OUG505 - Studio Brief 2 - The Storyline & Book

After deciding that I wanted to do a children's book I had to decide on a storyline and also more importantly an age range. I feel that children in the age range of 3-7 would be best because I can really simplify the language and make it a much more visual book.

The kind of message that I want to portray is that sometimes eating meat is bad, and you can live off vegetables as your main diet. I think that children of this age will be more empathetic and if they are taught about some of the truths behind farming they may be less inclined to eat meat. Additionally I hope to influence the parents as well who will be reading it to their children. It is going to be a challenge because I don't want to put a negative light on the industry or on people who do eat meat. I just want to suggest that perhaps there is another way to live than on an omnivorous diet.

My initial ideas were:

- Show Perry the pig and his friends being strong while eating vegetables - stronger than other animals who eat meat perhaps?

- Show Perry the pig stuck in a farm and he wants to go exploring the countryside without being behind a fence.

- Perry has to choose between eating vegetables or meat?

- Perry escapes from the pig sty to explore the countryside and makes friends along the way

Also I had a think about how to print and bind the book in order to be durable enough for children of a young age to look through. I think that I will do a hard cover because of this so that the book can take a lot of use. I am unsure whether to use a perfect bind or a simple saddle stitch bind. Either would work with the hardcover but it depends on how I want it to be printed. 

I decided on the story line where he escapes from the pig sty and makes friends along the way as I feel like it is a better message for children to be shown the value of freedom for the animals. Plus this means that I don't really have any negative messages about the farming industry so I hope that this wouldn't put anyone off.

The next step was to draw up a storyboard of sorts showing the illustrations and text for each page.