Rethinking structure

I’ve had some time to reflect on what to do with Rapunzel.

 

 I like the long thin image that I’ve got in the collagraph experiments but this doesn’t fit the book structure I’d thought about using. To make it fit the structure means shortening it by nearly half but this means the illustration doesn’t work as well.

I’m also beginning to think that the original structure is a bit too much like a folding box and not enough like a book.

Extending the end pages gives longer compositional possibilities and the concertina added to the tower makes it feel more like a book and less like a model.

But further experiments with the tower are showing problems with the opening of the book and the flow of the folds, it doesn’t feel natural.

Although I’m not entirely happy about losing the tower shape, I may, after all this messing about, just go with a straightforward accordion and have the long thin shapes echoing the tower.

An accordion means that I will be able to use a heavier weight paper for printing than I thought I’d be able too. The box fold was not happy bending two ways even with mock up paper and I’d been ignoring the fact it might get worse with a thicker one.

There are still lots possibilities with this construction. A long thin narrative piece, perhaps with images on two sides. Or stitching the folds to make tall thin ‘pages’. And that’s without playing with cutting and reverse folding........

I do like the idea of having the cover as a three panelled piece, this wraps the story within the tower like the witch tried to do with Rapunzel.