VisCom4Dev

About VisCom4Dev

VisCom4Dev presents animation experiments of Linda Mayoux. The blog explores ethical, aesthetic and technical issues raised in designing animations as ‘creative translation’ of community voices on gender and empowerment for global audiences.

Focusing on drawings, photographs and video from participatory community workshops on strategies for empowerment, gender justice and livelihood development in Africa (Uganda, DRCongo) and Asia (India, Pakistan) these animation experiments aim:

• to be visually driven so that they can be globally understood without relying on text or spoken languages, and thereby needing translation into hundreds of local languages.
• communicate not only the style but also the meaning of the original sources.
• be interesting to a range of audiences – including people who cannot read and write as well as international audiences with high levels of formal education and access to global visual cultures.
• workable for an independent animator like myself who does not have the support of a large design or animation team and/or budget. And importantly for me to be RSI-friendly.

At the beginning of this research I was relatively new to animation, seeing this research project as a way of developing new skills useful for communication of development stories. My initial idea was to focus on frame by frame line animation of community drawings using Adobe Animate, experimenting with narrative sequencing.

But following my initial a ‘bricolage’ research process I discovered a much more diverse range of contemporary animation and moving image approaches combining digital and physical media – in particular 2D frame by frame animation, rotoscoping, puppet and cut out animation and integrating photography and video. Diversifying and combining narrative and visual approaches not only enables grounding of constructed narratives within a ‘real’ context, but also provides ways of matching the media and style more closely to original meaning. At the same time my research identified some cross-cutting visual communication principles and strategies that are generally necessary to guide creative experimentation.

I hope that the blog will provide inspiration to others to also experiment more widely with different creative approaches in their work. As well as presenting potential styles and directions that my own future visual communication and creative translation work might take.