FMP Blog 4: Narrative Form and Visual Language.
As I began to think of this project in a more executional sense, I considered my audience and how they might receive it.
Form
Posters are impactful, flexible in their placement, and immediate — there is usually a striking visual and headline (sometimes combined as one image) with a call to action at the end of the body copy. In essence, posters are advertising. The message cannot be interpreted differently — it has to be loud and clear.
Animations have a time limit. They can be rewound and played again, but there is often little room to drift into your own analysis. You are usually too engaged with the moving visual and its accompanying audio to mull over much else.
I want my audience to have the time to sit and digest the message by exploring the visuals and reflecting on what is presented in text and image. It needs to be an uninterrupted, intimate engagement with the material. Readers need to come to their own conclusions — not forced. So a picture book it is.
What the picture book should demonstrate:
- Community dogs/animals interacting with the community.
- Distinctive multi-sensory presence of dogs (unique smell, distinct sound and look, invitation to touch).
- Reaction to/how to care for an injured animal (from child’s perspective) + anxiety from that because it’s normal to feel things?
- Emphasis on total change of household dynamic (new chores, inconveniences, but also joy).
- Not wanting to let go of the dog once he has recovered — dogless void.
- New, different, better interactions with the community thanks to the presence of the dog (e.g. small treat from shopkeep). — mental health.
Visual Language
I took part in a couple of social media art challenges to see how I could develop my art style to suit my positioning and my project. The Peachtober art challenge was a month-long commitment where the art produced is generally bright, colourful and innocent. I made sure to feature only my dogs as characters, and below is a sample of my attempts.
The next challenge was Folktale Week, which was a 7-day art challenge where participants told an original story through daily drawings. I decided to use monochrome this time and tried a sequential, wordless narrative, also featuring one of my dogs as a puppy.
I inserted myself at the end of course. Overall I felt the reception to Folktale Week amongst my social media followers and others that I showed it to (including my project supervisor) was a lot more favourable than Peachtober. The monochrome seemed to capture more emotion which fits the tenderness of the outcome that I’m hoping to achieve with my project.
Further steps will look at working in monochrome and how to use text and image in a publication.
