Research a the product, the story and decide on style and content.

We were given a new brief to come up with out own paper engineering book. This book can be in any form using any type of paper engineering we would like to use. In class we went over the main types of ways you can make a paper engineering books. One of the ways that instantly struck me was the shadow books. I thought that they were a very interesting way of showing a story to your audience and it allows the audience to interact with the story a bit.


Me not being a very good drawer I thought that I would have to keep my silhouettes very simple but very clear and easy to understand. One of the books that we looked at in class was a book on the trenches, I think that the paper engineer technique was very powerful here and it was a very interesting way of showing your story. It make everything a bit eerie and disturbing without just by making the whole story shown through a shadow. Most books that are shadow books usually have there story based in the night time so that the paper that they use for their silhouettes matches with the theme. Other books are based in special places for example under the sea or in space, having a shadow book for these types of stories is a very interesting way of doing things and I think that having a story that is based in a different type of place could benefit of of a shadow book.

I wanted my story to be a story that almost every body knew that wouldn't be so hard to portray in shadow form and I believe that a fairy tail would be a good story to tell. There are many fairy tales all with very different stories. I needed to choose a story that would be very interesting to look at in shadow form and would also benefit type of book it is. I decided that I would choose Jack and the Beanstalk for my shadow book. This is because I think there are many scenes in that story that would be very interesting to look at through a shadow. I also believe that I could set the story at any type of day I want to, so I could always change the story a little, maybe give it a bit of a twist compared to your usual fairy tale. This is a very cool way of doing things and allows me to be a bit more creative when creating my silhouettes.

So my book is going to be a shadow book so this means that I will have to make it so that you can look at the image while at the same time looking at the shadow. I think the best way to do this is by making it so that each letter has a silhouette. This will mean that when you shine a light at the book not only does the main image shine thought but so does the sentence that will be along side. This will mean that I will have to find a text that is quite bold and will be easy to understand when made into a silhouette. Letters like, 'o' 'e' 'a' will have to be easily identifiable so that the audience does not get confused. 

I looked at a few fonts to see if they would work well with what I have in mind and most of them do however. Most silhouette fonts have a particular style that would just not fit with my story that well. I decided that the font I was going to use was a font called, 'Comic Dandy' this font is rather odd but gives of a child like vibe, that is very suitable to the story the book is telling. It also fits with the style of my drawing very well, I think if I give each letter a bit more room in-between each other I think the font will work very well.

Due to my book being focused many at a younger child audience, ages 6-10 I believe that I need to make my book into something that children would find interesting to look at. My skills at drawing are not the best and I knew this when going into the project. So I decided to look at other children's books to see how they design their books. 

I looked at a collection of books from the peter pauper press. There were 9 shadow books made in total all with completely differently stories. I found that all of the books were set in the night time, like I said above I believe this is because of how shadow books work. However I also believe that this could be due to when the book is read to the child. Most story books are presented to the child right before bed time and this is usually in the evening. Having the story be set at night time give the child something they can relate to and may make it a bit easier for the child to go to sleep. All of the stories are designed in a way that is not to complex and only features the key things in the scene, this is something that I will have to replicate when making my book.