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.

Synthesis

My dissertation and practical have a strong synthesis, my dissertation explores how comics portray mental health and depression, and if it can be done successfully, sympathetically and honestly. For my practical I have demonstrated that they are a medium that most defiantly can. My comic proves this and more, through my testing and development I have shown that they can not only do this, but do it wordlessly and give out subtle different meanings through small changes. This shows that comics can do this if thought about enough. I also was greatly influenced by my research in other comics on mental health in doing this. Taking metaphors from the 'Black Dog' series, the honesty from 'Hyperbole and a Half', and the visual storytelling of 'Arkham Asylum' and 'Elephantmen'. This shows that through analysis there are already comics around that display these issues well in different ways. They may not all cover all areas perfectly, but by taking inspiration from all of them I have created something that does.

Printed Version

I decided that after how proud I was of my comic, I wanted to see it as a comic. I decided to create a cover, I wanted to keep this simple, effective, I had put so much effort into making the comic wordless that I didn't want to ruin it by giving away information. So I decided to simply call it 'The Void' and put my name at the bottom in a smaller font. The font I used is a free one called 'Bleeding Cowboys' that has featured in my posters, and I think is the perfect font for depression. Rather than creating a index page that had information about the comic, and myself I decided to keep it black, as well as the fist page, last page and back cover pages. I did this intentionally to enclose the actual comic in a 'void' to keep with the them and give the reader this extra emphasis on the fact that this character is trapped in this empty place that there seems no escape from. By doing this I have given myself the opportunity to visualise what my work would look like in a hand held, physical form. I thought hard about how to arrange the pages so that is would read correctly when bound together, looking at how to arrange the pages to the appeared in the correct order. 

I did this my printing out the pictures in A4, arranging them so I could old them and see how it would work before putting them together on photoshop, making sure I left room for the staples, and space that would use. Before printing it. 

After doing this test and seeing how well it worked, I decided to go down to digital print and print it again so it was in a much higher quality, using the guillotine to cut of the edges, and using a thicker paper, gave my work a professional feel. Having this version, and the individual pieces to display, gives me a wider ranger of choices on how to display my work.

Final Piece

This is my final piece. After showing audiences my other versions this is the one that captured the reaction I was after. I found as long as the viewer did not know me personally they got the narrative I was trying to send, everything in these few pages are the way they are for a reason. Every detail has been considered and thought out to relay a specific message, from the dead plant to the rough, sketchy design of the comic. I am very proud of the piece I have created, and believe it speaks in every way I wanted it too. This comic proves that comics can be a great medium to represent mental health and depression. Some comics may not do it sympathetically, and some have, all with different tones and approaches as I have discovered in my dissertation, but evidently it can be done sympathetically and accurately in great detail.

Practical: Testing and Development

I firstly worked off my storyboards to create a detailed, finished version of them. This was stage 1. I paid close attention to the panelling, and layout of the pages. The thick black border was something I was inspired to do from 'Elephantmen', and the practice piece I did on that. It represents the dark, caged void of depression and gave the images room to breath and talk within them. As the character started to break free of the wire, the panelling structure starts to change, to look more like a razor blade or lifeline on hospital machine. Which means when he is not breaking free and cutting himself, the lifeline is flat, representing how dead he feels without the rush of self-harm. I also considered what is in the room in the reality scenes, such at the messy room, screwed up paper (potentially letter from girlfriend concerning break up?) and smaller elements such as the dead plant, representing his current emotion, feeling dead inside. I thought this was a nice touch and link to depression. I also used a splash page for the entrance of the hope/desire character, to show awe.

I then started to think about what I could change. In my feedback I saw that a lot of people thought the Angel version brought in a religious aspect, when I simply chose it as symbolism. Although I liked the idea that people could interpret the different messages from my piece, I wanted to know what messages to give, so I started changing small details, which changed the narrative of the story. As a wordless comic, this was easier to do. I started by doing a version where I took away the wings, and added a dress to the woman ‘hope/desire’ character. This seemed to settle better with audiences, however many people addressed the fact that the woman in the picture frame looked similar, and asked weather he was depressed over an ex girlfriend. I liked this, I liked that people started reading into a history and background to the story that I only hinted at.

I liked this but it all seemed quite melodramatic, depression can have many causes, or none at all. I didn’t want this to be a large focus of the story however; I was more interested in the personal struggle of this character. So I then removed the dress, and created a version where the woman was naked, I felt this made the work more human, and focused on human emotions, with the intent to draw a character that for me as a sufferer of depression, is the reason to keep going. Beauty, sex, life, all the best parts of it. This worked better among audiences when explained, however the issue about sexuality came up numerous times, was that why he was depressed? Was he struggling with his sexuality? Was it to do with sexual deprivation? Or sexual inadequacy? This was not a message I wanted to give off either.

So I created one last version, where I removed the woman from the story, and added the same character that is chained down, so it looked like a man who was at war with himself. Fighting these emotions. But when I did this I got a lot of feedback asking weather (as I am a twin) it was about that, and the bond of brothers. Unintended but another interesting concept. People who did not know I was a twin, did not get that message, Which meant for the general population, it was the most successful version. 

The comic worked well as it was, but it felt a bit flat, so I added a gradient to the whole piece, making it feel more 3D and real, This I preferred but knew I could go further, so I took my last two ideas and started adding colour to them, and experimenting on what that said.

I firstly used colour in the scenes set in reality, as I knew it worked well from the practice piece I did, the low saturation added a gloomy realism that was worth keeping.

I then added colour to the hope characters, to show how alive they where compared to the other character, giving them an almost sunlight warmth to make the other character look even more bleak. I also added it to the chained down character when the hope character got close, to show how their influence adds life or courage to him. I also added colour to his cuts and the blood to emphasise the pain. Then only main scenes with colour are the ones set in reality, and for these I tried to use specific colours for reasons, the walls are grey in an attempt to make the room look like a prison, and the floor blue to reference one of my earlier ideas, to make the character look like he was drowning. The bed and curtains are red, a reference to the blood and his ex/girlfriend in the frame who is wearing the same coloured top, which hints that she still has a prominent influence on his life, and potentially the cause of the depression.

I finished both of these pieces and handed them round to audiences once more, and the majority of people preferred the version with the man. Many complained about sexism in the woman, and that took away from the main narrative.