One of my most prominent worries from the start has been what to include on the back of the concertina as I didn't know if I'd have time to create content for that as well as the main front side of the book. I found out from my tutorial today, as well as looking at other examples of concertina books, that most of the time the backs are blank. This reassured me it is acceptable to have nothing on the reverse side of the book so I can focus my time on the main illustrations. Here are some concertina books based on Portsmouth that I have seen so far:
A lot of them included the architecture of Portsmouth as it has many fantastic buildings, but none of them included mermaids.
Another one of my concerns was how to incorporate maps into the book, as I wanted to include an old map of Portsmouth so the setting would be more apparent to the audience. After experimenting with putting maps and my illustrations together on Photoshop, I decided that I didnt like the look of it as it didnt fit in with the watery style of the rest of the images and stunted the flow of the whole book. Therefore it was suggested that I could make a band for the outside of the book with the map. So the old map of Portsmouth is on the outside of the book, giving the audience a sense of place before even starting the story. This could also be where I have the makers imprint details of the book e.g. limited edition no. 1 of 5, made/publish in Portsmouth etc...
Examples of my experiments:
Since starting to piece the whole thing together on InDesign, I have noticed that because of the different watery backgrounds being right next to each other, it looks a bit blocky. I thought of creating a new page in between each illustration as a 'spacer' page, which would act as a wave joining one watery background to another. This would help with the idea of the ocean and its waves in general to give the book more of the sea vibe, it would also help to show the great space and vastness with the ocean as well by creating more space in the book. I will experiment with this next in hope that it gives a better flow to the book.
The last thing I want to experiment with is whether to have the text of my poem dispersed throughout the images or to have it on its own page near the front of the book. This may work as the poem is quite short and would allow the images to speak for themselves. It would also give the audience chance to interpret the illustrations however they like in relation to the poem instead of me deciding what lines go with what images. In my rough layout of the paper draft I have written the poem alongside the images, but I am leaning ever more towards having the poem on its own.
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