Comic?

I have been wondering if I still could swop the illustrations to a comic. It would make no difference to the topic as I would still evaluate the presentation of characters. I feel my experiences would create an interesting story line and trough comic it would be easier for me to communicate with the viewer. I feel like the illustrations would be just too vague. I have a desire to tell more about the topic.

My fear is not that I would not finish on time, I think I will. Rather it is about wether comics fit the area of design. Is it going too far towards the field of media studies?

Well this article is trying to highlight the connection between comics and (graphic) design.  http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v7_3/evensen/

I guess it does fit well with graphic design, less so with the other fields of design to which my course is more dedicated to. But I should make decisions that fit my career and not those that fit the course outline.

I’m even sure the sketches I have made so far will find their way to the comic. And actually this is such a topic that I would love to produce a comic about it anyhow. Why not hit two flies with one stone? I hope my supervisor is not varied for the sudden turn around.

Why Not Comics?

 

Last night I was thinking about the thesis. Why wouldn’t I make the research about comics. I could write about the representation of African characters in Finnish (or European) graphic novels. As my practical production I could make a graphic novel with an African character from a new perspective or at least with wider array of african characters.

I wonder if I could pull this of. This might step into the challenging area of literature. And it might be difficult to explain why Im doing media research type of subject within design program. Never the less it’s an interesting topic.

Great Idea 2: The wonderful World of Microstocks

 

This would be an easier option. It also interests me quite a bit though it’s not all that noble life changing topic. Oh well, at least I won’t have to deal with a white messiah complex.

I’d like to study how microstock illustrations portray african characters. (Again Afrcan theme. Im stuck in it. Maybe some reverse cultural shock going on.) As a graphic designer in a West African university, I have had to go trough microstock collections in search for images with an african theme. I have noted that the role African characters are given is narrow and stereotypical. This is my hypothesis anyway. In my thesis I would like to go deeper and find out if this is true and what are the typical roles african characters are given in microstock illustrations.

As a graphic designer in an African university it would be awesome if there were more variety in illustrations when it comes to african characters. I would benefit from this study a lot my self. As my thesis project I would want to make illustrations about Africa and African characters which would stand out from the typical microstok illustrations in regards to the topics and the roles assigned to the characters. I would want to broaden the field. My assumption is that there is a need for it. If my study reveals that there actually is no need for this then I may need to figure out the practical project from another angle. But Im pretty sure there is always space for new kinds of illustrations.

By the way with African I mean sub Saharan African. (Minus white africans. Sorry. Can I do that?) The term is slightly problematic when it comes to search words. Often when you use the word African as a search word you end up getting results for African Americans and other African related groups. Many times you can use these two in a mix but sometimes cultural differences and differences in physical appearance become an issue. Should I use a term like indigenous African, I would certainly rule out the African American material but it would also lead the material into certain direction. Have to think about a solution for this.

For quite some time I have collected interesting images with this theme to ehm… Pinterest. I have gathered fine art and vector illustrations. I would probably use some of these as my inspiration to the final product. Though in the vector collection there are a lot of bad examples too and most of them seems to be examples of African American rather than African characters. These are not very scientifically collected samples. I might want to make a new collection specifically for this project.

Great Vision 1: Empowering Comics

 

My initial idea was to write something to do with my employer’s websites. But actually I was not very interested in it and it had a lot of challenges to do with communication and location. If you have ever dealt with an African organization you know that things work best if you can meet face to face. Besides Im pretty sure Savonia wouldn’t fund my air ticket so I’ll drop this idea for now.

Well then, only heaven is the limit. What could be of interest to me? I could use the opportunity to do something really DUM. Something that profits me nothing.

For a long time I tossed the idea of comics as my subject. Somehow the fact that I’m (propably) not going to do a career as a comic artist was bothering me. For the last five years I could not even get a hold of a recently published comic book. You may note that I’ve been living in a developing country for a while. Though maybe precisely for this reason I should go for this topic. It could further the field of comic art in West Africa.

Still in this topic too I run into the problem of location. I should return to Africa, or better still, be an african.

I wonder if I could get some sort of funding for arranging empowering comic making course in a developing country. At least there is an NGO in Finland called World Comics and they are about “promoting comics as a development communication medium”. They could at least give me some advise.

http://www.worldcomics.fi/

http://comics-with-attitude.blogspot.fi/

Facing all this I feel exhausted. I would have to arrange all sorts of stuff. I would have to get maybe some training from the World Comics guys and maybe some human rights training, funding, travel, would have to actually arrange and advertise the course in the developing country and get people to join. And I’ve even forgotten that I may not actually be teacher type. I have worked as a teacher for three months in a West African primary/junior high school with poor success.  At least I would know all the pitfalls, that’s for sure.

Oh man, I’m really interested in this subject. It would be awesome to help kids in developing countries to learn and express their human rights trough comics.

If funding would not be the problem I would still need to face the issue of possibly leaving my one year old child behind for a month or more. I wonder if I should save this project for later since I seem to have issues with making so many sacrifices.

Well of course I could execute this project in Finland lets say among immigrants.  Somehow that just does not get me so passionate. But maybe i just have to give the idea some time. Maybe it will start to taste better after a while.