For this workshop we each chose one of our dilemmas and tried to approach it in three different ways. We also did some drawing exercises around single cartoons and sequential images.

Through our drawing exercises we explored what comics do that is different? In a comic you can:

1. Exploit aspects of voice and point of view. You can use this to give different perspectives on your research data, or represent different aspects e.g. the actors in the project, the researcher.
2. Represent the viewer/commentator. ‘Heterophenomenon’ (from Daniel Dennett). Here you can establish yet another point of view.
3. Make stylistic/genre switches for meaningful (analytic or presentational) reasons.
4. Show multiple plots e.g. an example from Herge’s Castafiore Emerald where one plot contradicts another. Sequence/inset visual/audio/times.
5. Temporal simultaneity – multiple ‘times’ show/tell e.g. 1870 and 2016 and 2040.
6. Proposition. Saying something is either ‘true’ or ‘false’ is more complicated in comics.
7. Representing movement and using emanata.

Based on our presentations each of us was given a specific task.

TO DO: Using the first experiment, make a script for a new comic of 4 or 6 pages. Focus on communicating information about the exchange with as much precision as possible. This might mean taking a short extract of the exchange.

TO DO: Make a new comic or/and visual diagram transcribing the exchanges, with as much precision as possible. Consider divisions of action, addition of subjective (ie researcher) voice(s).

TO DO: Identify aspects of existing visual narrative ‘models’ and start to use them/integrate them into current practice.

 

TO DO: Experiment with different production regimes (see www.canvaz.com) to attempt to locate both the story and the story0teller relative to one another.

TO DO: a) Add yourself to the cartoon ‘one shot’ and b) make a series of ‘strips’ of 2 panels or more, in which a ‘plot with a point’ develops.

 

TO DO: Develop ‘disruptive drawing tools/devices, part of the creation of which might be the creation/foundation of a narrative strip or strips (that lay out the ‘problems’). Interview the participants in this workshop and add to the/institute with Shari and Jamie, the website.

TO DO: Make two more comics transcribing two new, more complex situations/exchanges.

 

 

TO DO: Select an existing ‘object’ and produce it as a comic by imposing a 6 page, panel grid structure on an extrapolated ‘plot’. Focus less on ‘production’ and more on ‘structure’.

TO DO: Make a beautiful, false journal!