Who or what will play the lead character?

I have decided to have a lead character to 'guide' the reader through the adventure. This character will speak, meaning I can keep my actual text to a minimum and focus more on the more unusual modes such as sound and music. 

I have considered various characters to act as the ‘guide’ for the reader on this adventure, originally deliberating a Tudor child, of whom the reader (as a child themselves) would be able to directly relate to. I then decided to go down a more ‘gruesome’ route, as I have found this would be more interesting and appealing to a young reader; something for them to go ‘ewww!’ at. I considered a rat and a flea, before eventually deciding on a fly. By choosing a small animal it is easier to have a sense of perspective, the reader is able to appreciate big and small backgrounds, but I mainly liked the idea of having something with wings, so I can create a variety of more unusual angles for the multimodal text, such as flying over a room or scenery. With a fly I can also more modes, such as a 'buzzing' sound effect and hovering custom animation.

After extensively searching for cartoon fly images, I was unable to find anything quite suitable; I wanted a fly with a bit of character to it, so I decided to create my own. This way I could personify it more and make it more relevant to the story by adorning the fly with a typical hat from the Tudor era! I started by drawing my own fly, but I found it difficult to get rid of the off-colour background to paste it seamlessly onto a background picture.

I have ultimately decided to create my own design on the computer itself. This meant I could easily edit the fly in order to change its facial expressions, adding that extra bit of character. I downloaded GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) and used this as an aid to create and enhance my Tudor fly. This software is brand new to me and I have been finding it relatively difficult to manipulate, but it is useful to try a new way of adding colours and using filters.

Further inspiration: Horrible Histories books

Thinking further into the field of educational history for children, I have looked at the hugely successful and critically acclaimed books (and recently television series), Horrible Histories, a series I myself grew up reading as a child. These are books designed to teach children about key times in history, while still being fun-to-read and containing a juicy bit of gore and gruesomeness.

A collection of some of the Horrible Histories books

It is important to note however that although I intend my text to be thematically similar with a similar 'horrible history' semantic field, the typology and general formal of my text will be vastly different from the Horrible Histories books. These books are written in a conventional black-and-white, words-printed-on-paper format, whereas my text will be the polar opposite to this. However, in the books there are frequent cartoons with amusing quotation bubbles, as well as some fun diagrams. These break up the text into smaller chunks, giving the reader a light break. The author also draws attention to important names and facts by using bold typography.

A look inside the books shows funny cartoons and bold typography...

Looking at the content and style of Horrible Histories has also helped me to find a way of incorporating social realism into my text, as Horrible Histories have proven that gruesomeness is something which can really appeal to children. Therefore, I have decided to touch on one of the most pervasive aspects of social realism: death. The Tudors were notorious for their public executions and their high death-by-execution rate, and therefore my chosen history period will be the Tudor era. I have decided that the ‘adventure’ in my text will be having to find clues, in order to save an innocent person from getting beheaded.