Project Execution Process

Phase 1: Research In-depth research was conducted before writing, designing, and illustrating to learn more about the importance of multi-racial representation in media. In addition to researching multi-racial experiences in media, I researched children’s book design and writing. See “Research” for significant findings.

Phase 2: Writing Before I began writing, I had the title, My Mom Makes French Toast with Chopsticks, finalized. I knew the story would be about growing up bi-racially, but I did not know what would happen in the story yet. I struggled with this for about two weeks, until I decided to do a free writing exercise. While free writing, I recalled various childhood memories that I felt contributed to my identity formation and association with Korean culture. See below for samples from my free writing exercise.

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Project Execution Process

After I completed the free writing exercise, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. Originally, I had planned to create a full storyboard, but instead I summarized the story on a Google Doc. I split up the writing by pages and shared this Google Doc with my illustrator so she could use it as a guide. I also shared this Google Doc with people I thought would provide good feedback. See below for an example.

Phase 3: Illustrating Before my illustrator began drawing and sketching, we met multiple times to talk about how I wanted the style of the illustrations to be. I looked to Pinterest and published children’s books for inspiration. The illustrator is my sister which helped the project’s success because she was easily able to envision aspects of my childhood.

The illustrator used traditional Korean Folk Art (Minhwa) and the artist Kim Hyun Jung as inspiration. See below for examples.

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(Minhwa) (Kim Hyun Jung) (Minhwa)

I knew I wanted the art to not be full bleed, but rather glimpses into the story. I wanted to put emphasis on specific aspects of the visual story that personally stood out to me.

(Example/Inspiration)

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(My Mom Makes French Toast with Chopsticks)

Project Execution Process

At the beginning stages of this project, I originally planned for the illustrations to be full color. I realized around the halfway point that this was unrealistic to do in ten weeks. Instead, I intentionally colored only aspects of the illustrations. I brought the sketches into Adobe Illustrator, image traced or pen tooled them, and then filled the paths. I plan to work with illustrator to make the drawings more detailed after this project is completed.

Project Execution Process

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Illustrator Storyboards

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Project Execution Process

Phase 4: Design To begin the design phase, I needed to look at publishing standards for children’s books. The book size was finalized at 10x8 inches. I built the book in Adobe InDesign. I utlized master pages and paragraph styles for consistency. The final page count of the book was 32 pages, an industry standard due to binding and signatures. The structure of the book is:

Cover Page End Pages (Glued to front and Back) Copyright Page Dedication Page 24 Story Pages End Page/Back

While designing, I realized it would have been more efficient to create the file earlier on in the project. This way, I could give the dimensions to the illustrator and see how much copy landed on each page.

Project Execution Process

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Phase 5: Output Unfortunately, I was unable to print and bind a physical copy of the book due to no access to the Cal Poly Graphic Arts building, so I published the final pdf of the book on Issuu, a free digital publishing platform. The digital book can be found at: https://issuu.com/sarahhughes/docs/mymommakesfrenchtoastwithchopsticks_draft1

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Project Execution Process