Thesis 2025 / Miranda Hoover

My thesis work shows the dummy stage for my 48-page Risograph children's book, There's Something in My Closet, a story about a child who hears strange noises in their bedroom at night and knows there must be a dreaded monster inside their closet. This installation offers a holistic look at the various facets of creating this book. It's divided into three sections: a mock-up of the full book, 6 featured Risograph spreads, and a behind-the-scenes look at the process. The center section showcases a hand-bound book dummy that is a digitally printed version of the book in its current state. The pages range from sketches to fully rendered illustrations, with some being a mix of both. The section on the left presents a selection of the finished spreads printed as Risographs on black paper. This medium greatly influenced the book's design, from available colors to the images themselves. The Risograph inks mint, yellow, and fluorescent pink stand out when printed on the black paper and layer together to create a spectrum of blue, green, pink, orange, and red, setting the limited color scheme for this book. The designs for the scenes and characters are simplistic with intentional imperfections, such as coloring outside the lines, integrated to embrace the inevitable alignment variations of the Risograph prints. The section on the right shows this influence by displaying the creation process, including Risograph test prints and a process book cataloging stages, including details of the initial concept, character design, and the story's meaning.

While creating this story, I considered our cultural relationship with monsters and how we often find things monstrous due to ignorance and misunderstanding. I use this concept and the closet monster trope to build reader anticipation so they might expect something frightening is causing the noises. When the creature is revealed, the child's reaction is unexpected—instead of fearing the ghost, they look past cultural bias and see the discovery's true potential: a friend. For this closet reveal, I didn't want the child's reaction to seem unnatural, so I leaned into the cute aesthetic, giving the ghost large eyes, a small mouth, and very soft edges—essentially just a ball with a tail—making it immediately clear this ghost is friendly and non-threatening. This reveal makes the story's antagonist not the monster, but the child's imagination and the consequences of inaction (the growing stink).

Additionally, I increasingly saw this story as an anxiety allegory. If the closet creature represents an anxiety trigger—a situation we must face—then the growing stink represents the consequences of delaying action. In the story's final moments, the hint of another monster under the bed reminds readers that conquering one fear doesn't mean we’ll never face similar challenges again. But it suggests we face these new challenges using lessons from previous ones. In this story, the character prepares to face a similar situation, but now with a friend.

Using the suggestions from my thesis committee, I've improved the book and its presentation. I've altered several spreads to introduce and modify imagery, and added new text at the end to slow the post-climax transition from night to day. I've committed to a color language, keeping background elements in mint and giving characters and foreground elements the brighter colors, including the stink and sounds. For the installation, I chose a light theme, using medium grey and pink paint to create shapes replicating imagery from the book. These shapes flow through each section to unify them visually and conceptually. I printed all of the selected Risograph spreads discussed at the second committee meeting, with the addition of six pages for the gatefold spread, utilizing both the exterior closet doors and the interior closet with monster reveal. In these Risograph prints, I chose to use the method in which a double layer of mint serves as a base, with a black layer added last for linework, to increase the contrast and the vibrancy of the colors..

My ultimate goal for this project is to create conceptual and material foundations for a children's book that can soon be packaged into a proposal for agents and publishers, potentially leading to the publication of this and future books. For this installation, I want audiences to see this work in its current state and anticipate its future by reading the dummy book and viewing the Risograph prints. Additionally, I want them to learn about Risograph printing and understand how it has influenced the book itself.
This project culminates my time at MCAD, combining my love for storytelling, Risograph printing exploration, and my interest in joining the children's book industry after graduation.

Website: MirandaHoover.com
Instagram: @miranda.illu