The Final Major Project is the last body of work that I will produce at university, its a self initiated-project where we are required to write our own brief on almost anything we want. This gives us a pretty big scope to choose from and so I've spent the last week or so trying to decide what to do for it. Its a 16 week project so it needs to be something I'm going to enjoy and something that I can develop week by week.
To start with I've made a few notes on the things I like, feedback from the last project, and what my favourite projects have been in the past:
 |
| Pages from my "Ideas" notes. |
Looking at these notes, I think I've come up with an idea that combines my interests with some elements from my favourite past projects, and should also allow me to work on some of the suggestions from negotiated study.
I would like to illustrate a collection of fairytales (most likely the Grimm's stories), but adapting them so that the characters are animals instead of humans (which might involve a bit of anthropomorphism, something I've been quite interested in recently). By using a collection of stories as my theme I think I will find it easier to stay focussed and motivated for the project, as I won't be working on just one narrative for the whole 16 weeks.
At the moment I am aiming to produce an illustrated book as my final outcome, and I have a few ideas for that as well. A while ago I purchased a book called Mamoko which I found really interesting. At the start of the book you are introduced to a selection of characters, and after that there is no other text in the book. Each double-page is filled with a busy scene involving all of the characters, as well as "extras", and the idea is to re-read the book again and again to follow each of the character's stories, while some of them overlap and interact with each other:
I like the idea of using this sort of format to illustrate a collection of fairytales. I too would make some of the stories overlap with each other, for example: Red Riding Hood could drop the apple that Snow White later eats etc.
Rather than introducing the characters at the beginning of the book, I would more likely simply ask the question "How many of your favourite fairytales can you find within the book?" (or something similar).
This idea needs to be approved by my tutors on Monday, but today I am going to do some research into collections of fairytales to make a decision on what stories to use. I originally wanted to use some of the lesser-known fairytales, but now that I have this idea for an outcome I think it would be more appropriate to use some more popular stories, as the characters and stories within the pages will need to be reasonably recognisable.