iBook, commentary and self-reflection and evaluation:

Part One: Discuss your feelings about the iBook animation story task:

1.    Are you satisfied with the final result?

Yes I’m very satisfied with how my iBook has turned out. At the start of the term I wasn’t too sure if everything would work considering I had never made a book of any sort before, but I guess that I've proved to myself that I can make an iBook! 

2.    Did the iBook require more/less time than you originally thought?

I think making the iBook required more time than I originally though due to the fact that when we were told about the project, I thought making an iBook would just consist of finding pictures or taking screenshots of our animation then writing a story to go along with them. However it actually turned out that making an iBook was much different to what I thought it was, as we needed to: 

- Split up and trim our full animation so there would be QuickTime clips for each chapter

- Make voice recordings for each chapter

- Find suitable background pictures

- Find suitable fonts

- Choose a good colour scheme for the iBook

Although it took a while, it was definitely worth it in the end because I’ll always be able to open my iBook and be proud of the work I did in Grade 9.

3.    Would you like to change any aspects of your final project (layout, links, images, video and audio content, colour scheme etc)?

If I were to change certain aspects of the final project, I would probably try and modify my voice to sound more interesting in certain parts of the book. For example, if something sad was happening I would try make my voice sound sad, if something really exciting were happening, I would try and make my voice sound excited, and so on. I might have also looked for different pictures to put in the background of each chapter, even if it that only meant finding a little clipart fish or some underwater bubbles.

4.    If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

I don’t think I would do anything much differently if I were to start the project again. However, as I mentioned in the previous answer, if I were to modify any aspects of my iBook, I would probably try improving my tone and emotion in the voice recordings as well as finding some more background images for extra interest on each page. Although coming to think of it, before I imported my videos into QuickTime, I should have made sure the sound at the end of the video slowly faded off to prevent the sound from being loud and suddenly coming to a stop. This would have helped my videos to flow more when watching them.

Part Two: Respond to each of the following dot points. You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.

1.    Discuss whether your iBook has turned out the way you pictured.

I think my iBook has turned out better than the way I pictured considering I had never previously made a book, let alone an iBook. I had never used anything relating to iBooks Author so everything was really new to me, however I soon got the hang of things and was able to produce an iBook that can be kept and read in my iBooks Library for many years to come.

2.    Explain whether your iBook clearly depicts the style of your animation and describe some specific design principles that you have used to achieve this.

I think my iBook clearly depicts the style of my animation considering both are quite childish and colourful. However in order to achieve the appearance of my book being similar to my animation, I downloaded fonts from the internet that closely resemble the handwriting of a child, I then made the colour scheme closely relate to the colour scheme of my animation by using the magnification glass tool found in the colour pad. The colour played a major part in making the two look similar, as in every chapter, the main colour of the video preview was the same colour as the text box surrounding the writing, the title of the chapter and the same colour as the shadow surrounding the video. I think all of these aspects helped my animation and iBook have styles very similar to one another.

Matching colour scheme:

3.    Describe any problems or technical difficulties you encountered while creating your spoken words in GarageBand.

There weren’t too many problems while creating my iBook, however at the beginning of the project when I wasn’t too sure how to use certain tools, I continually had to ask my friends and Mr Powell for help. For example, I didn’t know how to crop an image, use the magnification glass tool or how to chose an appropriate cover image for the movie previews in each chapter. My other issue would have had to be getting all of the voice recordings done, as I kept having to delete and restart recordings due to me miss-pronouncing or missing words, stuttering, or missing a line when reading.

4.    Did you have all of the necessary resources to complete your iBook or did you have to create new materials?

Yes, thankfully I had most of the resources needed to complete my iBook such as appropriate QuickTime movie lengths that allowed me to create decent length stories for each chapter. The only resource I didn’t have were the background pictures for each chapter. For the opening page with the little introductory sentence to start the story off, I found some orange clip art fish to go in the background. For the remaining pages, I found an appropriate striped pattern off Google that I cropped down so there could be a few rows of stripes at both the top and bottom of each page.

5.    List the steps you used to plan and develop your project.

When we were first told about the project, the first step I took was to trim down appropriate sections from my full animation into good chapter lengths. From doing this first, I knew what each chapter would consist of so I could start off writing the stories. This took about two class lessons before I’d finished, so after this, I begun putting together my iBook. I started off with importing my QuickTime videos and pasting each chapter’s story into each chapter. After this, I discovered how you could download fonts off the Internet, so I ended up finding some really useful fonts that could be used in my iBook. I’m really glad I discovered these fonts because otherwise my iBook might not have had the same childish and fun feel to it, as I don’t really think any other usual fonts found in programs could have achieved the same appeal. Once I had figured out my fonts, imported all my videos and pasted all my stories into each chapter, it was time to start the voice recordings. Altogether, this took several hours, as I had to make sure each sounded how I wanted it to and make sure it would fit into its assigned chapter. On top of this, I also had to add in the title “Click here to play voiceover” to every voice recording and change the font to match the story’s font. Once all of this was done, I started playing around with the colour scheme. I made the background of each slide a light blue to match the underwater theme of my animation, and then made sure each chapter’s title, text box surrounding the writing and shadow surrounding the videos, each matched the main colour of the chapter’s video preview picture. I did all of this by using the ‘colour magnification tool’ that can pick out any colour it’s hovering above. When all this was done, I had just about finished and had a last couple of read through to make sure everything was in place and looked appropriate. Finally a term's work was finished! And I couldn't be happier with the final result.

6.    Talk about any time-management issues you encountered during the project and describe the steps you took to improve in this area;

I don’t think I encountered any time-management issues during this project. I managed to stay on track with my work so at the end I wasn’t rushing to have everything finished for the due date.

7.    Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection throughout your project. i.e. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work?

I think I have undertaken adequate and detailed reflection throughout the project as I’ve kept recent blog updates explaining what I did in each lesson and what I learnt. I have also included screenshots and pictures in some of my post to support what I was talking about or trying to explain.