development

I started rethinking the format of my book/narrative - I thought about a square but on a big scale, something like this:

I was thinking a map format with areas of importance illustrated and enlarged, but all the key moments happened mainly in St Petersburg so it would have been really concentrated in one area.
So instead I thought just a collection of key imagery within the square - storming the winter palace, bloody sunday, a big lenin and stalin etc with a timeline running around the outside.

I found trying to map out all the imagery for this idea quite hard as there wasn't really ay logic to the layout - so narrative or sense of sequence. So I decided on a timeline format - a really long piece which I could fold into a concertina or leave as one bog image.
I worked out the imagery, it made it easier when I thought about it as one big image rather than trying to fit together loads of different bits. 

Starts with Tsar Nicholas II, he has people below him begging and starving. He is pointing to his troops to attack the peaceful protest (Bloody Sunday). Then it moves to WW1 and then another demonstration protesting the war and Tsar (February Revolution)

You see Tsar Nicholas II being told to leave and a big Lenin emerging below him pointing his followers to storm the winter palace, the successful October Revolution. Then comes the civil war - illustrated by Lissitzky's 'beat the whites…' surrounded by propaganda posters, but with starving people beneath (1922 famine)

a propaganda train drives through the countryside, spreading the word of communism. Moves onto the creation of the NEP and constructivist advertising as well as the red winning the war - russia is fully communist. But it 1924 Lenin dies, a crowd of people line up to see the body and an ominous Stalin takes over.

I decided to make the timeline only from 1905-1924, only a short time but was such an important and action packed period. And the beginning of Stalin as ruler starts a whole new, long period in Russian history - so I might just propose his timelines. 

There will be text in the image, but only little bits, it won't really be a story but rather a chain of events. It is still educational and aimed at children but it solves my problem of not having a creative writing skill - and is made simple enough to understand.