Visual Narratives: Final Piece - Printing and Finishing // Evaluation

Folding a concertina book is absolutely nerve wracking. I trimmed the sides off my images but one ended up being about half a millimetre shorter than the other one - I was a little worried about this incase it threw all the pages off but I couldn't afford to slice any more information off the other page.

Although I was really careful with my folding it still ended up being a little off! You can't tell when it's stretched out but when it is folded you can see the pages are a little wonky. I think I should have practiced folding on spare paper a bit more so I could have got it perfect but overall I am pleased with my final outcome.

I accidentally cropped about 5mm off the bottom of the whole book - it didn't really take off any vital information but it's still annoying! I neglected to add bleed in indesign as when I was compiling my image in photoshop I cropped it to the exact size rather than being a little bigger and having some excess information. At least I have now learned this lesson and will strive to remember bleed from now on.

Evaluation

I am really pleased with how my final book came out. I painted my final pieces on a textured paper so the original texture has come through on the digital print. I really love the effect that gives. It's quite subtle but I think it adds a bit of extra depth to the images. I had wanted to do the colour shift that Kristyna suggested but ended up having the end of the book mostly saturated with ghosts instead, which has given a similar impression as the blue contrasts to heavily with the browns and oranges of the rest of the book. The blue colour works really well on the 'belly band' cover as it foreshadows the ending and contrasts against the trees that it sits on top of. Initially the writing on it was orange but I found that the colour burn tool made the overlapped bits orange so I thought this was a subtler way of including the colour.

Feedback

All the feedback I got on the colour was very positive as I had really considered the palette I used for this piece. I am happy that a lot of people wrote really positive things as it was stuff I was really happy with too. "Love the format to reference the trees. Love it.", "choice of format suits the content", "images work really well in concertina" - I'm glad that the intent of my format was clear - making it long and thin to reflect the height of the trees. One piece of feedback said the stock was too thick and the folding "ruined" my illustration, there are indeed some creases on the folds of my work that I'm not too pleased about but they are barely noticeable and the thickness of the stock helps it to stand up by itself so I think it's alright.