The Walk project – Proposal and Evaluation

My Proposal – The Walk Project

My project is based in Rhodes, Greece
It is supposed to be written for tourists
It will incorporate fictional stories based on real characters
The setting of my stories will be in the past
1. My chosen area is Rhodes island, Greece as it is somewhere i have been to many times and has a rich cultural and mythological history. I feel that there are many interesting locations such as the town of Lindos and vast sandy beaches which would make ideal settings for my stories.

2. The themes I will be using for my walk are history and fiction. I am using some of the local Greek mythology as a basis on which I can create fictional stories. An example of this is the myth surrounding the town of Lindos, which tells of a man who built the town with his 50 daughters to escape his 50 sons. There are many other myths I believe I could expand on, and adapt into my own style of writing.
3. My style of writing will be fictional as I want to create new stories based on the Greek myths. This means that most, if not all of what I write will be made up and not related to real life.

4. The aim of my map is to entertain people as they will hopefully enjoy my stories and want to read more. As I will be recreating some of the original myths, I cannot say that my map is educational as the details are inaccurate.
5. My target audience are tourists who are visiting Rhodes. This is because not everyone can afford or wants to go all the way to Greece. The tourists that want to use my audio book can further enhance their visit to Rhodes by learning some of the history behind it and see what locations inspired the stories in it. I feel that my book will also be good for families as it is quite interactive, so young children will enjoy it. The images I am going to use are based on the myths themselves so children will enjoy seeing the characters, as well as hearing about them.

6. The overall style of my piece is travel writing as it is based on the Greek island of Rhodes. The stories themselves will be based on Greek myths and incorporate different areas on the island.
7. In my map I want to include 3 different locations based round the town of Lindos in Rhodes. The locations I have chosen are Lindos beach, Lindos Acropolis and within the town itself. I feel these locations can all be interesting settings for the stories I am going to make about the ancient Greek myths. I also want to add an X marks the spot in each area so that tourists can stand in the exact spot the photo was taken. This allows them to see the current area and then the area through the eyes of the characters in my stories.

8. I will use edited images/ drawings in my work to mix real life locations with the mythological setting of my story. The color scheme will be white and blue to keep with the colors seen widely on the island. I am going to attempt to use page borders that are filled with patterns or small Greek flags.
9. I will add sound effects and pictures to some of my pages in order to make my stories come to life. I will also implement an X marks the spot in some of the photos so that people can interact with my story and stand in the actual locations I am basing them on. Finally, I will add page turning sounds to make my audio book feel more like a real book.
10. The problems I may to overcome include not being able to find the right audio, losing pictures and not being able to find the correct pictures. To overcome these issues, I will be sure to save my photos and back them up onto my computer and a memory stick. I will also record multiple versions of the audio in order to have at least one available track for each time I need it.

My Evaluation – The Walk Project

I feel that my final piece has many strengths and a few minor weaknesses. Firstly I feel that I have stuck to my desired theme well as the stories I have written all convene with the genre of mythology. The main conventions I have stuck with are “triumph or doom of the hero” and “hero(ine) is tested”. All of my stories end in triumph or doom of the hero and story 1 and 2 include the hero being tested. Another strength of my work is that it has various stories that cater for various ages, which means there is something for everyone. The longer story at the beginning of my walk is well suited to adults who have a longer attention span. The two shorter stories include far more action and take less time to read, making them perfect for younger readers who may not want to read large chunks of text. Finally, I feel that a major strength of my work is in the way that it is presented. I believe that it is visually appealing to the reader, and conforms with the theme of Greece and all the colours that I would associate with it. The heavy emphasis on the use of white and pastel blue really gives the feeling of being in a seaside town in the Greek isles.

Moving onto some of the weaknesses of my work, I feel that I could maybe have written another story to bulk out my project. I think that I took too long to decide what I wanted to write about, meaning that I wasted valuable time in which I could have been writing another story. In the future I therefore need to sort out my ideas as quickly as possible in order to maximize the time I can spend writing. Another weakness of my work was the fact I was unable to add the “X marks the spot” feature that I was planning to do. This was because I was unable to source the necessary photographs that I needed. In future I feel that I need to do some research sooner, in order to establish if my plans are possible before diving into the writing aspect of my work.

From this project I have learned many new skills whilst working with the adobe programs such as In-design and illustrate. One of the most important skills I have learned was how to create a master page in adobe In-design, as this has allowed me to create the template for my project. A master page allows me to create a design that will then be added to all my pages, thus allowing me to have more time to work on other things instead of going through my booklet page by page. This is a valuable skill that I can use in later life as many magazines and newspapers are created using a similar technique. Another skill I have learned is how to create my own map in adobe illustrator by tracing over an existing design. I can successfully use layers to carry out this process, which allows me to put my own twist on a design that I like the look of. I am very happy with the way in which my map turned out, and feel that if I were to do this project again I could comfortably create another design. This skill will be of great use in the industry as it will allow me to add images and diagrams to my writing, which would enhance the work  I would have done and make it more appealing to customers.

One of the techniques I used to prepare for designing my booklet was the creation of a mood board. I searched the internet for a number of designs that I found interesting and put them all onto a page. After looking at all of the images I decided to write a small paragraph under each, detailing what I liked about them and how different aspects of their design would feed into my own work. Overall I feel that this idea really helped me to create a good looking design for my audio book as it gave me a lot of inspiration. In the professional industry I feel that the use of mood boards would allow me to come up with many unique designs as there is an endless combination of ideas to chose from. This would allow whatever I was publishing to have a different design all the time, and therefore keep my customers interested.

In comparison to professional standard work, I feel that my booklet holds up well against it. The quality of my design is as good as any professional design as I have used the same program that they use and taken inspiration from multiple published pieces. This makes my design unique in its own right, but still fairly similar to other products out on the current market. The quality of my writing will not be completely up to professional standards, but I feel that it is almost at that point. My stories are interesting and fit the genre that I aimed to write in, so I consider them to be successful. Looking at some of the professional products, I can see that they have a very consistent style of writing. All of their stories are written in a similar fashion, where as mine are all in different styles. I feel that using different styles such as differing tone, keeps my writing fresh and more interesting however I can appreciate why many people would want to be consistent with their style. I believe that the tonal difference in my stories effectively sets them apart from other products. The mild tone of my first story slowly becomes frantic, which I believe shows how the character would feel as time begins to run out. My second story however, becomes frantic rather quickly as the main character does not have long until he is thrown straight into danger. The frantic tone of the narrator puts the reader on edge and you can almost feel the quick heart beats of the main character as he battles for his life. Finally, my final story is far more subdued. Besides from a sudden rush of action in which a monster attacks the main characters boat, the story is far slower as the main character is locked away and focus switches to the misfortune of that decision.

In regards to the audio element of my story, I have acquired a few useful skills in recording and editing. Learning how to record in the radio room using focused microphones was incredibly useful as it opened the door to having professional quality sound, without the background noise that would have been heard if I had used the microphone on my mobile phone. I got a lot of practise using the radio room, including reading out my own work about world war one. After we had learned how to record our work, we were then shown how to edit the audio using Adobe Audition. Using this computer software, I was able to cut out any pieces of audio that I didn’t like and was also able to stick different pieces of audio together. I feel that after being shown how to do all of these things, I am now able to do each of them effectively. Unfortunately, I did not have time to edit my audio for my final piece but it is still a useful skill to know.

The link to my piece is – http://online.fliphtml5.com/vnvi/tszj/