Evaluation

Although I am proud of my dissertation, there are things I would change given the time. I have an extensive chapter on a case study, and although I think this is a huge part of my project, and was my main piece of research. I would have liked to take it out, put it on my blog, giving me more room to talk about other things concerning my dissertation. I also would have liked to leave out the section concerning my practical, as it could also have given me more room. I was cautious about the word count, and I hit 9,863 words, that didn’t leave much room. I had these chapters in, as I wanted to remain safe and followed the chapter headings on estudio, I also thought it showed a great synthesis between my research, dissertation and practical. However looking at other peoples essay’s I have seen they do not all do this, so this more time, or a chance to edit what I have and write more, this is the major factor I would have changed in my dissertation.

I would have loved the opportunity to write more concerning Mental health in comics, and to go into greater detail in certain areas, such at the way Batman villains are portrayed, the Hulk and Phoenix schizophrenic characters, and how when schizophrenia is in a comic, it tends to be a normal calm side, and a uncontrollable murderous counterpart. Which is not how schizophrenia works, and in fact more resembles multiple personality disorder, but is a very unsympathetic way of portraying it. There are also comics that have representation concerning self-harm such as ‘The Runaways’, which has a character that must self-harm in order to summon her super power/staff. In this we see self-harm being in some way a saviour, and it describes the lust and need for it incredibly well. All of these elements are things I would have liked to divulge into given more words, or sacrificing the synthesis for.

Among my many regrets concerning the project, there is only one 1 have for my practical piece, which would be to have been to spend more time designing beautiful and magical designs to embody depression and hope, although I did not end up going down that route at all, I still think I could have created some truly beautiful designs and artwork concerning them. This could have come in useful in further projects if I had done this.

In terms of research I would have liked to explore different mediums, such as renaissance art, films such as ‘Chronicle’, I feel that all visual storytelling shares the same basic principles, and that by exploring how other mediums represent mental health and depression, I could have infused it with my work more and created something very unique. Having said that, I think my dissertation in defiantly more detailed by narrowing down the subject as much as possible, but perhaps I could have done this at an earlier stage. I would love the opportunity for this project to be longer so I could create more comics, maybe based on some of my other ideas, and could even create comics focusing on different mental health issues rather than solely depression. However this could be something I do for extended practice.  

I have learnt many things from this project, all that I will take into the next module, from starting with purely some personal knowledge on the subject I feel I can know accurately represent these issues in visual storytelling, and back up all my facts and reasons for my choices with extensive research.