My Marine Conservation Pop-up Book

This blog shares the development process of my marine conservation pop-up book that is based on my self-selected brief where I took on the challenge to devise and illustrate a pop-up book to educate/inform and promote thriving of marine life on the Glamorgan coast.

Through my online research I quickly discovered that there was a sparse amount of information on the marine life specifically within the Glamorgan coast so I interpreted this as brief being based on all of the UK Ocean.

Why this is such a great project:

This is a great project for me as it importantly informs me of an issue happening here to my home and extending out to a wider global context through my research.

By being aware of an issue I can get involved and inspire others to take part in meaningful volunteer work or make simple mindful actions that can make a difference to the troubles that both we and marine life are facing.

My next step:

In my most recent blog sharing my development on this project I learnt, explored and crafted many pop-up mechanisms.

The next creative step I took with my project was to develop an illustration concept for my first pop-up page.

After discovering from my online research that the two main problems of the ocean is litter and overfishing. 

I found that litter is of a greater concern to people as its a common, unpleasant and disturbing issue that is with us in our environment almost everywhere you look being most noticeably destructive and regularly brought to light in the news media. Stressed by more news coverage people are therefore more educated and informed about this issue of litter and it’s also something that I was taught about through school.

Significantly the decline in fish species is not taken as seriously as its effects aren’t felt as close-knit to peoples direct health and happiness. In the UK we don’t feel overwhelmingly concerned or threatened by the depletion of fish stocks as we are not dependent on fish alone for survival as we have so much alternative food sources. With far less regular insight on this “distant” issue within the news I believe that people are less informed of this growing issue and convinced by my own experience of having known nothing about this topic before my own self led research and having asked multiple peers too. I feel confident that an informing page based on the topic of overfishing would be the essential and interesting place that I desired to start with to expand my own and others awareness of this more quiet issue.

Here is my illustration intended to inform my audience of the overfishing issue happening in the UK Ocean today. This piece works to create that perspective of human’s careless and greedy grasp and how the beautiful biodiversity is being taken directly by us. I used depictions of hands to connect us directly to the issue more intimately. I really wanted to show the beauty being destroyed by us as a reflection on what we are doing when we are overfishing hence the peace being disrupted. This problem that surrounds us is an issue that we can’t see our impact as clearly as we would see on land. I feel it’s my job to bring this issue to light so that we can see clearly what we are doing and do something about it before we destroy our oceans beautiful biodiversity by making fish species extinct.

After I completed this illustration concept I looked at my range of pop-up mechanisms and selected the mechanisms that I felt would work to strengthen and make my illustration overfishing concept more visually striking and interesting in a book form.

Here is my first design for a pop-up book that I developed on paper:

Incorporated are THREE pop-up mechanisms including the third pop-up shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpt-ukUDGKM which I learnt from this YouTube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCIwAJZxLs0, plus the ROTATING DISC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj9P8g1lvMY) and the SLIDING MOTION paper engineering shown in my video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFx07Ken-2A which I learnt from Mark Hiner’s book called “Paper Engineering for Pop-up Books and Cards” that I discovered and borrowed from the University library.

I planned on using my overfishing illustration concept for the overall background and to use the centre dynamic mechanism for a space to attach paper fish (catch). This mechanism is to give the page a sense of a near and close up perspective of the catch scene with that sense of depth within the catch captured by the fishing boat above. To the right I wanted to place a mass of cut out fish and bycatch attached by strings representing fishing lines connecting to some of the fishing boats for the viewer to interact with to give the page more chaos with this overfishing frenzy to create that distressing atmosphere. I wanted to have on the bottom left of my page a mini ROTATING DISC with yellow and black warning colours to emphasise that overfishing is becoming a serious and threatening problem that could lead to damaging consequences to our species. Along with this I want to also have a SLIDING MOTION pull out feature as a base to the rotating disc to show my own personal body language facially as my own response to this issue I plan on my response to be a distressed pose.

Remember my paper engineering:

SLIDING MOTION:

ROTATING DISC:

I CONTINUED MY RESEARCH TO IMPROVE MY KNOWLEDGE OF THIS TOPIC AND TO BOOST MY MOTIVATION!

Before going ahead with making my pop-up book following the plan I made above I knew how important it is after having learnt from previous project to test things out before jumping straight in for the final piece. Making mock up can inform you so much and can prepare you by learning of an effective approach for the final piece.

Throughout the making of my mock-up pop-up page following the design plan I constructed above. I continued my research by learning more about this topic of interest through watching and listening to fascinating documentaries based on overfishing via YouTube. From the documentaries I was able to access a vast diversity of opinions and perspectives from scientists and fishermen. But this did make me particularly intrigued to wanting to know more about the general public’s thoughts on overfishing to see how much they know about this critical issue and to see how much they care.

For motivation I listened to music that really drew out my passion for protecting the beautiful marine life and helped me imagine the destructive moment of overfishing by connecting myself emotionally to this topic.

The DOCUMENTARIES:

The MUSIC:

Pop-up Page Mock-up Development:

The mechanism that I have used for the pop-up centre scene of fish and by-catch represented in the blue paper illustrated cut outs showing the biodiversity of the ocean is supported by the mechanism I learnt from this YouTube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCIwAJZxLs0   – In addition to my initial mock-up page plan I developed an idea of making the centre mechanisms pop-up space a stage for a puppet. The puppet I wanted to be a cluster of paper illustrated marine life that my audience can control via two pull strings at either side of the books pages. This movement that you can create being a side by side motion or panicked rapid up and down motion like a fish out of water creates the sense of panic and no escape.

Here is a close up of the marine life clustered together that I imagined would work well with my illustration concept of their entrapment by two enclosing giant human hands. I also particularly like the wonderful shadows this 3D page mechanism casted in the changing light angles creating quite a ghostly animal shapes.

Check out my videos – In these videos I am showing the additional puppet feature I included and the motions you can create:

View this post on Instagram

This is a trial pop-up page I'm working on. I plan to put a netting around the marine animals to highlight overfishing. This is going to be quite a fun yet educational interactive page. The puppet effect shown in this video is a fun way of creating panicky movement within the net as the fish is caught it also helps to give the netted animals depth.

A post shared by Ellen Rees (@ellenpaigerees) on Mar 4, 2016 at 3:56pm PST

View this post on Instagram

This is a trial pop-up page I'm working on. I plan to put a netting around the marine animals to highlight overfishing. This is going to be quite a fun yet educational interactive page. The puppet effect shown in this video is a fun way of creating panicky movement within the net as the fish is caught it also helps to give the netted animals depth.

A post shared by Ellen Rees (@ellenpaigerees) on Mar 4, 2016 at 4:02pm PST

With this additional puppet feature and of course the fish cut outs on the 3D centre mechanism. I had to make sure that my book could close and reopen effectively with no damage to these paper features.

I did find that the puppet occasional caught on the fish shapes attached to the centre mechanism once the book was folded and reopened, as the puppet can sometime lose its flat shape when left in the centre position where it is bent by the closing of the page.

However I knew that this can be easily fixed by designing a wider and smaller puppet of paper clustered fish with no sharp edges that would easily catch on the other paper forms and laminating this shape so that it won’t bend but lay flat when closing the book.

I then progressed onwards with completing my mock-up pop-up design which finally developed into this outcome:

Instead of the mass of caught fish hung by strings representing fishing lines that I planned to have on the far right section of the page. I instead used garden netting that resembled a fishing net aesthetic to have a foreground of cut out illustrations of caught fish and by-catch. As I didn’t like the ends of the netting fraying and free spiking out all around it’s edges. I had to tidy up a section for practice by using a needle to pierce a hole in the page and push through the loose strands of the netting plastic material so it is sewn in to the page creating a more satisfying appearance. At this stage you can also see that I planned where I wanted my informative facts to go with some interactive flaps to add to the quirkiness of the page.

I used a black fine liner to outline my illustrations and a water wash for the background hands to add a bit of shading to create a sense of light and 3D perspective with my quick drawings.

Here is a close up shot of my mock up page design.

Here is a video of my completed mock-up of my page design and me showing all the interactive features in action:

View this post on Instagram

The interactive features of my draft first page for my pop-up book project based on the troubles of the ocean.

A post shared by Ellen Rees (@ellenpaigerees) on Mar 6, 2016 at 1:05pm PST

From this mock-up of my overfishing pop-up book I was able to establish what works well and what doesn’t. I knew that for the centre mechanism of paper fish biodiversity I wanted to have that pop-up out structure framework made transparent using acetate to give the fish that floating effect of a moment underwater. I didn’t want any of the mechanism framework to get in the way of visibility of my illustrated cut out marine life.

I felt that everything on my page has to be strong and clear with its message to create an instant impact and response from my viewer. It was here that I grew more of a desire to make my page more straight to the point with the idea of removing features of my rather cluttered mock-up design.

So I wanted a more basic approach with less going on, removing that section of netting and just using my original illustration for this page with the hands grabbing the fish from the ocean and the fisher boats above the sea line. I was also very displeased with the text sections clustering the page, I felt they didn’t work as compositionally as I imagined it would. The text distracting flaps and cluttering locations take away the powerful statement I am making alone visually with my illustration which I always want to enforce as the real enforcer, activist and messenger.

From this stage of thought and development with my project the next step I took was attending a very helpful group tutorial that took place on Monday the 7th of March. The tutorial was attended by my tutor Chris Glynn and new associate tutor Phil Wrigglesworth plus other student illustrators who all shared their opinions and suggestions in response to my presentation.

My feedback I received once I had fully explained my project and my intentions was the idea of creating a survey to take with me to the beach cleaning event that I am going to attend to inform me of the general public’s view about this overfishing topic and most importantly to hear the opinion and experience of the people who were leading the event.

The tutors suggested that I use a quote for each pop-up page in my book derived from my surveys.

This survey would help to support my project by incorporating my journalistic experience with this collaborative aspect of discussion providing me with interesting and useful insight into the general knowledge and people’s feelings towards this topic. Which is always important when you are creating something meant for that exact audience.

So I made two surveys based on the topics: OVERFISHING and LITTER

I made the surveys in a hand out form to take with me on the trip and I also made an online version of the surveys using Smart Survey to share on my Facebook page to reach out to my friends and family. I created my questions with my own curiosity and I grew really interested to listen to people’s opinions about this issue.

My SURVEYS:

My online survey for overfishing. Source: http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/WXVQL/

The rest of my online overfishing survey. Source: http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/WXVQL/

My online version of my ocean litter survey. Source: http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/NA0HI/

The rest of my online survey based on ocean litter. Source: http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/NA0HI/

In the Tutorial I also shared my new proposal for my project, which I developed after producing my mock-up pop-up page.

Remember my initial proposal:

My plan: I developed the idea of creating my pop-up book in the form of circle to represent our world and home. This all-encompassing shape also highlights the feature of marine life conservation as an important global concern that can be cured only by global action. On the left half side of the book it will be dystopian based pop-up pages showing a representation of now and the problems getting worse over time as you progress through the pages highlighting the devastating impact this will have for ourselves, future generations and marine life. The divide between the dystopia on the left and the utopia on the right is separated by a page declaring an option for the viewer to either stop reading here and simply accept this dystopia as our reality or to turn the page and accept the world of wonderful possibilities of the dreams achievable by working together and inspiring actions that they can do to help. On the utopian right (ethically right) side there is more pages as with imagination there is infinite possibilities and there being so much that we can prevent and do with beautiful representations of what we can achieve by working together and the incredible persuasive and inspiring difference this makes to life on earth. On the utopian borders of the pages I plan to make linked human forms hand in hand representing team work illuminating the pop-up pages representing the outcome of that collaboration. When you open a double page pop-up spread in the utopian section we can see the human hand in hand border creates a whole sun formation linking metaphorically to optimism, happiness and wellbeing.

My new proposal:

For my new project proposal I planned on dropping the initial idea of a circular world shaped book with a parting of one side dystopian and the other side utopian. For this new concept I imagined having a different system with a flow of pages representing firstly what is happening now, secondly what we will happen if we don’t do anything and lastly what we need to do to turn things around and solve the issue.

My plan for my first set of three pages. This set is based on overfishing in the UK Ocean.

This is my plan for my second set of three pages based on scallop dredging in the UK Ocean.

This is my plan for my last set of four pages based on litter in the UK Ocean.

After sharing my new intention for my project, Chris Glynn who was considering the time aspect of my project suggested to me the challenge of completing three pop-up pages refined and the rest of my seven pages I planned to create just as quick draft proposals. So particularly the refined three pages would show the potential I have with my book effectively.

At the time I felt like this was achievable with the week I had remaining for this project.

I was also warned in my tutorial that documentaries are biased and that the information can be outdated so it would be unwise to use any statistical data from the documentaries.

Beach Clean!

On the 8th March I took part in a really enjoyable Beach Clean event that was a volunteering project led by the Cardiff Student Union Team and not as initially thought as the universities surf club. I travelled by bus with the group of volunteers and went to Ogmore-by-Sea beach where we met up with Tim Wort who works for ‘Keep Wales Tidy’ who really thanked us for coming along and taught us about the litter issue on the UK beaches and the instructions for the beach clean.

My pictures from the day:

This is the beautiful Ogmore-by-Sea beach that I actually didn’t even know existed only 30-40 minutes away from my home. You can see in this picture no obvious signs of litter as this beach seemed very well looked after.

This is Tim Wort sharing to us his knowledge on beach litter and our instructions for the beach clean event. After this talk we were then handed out equipment of a litter picker and a ringed bin bag.

This is the logo on Tim Worts jacket representing the lovely Keep Wales Tidy organisation. Here is a link to their official website which I will return too when I want to again get involved with more events like this really good feeling beach clean event. Their work is completely reliant on volunteers exactly how I am approaching my intentions for my project with the idea of aspiring activism. Keep Wales Tidy Website: http://www.keepwalestidy.org/

 

I took this picture of the pebbles on the beach because I was shocked by this really cheeky piece of foam which was camouflaged very well with the rocky scene. I couldn’t believe how perfectly rock shaped it was. Can you spot the foam? I found that there was more litter up the highest point of the beach than there was closest to the sea shore.

The cheeky foam posing as a rock. It didn’t fool me though, it went straight in the bin where it was meant to be in the first place and not on this beautiful place of nature.

A pleasant picture of Ogmore-by-Sea beach with its fun mixture of both sand and pebbles. A lot of the rubbish that I found on the coastal areas was very much broken up in small pieces. The most common litter that I picked up was small fragments of polystyrene and plastic.

Ogmore-by-Sea beach.

This is me with my volunteer vest on. This was my first ever volunteer work of this sort and this was a really good and worthwhile experience.

This was my view as I entered the river area where the water has had its close encounters with humans and heading straight out to the sea. There was so much visible rubbish here that was a lot more bulky and intact.

There was a lot of plastic surrounding the river environment and a lot more unexpected items of rubbish like shoes and underwear.

Inside my bin bag.

Our group beach clean work shown here in all those bin bags being collected by Tim Wort who is going to dispose of them. This is only about an hour and thirty minutes work just look how much rubbish we removed from the beach.

A group picture and along with the rubbish we collected from the beach.

I was shocked to find a discarded baby stroller here at the beach as it being so big.

In the instruction that Tim Wort gave us at the start of the event he made sure to inform us to collect these seaweed looking forms that are actually the egg cases of rays and sharks which I didn’t know before. Many of these interesting egg cases were found on the beach by the group which are belonging to various different species of rays and sharks. Tim Wort wanted us to collect these and bring them to him to take to a scientist lab where they monitor the species distribution and abundance to record their threatened populations. More information can be found here: http://www.sharktrust.org/en/great_eggcase_hunt

Here is the group’s good collection of the wonderful egg cases that we collectively found ready to be taken to the lab.

This was my first experience with this type of volunteer work and I have to say I had such a great time at this beach clean and I’m definitely considering going to another event like this. By picking up litter from the beach I am saving the natural beauty of our home and eliminating a potential killer to our treasured marine life. We must never take natures beauty for granted, we need to protect it and we need to look after it with all our love just like we do with our own homes. I made sure to interview Tim Wort who was very knowledgeable about the ocean to gain interesting answers to my survey questions before leaving the beach.

The Development of my First Pop-up Book based on OVERFISHING:

This is a picture showing my first stage of development with my A4 pop-up book. You can see here how I have used a material known as acetate which is like a thin sheet of plastic that I was able to manipulate like card or paper to craft my desired mechanism. At the top of the page I started to illustrate using a range of artist pencils a detailed huge fishing trawler and a busy range of fishing boats. I really wanted to crowd up this level above the sea with the boats to convey this issue of the competitive and huge fishing industry.

This was the development stage when I had completed all the illustrations for this page with my range of artist pencils. I planned my layout of the cut out illustrations for the mechanisms by attaching them to the acetate pop out pieces using blu-tack. I didn’t want to secure these cut out sea animal illustrations in place permanently at this stage as I desired to paint my page using watercolours it would make the page more awkward to paint if I had secured them in place.

The drawing stage complete.

The drawing stage complete and cut-out props experimented with positioning using blu-tack. I planned on using this photo as a reference for when I permanently secure the cut outs in place to the pop-up mechanism and pages once painted.

For the animal and boat illustrations I used the internet as a source of reference and research to create a realistic appearance to these features that I desired as I wanted it to be a bold and clear statement and perspective.

For the illustrations of grabbing hands I simply captured and utilised pictures of my own hand in various grabbing poses to again create a clear realistic appearance.

Some of my resources that I sourced from the internet that I used for reference when illustrating my pop-up book:

Source: http://www.divephotoguide.com/images/news/uploaded/article_6186/942441269.jpeg

Source: http://www.roosterfishing.net/images/boats/brindisi-fishing-boat-0.jpg

Source: http://www.europabevegelsen.no/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Fiskeb%C3%A5t.jpg

Source: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/fishing-boat-26591907.jpg

Source: http://nevseoboi.com.ua/uploads/posts/2010-11/1290112348_airena-wallapack-143-8.jpg

Source: http://www.kuredu.com/wp-content/gallery/free-introduction_1/manta-ray-surface.jpg

Source: http://www.tommyschultz.com/photos/big_thumbnails/philippines/tubbataha-underwater-photography/tubbataha-underwater-photography-63.jpg

Source: http://www.lareserva.com/home/fimage/tibushark.jpg

Source: http://1wallpaper.net/whale-swimming-underwater-water-wallpaper.html

Source: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7333/14093315635_5712c7e4bc_b.jpg

Source: http://mgduff.co.uk/files/large/0c7fc7da894ce974351cf896946a0857.jpg

Source: http://www.paradisediver.net/sites/default/files/dolphin1_72dpi_1.jpg

Source: http://www.hickerphoto.com/images/1024/dolphin-photos_4786.jpg

Source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P809LBjXISM/UUBxBvhQFNI/AAAAAAAAAuI/N0adRf5ZuAg/s320/dolphin-wallpaper-1366×768+(2).jpg

Various photos I took of my hand/hands to use as reference for my illustrations:

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

I took captions of my hands in poses I desired to use as a reference for my illustrations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next step – COLOUR

Before applying the colour straight onto my pop-up page I had to experiment to make sure I get my colours just right. I wanted my colours to be bold and eye-catching.

This was my first colour experiment where I quickly painted on my watercolours following my intuition. However I really didn’t like this outcome as the colours were much too weak and gloomy. I wanted my colours to really pop.

This was my next colour experiment where I minimised the amount of colours that I used and arrived to this outcome using red, yellow, blue and green. I wanted the red to represent the murderous blood thirsty humans and the animals to be a non-natural colour as I want them to really illuminate the page and be the beauty illuminating out like stars in the night sky and the green for the fresh nature representing life and health. I really wanted the beauty to radiate like a magical treasure find that is so precious.

Here I used a filter on my Instagram to transform my second colour experiment into a black and white version. I knew that from here colour really does make a difference to catching the eye and making my illustration that more interesting.

With my sea animals being like I said “stars in the night sky” and perceived as treasure, precious and beautiful. I believe this idea was influenced from my research from my previous field project where I worked with a group of fellow illustration students on a recent promoting nature project.

What my colours represents:

Yellow reflects happiness and positivity.

Green reflects life.

The artist that inspired my colour concept is Martin Wittfooth and his piece “Eschaton”.  I just love the beauty of the light and the animal so perfectly in tune with each other in contrast to the fire and destruction in the background it really highlights how special animals are and how we must preserve them. Source: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/321866704599202060/

I believe a world without those two colours yellow and green existing for us today would be a very upsetting and unthinkable world to imagine. I feel these two colours are a powerful source of happiness.

I was happy with this colour scheme and ready to approach my prepared pop-up page with this plan.

I got on with painting my pop-up page using the colour scheme that I was happy with consisting of red, orange, yellow, green and blue.

I got on with painting my pop-up page using the colour scheme that I was happy with consisting of red, orange, yellow, green and blue.

I had a play with the garden netting over my second colour experiment painted scene to see how this would work together later on. I felt the netting took away too much clear visibility of the strong statement I’m trying to make alone with my illustration with this quite messy and distracting material.

I painting the cut-outs separately then placed them carefully with blu-tack where I wanted them to be compositionally using my reference photo I took early.

Here is my pop-up book painted with more yet to do like the crafting of the other interactive features and text needed to be included if I wanted any factual information to be incorporated with this illustration this was something I could experiment with later on. I still had to play around with my cut outs here for the right positioning I was after, I could easily rearrange with the Blu-Tack.

 

Close up of my progress.

 

The FINAL OUTCOME: 

This video shows my pop-up book based on overfishing completed:

I decided on using a single strip of text making my work punchy and straight to the point.

So here is my final outcome with this pop-up page spread based on overfishing completed.

My complete pop-up page spread based on boosting overfishing awareness. This photo taken in daylight shows the eye grabbing effect of the blue tones and yellow colours beaming from the page.

 

 

 

 

My little illustrated personal expression in response to this issue. My distressed mode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my front page is series of facts that I sourced from the Marine Conservation Society website. This was placed on the front of the book for people to learn about the overfishing issue. Source: https://www.mcsuk.org/

My project takes a final new road:

In the development process of creating this pop-up page designed to educate people about the overfishing issue happening within the UK Oceans. I grew an exciting concept drifting away from my latest intention of a 10 page pop-up book.

The idea stemmed from how much my book wanted to stay open physically due to the sturdy and stubborn material of acetate used for the pop-up mechanism where the book sternly avoided being closed and laying shut. Simply, when you attempt to close my book it only springs back open.

This made it clear that my book refused to be like other pop-up books with their many pages of surprises each shut away at the turn of the page or close of the book. Its wonderful handiwork enclosed away waiting to be revealed but without the intervention of turning a page it doesn’t get seen like it deserves. By learning all those paper engineering mechanisms I discovered how really clever these inventions were and precise in its particularly parts, it really is very tactile work.

My pop-up page however was a singular and serious statement declaring itself as something that must be read and seen immediately. Its open stance empowers its critical importance as it stands strong and proudly presents its self.

My book open speaks with few words and provides a perspective that lays invisible to us, through my book is to see the ocean from an underwater perspective. By standing out from the crowd of pop-up books with a use of only two pages and it being self-standing effectively grabbing my audience in with my eye-catching art I gain interest and with this interest I have facts on the opposite side of the book to inform my viewers in a feed of facts to become informed of this issue.

It was then I realised when I had completed this book that I wanted it to be a singular standing piece informing people of what is happening now to go a long with a similar format of book but based on what we need to do to solve this overfishing problem.

My illustrated vision of my second book:

Here was my second page where I wanted to have a human face and a mouth pop-up mechanism eating away at a picture that I planned to take of a fishing market showing how we are consuming particular fish species. On the left side of the book I wanted to have characteristic illustrations of fish that are threatened/endangered protesting and raising signs that the reader can move from side to side basically saying to not eat them. The mechanism for the protest signs is called pivoting motion a paper mechanism I learnt from Mark Hiner’s book “paper engineering for pop-up books and cards”. On that left page you can also see how I have used again the bottom corner mechanisms like the rotating disc that I will have in green and blue to represent healing and conservation and again the sliding motion mechanism to reveal my emotion to this problem solving theme. On the right page I plan on using again the pivoting motion protest signs for the fish that we should consider eating instead of the threatened species to left to release the pressure of certain fish species. In the centre I have drawn little ovals to represent a crowd of people who connected by strings vote for eating the fish that are not threatened all together with their hand prints stamped on the right page. For the brain of the big centre head I put a simple pound symbol representing how we should think about where we put our money. The texts not including those on the signs I have included in this design “we can do something together” and “we need to help take the pressure of threatened fish species”. If I were to make this I’m sure I’d probably make adjustments just like how I simplified my initial plan for my overfishing pop-up page and made changes along the different stages of its development.

 

The idea of this page is to inform people of what to consider eating over the threatened species as an effort to help take the pressure of fishing for common fish species that we are depleting. By doing this together and raising this awareness through my book this could help the common fish stocks to repopulate and grow again.

By creating a set of two pop-up books informing people of the situation now and what we should do about it I have helped the issue gain more an awareness and it is awareness that leads to solving.

From here I was happy with just focussing on the overfishing topic for this project as I felt people knew more about the more visible little issue than they did about this discrete ocean issue that we take little notice too.

Due to the little time I had left to complete this project I was pleased to hand in my overfishing book and my illustrated plan for my final book.

As a third feature to my project submission I included my survey results in this open standing book form following the open design I loved about my completed pop-up book.

My survey results is a way of accessing the general feelings and thoughts made by the UK residents about the oceans overfishing issue in the UK.

It was really interesting to see people’s individual responses to this overfishing issue and this journalistic approach was a great way of gaining research as insight into the thoughts and feelings of this important issue as a community of discussion.

 

This way I am making a group discussion about the issue an accessible timeless piece.

What I think of my project:

I am really pleased with my end result as I know I put a lot of time, energy and passion into this project. I feel that the strongest element of this outcome has to be the single text statement of the opened visual illustrated inside. The single strip of clear capitalised text reading “WE ARE TAKING TOO MUCH” gets straight to the point as clearly and as simply as possible. I am also particularly in love with the format of the book in its presentation being a standing and very eye-catching aesthetic along with its bold colour work. The fact that it effectively stands out and attracts the eye is a success in my effort to bring the issue to light.

I don’t feel unsatisfied with any particular element of my project I’m happy with the outcome as it’s refined and a bold affirming piece.

My Crit:

My critique is the final stage of the project where I simply presented my project to a small group of fellow illustration students and my tutor Chris Glynn. In this 10 minute session I was able to gain fantastic feedback that I always find very useful and a key source of improving myself as an illustrator.

What they like about my project:

The group loved the idea of the open book self-standing format and much preferred my less cluttered outcome to the initial mock-up book. Chris really liked my conversational survey piece form as a feature to my project.

What they didn’t quite like about my project:

• The colour came up as an agreed fault with my overfishing pop-up book as one of my friends said the colours of the intended precious and treasured marine life that I painted in yellow and green reminds them too much of a toxic waste colour!

Oops! Bad colour choice. Wasn’t quite the outstanding beauty colour that I was aiming for in getting across to my audience. This is images on google images based on toxic waste,  I can see why my friend made that connection. Source: https://www.google.co.uk/search?espv=2&biw=1517&bih=741&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=toxic+waste&oq=toxic+waste&gs_l=img.3..0l10.3615.6312.0.6727.11.5.4.2.2.0.72.315.5.5.0….0…1c.1.64.img..0.11.346.8yA5kku9vYc#imgrc=_

• Chris also mentioned how my survey piece looked a bit shabby with all the staples I used to secure the pages together and the sign needed to be a lot stronger standing and so it could also work as a handle.
• I was advised that inks would of worked better on the card that I painted onto with watercolours as watercolours did kind of wear down and slightly tear up the card material in areas where I dampened it too much. I haven’t ever used inks for illustrations before so it would be good to practice this medium over the Easter break.

We agreed I need to practice more colour work over the Easter break as I admit I found it tricky to know what colours to pick and worried if I was making the right decisions. I want to feel more confident with colour work and make the right choices!

I admit also that the staples on the survey piece was a rushed job and I should of taken my time with its construction to make it more pleasingly aesthetic.

April 18th 2016  – In response to my advice on how I could improve this work in preparation for the final module assessment:

• I believe my eye-catching and alluring pop-up book would function best in the domain of the public especially placed in clear view in fish markets to aware the consumers of the overfishing issue so they can make informed decisions on which (hopefully) alternative fish they buy. Therefore with every successful influence on purchase I have effectively helped through educating to reduce the pressure of fishing of the threatened species that face the possible future of extinction. This was in agreement via email with a lady who I believe was called Jennie Griffiths who led a marine conference at the University during the Future Generations module in response to my email as I was highly persuaded to email her my work and for her thoughts on this theory of mine. She loved my work very much and thought it was an effective concept and to my surprise Jenny even asked to show my work in an upcoming meeting with my permission to which I allowed.

I would show a print screen of this email but I unfortunately accidentally deleted the email in attempt to declutter my inbox. I really need to be more careful and ‘Archive’ all of my important emails and forbid myself from deleting any from this file.

See my previous related blogs:

My first post based on this 4 week Field project sharing my initial research and intentions for this project:

https://ellenreesblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/field-individual-response-a-pop-up-book-project/

My second post where I presented my large range of pop up mechanisms that I learnt from YouTube sources and a very useful book from the library:

https://ellenreesblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/pop-up-paper-engineering/

 

 

Pop-Up Paper Engineering

From the research that I carried out last week which you can find at this link below to my initial blog post telling you more about the Marine Life pop-up book Inventor based brief I am working on and my intentions.

https://ellenreesblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/field-individual-response-a-pop-up-book-project/

Reminding you of my chosen task:

Devise and illustrate a pop-up book to educate/inform and promote thriving of marine life on the Glamorgan coast.

The next great place to start was to dive right into learning pop-up paper engineering.

I knew I wanted to learn lots of mechanisms to open my project up to lots of possibilities and to allow my book to have a unique pop-up mechanism for each page of my book to keep every page surprising, amusing and exciting.

From the pop-up paper mechanisms I learn I can simply grow my ideas off of them by planning my illustrations for the pages using its 3D perspective in front of me.

I used my “how to make a pop-up” research on YouTube to learn some striking designs.

When watching the YouTube homemade tutorials I found it really useful to adjust the speed settings to slow the process down to make it much easier for me to follow.

The Tutorial Videos I used to make a book of simple and easy pop-ups:

Here is my result:

Using card really made my pop-ups solid, neat and more striking. I intend to use card for the final pop-up book piece for a really powerful effect as I know paper is going to be a lot weaker and more flimsy. I definitely want my piece to punch out from the pages.

Next up was this video which I used to make this gorgeous flower growing effect which I immediately thought as being fantastic for a biodiversity page representing thriving marine life and also handy for upcoming Mother’s Day. The flower forms of this useful design could perhaps be transformed into marine fish and plant shapes or into fiery paper sea plant forms with fish paper cuttings incorporated and these cuttings having multi-coloured acetate (shiny and colourful just like fish) backings. Wouldn’t that look great in the light? I imagine it would project all the colours similar to a stain glass window effect.

The Pop-up Flower YouTube Tutorials I used:

Here is my Pop-up flower:

I also just came across this just now as I looked up “paper cut fish” which would look beautiful surrounding the flower transformed marine biodiversity centre developing off that exciting acetate idea.

Source: http://webneel.com/daily/sites/default/files/images/daily/04-2013/fish-paper-cut-illustration.jpg

 

I also made sure to make good use of the Universities library resource as I was curious to see if they had any relevant pop-up book material that could help me with learning new paper mechanisms. Plus tutors always advice we use the library as well as the internet when it comes to research which I totally agree with. I was really amazed that the library had so many books of this kind to offer me. I reserved the following:

• Paper engineering for pop-up books and cards – Mark Hiner. (Hiner, M. (1985). Paper engineering for pop-up books and cards. Norfolk, England: Tarquin Publications.)

This book clearly had been used a lot which is a good sign of its popularity. Source: Hiner, M. (1985). Paper engineering for pop-up books and cards. Norfolk, England: Tarquin Publications.

• Paper Engineering For Designers, Pop-Up Skills and Techniques – Keith Finch. (Finch, K. (n.d.). Paper engineering for designers.)

Book by Keith Finch. Source: Finch, K. (n.d.). Paper engineering for designers.

 

Might I just add that reserving a book in advance online is the best thing ever. This saved me time struggling to find the books I needed as the librarian had already collected it for me. I definitely know now to always reserve! It was my quickest and most successful trip to the library ever.

The book that I used was the “paper engineering for pop-up books and cards” created by Mark Hiner as it was such a brilliant and easy to follow guide whereas the other one by Finch was pretty much the same thing except it had a lot more of a complicated approach. Hiner worked more with diagram illustration instructions which I much prefer over heaps of step by step writing in the Keith Finch book.

Using Hiner’s extremely helpful book I could simply trace the shapes of the paper mechanisms I needed and then follow his fold, cut and assemble guides.

Hiner also gave me an interesting brief back up on the history of pop-up books being designed to amuse and how they are once again a thriving market and starting to be used for serious educational intent. This is the way how I’m going with my project about educating the serious importance of saving our marine life.

Hiner helped me learn of all ten working mechanism models which are said to be…:

“…the basic ground-rules for successful paper engineering. Each being a starting point for a whole range of exciting possibilities.” – Mark Hiner

“By choosing the right mechanism and then adapting and developing it to suit your need, you can express and idea, a message or a mood far more vividly than any static picture ever can.” – Mark Hiner

My Mark Hiner Pop-up led works:

1. FLOATING LAYERS

2. MAGIC BOX

3. V-FOLD

4. MULTIPLE LAYERS

5. ROTATING DISC

6. DISSOLVING DOORS

7. PULL-UP PLANES

8. SLIDING MOTION

9. PIVOTING MOTION

10. MOVING ARM

 

With my variety of pop-up mechanisms that I have accomplished. I plan on using these as reference for upcoming illustrations which I will now be focusing on for much of this week. Ideally I want to plan a page for the negative side then a opposite positive reflection and build the pop-ups with this repeat process to get my pop-up book developing into its physical form quite quickly following my intuition.

My tutor Chris Glynn said at last week’s tutorial that “it doesn’t have to be a complete refined piece”. Although I am aiming to complete mine by the fourth week on the 14th of March as I want to imagine this as a deadline by a company who is dependent and relying on me like how the Theatre designers from the recent MUSE are set strict deadlines and it is good for me to be in bit of pressure like Dominic Wilcox said when he set himself the challenge of creating something creative every day for 30 days in a row as this got him into the habit of making decisions really quickly which helped him to get in touch with his heart and instinct.

Watch Dominic Wilcox’s inspiring video called “The reinvention of normal”: