COP3: Summative Statement

In creating work lesbian comic makers face many challenges. This project became an exploration of these challenges and the social forces that cause them, the main one being heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is the belief that society holds that heterosexuality is the prefered and default sexual orientation. In my dissertation I mostly examined the work of Alison Bechdel, creator of Fun Home and Dykes to Watch Out For and cross referenced her work with the comics of other LGBT women. All their autobiographical work shows how heteronormativity has affected their lives and some chose to use their work as a way of dissecting and bringing it to reader attention.

At the start of this project I wished to continue from my previous work in past context of practice modules, and I feel this has been successful and have a specialised area of academic knowledge under my belt. The end of this project has resulted three samples of single page autobiographical strips based upon real things and a proposal to continue the autobiographical comic strips as an ongoing and growing practice. I explored the idea of eventually collecting these strips into larger bound editions, and also archiving them online so new readers can catch up, although these explorations were more to explore the context the comics would sit in and not the main idea or aim of the project.

In the end my work reflects the current world of autobiographical strips, where they are published online to social media, in regular intervals, such as weekly, that keep followers interested in their lives and their struggles with being a minority.

COP3: Final Boards

COP3: Visual Development

COP3: Website/Archive

Although I didn't want to make coloured strips, I did want a coloured header to the website.

I chose tumblr because it is easily customisable and no HTML experience is required. I feel I'd definately get a custom URL without the "tumblr.com" on the end in the future, and then even further than that move to a proper website.

I decided to keep it simple, white, pink etc. I really like Alison Bechdel's front page but I think it's only something that can be done with custom HTML etc, so can't be done on these free, simpler hosting websites.

Zoomed in

Zoomed out

SEE LIVE WEBSITE HERE

COP3: Webcomics/Website's Archiving Comics

Hark a Vagrant - Kate Beaton

All the pre order buttons are very off putting, but I like the header!

The Forming - Jesse Moynihan

Not very pleasing with the formatting, but like he header/commitment to colours.

A softer world-Emily Horne & Joey Comeau

Not an illustrated comic! I feel the website fits the atmosphere pretty well.

Super Mutant Academy - Jillian Tamaki

A customised tumblr blog, which would be a pretty good idea! Very simple and blog based.

COP3: Alison Bechdel's Website

I really like the layout of this site, it's only the introduction, but it's very clever!

 

The panels change when your mouse hovers over each panel!

The rest of the site/archive isn't as impressive however. 

I think something interactive would be good on a website that hosts the strips.

COP3: Final Colour Front Booklet

I'm going to make two booklets, one with a colour cover, some with a black and white cover. Both will have the same newsprint stock inside, which reminds me of the DIY newsprinter LGBT comics of the past.

COP3: Final Black & White Booklet

COP3: Booklet Final Post

Pros:

-Edges are nicely squared up!

-recycled paper looks good inside

-think i prefer the colour cover

Cons:

-Edges aren't really clean? even though I used the electric guillotine 

-accidently creased the front colour cover and i don't know how

I feel they turned out well for a small exploration. They aren't final pieces but a small part of my proposal.

COP3: Social Media

I feel twitter is most suited to posting whole strips, such is the norm, but Instagram is a little different. Posting the comic whole on there would be very hard to read, so I'm thinking about perhaps posting individual panels. 

Instagram's posts go from newest to oldest when strolling and also when looking at profile, so perhaps if I post the last panel first when a person is scrolling through their feed, they will read it in the correct order. 

Reading comics vertically is not new, in fact artists such as Emily Carroll, post their comics on their website vertically, such as His Face All Red

COP3: Twitter

 

• Keep tone informal, a relationship with followers seems to be fostered by being quite casual when posting autobiographical comics

COP3: Final Strips

Here are my final autobiographical strips.

I'm happy with all 3 and I feel that all 3 carry different moods.

Pros: 

• Format is very strong, the 6 panel structure is a good way of continuing a weekly practice as time is not taken up thinking about layout.
• HOWEVER, this structure is open to flexibly as panels can be combined as shown in Eye Contact. This could be used to combine and maybe perhaps a dramatic comics where all panels are combined to create a single, big statement panel.
• Strong visual language such as the bold lines, big blocks of black. 
• The personalised font was a good choice, I am not skilled in choosing fonts and spend a lot of time doing it. Creating my own font gave's the comic a personal touch. 
• My girlfriend feels she's been well represented and enjoys them.

Cons:

• Colour could make it potentially more attractive, but I was trying to keep in mind the art of my researched artists, some used colour and some did not. Not using colour is a time saving exercise and makes weekly comics easier to produce.
• If beginning the project again I would have tried to set a goal of one of these a week, and thus have a body of work, rather than proposing it.

COP3: Booklet??

More and more interested in how many different forms my comic can take, this was brought in by the idea I shift, it got me thinking more and more about the context of where these would be seen.

I was recommended looking at Andrzej Klimowski and his book the Secret, that has quite a few pages like this: 

that are called "montages". I like them, they give a real sense of atmosphere, they also really reminded me of my own comic panels.

So I decided to try see what they would look like in a small booklet.

I actually think some of the double page spreads are quite good, the title panels look particularly good this way. I wouldn't say this is the "final form" of my product AT ALL, but it was nice to see it this way.

COP3: Colour

I've been thinking about weather colour is appropriate for my comics. I tried full colour as that is how I usually work, and an alternative spot colour.

Above: more my 'natural' way of coloring, I try not to use straight up black in my stuff except for eyes and eyebrows, but when I tried to change the eye abyss to another dark colour it just did not look good. I feel overall colouring it this way gave the eyes not as much effect, they also feel out of place. The ramen, etc looks good but overall I think it's too distracting.

Above: Single colour, this was to mimic Fun Home and, Nagate Kabi's work, I feel it works better than the full colour, but yet again I still feel it takes the away the dread.

So, although I do enjoy the single colour version, I think to properly show connection to my research they should be left black and white. Comparing the strips in black and white to artists such as Bechdel's single strips, Jennifer Camper's comics, a lot of Amber Cragg etc, black and white seems the way to go. I also enjoy the atmosphere using big pieces of black can bring to a panel.

COP3: Andrzej Klimowski-The Secret

 

Polish artist-illustrator of The Depository. The narrative is rendered entirely as a sequence of 300 pages of compelling drawings and photo-montages.

These pages are actually very interesting. I think the singular panels on a single page actually works very well. I wonder if I could make a short collected booklet of my first 3 strips using this kind of format. This wouldn't really be a final piece but more the exploration of format.

COP3: Panels?

I know I want to do set panels, briefly thought about a four panel but I think I prefer the 6 paneled!

COP3: Re-looking at Dykes To Watch Out For

When I think of what artists I've looked at and who is influencing my work, I think of Dykes To Watch Out For as the bed rock. Although it is not autobiographical really it is heavily informed by Bechdels experiences with the LGBT community. Fun Home is her crowning achievement, but I think is equally important as her it was basically her LIFE for so long.

I feel it doesn't get as much attention because it's "queerer" (even shows in the title, with the word "Dyke" being the first word) and made with a LGBT audience firstly. Alison Bechdel wanted to show the world the inner lives of a community of gay women, but a lot of the content is made to be understood and appreciated by LGBT people. When jokes are made, they're made in a nudge wink fashion. Fun Home I feel is for more a general audience.

How can I reflect the influence of DTWOF in my finals? 

• Everyday scenarios
• Mixture of humous and more serious content. 
• Single Page strips. 
• Black & White???? need to test that.

COP3: Love Is Love Anthology

Article HERE

A comics anthology dedicated to the Orlando Pulse Shooting victims.

I feel uncomfortable with DC + Marvel putting work into this, just because of my research into how they were so strict on CCA rules back in the day, HOWEVER I feel the sentiment is very nice and for a great cause.

I think this does show how comics and these kind of issues have and always will be linked. As Bechdel says "comics are a queer medium"

COP3: ABANDONED IDEA

Some pages from what was going to be my final piece, but as you can see by these sketches, I was hating it a lot! I want something I can be proud of and something I'm confident in and this isn't it.

The panels are boring, I'm rambling too much etc, time to start my new idea of single page strips!

COP3: Final Crisis and a Critical Incident

There's a lot of text here, but it's all important.

I've come to a bit of a crisis point. I've come to realise this publication isn't going to happen, so I need to do some damage control, sort myself out. It's like dragging a corpse and every extra minute I spend on it is a waste of time.

In fact through talking to other people the idea of purposely creating a publication now seems ridiculous. Most of my researched artists did not start out with intent of creating a publication with their autobiographical comics. The comics have always been singular strips that have been published singularly, only years and years later were a selection of these strips collected into books. 

I think in hindsight my research has blinded me. I've been reading most of these women's strips via the collected editions, as it gave me easy access to reading a body of their work. This has brought me to associate autobiographical comics more with books and publications rather than the ongoing diaristic process. They never set out with intent to have these collected into the thick books I'm reading. I have not been viewing these strips in the setting they were meant to be viewed in, thus I've lost an important piece of context that could have helped me from the beginning.

Further more as I mention in my essay and talked about on my blog but have neglected in my practice: most modern female artists currently purely publish on social media platforms such as twitter, instagram, websites and blogs. The alternative newspapers Alison Bechdel published in are pretty much dead. Even Bechdel publishes online now.

SO HERE'S WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN

I am going to scrap my publication! Is it annoying? Yes, but it's almost a relief to see it go. Instead I am going to produce 3 single page comic strips. I feel 3 will be a nice selection.

I will then provide context to this by posting them to social media. I think twitter and instagram will be most suited for this. I may also mock up a blog or website to show, as usually these internet are secondarily posted to artists websites and blogs for archiving purposes. 

AND I'M GOING TO MAKE THEM FUN. 

Another stumbling block I've come across is that I've been taking the autobiographical aspect very literal and thus I've been drawing mind numblingly boring content, People talking to each other, heads, people sitting down, more heads. Through talking to tutors I've come to realise it just isn't me. This kind of stuff is ok for a page or two, but beyond that I can't bring myself to draw any more. This may have worked for Alison Bechdel but we are different artists. So my strips will be much less literal and more experimental with telling the story.

I'm feeling a lot happier now, and am actually looking forward to making these final pieces.

COP3: Marker Drawings

I feel these show how I've really gotten more comfortable with drawing myself