Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary Sources 1: Community Voices

My main primary sources for the research are the community voices as expressed in drawings, role plays and video clips from women and men participants in participatory workshops on gender and empowerment in Africa and Asia. The drawings presented are public documents to which participants consented for use as part of workshop reports written by me. Photographs and video materials I have copyright as photographer or film maker, and participants gave their consent. All songs were recorded with the consent of the performers and most were the product of participatory song-writing exercises where no one person was sole author.

The process through which the visual used were produced and issues involved in their interpretation is described in more detail in the posts on each process – see the links below.

All the community visuals are referenced as ‘unknown community artist’. The main aim of the workshops was reflection, analysis and planning of strategies to change gender inequalities and empower women and men to achieve their visions for their lives and their families. The drawings selected were posted anonymously on group diagrams and in most cases it is not possible to accredit them individually. In those cases where the artist is known by me, given the sensitive nature of some of the powerful statements made in the drawings, role plays and songs, I would want to have had permission of the artist to put their name on in case of any possible unanticipated repercussions for them. As all the resources are from about 10 years ago, it would be impossible to do this now.

Primary Sources 2: External voices and global animation inspiration

My other set of primary sources in development of my own creative animations are on-line videos of the work of other global animators found through Google keyword searches on You Tube, Vimeo and other websites. Keyword selection was made to identify relevant animations in the categories on the right.

Links to the individual posts are given in the mapping in the padlet below for easy access, together with sample videos. Copyright and the accreditation chosen by the creators is given in the linked sources.

From these a number of animators and specific animations were selected for more in-depth study, particularly on different animation approaches (2DFramebyFrame, rotoscoping, stop motion puppet animation and use of physical media).

NOTE: Some of the videos originally consulted have now been removed from You Tube for Copyright reasons, or are no longer available for other unknown reasons (sometimes political). Where possible, I have removed the links altogether. But as this is a continually shifting situation, some links in some posts may now no longer work.

Development Agency animation

Styles and approaches from the same regions as the community drawings

  • Indian animation (animations focusing on women’s empowerment
  • Iranian feminist animation and film
  • African animation styles 
  • Pakistani independent animation

Big professional animation studios
to understand the commercial context for independent animation, including evolution of currently accepted animation principles.

  • Disney animation
  • Japanese animation
  • Russian animation
  • Eastern European animation

Innovative Western European/American animation
focusing on textless visual narratives with innovative techniques and narrative formats.

Made with Padlet

Secondary Sources 1: Theoretical and Research Frameworks

Assignment 1 Research Question and Plans and Assignment 2 Theoretical Framework: translation bricolage
  • Appignanesi, R. & Garratt, C., (2007) Introducing Post-modernism: A Graphic Guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
  • Baldwin, J. & Roberts, L., (2006) Visual Communication: from research to practice, London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc.
  • Collins, J. & Mayblin, B., (2011) Introducing Derrida: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
  • Davis, M., (2012) Graphic Design Theory, London: Thames and Hudson.
  • Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (eds.) (1999) The SAGE Handbook of qualitative research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
  • Devi, M. & Spivak, G. C., (1995) Imaginary Maps, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Downs, S., (2012) The Graphic Communication Handbook, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Gentzler, E., (2001) Contemporary Translation Theories, Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto, Sydney: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
  • Horrocks, C. & Jevtic, Z., (2009) Introducing Foucault: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
  • Horrocks, C. & Jevtic, Z., (2011) Introducing Baudrillard: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books.
  • Julier, G., (2014) The Culture of Design Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC: Sage Publications.
  • Macario, J. W., (2009) Graphic Design Essentials: Skills, software and creative solutions, London: Lawrence King Publishing.
  • Morton, S., (2003) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Munday, J., (2012) Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Application, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Niranjana, T., (1992) Siting Translation: History, post-structuralism and the colonial context, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press.
  • Noble, I. & Bestley, R., (2016) Visual Research: an introduction to research methods in graphic design, London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc.
  • Phillimore, J., Humphries, R., Klaas, F. & Knecht, M.,(2016)Bricolage: potential as a conceptual tool for understanding access to welfare in superdiverse neighbourhoods. IRIS Working Paper. Birmingham: Birmingham University.
  • Rogers, M.,(2012) Contextualising Theories and Practices of Bricolage Research. The Qualitative Report, 17, 1-17.
  • Rose, G., (2016) Visual Methodologies: and introduction to researching with visual materials, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,Singapore, WashingtonDC, Melbourn: Sage Publications.
  • Schulte, R. & Biguenet, J. (eds.) (1992) Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.
  • Spivak, G. C., (1990) The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, New York, London: Routledge. Spivak, G. C., (1998) In Other Worlds, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Tharp, T., (2003) The Creative Habit: learn it and use it for life, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
  • Thody, P. & Piero, (2013) Introducing Barthes: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
  • Wibberley, C.,(2012) Getting to Grips with Bricolage: A Personal Account. The Qualitative Report, 17, 1-8.
  • Wibberley, C. 2017. Bricolage Research Methods. In: REES, E. A. G. C. (ed.) Health Care Research: at a glance. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Assignment 3 Gathering Data: Visualising Empowerment
Secondary sources: sketchnoting/doodling/semiotics/visual dynamics
  • Barthes, R., (1967 (French 1964)) Elements of Semiology, New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Brown, S., (2014) The Doodle Revolution, New York: Penguin Group.
  • Causey, A., (2017) Drawn to See: drawing as an ethnographic method, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • Cobley, P. & Jansz, L., (2010) Introducing Semiotics: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
  • Collins, J. & Mayblin, B., (2011) Introducing Derrida: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
  • Downs, S., (2012) The Graphic Communication Handbook, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Hall, S., (2012) This Means This, That Means That: a user’s guide to semiotics, London: Laurence King Publishing.
  • Horrocks, C. & Jevtic, Z., (2011) Introducing Baudrillard: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books.
  • Kepes, G. & Giedion, S., (1944) Language of Vision, USA: Wisconsin Cuneo Press.
  • Rohde, M., (2013) The Sketchnote Handbook, USA: Peachpit Press.
  • Sherman, W., (2014) Playing with Sketches, Berverly MA: Rockport Publishers.
  • Taussig, M., (2011) I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in notebooks, namely my own, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
  • Thody, P. & Piero, (2013) Introducing Barthes: A graphic guide, London: Icon Books Ltd.
Assignment 4 A Working Draft: Empowerment Stories
  • Abbott, H. P., (2008) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bell, R. & Sinclair, M., (2005) Pictures and Words: New comic art and narrative illustration, London: Lawrence King Publishing.
  • Blazer, L., (2016) Animated Storytelling: simple steps for creating animation and motion graphics, USA: Peachpit Press.
  • Bono, E. D., (1982) de Bono’s Thinking Course, London: BBC Books.
  • Buzan, T., (2002) How to Mind Map, London: Thorsons.
  • Cobley, P., (2001) Narrative, London and New York: Routledge.
  • Devi, M. & Spivak, G. C., (1995) Imaginary Maps, London, New York: Routledge.
  • Jason Lankow, J. R., Ross Crooks, (2012) Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling, New Jersey, USA: John Wiley & Sons inc.
  • Maden, M., (2006) 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, London: Jonathan Cape.
  • Queneau, R., (1957 (French 1948)) Exercises in Style, Surrey: Alma Classics Ltd.
  • Mccloud, S., (1993) Understanding Comics.
  • Noble, I. & Bestley, R., (2001) Experimental Layout, East Sussex, UK: Rotovision SA.
  • Queneau, R., (1957 (French 1948)) Exercises in Style, Surrey: Alma Classics Ltd.
  • Stroh, D. P., (2015) Systems Thinking for Social Change, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Assignment 5 Finalising your Submission: Participatory Visual Communication
  • Bishop, C. (ed.) (2006) Participation, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: MIT Press.
  • Kristof, R. & Satran, A., Interactivity by Design: creating and communicating with new media, Moutnain View USA: Adobe Press.
  • Stroh, D. P., (2015) Systems Thinking for Social Change, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Secondary Resources 2: Animation technical manuals and tutorials

ON-LINE SOURCES
(open in a new tab)

BOOKS
(Harvard referencing to be done – these were my key sources but references were deleted in glitch with updating EndNote just before assessment submission)

4: The Airplane, Pakistan

Overview of animation concept September 2021

‘The airplane’ is about the contrast between the dreams of empowerment and happy families expressed by women and men in poor communities in Pakistan have – particularly at the time hey are married – compared with the reality of what happens statistically to very many women over time. And also to disappearance of men’s dreams.

The series were selected because of the powerful single image narratives from participatory workshops. I had good workshop reports on the drawings and background discussions, but few photographs and no video or audio.

The most poignant central image is the image of the woman lying dead in a cemetery with her children crying around her – so many women identified with that. Compared to another drawing by an old woman of her vision of flying in an aeroplane and being a happy couple.

The constructed narrative would have the following elements, not necessarily in linear order and including visions of men as well as women to make the animation more like the realities expressed in the community workshops, and less didactic and obvious than animations focusing solely on women:

  • Scene 1 Visions: A couple just married coming down a path together with a series of flashed up dream bubbles of aeroplanes and happy family etc – including men’s visions of a job, taking his wife to the cinema.
  • Scene 2 Reality: A sequence of what actually occurred : violence, too many children etc. These could just be sequential still images. Or a series of very short 3-5 frame looped animations. This would also include men’s frustrations and the reasons for their descent into addiction and violence.
  • Scene 3 Tragic Result: The shot of the cemetery with the children animated then replicated to show the numbers of women in that situation. With an image of a man distraught at what he had done.

I envisage a contrast between artistic black and white animation in the moving image/film style of Shirin Neshat and Brothers Quay. With drawings animated in charcoal or digital scraperboard, interspersed with found video of life in poor housing urban areas and domestic abuse that confirm the reality of the drawings women and men made.

Sound effects are a challenge and will need to be imported together with appropriate ambient sound from on-line video and library.

‘The airplane’ Creative translation questions and future steps

This animation is still very much at the planning stage, with only a few clips and ideas developed. But a lot of possible styles, images and narratives suggested by other animations without words, and footage film and animation from Pakistan.

Because of the artistic and narrative concept I have, and the need to be innovative rather than didactic, this animation is a much more complex task than the other animations. I wanted to incorporate natural as well as digital media but have only got access to my art studio again in July because of household arrangements during COVID-19. The TVPaint animation is also complex and I needed to take this slowly, after the other animations, because of RSI

Creative translation narrative

This could incorporate elements from popular Pakistani cinema and TV to both reinforce the poignancy and tragedy, but also add an element of culturally relevant fantasy and thinking differently.

  • Different possibilities of linear and/or non-linear narrative sequences eg opening with the cemetery scene or the woman jumping of the roof as in one of Shirin Neshat’s films.
  • There could be other linking formats eg scenes are pushed, or represented by page turns? or linked with characters moving between frames as in ‘Merlot’? Looped cycles to present repetitions eg addiction and violence from the mobile phone footage. 
  • Should there be any comedy? If so what? There is nothing comic in any of these community drawings. One possibility would be to end with the woman in a burqa flying high as a pilot like Haroon’s Burqa Avenger – see the gouache painting on the right.
  • A key issue is the need to clarify the characters and style – the community drawings are mostly solid marker, but some in more scratchy biro and felt tip.

Technical quality
I would want to animate the drawings in a mix of gouache, Procreate, TVPaint and charcoal and/or scraperboard Stop Motion on my iPhone. The composite them with the mobile phone footage (part rotoscoped?) and audio in Premiere, possibly adding some Creative Effects and lighting in After Effects.

Creative Translation Overview Padlet

Made with Padlet

Evolution of Animation Experiments to March 2021

The account below gives my notes and more details of my initial animation skills development till March 2021)

For my analysis of community drawings and context from Pakistan see:

What happened to my airplane?’ story line ideas

In terms of storyline, the most poignant central image is the image of the woman lying dead in a cemetery with her children crying around her – so many women identified with that. Compared to the vision of flying in an aeroplane and the happy couple.

The animation could actually be quite simple. It could focus only on women, or more interestingly/accurately/less stereotypically include the visions and situation of men also expressed in Taraqee Foundation:

  • Scene 1 Visions: A foreground drawing of a woman with (probably unkempt hair) with a series of flashed up dream bubbles of aeroplanes and happy family etc. This could also include men’s visions.
  • Scene 2 Reality: A sequence of what actually occurred : violence, too many children etc. These could just be sequential still images. Or a series of very short 3-5 frame looped animations. This could also include men’s frustrations and the reasons for their descent into violence.
  • Scene 3 Tragic Result: The final shot of the cemetery with the children animated then replicated to show the numbers of women in that situation. There could also be an image of a man distraught at what he had done.
Some questions
  • should I use the existing community drawings, or do my own versions? for example a simple black on white animation in Islamic calligraphy line, something like the black square animation above?
  • should the drawings all be in similar style? or use different line thickness and style to eg represent different degree of power?
  • should the story be sequential or eg try reversing the order to start with the cemetery as a shock and possibly repeated at the end, with the middle part explanatory?
  • is it possible to incorporate some black humour? eg in the way I portray the hectoring man, and maybe mother-in-law? if so does the whole animation need to be humorous, or just part of it? do I create humour through the images, or contrast image and sound?
  • what sounds to use?

Sketchbook and animation experiments

Sketchbook drawing experiments

I started by printing out large A4 versions of the main diagrams and pasting in my A3 sketchbook. Then annotating them referring to the documentation on meaning. Then I started to look at and replicate some of the different line styles.

!! To photograph and upload. Need to do more when I start to work with different physical media: charcoal, scratchboard, monoprint etc. Mostly my experimentation so far has been digital for this series.

Digital Portraits

I also experimented with digital manipulation of my photographs of Pakistani women. To be used as the basis for drawing, and also integrated as photographs to make the animations grounded in reality.

I had initially had the idea of using a portrait as background for ‘drawings of fate’ like the inscriptions of poems on the portraits by Shirin Neshat.

Gouache accidents procreated

For the Pakistan series, I wanted a more textural, dark treatment. In Sketchlog 3 I had gouached over writing on some of the pages, but these had stuck together or left traces of separating sellotape rolls etc. I found these quite atmospheric, and I could see faces and landscapes in the splodges.

So I worked into these in Procreate, cutting and collaging and using curves, colour masks and blend modes. Some of these became very scary faces as backdrops. Others ghostly figures. Some were women airplane pilots in a burqa.

iPad animation experiments

The wide variety of very expressive drawing styles provide a rich set of possibilities for line animation, with different types of abstraction of the figure, clothing, expression etc. I used these drawing as the basis for some of my very first very short animations in Motion Book. .

I also did sketches in my sketchbooks of South Asian women based on photos in a book of Faces as the basis for a series of animations in Rough Animator.

TVPaint walk cycle effects

I replicated some of these effects on walk cycles as part of my learning process in TVPaint. It is possible to get a high degree of control over blurring, ghosting and masking that I intend to apply selectively as backdrops for the drawings in my animation series.

Creative animations so far

Experiment 1: Colour/black and white fairtyale

Using layering and lighting effects. Possibly some linocut for background with animated elements in flat style, or oil brush/gouache style? Composited in TVPaint.

Clive Walley Painting build up and framing

Rein Ramat Estonia. Integration of linocut and line.
Jiri Trnka very dramatic lighting.
Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis. Uses dramatic black shapes and line.
Ian Gouldstone’s Dog Piano uses a simple mask blended over the image to focus the area of interest on the action and give colour.
Myfirst colour experiment on my iPad.

Experiment 2: Violence Scene: Video integration

I found some mobile phone footage of an actual domestic violence incident in Pakistan that I downloaded and started to use as rotoscope. But I actually find the footage itself with some colour manipulation far more effective, with overlaid drawings as an idea to develop further.

The idea of adding more and more drawings is to indicate the scale of the issue in Pakistan, but I need to think how to do this more effectively.

Hitchcock: Psycho Shower Scene
This brief rotoscoped animation is extremely atmospheric with its suggested shapes.
Brothers Quay use of light and music in Absentia
Experiment 3: Cemetery Photographic erasure
Jittery, flashes of line.
creeping snakes of multiplying shapes
Experiment 4: Understated black/grey on white line

A final very simple possibility using just line. Possibly charcoal erasure of the different drawings.

Integrating sound effects from video – eg mobile phone footage of violence. Or maybe a marriage song.

Peter Millard This animation starts with a blank screen that shimmers with slight variations in white/cream while a shrill cild/female/robot/alien? distorted voice sings a vaguely familiar melody. This creates tension and anticipation waiting for something to happen. Then the voice suddenly changes to the more familiar deep male opera voice as the childlike simple pencil drawing of a man’s face moves slowly at the same speed and horizontal position across the screen. This drawing ‘boils’ with slight apparently random changes in the drawing as a whole – size and shape of the face circle, eyes and pupils and length of the line of the mouth. This creates a real poignancy of sameness, thinness of the line and blank expression in contrast to the heavy emotion of the ‘we will overcome’ vincera aria that also references the masculinity and tribalism of football matches as well as the operatic strength itself.
The title ‘since the better’ then adds a layer of loss and past ‘glory’.
Jane Cheadle. I like the white on black textures. Could be used to effect in a simple line animation.

Visual inspiration
to explore further

I like this storytelljng style.


sand art and william kentridge, erasure and transformation

Vicky Smith scraperboard, black monoprint, charcoal stop motion

Priit Parn First part stylisation

William Kentridge

Catherine Anyango-Grünewald uses a similar technique to Kentridge. She draws repeatedly on the same sheet of paper, but instead of using the residue of a material, she focuses on the durability of the surface that she is drawing on. The disintegration of paper beneath her aggressive drawings expresses her personal frustration and anger at police brutality and echoes the imbalance of power of her subject.

interesting overlays that could be used.

3: ‘Pig Tales’, India

Poverty is no picnic’: drawings, photos, sketches and video animated using 2D animation, cut-out puppet Stop Motion and rotoscoping techniques in Rough Animator, Procreate and/or TVPaint composited as a narrative in Adobe After Effects/Creative Effects and Premiere. Draft Animatic September 2021.

Pig Tales Overview

‘Poverty is no picnic’ : concept

The animation narrative contrasts a rather romantic ideal of tribal Santhal life, with the realities of looking after livestock and poverty. 

Santhal women work in the fields, forest and with livestock. Lives of ‘tribals’ are very much romanticised by upper caste Bengali culture – partly because Santhal communities are seen as a much freer/separate place for Bengali men to drink and mix/sleep with women. Tribal communities in Bengal and neighbouring Bihar are also very politicised by left wing movements on wages and communal rights to the forest. But for the women themselves, issues of poverty, lack of access to education and income and sexual exploitation are key issues. So the stories they told about goats and pigs fighting are often for them life and death issues affecting food security and independence. 

My translations aim to contrast this romanticism (evident also in my own photos) with the reality of loans for ‘exotic’ foreign goats and pigs that cost a lot to house, buy and feed, that get diseases, fight and die because of lack of veterinary services.
The drawings, photos and video are from a participatory business planning workshop for a US-based INGO giving grants for livestock development to very poor women in disadvantaged communities. The local NGO had had difficulties communicating with the women because staff do not speak Santhali, except for some volunteers from the community. The power relations were very evident from the body language and interactions during the workshop. 

The nature of the participatory empowerment process whereby drawings are placed on a collective diagram for discussion and analysis meant that the names of individual artists is unknown. 

The narrative is bound together by the beautiful Santhali song that one of the participants sung for us just before we left. Unfortunately leaving was rushed and there was no way  of finding out the meaning of the song, who wrote it (I think it was traditional) or the name of the singer.

Pig Tales: Experimental Vignettes

‘Romantic visions’
Goat Idyl/Goats with Attitude. Cartoon-style narratives animating women’s coloured line drawings with occasional goat/rural sound effects to add. Lighthearted/ colourful inspired by Gottfried Mentor’s allegorical sheep and goat CGI animation.
(Jan 2021 draft iPad Rough Animator.)
Pig Mother.
Santhal women obviously like the nurturing ‘maternal’ role of caring for livestock – contrast with men’s commercial role in on-line training. Romantic Stop Motion puppet cut-out from watercolour sketch from photos. Inspired by Nuri Yorstein. (Jan 2021 draft iPad Procreate. )
Pig Fight
Pencil effect

Clash of Titans
Clashing shape animation makes the rotoscope more ‘real’ and dramatic.
Inspired by Peter Millard colours.
(Jan 2021 draft TVPaint animated line and shape rotoscope with After Effects Creative Effects added.

Pig Lament
Pig Lament 1 charcoal.

Pig Lament 2: Watercolour Grunge. Inspired by Peter Millard colours.
(Jan 2021 draft TVPaint animated line and shape rotoscope with After Effects Creative Effects added.

Creative Translation Overview Padlet

Made with Padlet

These drawings were the most expressive in terms of line styles. I started with these as my first animations as they were very simple and relatively easy to animate on iPad. Selected also because of photos and video for rotoscoping and evocative sound track.

Narrative

  • Different possibilities of linear and/or non-linear narrative sequence eg starting with the women’s fight – explanation of woman on woman violence or picture of Tupa Tupa all alone, rejected by his family.
  • Earlier animation experiments simply animating the pig and goat line drawings on my iPad were another possibility, if I can make the animations longer and inject some tragic humour like ‘Oh Sheep’ by Gottfried Mentor.

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balanceThis animation combines different styles to contrast the message. But how can I increase the contrast between:

  • the dreamy romanticism (eg adding more of the mistiness of Norstein’s puppet animation, even adding vaseline diffuse overlay?) 
  • the violence of the pig fight? (eg combining Jonathon Hodgson’s varied rotoscoping in ‘Dogs’ with jagged line work and the camera work of the boar fight scenes in Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke?
  • the documentary envelope – should this have a colour overlay. I understand the Bengali discussion of plans for the shop, but how to make the meaning of the drawings visually clear to a non-Bengali speaker?

Future steps

This animation is still a draft, rotoscoping from the video in TVPaint is still rough, as are manipulating photographs in Procreate on my iPad and  final compositing in Adobe Premiere. 

I am aiming on the one hand to showcase the raw artistic power of some of the drawings by women who never held a pen before, as well as the contrast between romantic views of outsiders and women’s dreams for use of the grants – that they have costed – and the realities of vulnerability and food insecurity, even with grants, in an area with very few services and that has been neglected by government.

Technical quality:

Painterly section: Procreate was a good initial RSI-friendly software to start to develop the ideas, making cutting out the characters and draft backgrounds easy. For this short and simple clip, Procreate is probably a good option for further development with smooth in-betweens and cleaning up the artwork. But the animation is aiming to be romantically dreamy and does not need to be in sync with the audio.
Rotoscoping: The rotoscoping of the pig fight could be more dramatic using Disney techniques of squash and stretch, follow through etc. But is aiming to be fiercely poignant rather than cartoon -like. I could use camera moves to change the viewpoint, but this needs redrawing in TVPaint because it is pixel-based. Rotoscoping of the video of the singer needs to be redone to be in sync, but I like the way some elements are missed and the rotoscope fragments, adding to the romantic illusion overlay.

Fidelity to community voices and context? The narrative is constructed from my workshop notes, and shortens issues from my original workshop video. 
Visual magic and creativity?
The painterly effects and pig fight are introduced for dramatic effect for a global audience, and well received by Western viewers if the technical issues are resolved. These would aim to be much more dramatic, drawing inspiration from Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.

In taking it further in response to audience feedback, I would consider a bigger range of narrative options and ways of intensifying dramatic impact. Continuing using puppet animation in Procreate and/or TVPaint, refining the rotoscoping with final compositing in Adobe Premiere. Possibly using creative effects in After Effects.

Evolution of Animation Experiments

The account below gives my notes and more details of my initial animation skills development till March 2021)

Jamghoria Sevabrata: Community Drawings

For these experimental animations I decided to focus on the distinctive use of line by tribal Santhal women in West Bengal who had never held a pen before. Although the community drawings from ANANDI were potentially more interesting in terms of the views of empowerment, they would take much longer than the time frame of this module to animate well – something planned for future. West Bengal, and Santhali culture, was part of the research for my PhD and so I felt more comfortable trying to ‘translate’. I also had some photos, video and music I could use.

Unlike caste Hindu or Muslim women, they do not have such a strong tradition of handicrafts that give them an immediate facility for drawing. Like older women in ANANDI, they tended to use very abstracted stick figures but add symbolic elements and gestures. Some of the drawings were the most expressive drawings I have seen, in many ways more artistically interesting than the more figurative drawings of people with more education or the line drawings I have from Africa.

In addition to the drawings I also had photographs and some video footage (badly shot while I was facilitation or in a hurry in bad lighting).

Singer and Santhali song
woman feeding pigs.

Sketchbook

Pig Tales_Sketchlog page
Pig Tales_Sketchlog page

Romantic Visions 1: Goat Idyll

My first translations were very early animation experiments with line on my iPad, for a very simple playful effect, inspired by sheep 3D animations by Mathias Klein from FilmBilder.

Inspiration: Gottfried Mentor, comic social parody

Oh Sheep: FilmBilder Directed by Gottfried Mentor with animation by Matthias Klein

https://youtu.be/sY5MmhLQBng

A tragi-comic political parody of two shepherds who do everything they can to distinguish and keep their two flocks of sheep apart. Every time the sheep manage to meet and mingle. When finally the shepherds think they have found the solution through branding, the sheep see themselves as different and fight to the death.

An amusing tale about youth rebelling and teaching old goats how to survive in a new world.
The lamb’s parents are shocked, because their little lamb doesn’t sound like the other sheep: It’s making „moo” instead of „baa”.

I used these line drawings to do a series of animations in Rough animator on my iPad, exploring effects of frame rate, duplicating and mirroring layers and creating quick story-lines.

Goat idyll 5: Goats with attitude. Rough animator. I started to make a story of flirting goats. Colouring the background. Duplicating the layers again but flipping vertically and altering opacity to create reflections. I like the general feel and pastel-type colours. I could develop this much further into a series of comic encounters – drawing more inspiration from the different Mathias animations.

Rural Idyll 1: Goat goes for a walk. 6FPS gives strobing. But for this animation I like the awkward, tentative child-like effect.
Goat idyll 3. Two goats passing. Rough animator doodle. Duplicate and flip layer than offset movement to create interaction between two goats. 24FPS focuses on the passing.

Goat idyll 2. When two goats meet. Rough animator doodle. Duplicate and flip layer than offset movement to create interaction between two goats. 12FPS. Slower frame focuses on the meeting.
Goat idyll 4: If goats could fly. Rough animator: Quick animated doodle replicating the style of the community line drawing and using cheap sketchbook background. Duplicates and mirrors the same goat, then adjusts the movement of one goat to make it jump over the other one. 12FPS.

Romantic Visions 2: Pig Mother

This second set of experimental animations aims to project a dreamy, romantic vision of happy caring women ‘mothering pigs’. Very unlike the harsh, cold commercial realities of sterile concrete pig pens and sending pigs to slaughter.

I take a painterly approach, using texture, colour and shape as well as line.

Inspired by a mix of Japanese hand-painted watercolour animation, monochrome puppet stop motion of Nuri Yorstein, animated watercolour (based on rotoscope?) of Ryan Larkin and integration of the very varied whimsical 2D, rotoscoped and cut-out styles of Gasparovic’s Satiemania.

clearly shows the mix of line styles for different moods. Colouring strategies from flat for characters to watercolour. And very sketchy fluid animation for dramatic flight and high emotion.
Ryan Larkin ‘Walking’ 1968. Uses a variety of techniques–line drawing, colour wash, etc.–to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot.
‘Tale of Tales’ by Yuri Norstein uses Stop Motion puppet animation, drawn by his wife and very smoothly animated on a multiplane frame to produce a really evocative fairy-tale look about cycles of life.
Satiemania - Wikipedia
“Satiemania’ by Zdenkó Gasparovich 1978. The subject matter is somewhat inappropriate. But I am very inspired by the mix of a wide diversity of line and colour styles and mix of handrawn, rotoscoped and cutout images for different emotions and effects.
iPad photo to Procreate to Rough Animator

I start by manipulating one of photographs on my iPad.

I started with full colour overlay in Procreate, replicating the colours from the photograph. Then I took this into Rough Animator for a line, and then coloured crayon version. Much finer

Pig Mother iPad 1: Photo overlay in Procreate, replicating the colours from the photograph.
Pig Mother iPad 3: Crayon fill of iPad 2 in Rough Animator. This Japanese-style pastel crayon work has a lot of potential for the dreamy effect I am aiming for. If redone with better drawing and animation in TVPaint.
Pig Mother iPad 2: Line version from iPad 1 imported and drawn over in Rough Animator.
iPad video to sketch to Procreate

I then used the video to get more realistic keyframes that I printed out as jpgs.

From these I made a series of sketches. Taking these into Procreate I cut out and recoloured the drawings, overlaying and compositing them into a picture.

I then manipulated these to make a short animation. The second version has more perspective and less saturation in the background to give more depth. This is still too jerky and needs more in-betweening.

But I think the style is quite effective and many possibilities for further development as a longer and somewhat smoother animation – depending on whether I am trying to copy Stop Motion or handdrawn watercolour. Puppet animation would be more professional using Photoshop to create the puppets, then using puppet animation in After Effects.

Pig Mother watercolour 1: Procreate using photos of the watercolour drawings. I quite like the dreamy effect of the background close-up and it makes the figure stand out. It would be interesting to split this into 5 camera layers with front pig, woman, back pig, front trees and back trees.
Pig Mother watercolour 2: Procreate. Gives more perspective and less saturation in the background for more depth – attempting rather unsuccessfully to respond to feedback from Howard Wimshurst. Has more ‘realism’ but less dreamy. Somehow falls between the two – possibly could be improved by longer smoother animation, but probably needs completely re-doing either by hand or digitally.
Pig Mother watercolour 3: A first attempt to get a more uniform blending of the woman and background as if in a dream. After Effects with Creative Effects Filter Vector Blur 3. The blurriness has potential, but needs quite a lot of prior edge and tonal work to make images clearer eg Procreate or TVPaint.
Pig Mother watercolour 4. Monochrome in the style of Nuri Yorstein, could potentially create a more romantic and distanced effect. Pig Mother1 adjusted using curves and pentatone filters in After Effects to blend the woman, pigs and background more as a cohesive image.. I think this approach has a lot of potential to take further. But the original file from iPad needs to be cleaned up with better tonal balance between the woman’s face and the white pig. It would also be more interesting as a multiplane camera animation.

Realities: Pig Fight

Inspiration: aggressive ‘boil’

This third animation ‘Pig Lament’ has a lot of creative potential – the furious purple pen drawing of pigs was what first attracted me to drawings from this workshop as a source for translation.

I wanted to animate the pig fight drawing, rotoscoping a real pig fight video clip, using aggressive line like the Santhal drawing. Drawing also some ideas about violence and final death scene from Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. Adding either pig fight sounds and/or the haunting song.

This could either be a simple ‘boiling line drawing’ like Jonathon Hodgson’s ‘Dogs, or a bold colour animation like those of Peter Millard. Or I could use energetic coloured strokes like ‘Layman, Shamam, Daydreaming’. This last would probably be best done in natural media painting onto acetate over printouts of the rotoscope.

In order to get a feel of the fight and possible keyframes, I selected video keyframes edited in Premiere. Then did some quick pencil gesture drawings from printouts. These were very useful, but it would be better next time to do these while watching the video, not just from photos.

‘Dogs’ from Jonathon Hodgson: partly rotoscoped animation in which all elements are constantly in motion but at different paces of boil to show different moods – energy, waiting and anticipation. Sometimes the colour shapes pulsate and shift more than the lines, sometimes figures, shapes and lines all move energetically and dissolve into chaos.
Princess Mononoke is a much more violent and dynamic animation, with very dramatic scenes of a wild boar (see right). The dead skeleton is something I could try to add as a ghost image at then end. But this might be too cliche.
Mononoke_screenshots

Rotoscope ‘Kadiri Pig Fight’ video and Creative Effects

Rotoscoping over an edited version of the Kadiri pig fight video in TVPaint. These are not so successful and not as dynamic as I would like them to be.

The line drawing would be better as a gesture drawing from live video. The coloured version would be more interesting painting into that digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.

Pig fight 1: Line rotoscope of edited version of pig fight video. TVPaint. This would be more dynamic as a gesture drawing from live video.
Pig fight 2: Coloured version of line rotoscope. TVPaint. This would be more dramatic painting into the gesture line digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.
Pigfight Rotoscope 4 Pencil
Pigfight Rotoscope 5 Vector Blur 4
Pigfight Rotoscope 5 Rough Sketch
Pigfight Rotoscope 8 Vector Blur 5
Pigfight Rotoscope 6 Charcoal
Pig Fight Rotoscope 9 watercolour grunge 1
Pig Fight Rotoscope 10 watercolour grunge 2 original colour
Pig Fight Rotoscope 11 textiles original colour

Developing Narrative

Narrative formats

Narrative Format 1, song thread: Pig Lament

The song in the video I find really haunting. Though I have no idea what it means – maybe an interesting point about translation.

But I think that adding a rotoscope of the singer for at least part of any narrative would add a degree of realism. I like the way the line drawing in the version in the right dissolves because I accidentally omitted some lines towards the end. I am planning to experiment a lot more with different rotoscope effects like the variations in Jonathon Hodgson’s animation.

Singer: original video footage. Shot in a hurry at the end of my visit and batteries running low in poor light.
Singer rotoscope 1 charcoal. Stylising the original video in After Effects Creative Effects charcoal 1 filter. To work well there needs to be a bit more contrast and sharpness in the original video without losing the dreamy stylised effect.

I like the way the line drawing in the version in the right dissolves because I accidentally omitted some lines towards the end. I am planning to experiment a lot more with different rotoscope effects like the variations in Jonathon Hodgson’s animation.
Singer rotoscope 2 Watercolour grunge. Stylising the original video in After Effects Creative Effects watercolour grunge filter. To work well this needs the original video to have higher contrast and sharpness.

Animatic 1: Pig Lament

First attempt to composite as a narrative with sound. I need to redo the rotoscopes and rethink this – colours, line, style and technique. I was aiming for something much more expressive and emotive.

Adding Creative Effects goes some way towards this. I particularly like the charcoal version and the watercolour grunge version. But I need to experiment more with settings. And possibly layer with different elements eg singer and pigs in different but complementary styles to signify different roles in the video.

I could also experiment more with framing, again separating different layers.

Pig Lament 1Charcoal

Pig Lament 2 Vector
Pig Lament 3 Watercolour Grunge natural colours
Pig Lament 4: Textile effect. Links the idea of Indian women’s handicrafts as romanticisation and beautification by outsiders.
Pig Lament 5: Watercolour Grunge coloured. I like the angry flaming red colour effect on the pigs. But need to work out how to control the effect more. Inspired by Peter Millard colours. (Jan 2021 draft TVPaint animated line and shape rotoscope with After Effects Creative Effects added.

Format 2: Documentary envelope, Pig Tales

Could ‘envelope’ the animation between short ‘reality context’ introduction and ending using some video footage of women drawing and the workshop process, with examples of drawings.

This first version attempts to put the different styles together. But this does not flow. This was the version sent to my tutor i Assignment 5.
This first revised version just uses the goat clips with the song, As the most faithful rendering of some of the community line drawings. This could be further developed as a humorous narrative.
This final version focuses just on the pigs. Although it brings in more ‘creative elements’ and documentary from other sources, it reflects the community narrative and angry feel of the pig drawing better.

2: ‘Tupa Tupa’, DRCongo

‘Tupa Tupa’ animatic overview

‘Tupa Tupa’ (the drunkard) is based on photos from role plays on gender issues in the households by women and men coffee farmers in a Fair Trade cooperative in DRCongo. Women and men did separate plays on what happens to the money from coffee. – women do most of the work. Men ‘own’ the money and spend on alcohol and women in town. Money also goes to corrupt lawyers and the police because of men’s lack of responsibility.

I chose to work with these images because the role play narratives were very powerful and highlighted different things about women and men’s perceptions. These stories and effects of men’s control of coffee money, alcoholism and adultery and corruption of officials are common across all the coffee sector in East Africa, including Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. So these role play stories have wider implications as advocacy in the coffee sector – Fair Trade as well as private sector companies. Woman on woman violence is also a common issue because of women’s vulnerability. Divisions and arguments between married and unmarried (ie girlfriends) women are often at least as significant at participatory workshops as between women and men. Acording to hospital admissions, leading to extreme violence and even murder – including murder of a friend of mine by her husband’s girlfriend.

Apart from its importance in advocacy, I selected this photograph series because it gives an example of dramatic community narratives. Also one of my best photo resources for dramatic sketching beyond stereotypes and collage. This was also the only clear set of visuals I have of farmers’ complete stories, as opposed to vignettes from drawings that I then interpret from interviews and other contextual information. The photos are of variable technical quality as they were taken in difficult bright lighting while I was focusing on facilitation and documenting the narrative. But many are very expressive and dynamic when edited as the basis for sketching and further development for animation. Importantly the photos provided a basis for developing my ability to draw local expressions and body language so that animations could abstract and clarify without resorting to stereotypes and potentially racist tropes. They also highlighted both the ways in which women and men perceive their own and the opposite gender – both seriously and as comedy.

Creative translation assessment of animatic draft

This animation is still very much an animatic, manipulating photographs in Procreate on my iPad with final compositing in Adobe Premiere. I am aiming for theatricality and exaggerated movements that combine comedy with poignancy, rather than consistently smooth animation. Something with dramatic impact of Tartakovsky with comedy of Terry Gilliam.

Technical quality: Procreate was a good initial RSI-friendly software to start to develop the ideas, making cutting out the characters and draft backgrounds easy. But it is not the best software for refining professional cut out puppet animation. All the clips still need much more fluidity and better dramatic timing of the line animations to work with the music, incorporating squash and stretch, camera and viewpoint var. Squash and Stretch. I should have identified an audio source much earlier in the process.

Fidelity to community voices and context? The narrative structure combines, but is faithful to, the original women and men’s role plays. The original role plays combined humour with anger and sense of inevitability of men’s failings. The main issues were:

  • sequencing and narrative format for dramatic effect 
  • how to process and clarify the photographs to enhance the drama
  • how to simplify consistent characters based on those in two merged role plays
  • I needed a linking narrative thread but had no audio. I selected a Swahili song by women from another similar workshop in another coffee cooperative in Tanzania. So this could also be understood in DRCongo.

Visual magic and creativity? I find the general puppet Stop Motion style dramatic and engaging – if I can do it well.

But there were also many other narrative and stylistic option I could have chosen – see Creative Translation questions below.

 In taking it further in response to audience feedback, I would consider a bigger range of narrative options and ways of intensifying dramatic impact. I would do this using puppet animation in Adobe After Effects and/or TVPaint for artistic scene, with final compositing in Adobe Premiere.

Creative Translation Overview Padlet

Made with Padlet
‘Tupa Tupa’ Creative Translation questions

In terms of creative translation a challenge was to combine women and men’s stories into one narrative. The role plays themselves combined humour as well as serious commentary, but also based on community gender stereotyping for comic effect. I have to make decisions about how far to exaggerate this further for greater dramatic effect, and how far to have something more gender neutral.

The following were some interlinked parallel underlying questions relating to creative translation options – pointing to other potential animation interpretations for future experiments following post-COVID crisis feedback from colleagues and communities in East Africa.

Narrative

  • Different possibilities of linear and/or non-linear narrative sequence eg starting with the women’s fight – explanation of woman on woman violence or picture of Tupa Tupa all alone, rejected by his family.
  • Alternative sequencing and contextualising of narrative? Currently different scene ‘nuggets’ are linked through changing visual dynamics as in ‘Primal’? There could be other linking formats eg scenes are pushed, or represented by page turns? or linked with characters moving between frames as in ‘Merlot’? Looped cycles to present repetitions eg visiting girlfriend, fight scene that would then emphasise final story elements of corruption or women fighting.
  • Narrative balance between comedy and tragedy to counter ‘not all that feminist whingeing again!’ reaction and attract attention from different audiences ‘outside the already converted’? Importance of dramatic timing?
  • A key issue is the need to clarify the characters – this is currently confused because the photographs come from different role plays.

General style/message medium

  • Should the whole animation be in collaged Stop Motion of photographs? Or a more mixed approach with more drawn animation?  
  • Vary use of colour and line in the drawn elements and colour in the photographs to show different characters and mood. Use of colour and line

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balance

  • More dramatic application of ‘grammar of the shot’ framing and viewpoint to simplify/clarify composition to enhance the narrative, exaggerating Tartakovsky’s techniques and facial expressions. eg directing the gaze eg girlfriend feeling man’s pocket to see how much money he has, lawyer putting money from police chief in his pocket.
  • How relevant are the Illusion of Life animation principles to eg squash and stretch of collage, varying posture, increasing drama of fight scene?
  • Which global visual conventions are necessary for clarity across audiences? How can clarity, drama and ‘magic’ be enhanced by selective use of colour? camera moves and lighting?

Evolution of Animation Experiments

The account below gives my notes and more details of my initial animation skills development till March 2021)

Women’s role play:
Photos edited and clarified in Lightroom

  • Muungano women's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano women's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano women's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano women's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano women's theatre Lightroom edited photos
Women’s role play story
  1. Wives and daughters in the family are working in the fields while the man sits back
  2. The women carry the coffee to market. The man accompanies them and keeps the money.
  3. The man persuades them to go home, promising to come soon. The women go back.
  4. The man goes to the bar and his girlfriend.
  5. His girlfriend persuades him to buy her not only drinks, but also fancy clothes in the market.
  6. The daughter goes to the market to find the father and see him with the girlfriend. Then goes back to tell her mother.
  7. The women then all go and attack – not the husband – but the girlfriend (a point of much discussion).

Men’s role play:
Photos edited and clarified in Lightroom

  • Muungano men's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano men's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano men's theatre Lightroom edited photos
  • Muungano men's theatre Lightroom edited photos
Men’s role play story

‘Tupa Tupa’ means ‘drink, drink’ – the man’s nickname.

  • men take all the money to gamble, drink and buy presents for his ‘girlfriend’ in town
  • the man gets put in jail because of a fight
  • the lawyer and police chief work together to extort bribes from the family to secure his release
  • the family is left without money
  • the only winners from the whole coffee production are the corrupt officials
  • ….till they use the GALS participatory visioning methodology

Inspiration

Inspiration: Genndy Tartakovsky

The key source of inspiration for these animations is the dramatic and simplified visual style of Genndy Tartakovsky.

Inspiration: puppet/collage animation

But maintaining the link to ‘reality’ through clear style link to the photographs – either through digital montage in Procreate on my iPad. Or photo collage of photos edited and cropped then animated in Stop Motion or After Effects.

Emma Calder, Everyone is waiting for Something to Happen (2016). Half way in this uses very interesting cut-out collage animation overlaid as motion graphics to create narrative.

Storyboarding process and ‘narrative kernels

Identifying and sketching ‘narrative scene kernels’ and keyframes for animation

I think this narrative has a lot of dramatic potential, although the work required to fully develop it is probably outside the scope of this research and may need to be left until a later stage after my degree. The aim here has been to develop something that I could propose as work in progress for advocacy, and to get feedback on style etc if I were to work on it further.

As the farmer stories were very clear, I need a very clear simplified story to which can be added comic touches and very selective cut out or drawn animation.

Some of the most interesting images in terms of story were not always of the highest technical quality. My first task was therefore to edit them in Lightroom to get more consistent colour and tone. And to make a selection for a narrative.

In terms of visuals there were a number of ways that the photos could be used:

  1. cropped photos – what colour/saturation/tone? simplified? edit in Photoshop filters? put together in Premiere.
  2. shape cutout collage on plain/simple background as cut out animation in Stop Motion
  3. simplified composites animated in Procreate/TVPaint

I then use these photos as the basis for exploring issues in visual narrative, using framing, editing and camera movement to tell the story rather than animating movement itself. Using pencil, ink and crayon sketches, refined in Procreate 5 on my iPad for the sketches and Adobe Premiere.

Stage 1: Scene kernels
first keyframe drafts

I printed out and edited the Lightroom images, dividing these into separate narrative elements and pasting them into my Sketchlog. I then drew and painted over these, and did freehand sketches to get a better idea of the dynamic potential of each scene.

Scenes 1-3 Women do the Work and man gets the money
Scene 4 man goes to bar to see girlfriend and is seen
Scene 5 Tupa Tupa Gambles and fights and is taken to jail
Scene 6 Lawyer and Police take the money and man released from jail
Scene 7 Women Fight the girlfriend not the husband.

Do a more complete animatic with:

  • timings for each scene
  • more in-betweens from the photos – either just cropped photos or collage cut-outs
  • sound effects and music

1: Mary’s Story, Uganda

Mary’s Story

Alan Becker uses Adobe Animate for stick figures in his series of ‘Animator’ animated stories.
Overview of animation draft September 2021

Mary’s story is a compilation of single image narrative marker drawings by women and men coffee farmers at a workshop on gender issues in coffee sector in Gumutindo Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Eastern Uganda.

The community narrative of Mary’s story is very important for gender advocacy in coffee sector. Gender inequalities in coffee farming households, including Fair Trade cooperatives, in Uganda, and in East Africa more widely, has been a key focus of my consultancy work. The overall narrative is therefore grounded in very common patterns of gender inequality throughout the East Africa region. These particular community drawings were selected because these are some of the most expressive single image narratives that have been produced in participatory workshops I have facilitated. The drawings are separate one-image narratives that are expressive in themselves – the most expressive being ones by a woman called Mary. I also have video footage and and photographs ofthe workshop – including role plays – workshop and Mbale context. Some of this material I used as the basis for my own drawings. Including Mary’s head that I drew in pencil from a photograph, then and then edited in SilverFX.

The narrative structure of the animation is constructed by me bringing together the selected drawings in the context of other video about women as ‘the Mother of the Nation’, and the backbone of African agriculture. But interventions, including organic production, tends to mostly target and reach men, and increase women’s workload without giving them more control over the income because they do not onw the land. I sequenced selected drawings as a constructed line animation narrative in TVPaint: 1) Bride kidnap 2) Property inequality 3) Nagging children and lazy husband 4) Husband goes drinking with girlfriend 5) Mary is left working in the fields 6) Mary gets a cow 7) Mary is left looking after the cow and shop while the husband still goes out with second wife. Then looped and reversed some clips to indicate a repetitive cycle whereby Mary’s own actions make very little difference to her husband’s behaviour.

The line animations are placed in a contextualising ‘reality wrapper’ of photos and my own sketches/drawings from photos including possible added animation of 8) Mary has fantasies of being a butcher with a sharp knife to take out her anger???. Another possibility would be to add/substitute video footage of the performers, particularly a section showing alternatives with men sweeping and helping women.

The linking narrative thread is a music soundtrack of one of the songs about gender inequality in the household written and performed by workshop participants in local Gisu language. I do not have an English translation but similarity to Swahili words enabled me to match roughly the meaning to some of the images so that they make sense to a local audience. I made effort to match the general rhythm of the animation to the rhythm of the music for global audiences. This ends a bit abruptly and I need to make a final credit sequence, but I was having some issues with file size to upload.

A further linking thread was an overlay of a ‘coffee’ brown gouache grain texture from my sketchbook with a round circle that could be a coffee mug, a sun or a narrative circle. Placed between the backgrounds and the black lines, this breaks the starkness of a white background and adds a more ‘artistic’ and organic feel, and also ties the photographs and animation together.

Creative translation assessment of animatic draft

The drawings alone could work very well as simple line animations using Disney principles: squash and stretch, arcs, anticipation etc. Timing will be key. But I discovered that this was far from simple and this requires considerable animation skill and experience. Further technical skill needs to be developed here.

The current animatic is a ‘maximalist version’ where I combine different sources together to see how the narrative might work and possible timings with the sound track, and make an initial assessment of how different styles might work together and complement each other for some feedback before refining this version.

Technical quality: Despite much tweaking, this still needs much more fluidity and better dramatic timing of the line animations to work with the music, incorporating squash and stretch, camera and viewpoint var. Squash and Stretch. I should have identified an audio source much earlier in the process.

Fidelity to community voices and context? the focus on animating the original marker line drawings is the closest I can get to fidelity to the original drawn sources. The addition of gouache and crayon overlay on role play photos also maintains close fidelity to what was said in the workshop. But the narratives have sometimes been constructed by me based on contextual information because the workshop documentation had some gaps.

Visual magic and creativity? I find the general ‘coffee’ style and mix of animated and figurative media quite striking, but there are other contextual photographs and images I could adapt. I now need to think much more strategically about timing, colours and style to reflect the message and how to lighten things with more comedy in order to emphasise the serious points.

But there were also many other narrative and stylistic option I could have chosen – see Creative Translation questions below.

Creative Translation Overview Padlet

Made with Padlet
Mary’s Story: Key Translation Questions

The following were some interlinked parallel underlying questions relating to creative translation options – pointing to other potential animation interpretations for future experiments following post-COVID crisis feedback from colleagues and communities in East Africa.

Narrative options

  • Narrative balance between comedy and tragedy to counter ‘not all that feminist whingeing again!’ reaction and attract attention from different audiences ‘outside the already converted’? Importance of dramatic timing?
  • Sequencing and contextualising of narrative? As a scene-based sequential narrative where different scene ‘nuggets’ are linked through visual dynamics as in ‘Primal’? or each is pushed, or represented by page turns? or linked with elements moving between frames as in ‘Merlot’?
  • Possibility of a composite of cycled looped vignettes like ‘Tango’ to show the burden of things? (technically easier using looped symbols in Adobe Animate than TVPaint). Ending with some sort of comic or tragic concluding clip eg from the Mother of the Nation You Tube video, or gestures from the singers of the song. To show the cyclical build up of pressures to boiling anger.

General style/message medium

  • Main mood: Mary’s anger? vulnerability? strength? what mix of these?
  • How to visually present a balance of comedy for audience engagement to create contrast with tragedy/poignancy/seriousness of inequalities to promote action and advocacy?
  • Fidelity of line: should I replicate original flat black marker line or use a more artistic ink?
  • Use of colour? shape? fracture? follow more more globally recognised ‘African’ colour style’? ‘professional’ Disney/Hollywood style preferred in some comments on otherAfrican animations on You Tube?

Illusion of Life: realism/magic balance

  • How far should the animations observe global conventions of visual dynamics and perspective to show ‘professionalism’? Which global visual conventions are necessary for clarity across audiences?
  • Which visual conventions can be ignored to follow the flat uniform viewpoint and perspective of the original drawings and give a more ‘authentic/community look’? eg in use or non-use of perspective? use of upside-down faces? Which of these non-standard drawing features indicate different ways of seeing things? which are just due to the lack of time, practice and types of drawing materials at the workshop?
  • How can clarity, drama and ‘magic’ be enhanced by selective use of colour? camera moves and lighting?
Sketchlog 2: Mary’s Story

A lot of my drawing experimentation was done directly in TVPaint with multiple iterations and refinements of the animation. My sketchlog was a way of slow down, and thinking about the imagery as well as bringing together the various sources I had. Because of the timeframe of the research, and prioritisation of learning technical animation skills, experimentation and storyboarding was shorter than would ideally be the case. Storyboarding is actually much quicker and more effective in TVPaint, and it is important to determine early on to explore which drawing styles can be replicated digitally. Sketchlog and animation work need to take place in parallel so that both are freed up to ‘accidental discoveries’ but also focused on the main messages of potential alternative narratives so that they do not become mechanical.

Sketchlog2_Uganda

Evolution of Animation Experiments

The account below gives my notes and more details of my initial animation skills development till March 2021)

Narrative elements

I started by thinking about the overall narrative suggested by the community drawings. The community drawings were all single narrative images, most of which I had some documentation of. But they were images posted on a GALS Diamond infographic as ranked things women liked or did not like about being a woman. These gave a generalised quantified account of likes and dislikes for 10-12 women, but not an individual story in time.

My first idea was to construct a sequential narrative starting with different things women did not like in a sort of life cycle sequence, ending with possible dreams of owning a cow. After consideration I chose as the ending one of the ambiguous images of the small man with large woman leaving the woman with the alcohol shop and cow – still left behind by her husband and co-wife with even more responsibility of the cow and shop will she be able to control the money of still need to give it to him?

First thoughts: black and white line animation in Adobe Animate

My initial aim aim was to produce animations that were faithful to the expressive single image narratives in flat black marker, sequencing them in an ‘invented but believable’ way that could balance comedy and seriousness.

I was very much inspired by the expressiveness of simple stick figures of political graffiti artist STIK and the ironic humour and expressive lines of David Shrigley. In an early You Tube search for ‘short textless line animation’ I also discovered ‘Nuggets’ by Andreas Hykade that encapsulated most what I had in mind.

I planned to do the line animation in Adobe Animate, based on the short textless animations of Flash animators like Ross Bollinger and Alan Becker. But with a much more conceptually rich storyline provided by the original drawings.

At a slightly later stage I also came across the really powerful animation ‘Since the Better’ by Peter Millard with a very simple drawing that moves ‘boiling’ across the screen. The poignancy of this suggested a further option.

Andreas Hykade’s apparently very simple animation about addiction tells the story through really simple but subtle character animation of the bird, then progressive changes in tempo and colour – just white-grey-black and shades of yellow for the ‘ecstasy and bliss nugget’.
Peter Millard, Since the Better (2015) This animation starts with a blank screen that shimmers with slight variations in white/cream while a shrill cild/female/robot/alien? distorted voice sings a vaguely familiar melody. This creates tension and anticipation waiting for something to happen. Then the voice suddenly changes to the more familiar deep male opera voice as the childlike simple pencil drawing of a man’s face moves slowly at the same speed and horizontal position across the screen. This drawing ‘boils’ with slight apparently random changes in the drawing as a whole – size and shape of the face circle, eyes and pupils and length of the line of the mouth. This creates a real poignancy of sameness, thinness of the line and blank expression in contrast to the heavy emotion of the ‘we will overcome’ vincera aria that also references the masculinity and tribalism of football matches as well as the operatic strength itself. The title ‘since the better’ then adds a layer of loss and past ‘glory’.
Broadening out: ‘African colour’?

Although my original ideas had been in line, with possibility of addition of flat colour, the visual methodology I work with also uses colour-coding to signify particular meanings like visions, ‘green fruit plans’ based on the four marker colours. Experienced members and staff of organisations in Rwenzoris in Western Uganda have also used attractive stylised colour figures in adapting their drawings for eg manuals on coffee techniques.

So before deciding on style, it was obviously relevant for translations to also look at colour possibilities.

Cosmic Xo from Ghana. Very short really funny – if it did not have a lot of truth – satire on the education system. Very simple direct animation style that is very dynamic, expressive and effective with just outline and shapes with sound effects and dialogue.
A much more atmospheric sand art style.
Exploration of narrative format

In parallel to the research on style, I also looked for different approaches to narrative that were used by different animators that might be relevant to this particular story.

These

Tango by Zbigniew Rybczyński (1980) Superimposes cycles and repetitions to show how life repeats itself in different combinations. The end with a single person after all the crowd and noise is a poignant image of loneliness.
A is for Autism 1992 by Tim Webb. A is for Autism 1992 by Tim Webb. It assembles hundreds of drawings made by autistic young people together with narrative of fragments from interviews about their experiences and what the drawings mean. He then converts the drawings into frame by frame animation using crayons and other physical media together, combining some line animation with techniques like shimmering ‘boil’ and varying perspective and zoom. and , zooming in and out with a narrative thread from children themselves.
Story told by movement of contrasting layers across each other.

Developing the animated clips

Sketchbook revisited: broadening out the style

I also worked on Sketchlog 2 Community Voices to think more deeply about the community drawings, and how they might be interpreted through different sequencing narratives compared to my initial story. I also experimented with sketching context photos in different pencil and ink and wash styles to whether and how I might integrate these sketches into the animation for ‘contextual realism’.

iPad Experiments

After initial attempts with Adobe Animate I started to experiment with line animation on my iPad as a more RSI-friendly was to put time into learning animation basics. I started by experimenting with changes in facial expressions and effects of different types of line in different iPad software.

See: iPad software review

I then chose the co-wife drawing as one of my very first animation experiments on my iPad because it presented many of the line animation challenges I knew I would have to address. As I was aiming at line animation rather than textural painting effects, I experimented in Rough Animator because it has relatively good layering and time-line management features.

As I was new to animation at this stage, I learned a lot from this experiment about animation basics on the iPad, and it showed me how complex even simple animation can be in terms of balancing timing and movement, simple walk cycles walking forward etc. But the result was quite difficult to fine tune on the iPad to something I was happy with. Though I could have achieved more even in Rough Animator if I had known what I know now about animation principles.

TV Paint experiments: line animation

Between Assignment 3 and 4 I started to learn TVPaint from Howard Wimshurst’s Animation Academy and Bloop animation on-line training because of its better drawing and timeline animation features compared to both iPad and Adobe Animate.

I used TVPaint and the Animation Academy course to develop skills in Disney animation principles and walk cycles. This meant I could become more ambitious in what I tried to achieve with the animation. In particular how to achieve some degree of humour with simple line animation.

TV Paint experiments:
colour and shape
  • simple line style like the drawings themselves – single width
  • geometric line
  • colourful line style, maybe with fractured approach.
Coloured ink cartoon style
Coloured fractured shape style
1: First wife marriage kidnap
What women don't like:  Gender Diamond, Gumutindo, Uganda
Wife kidnap? Unclear. This is a picture of a (smaller with trousers) man taking a woman (largest with skirt) away? the skid marks under the woman indicate force. Who are the smaller figures bottom right? Children of the man from an earlier marriage? Or is this a scene of domestic violence, with the man forcing the woman back home?
2: Man owns the Land and Property
What women don't like: Unequal property rights, Gumutindo, Uganda
Unequal Property Rights: This image shows the woman on one side with nothing (the 4 lines are the numbers of other women participants in that situation – out of 12). She is divided from her husband by a straight vertical line. He has ownership of the coffee money, house, livestock and coffee land and trees.
Monochrome version with a coffee overlay instead of the coloured gouache texture, and try some drawings in coffee to see how this would look. I can also add blurs and effects to look more like actual drawings in coffee/sand art.
3: Nagging children and lazy husband
What women don't like: Nagging children and lazy husband, Gumutindo, Uganda
The Lazy Husband: This is a clear drawing – the children are tugging at the mother’s clothing – her face is interestingly upside-down. The man (stick figure no dress) is sitting at the back at a table doing nothing/drinking implied by his raised arm as if with a glass at a table.
6 First wife slave, second wife pleasure
What women don't like: Polygamy: Gender Diamond, Gumutindo, Uganda
Polygamy: This is a clear drawing – the artist is the older less educated wife on the left doing all the work in the fields is working hard on the fields to feed the family. Her husband is walking gaily out with his second favourite wife – they are almost skipping and dancing as they go along the path. Five of the 12 women participants were in that position.
Animation 1 in Rough Animator on the iPad. My first attempt at animating the scene, imitating the original line drawing style. This is too stiff.
Animation 3 in Rough Animator. I swapped things around, making the working wife black and smaller as if she is just in the background. And animated and coloured the husband and the favourite wife, birds and background. That also serves to emphasise the repetitive working movement of the working wife.
Animation 2 in Rough Animator on the iPad. I altered the animation itself and coloured the woman red to focus on her working.
7 Woman gets a cow
What women don't like: Gumutindo, Uganda
Woman Walking with Cow 3 with Stop Start animation. TVPaint
Woman Walking with Cow 4 Red Eyes
TVPaint. Refining the Stop Start animation with the cow running off the screen.
What women don't like: Gender Diamond, Gumutindo, Uganda
8: Even more work overload

This is a picture of a (smaller with trousers) man taking a woman (largest with skirt) away? (they have linked hands) from another woman (mother? co-wife? friend? bar owner? pimp?) who has a table with drinking utensils and house (alcohol bar? marriage table?) while a cow (whose?) looks sideways on the scene. But the meaning is unlear: This could be a woman (larger) taking her husband away from the bar. Could be a man and his girlfriend leaving the bar. The women could be co-wives. Or the man could have bought his wife with the livestock bottom right – but normnally that would be given to the woman’s father.

Animatics to March 2021

Animatic 1 November 2020: Monochrome version with a coffee overlay instead of the coloured gouache texture, and try some drawings in coffee to see how this would look. I can also add blurs and effects to look more like actual drawings in coffee/sand art.!!
Try marker on paper write-on drawings and Rybczynski Imagine push narrative strategies. Use head or photo for the repeated push.
Animatic 2 January 2021: Sound and addition of ‘contextual narrative wrapper’ as in N’gnedo Mukii and

Assignment 3.2: Visual exploration: iPad animation experiments

TASK: Bring evidence of all the visual work you’ve done so far together in one document. This should include a summary of what your visual work is trying to do with an explanation of how it links to your data collection and your research question. If you’ve modified your research question in the light of your data collection, clearly state your revised research question and explain why you decided to change it.

Note from Course Text: Aim to produce a substantial amount of visual exploration and developments. Don’t leap to final conclusions yet: you are still at a divergent stage of the design process, although some convergent elements might start to creep in. This is still a stage of visual risk-taking and trying lots of different options. Don’t spend ages on final pieces – work on a range of options that are still mock-ups.

SUMMARY

My work on my visual portfolio in Assignment 3.2 was limited to development of basic skills in animation and preliminary style and software exploration on iPad. Because of my RSI I needed to develop an animation workflow that did not require me to sit for long periods at my pc in order to get a better understanding of basic animation principles before transferring to more professional software like Adobe Animate. In Assignment 4, and also 5, my main focus will be more developed animations in professional pc software for my visual portfolio and detailed discussion of the most relevant sources of inspiration. My visual work in this assignment was primarily exploratory to:

1) Explore some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used

2) Establish a range of potential animation styles that I could feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like.

a) Identification and practising drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation.

b) Preliminary iPad experimentation with animation techniques from my iPad animation software review (Procreate 5 that I knew already and new animation software) to see how I could translate animation inspiration from my data-collection into my own animations.

The main results are a clear story-line plan for two translation sets of very short animation variants in a range of different animation styles that are feasible for me to review and develop to a much more professional standard in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

Woman Crying in Rough Animator
‘Pig Tales’ first attempts in Rough Animator
‘The co-wife’ first attempts in Rough Animator, now developed in ‘Mary’s Story’

1: Community visuals

I explored some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used, particularly line styles, methods of figure abstraction and manipulation to show emotions, how women/men characters can be differentiated building on ways in which people in different communities and contexts do this, and different cultural styles. To enable me to animate with conscious use of any stereotypes in ways that provoke questioning, and building on types of humour and visual conventions already familiar to people.

This proved potentially never-ending, and I stopped (early) when it started to become repetitive. I focused my own drawing on freehand copying drawings from India and Pakistan in biro, pen and marker to get a feel for how the drawings were done and look at some of the contrasting styles of figure abstraction.

I also looked at narrative photo sequences from drawings and role plays in DRCCongo and Uganda as examples for future animation as well as rich resources for drawing women and men in a more figurative style and/or where the community narrative was clearly developed. For more detail see:

Through this process I identified a three series of story lines to develop in multiple versions for testing with audiences. I will revisit the community visuals in detail as I develop the creative translations in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

‘Tupa Tupa’ : who gets the coffee money Farmer stories from DRCCongo

‘Tupa Tupa’ means drinking/drunkard. The idea is to combine the two role play photo stories into one. And experimenting with the sequencing of the storyline – as in Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story. This would be done combining physical drawing and painting on photos and/or rotoscoping over the drawings and/or photos, cropping them to add drama. Possibly I might do some cut-out and collage in the style of Sarah Fanelli. Certainly I want to retain the colours and expressions. Good sequencing and framing, focusing on the very expressive faces, should make it possible to tell the story without text or words. I would have to think about sound – possibly one of the GALS Swahili songs and/or sound effects.

This series – as it is in the form of photos – was not developed in Assignment 3.

What happened to my airplane? Women’s voices from Pakistan

A series of different translations around the big gap between women’s dreams and visions, and the realities of violence and suicide. This will be done in a number of different versions: simple line black and white style, colour cartoon and fuller colour with masking.

2: Exploration of stick figure drawing and cartooning principles

I wanted to explore potential drawing and animation styles that were effective but also simple enough for me to feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like. I then practised some of the techniques identified. But as this was potentially a never-ending process – life-long I hope – I did not pursue this too far at this stage before working on specific translations with a clear purpose.

I started by identifying and practising some of the drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation using standard cartoon guides (!! refs to be inserted), and also looking at the work of STIK.

I started Sketchlook 3: Animation Doodles (A4 old ‘scruffy’ lined exercise book with gouached pages over old text) for me to freely practise my own character animations and just ‘doodle’ as I explore different styles and ‘think outside the box’. I was particularly interested in what happened when my spontaneous quick drawing doodles produced random expressions compared to what happens when I purposely try to depict a particular expression. And how I can link the two in a learning process without tightening up. In Assignment 4 I want to work much larger and do this more freely still.

I also started to look at facial expressions of women and men from different parts of the world so that my animations are better able to question/avoid stereotypes.

iPad animation

I also started to experiment with the iPad software I had reviewed in:

iPad animation software review

to start to identify which software might be best suited to my animation ideas.

Again this exploration was potentially a lifelong project. So I did not go too far in this assignment, leaving much for Assignment 4 when I can experiment in a more focused way with specific creative translation storylines. I did however start to get more familiar with quick animation, and some idea of the different possibilities and styles.

MotionBook

MotionBook produces quick Flipbook-style animations. There are only 4 brushes but you can alter the line thickness, opacity and colour. No layers except a fixed background (where you can import a photo) and one animation layer. The timeline is quick to add, subtract, duplicate, delete and move frames around. It can export the animation as frames into Procreate for further development, as well as animated gifs and MP4.

Procreate 5

For simple cel animation. Here you can take advantage of all Procreate’s drawing, painting, selection, effect and masking etc features. You can have many layers in each frame, as well as designated background and foreground layers. And import photos and video. Layers can be blended and masked.

The timeline is a bit clunky for complex animation with lots of elements because it is separated from the layer menu. Buy you can export from here to Rough Animator

Rough animator

Preliminary animations and walk cycles

Series 1: Goats India

Rough animator: Goat 6FPS : First animation copying the lines of the community drawing and placing on a phoito of a cheap sketchbook page. 6FPS is quite leisurely to relly notice the way the goat turns its head (only move the eye position) and stops and looks.
Rough animator: Goats 24FPS
Just double the frame rate. This is too fast unless I use the increased framerate to vary the length of individual frames to create more movement variation, and lengthen the movie as a whole.
Rough animator: Goats 12FPS
Duplicating and flipping the goat layer to give mirrored goats. 12FPS is quite a good speed.
Rough animator: Goats Jump
A different animation to see how I could vary the movement.

Series 2 Woman crying
Rough Animator: Line Drawings from Photos
Rough Animator: Woman Crying
Animation of first Photo coloured and simplified. Uses selection tool and painting to adjust the cracks in the animation.
Series 3 Pig Woman
Rough animator: Pig Woman full colour
Using a photo as the source I drew over the photo and coloured it, then used selection, transform and drawing to animate it into a short vignette.

Rough animator: Pig Woman line
Drawing over the colour animation in a pressure sensitive pen, and filling in with white where necessary. This gives a more fluid drawing.
Rough animator: Goats Coloured: I started to make a story of flirting goats. Colouring the background. Duplicating the layers again but flipping vertically and altering opacity to create reflections. I could develop this much further into a comic encounter.Inspired by FilmBilder Lambs
Rough Animator: Woman Crying
Animation of first Photo coloured and simplified. Uses selection tool and painting to adjust the cracks in the animation. Purple background gives a sadder feel.
Rough animator: Pig Woman art colour
Colouring over the line with crayon on the woman, and paintbrush on the pig and background to make a more cartoon effect.
Toontastic

A stop motion lego puppet animation programme with audio and scenes. Can be used by children. But with a bit of practice this can be used to produce some very comic animations.

Features to get used to, practise and plan:

  • the action is live so you have to practise several times to get things right
  • audio is live recording, so you have to be careful about background noise
  • you can only move one character at a time

With a bit of practise, skill and good storyline, this could produce some very comic animations in childlike style eg on leadership.

Reflection

After Assignment 3

Notes on how I think my visual work so far meets the assessment criteria:

  • creativity: I have only just scratched the surface of what is possible. But the experimentation can become quite repetitive unless I have a clearer narrative focus. For Assignment 5 I will revisit these drawings – possibly the above vignettes, but more likely some new narratives eg a pig fight, a longer narrative using more of the Uganda drawings and a longer narrative around women and men’s perceptions of empowerment in India.
  • research and idea development: again I have only scratched the surface. But will further develop ideas and themes in Assignment 5. I still need to assess all my visual work in relation to the creative translation theory questions I identify and develop these questions further.
  • visual and technical skills: I came to this with very limited animation experience, apart from some video in Flash. This was the reason why I wanted to develop animation skills in this Research Module. I think I have made quite a lot of progress from a very low base. I am planning very intensive work on both narrative and visuals in Assignments 4 and 5, now I have established the basics.
  • context: my animations so far have been mostly attempting to recreate the community drawing styles, or animating photographs. I will be applying styles from other animators in Assignments 4 and 5.
For Assignment 4

Reading through the course material again after a gap, I noted that I was asked to work across multiple media. This was also part of my decision to focus much more on in-depth experimentation with physical as well as digital media, but with a narrower range of primary source data sets. Having thus re-focused, I came to see some new possibilities:

  • Creativity: I revisited the work on creative process I had been doing for VC Advanced Practice as the basis for a much broader experimentation of a wider range of translations of the same narrative.
  • Research and idea development was significantly widened to include approaches and styles that I really like and enjoy, beyond more conventional digital styles.
  • Visual and Technical skills focus on a workflow that has TVPaint at its centre, but includes physical media and iPad experimentation in Procreate.
  • Context was significantly broadened to new approaches by following up threads from Moving Image 1 and Discord discussions on my Howard Wimshurst course. This reinforced my bricolage approach, as many of my discoveries were serendipetous, partly from Google or You Tube generated ‘additional suggestions’ on animations that I had purposely searched for following recommendations. This serendipity then became the focus for a further set of purposive searches.
Resulting plans for creative translations from Assignment 3

As noted above, most of my time on this assignment was spent in developing a visual repertoire of ideas and inspiration from the community drawings and role plays and the work of other animators and illustrators (See links in the menu below).

My visual portfolio for this Assignment was very limited and preliminary because the process become repetitive and mechanical without a clear focus on narrative and story-line. As a result of my research and visual experimentation I have identified ideas and story-lines for two translation sets:

I anticipated that most of my time in Assignment 4 will now be on developing my visual portfolio from these translation ideas. This will include drafting the animations on the iPad, but transferring these to Adobe Animate and/or After Effects in order to get better fluency and combine scenes into an overall narrative.

Changes in Assignment 4

By Assignment 4, following more in-depth work on animation techniques and approaches, my interests had broadened considerably. I therefore followed my tutor’s advice to focus more on particular sets of primary sources.

Between VisRes A3 and A4 the COVID pandemic struck, necessitating changes to my plans for Visual Communications Assignment 4 to produce an audience-based body of work to ‘make the world a better place’. I thought that the work I had been doing on Africa so far in this VisRes module would be very well suited as sequential narrative and animation in Adobe Animate as part of an advocacy-focused body of work on the coffee industry, together with other material from my professional work.

At the same time I had progressed with work on Moving Image 1 as a personal development course, experimenting with Stop Motion and animation of natural materials. I was also progressing with a practical course with independent animator Howard Wimshurst using TVPaint that enabled manipulation of natural media images.

So as a result of both these developments, I for a while decided to focus in much more depth on India and Pakistan that offered more than enough primary source material for very significant ‘creative translation’ experimentation across a range of animation approaches. Rather than becoming diverted by too many different narratives. And focus in this Module on TVPaint and ‘material performances’, as well as continuing to use Procreate on my iPad for some of the image creation.

See:

But these plans were changed in Assignment 5 to encompass work on all 4 creative translations.

Assignment 3.1: Gathering Data: Community Voices and Animation Approaches

TASK: Design a PDF or similar document of 1,200 – 1,500 words that gives a focused account of:
• summarises your data-gathering, the methods you used and its relevance to your research question
• presents the data you gathered
• documents your analysis and interpretation of your data
• reflects on the results in relation to your ongoing research and research question – are you going to change or modify your approach?

This document can bring together secondary sources through bibliographies, highlight key pieces of data you think are relevant, include additional diagrams that help make conceptual connections, and be a visual piece of work in its own right.

I started by reviewing Assignments 1 and 2 in the light of feedback from my tutor, new work opportunities and software iPad updates, and need to manage RSI now I have more pc work for my professional contracts. My final revisions compared with what was anticipated there can be seen in the annotations on the Research Flow Chart on Visual Research Process and Assignments.

See also my notes bringing together questions from art criticism and translation theory that I use in this Assignment:

Thinking About Translating Community Voices.

I also updated the blog theme to WordPress 2020 to enable a more streamlined and attractive layout (still being refined).

My work on Assignment 3 is mainly practical analysing primary data from my professional work and/or linking to on-line videos, websites and other sources. Going forward, and particularly in Assignment 5, I will link back to and further develop my analysis with the theoretical and methodological frameworks from Assignment 2 and with full Harvard referencing.

SUMMARY

My visual research is driven by professional opportunities and need to develop textless visuals on gender and empowerment for a global audience including people in communities as well as development agencies – particularly low bandwidth on-line animations. This research on wordless animation strategies informs and complements parallel but separate audience work for development agency training on interactive infographics around concepts of leadership and movement-building using Adobe Animate in ‘Only One’ for Visual Communications Advanced Practice (to be confirmed).

My main focus in Part 3 was gathering data on three levels in order to:

a) focus my questions around ‘creative translations’

Based on analysis of community drawings and visuals I explored the ways in which women and men in different contexts use drawing to communicate ideas, and some of the limitations. I identified specific stories that I can develop into translations in my visual portfolio. I also looked at existing animations around development issues and common cultural design and animation styles in South Asia and Africa.

b) expand my visual repertoire

I researched possible animation ‘translation styles and techniques’ based on inspiration from other animators, particularly those working without text and with simple animation. I identified a number whose work I could feasibly draw on in my creative translations.

c) identify practical possibilities

I researched different types of iPad software I could use as part of an RSI-friendly workflow to achieve the animation approaches and styles that would be feasible for me as an independent animator and started to develop the required technical skills.

For my visual work see:

Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: drawing and animation experiments

As the format for the project as a whole is on-line, this page and links therefrom a printed pdf.

Technical research : Data gathering 3

I then started to develop concrete proposals and production plans for 5-10 short animated ‘creative translations’ with feasible ideas on animation style, technique and appropriate software workflow that will be taken forward in Assignment 4:

For my visual work see:

Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: drawing and animation experiments

As the format for the project as a whole is on-line, this page and links therefrom a printed pdf.

1: What is the question?

ASSIGNMENT 2: SPECIFIC QUESTION
How can community visions and strategies for empowerment be ethically ‘translated’ into powerful visual communication for advocacy in a way that ‘frees, transforms and multiplies rather than possesses, controls and defines’?

In particular:
– can this be done graphically without text through using simple lines and shapes?
– can textless narrative sequences as short comic strips or simple animation overcome some of the communicative limitations of single images
– can this be done using media accessible to most people working in communities?

My visual research is driven by opportunities to develop new forms of visual communication in the context of my professional life as a consultant in community empowerment methodologies for international development agencies. There are openings – and also a need – to produce visual resources for training and advocacy that link people in communities with government and private sector decision-makers on a more equal and also global basis. This means resources that do not rely on literacy or fluency in international languages. My research is also driven personal constraints in the form of RSI and health limitations on travel.

The underpinning theoretical framework I chose was that of translation theory, together with questions from communication theory and semiotics (See question on the left).

A key area of interest is in production of short textless animations that can be downloaded onto smartphones and tablets by people in communities as well as development workers, placed on social media and networks for dissemination without additional cost. In the course of Assignment 3 I decided to focus specifically on animation – leaving work on text and infographics to Advanced Practice audience work. In the course of my research I also concluded that it would be possible to do this using free or very cheap iPad software alone, and combining these into interactive pdfs. Instead of using more complex and very expensive pc software. That would also make my experiments more relevant to development workers who could replicate themselves some of my suggested techniques on their own tablets or smart phones. As well as making management of RSI more feasible, at least in the development and learning stages of animation.

The revised question then broke down into a number of specific questions for this stage of my research in Assignment 3 (see right).

ASSIGNMENT 3
SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

  • How do women and men in communities communicate concepts and experiences in their drawings?
  • What can I identify as common visual techniques and/or potential narratives for animation?
  • What challenges of textless communication do I need to address?
  • What simple drawing and/or animation techniques can be used to clarify visual communication without text?
  • How have illustrators and animators used line, shape and colour to communicate different messages?
  • What different styles have been used in different cultures?
  • How have they simplified and abstracted of facial expressions and figures?
  • How do they create humour? Shock?
  • What is the best workflow for me to produce short (60 second max) animations of selected community stories on an iPad?
  • What type of animation is feasible for me?
  • When should I draw with pen and paper?
  • What iPad software is most useful and at what stages, for which styles and purpose?
  • What might be the main limitations?

2 Data Gathering

In this Assignment the main aim of the data-gathering was to broaden my repertoire of:

  1. community images – drawings and role play photos – in order to identify potential styles, communication strategies and narratives
  2. animation styles and techniques from other animators, particularly those producing short textless animations
  3. iPad techniques and software that could complement photos and sketches as part of my workflow.

In order to start to answer my research question and develop concrete translation plans for my visual portfolio. For overview see:

My investigation and analysis of all the data indicated below was ongoing. Narrative analysis was much more detailed and focused in relation to development of the translation sets identified for Assignment 4. Animation experiments were revisited and polished as short animated vignettes in Assignment 5.

Data Gathering 1a: Community Voices

I started my research on community voices to enable me to focus my questions around ‘creative translations’. This meant looking through my thousands of images of community drawings, selecting series where I had enough background information and documentation of the drawings to ask and as far as possible to answer questions about:

  • How do women and men in communities communicate concepts and experiences in their drawings? How does this different depending on background, context and/or facilitation process?
  • What can I identify as common visual techniques and/or potential narrative strategies for animation that can be widely understood by different audiences?
  • What challenges of textless communication do I need to address? How can this be done?

I also wanted a variety of drawing styles, and different development themes important for my current work in order to develop a number of different story lines that might be of sufficient interest to colleagues to get feedback.

Based on my review I selected and analysed five different sets of visual data. I pasted the images I had into my Sketchbook 2: Community Voices and started my analysis and visual experimentation – copying freehand some of the drawings to get a feel for how the lines were made, and the details that were there. But I did not spend long on that at this stage as it became mechanical. A lot more detailed analysis will be done in Assignment 4, focusing on the specific story lines and translations. See detailed presentation of the data and analysis in the linked posts of:

Semiotic and Visual Analysis

The community datasets were very variable, between facilitation processes and individuals rather than contexts as a whole. Particularly in Pakistan and India where most drawings were by people at one-off workshops there were big differences in education level, many different drawing styles can be found on one group drawing. This variation was less in Africa, but there were still big variations depending on education and also how long people had been using pictorial methodologies.

Some images, particularly from tribal women in India who had never held a pen before, were very stylistically expressive – reminiscent of Basquiat or Tracey Emin, though the exact meaning needed verbal explanation.

Some images, particularly from women Gumutindo coffee farmers in Uganda were mini-narratives that could be pretty much understood even by outsiders.

Some organisations had over time developed their own internal semiotic language, resulting in very complex systems for pictorial recording and analysis, innovating with the diagram guidelines provided by myself. Anyone used to working with the organisation would be able to read these diagrams with little additional explanation.

Gender, poverty level and emotional state were widely communicated through abstracted figures differentiated by use of clothing, hairstyle, facial expression etc., even where drawings were spontaneous and done with little guidance.

Signs like arrows, dream bubbles, skid marks, tears and so on were also widely used and understood.

Concepts like empowerment, gender-based violence and leadership could be visually disaggregated into component meanings and gradations of power, abuse etc. that could be understood once the topic of the exercise was known.

That said, some of the images were very formulaic, eg with ‘sad crying figures’ meaning anything from loneliness to lack of identity and freedom. Such limitations would need to be overcome through developing symbolic juxtaposition of elements as single-image or sequential narratives.

Data gathering 1b: Visuals from development agencies and cultural context

I also looked at existing animations around development issues and common cultural design and animation styles. This was done through Google and You Tube searches and based on resources I have been looking out for in the course of my work before and since starting the course. See presentation and analysis of the data in the linked posts:

Analysis

In contrast to the community drawings the visuals from development agencies, and also graphic artists in Pakistan and Africa tended to be rather formulaic following a global digital style, with some variation in colour, features etc. The most significant shortcomings from a development perspective is the widespread reliance on a lot of written text or voice over narrative in English or main national language. Although these were obviously very professional, using comedy as well as serious messages, they were not appropriate animation models for my own work.

Some of the Indian animation was more ‘artistic’ with evocative black and white styles that were more relevant for my research, but still very reliant on English.

I continued to look for textless examples of illustration and animation in unconventional style – my aim being to broaden the repertoire. My anecdotal experience is that people in communities – like everyone else – rapidly become accustomed to stylistic conventions and tend not to look at many of the visuals produced by professional artists working with development agencies. Sources of innovative visual and narrative inspiration will in future be included in my category of Data Gathering 2.

Data gathering 2: Inspiration:
Innovative simple textless animation and/or visual style

In Assignment 3 my animation research was just starting with:

May aim in Assignment 3 was to significantly expand my visual repertoire of innovative inspiration for simple textless animation and/or visual style that I could feasibly adapt in my own short animations on the iPad. I used a combination of:

  • further investigation of illustrators and animators whose work I had looked at in earlier OCA courses
  • Google and You Tube searches on textless animation, political animation, 2D animation, flipbooks etc.
  • consultation of the available on-line sections of the OCA Moving Image 1 : animation module, further following up on links from there.

From this research I identified a wide range of possible approaches by animators whose work I myself find very effective in different ways, many working without words and in simple enough styles for me to simplify further on the iPad (see some key examples on the right). I thought my focus would be mainly in the form of traditional cel animation, building on experience of flipbooks. Though I might also experiment with some simple cut-out collage animation and lego puppet animation in the iPad software Toontastic. 2D vector animation in eg Adobe Animate would be left until a much later date.

Within 2D Frame by Frame animation styles I found many different styles and approaches that I would like to analyse in more detail and adapt in some way. I was particularly interested in exploring the key elements of animation identified in OCA Moving Image 1 : Animation module and the examples on the right:

  • ‘Boil’ strategies that create the illusion of constant movement across all or parts of the image
  • Cycles, loops and layers
  • Different frame rates
  • Attention to eye trace

The use of audio and sound effects and its relation to the visual narrative is also important.

In Assignment 5 this was brought together with further research in Assignment 4 as one page with padlet:

Monochrome styles
Painterly/drawn colour styles

Data gathering 3:
Technical research

The third element of my data gathering was to investigate different types of iPad software, the range of techniques and styles which other animators have used them. In particular, which software techniques would be most useful to adapt the animation styles I want to use in my translations. And how they might be combined in workflows adapted to different animation requirements.

A potentially effective initial iPad workflow I identified was:

  • Toontastic as a playful lego-puppet story-telling ap with very simple colours and character animation to experiment with simplification of the narrative, character and scenes with built-in mood music and possibility to alter order and number of scenes. Whether it is possible to create comic child-like animations just using this remains to be seen.
  • Procreate to create very artistic atmospheric drawn and/or painted short scenes, including photo and video import. Export to either:
  • Flipaclip to create longer sequences with multiple layering and audio tracks. Flipaclip could also be used alone for the whole process where very artistic effects are not required.
  • Rough animator to create longer sequences with complex loops and cycles with single audio track. Will export to After Effects.

But I found the professional software on a pc with bigger screen and much better timeline automation features much more user and RSI-friendly for my work. I was already familiar with Adobe Animate, used for some of the diagram animations on this blog. But after looking through tutorials and reviews on You Tube, I decided on:

  • TVPaint because of its art-style drawing and painting features as well as professional timeline management, storyboarding etc.
  • Adobe Animate for vector animation, symbols and small file size, tweening and interactivity (see Adobe Animate software overview and styles)
  • Adobe Premiere for final compositing and sound effects

Other software to be further explored in future:

  • Adobe After Effects for puppet animation of eg Illustrator characters, video stabilisation and robust effects compositing
  • ToonBoom studio for easier smoother cartoon-style animation?
  • Blender for 3D?
Key things to look for when choosing animation software:
  • Drawing tools vector drawing tools for creating motion and scaling and/or pixel-based tools for more artistic effects.
  • Symbols or re-usable elements
  • Tweening or smoothing/interpolation of animation between drawn key-frames
  • Onion-skinning: viewing of previous and following drawn frames to facilitate accurate drawing of current frames
  • Layers to be able to create scenes. Including image import so that backgrounds and other features can be created from photographs, artwork or imported images from other drawing and painting aps.
  • Timeline features: control over frame speed and duration, easy addition and deletion of frames.
  • Audio features to import music, narration and sound effects
  • Text features to add titles, captions and additional text overlays.
Bloop animation review of the main professional software: 3D from Autodesk (3DMax, Maya and?); Blender (free 3D); Cinema 4D; After Effects; Adobe Animate; Photoshop; TVpaint; Toon Boom. See also https://www.bloopanimation.com/animation-software/
Overview of free and professional software: MohoAnime Studio (free); Synfig (free) ToonBoom Harmony (professional used by Disney); Opentoonz (free Open Source used by Ghibli for Princess Mononoke) Cel Action (free no drawing tools); pencil 2D (minimalist traditional FbF); Tupi Pen Source tweening; Flipbook imports drawings from a scanner; Sprinter Pro to import and animate bones; Stop Motion Studio for Stop Motion.

My portfolio

Having identified potential workflow I did some preliminary experimentation on my iPad based on drawings from Uganda, DRCongo, India and Pakistan.

See Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: drawing and animation experiments

I then started to develop concrete proposals and production plans for 5-10 short animated ‘creative translations’ with feasible ideas on animation style, technique and appropriate software workflow that were taken forward in Assignment 4:

Reflection

Notes on how I think my work meets the assessment criteria:

  • creativity: the new plans for more but shorter animated iPad ‘translations’ opens up much more possibility for developing a broad range of creative responses and experimentation that will then be carried forward to the final interactive on-line experience.
  • research and idea development: contextualised semiotic analysis and visual comparison of five different community data sets, exploration of the approaches and techniques of early and contemporary animators to broaden the range of visual and narrative inspiration, together with fpcused experimentation with different visual translation possibilities in the Sketchlogs and digital iPad work.
  • visual and technical skills: new iPad drawing and animation technical skills, and further development of drawing/sketching/concept drawing skills and addressing a weakness in narrative and storytelling skills.
  • context: theoretical frameworks and researching illustrators and animators and work of other designers, illustrators and animators in development agencies, Africa and Asia as well as Western traditions.

Reworking in subsequent assignments from feedback (to be done)

Links to Assignment 3 Data-gathering outcomes

Community Voices : data-gathering 1a

I selected four sets of visuals from my many potential primary datasets:

External Voices: data-gathering 1b

In addition to revisiting work on Islamic calligraphy and Street Art from Book Design 1 (opens in new tab), I selected four sets of relevant visuals from Africa, Asia and development agencies from many potential primary datasets:

Assignment 2: Theoretical Framework

Research question

In Assignment 2 I refocused my research question in the light of my reading and research on digital software, incorporating tutor feedback on Assignment 1.

2: CREATIVE TRANSLATION SPECIFIC QUESTION
How can community visions and strategies for empowerment be ethically ‘translated’ into powerful visual communication for a global audience in a way that ‘frees, transforms and multiplies rather than possesses, controls and defines’?

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Subsequent changes

Assignment 3: As I moved forward with Assignment 3 I found this question still too broad and also wordy and theoretical. Also I decided to focus very specifically on short textless animation to make things less vague and focus on the skillset I want to develop most of the possibilities (logos, infographics etc) I had initially considered.

I realised that – consistent with the bricolage approach – each part of my work would throw up new specific questions that would need to be interlinked. The question from Assignment 2 became therefore an underlying set of criteria for assessing my translations rather than the key question for the timebound research project. What these questions mean in practice will be reassessed in detail in Assignment 5 Participatory VisCom.

My visual research for this module builds on my professional work skills and aims to address key gaps in my digital skill set (specifically Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Animate and After Effects) in relation to graphic design, illustration and interactivity to make much more engaging and impactful pictorial materials based on community visions and drawings produced from participatory workshops. The final version also develops my skills in interactive web/blog design to incorporate the different styles in html coding and different interactive media for WordPress.

Subsequent changes

Assignment 3: Due to RSI and work pressure I decided to focus much more on drawing with pencil/pen/marker on paper and using iPad software. A further issue was updates in Adobe software that would not work properly on my older graphics cards, requiring finance to update my system and only possible in the longer term. As I progressed with my research into contemporary animation and iPad animation software, given that I would only have time to produce very short pieces, I decided that I should be able to produce some interesting work using iPad alone. And focus on developing my understanding and skills for a range of animation styles and approaches. Leaving more complex pc software needed for longer more complex pieces to a later date. The focus on locally-available media also makes my working process more relevant to other designers within communities themselves who do not have access to expensive software. Interactivity could then be introduced using Adobe Acrobat/InDesign as interactive pdfs rather than my original idea to use Adobe Animate.

‘Translation bricolage’ framework

My main work for this Assignment has focused on going systematically through the research frameworks suggested and using concept maps as a way of linking and thinking through key issues and relationships between different frameworks in order to clarify my questions. I started to look at bricolage and translation theory as new but very relevant ways of thinking about the challenges I have experienced so far in attempts at community-led advocacy. I am aiming to bring these two frameworks together:

see: ‘Translation bricolage’

The Bricolage approach takes a flexible, non-linear and emergent theoretical approach and contextually contingent mixed methods that adapt to empowerment requirements to privilege inclusion of marginalised people. This is consistent with what I see as my role as:

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I use this framework to examine potential interlinkages and possible tensions between:

Concept Map: Empowerment

Empowerment advocacy as the overarching aim of my work – but where inherent tensions between universalist and individualist definitions of ’empowerment’ mirror in many respects the divisions in Visual Communications theory.

Concept Map: Semiotics and Semiology

Post-structuralist semiotics:focusing on relationships and elements in a conceptual system but (following postmodernism) exploring the challenges of potential plurality and instability of pictorial (as well as verbal) meaning across cultures and contexts. Taking a qualitative and open approach, mixing different artistic styles and media.

Visual Communication theory: the principles and methods by which information is conveyed based on largely Western audiences and research, but increasingly including illustrators and designers from the global South. Only a limited range of potential styles and approaches are currently used by development agency visuals and info-graphics.

Visual and written work plans

Format

As my tutor pointed out in Feedback to Assignment 1, my plans for this module were very ambitious and not everything needs to be done at once. So part of my work in this assignment has been to think about how to efficiently sequence my learning, bearing in mind my work also for the Visual Communications Advanced Practice module where I am developing skills in the same software for more documentary and imaginative work. Following the principles of bricolage, I am proposing to maintain a relatively wide set of possibilities for now and then focus down in a contingent and emergent way driven by what I think I need for ’empowering translations’ of the specific visuals I select in Assignment 3.

The module responds to a professional need to develop digital and on-line ways of working because earlier allergy and breathing problem caused by air pollution and cleaning products/insecticides have now become much more restrictive on my travel abroad. There are a number of related challenges I need to bear in mind that may require further adjustments as I proceed:

  • I will have to develop ways of working digitally while continuing to manage my long-term RSI. This means that a key focus of this module is on simple graphics and animation and exploring a range of software to develop the most RSI-friendly integrated way of working. I will need to build my skills over time, and my style will need to bear these limitations in mind, particularly during the learning curve.
  • Travelling to Asia and Africa will not be possible in the time-frame of this module so I am dependent on on-line feedback from colleagues and English-speaking friends in communities. I cannot predict how reliable/extensive this will be.

My work for this module focuses on my own visual ’empowerment translation’ innovation, using community empowerment drawings for advocacy as primary sources. Research on other artists and illustrators in driven by this in an emergent and contingent ‘bricolage’ manner. The visual work – translations and interactive info-graphics – will be brought together in the ‘on-line interactive empowerment experience’ produced in Assignment 5 below.

SUBSEQUENT CHANGES

Given my need to focus, and also get feedback on my visual work from people in projects on the ground, following Assignment 2, I decided to wait for final confirmation of a consultancy contract with Oxfam Novib to produce visual resources on leadership and movement-building for a project to change attitudes and practices around child marriage in Mali, Niger and Pakistan with later expansion to India and Bangladesh. make concepts of leadership my main focus in order to get buy-in to provide feedback. Because of delays in the project because of a worsening security and visa situation in all three countries, and other logistical reasons on the ground, that confirmation did not come until late December and my work was then further delayed until end of January and contact with people on the ground in early March. Meanwhile I proceeded with my work on the other Advanced Practice module. By March I also had another contract with IFAD for Nepal and Kyrgyzstan that potentially provided further opportunities for dissemination and feedback from colleagues.

But once the project started then this provides a coherent basis to provide concrete focus to make my research more manageable and also have a practical use for the visual work itself. On the other hand tight deadlines and work pressures meant RSI would have to be very carefully managed, limiting my digital work on pc in this module at least in the short term. I addressed this through focusing on iPad animation as outlined above.

Broadening conceptual focus: the main focus on empowerment and gender remains, but I added visual resources from Tanzania on leadership and movement-building for the Oxfam Novib project. Partly also because I started to have some very clear ideas about story-line and humorous use of Toontastic as a very different translation style that is quite RSI-friendly.

Visual work 1: review of primary sources – exploratory/emergent

In Assignment 1 I did a preliminary review of primary source material from community participatory workshops and development agencies. This primary source review will be further developed as I progress through the translation experiments, annotated in sketchlogs and summarised in linked blog posts as relevant to my innovation work.

Subsequent changes

See: Primary and Secondary Sources

Assignment 3: Primary sources now focus includes leadership drawings, as well as community empowerment and gender drawings as a source of inspiration on drawing styles. I also added a series of role play photographs as the basis for experimenting with narrative manipulation and roto-scoping.

Visual work 2: development of digital workflow – exploratory/emergent

In Assignment 2 I started to upgrade my technical skills in Adobe Draw, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop, Animate, After effects and Premiere using 2019 software, and test some of the potential integrated digital workflows. I tested Adobe Animate for producing animated information graphics for the post: Message and Meaning: Visual Communications theory. I also established how these can be embedded into the wordpress blog see: WordPress embed. From this it became clear that Adobe Animate is not the most RSI-friendly base software and that a more integrated approach would be best, using Illustrator symbols and styles as the main link. With Adobe Draw, Procreate and natural media in sketchlogs as the best media for initial experimentation. My software discoveries and workflow will be documented in blog posts and linked as relevant to my innovation work.

Subsequent changes

See above: although I put quite a bit of time into learning Adobe Animate and After Effects, I decided to leave further work with these until Module 3 Sustaining Your Pracfice, or after this degree. Because of consultancy pc workload and RSI. The focus is now on natural drawing media and iPad work in Procreate, Fresco and iPad animation, until Assignment 5 when I add interactivity as interactive pdfs.

Visual work 3: Visualising Empowerment – core work Assignment 3

I begin with semiotic and visual analysis of what I consider to be the most interesting community drawings from participatory workshops where I was directly involved or where there is good documentation for me to understand the meanings intended and the visual communication process that led to the visual outputs. The aim will be a comparative study of ‘universals’ and ‘specificities’ of empowerment visions and communication styles and how these are affected by different media, contexts and participant backgrounds. Some examples so far that I will develop further are:

ADDED:
Good and Bad Leadership Drawings: Tanzania
Tupa Tupa: What Happened to the Coffee Money? DRC

I plan to use Adobe Draw Fresco and/or Procreate on my iPad to analyse and make vector copies from photographs of selected community drawings, then send these to Adobe Illustrator on my pc to produce a series of symbol and style libraries that produce a range of possible ‘translations’ of the original meanings. Selected graphic symbols will be available for download from this blog as png images for others to use in Word and Powerpoint.

Part of my aim will be to significantly broaden the range of graphic styles that might be considered as ‘professional’ by people in development agencies through referring to styles employed by artists and illustrators. As is consistent with the bricolage approach, I want to leave this selection open and contingent on requirements of the content being translated. But is likely to include:

Subsequent changes: Lines Walking

Changes in plans went through a number of iterations while I was waiting for confirmation of the consultancy contract. First changes are shown as crossings out on the original text on the left.

The focus on producing visual resources on leadership led to some significant changes in Assignment 3 to make it more manageable. At the same time, owing to delays in the project for security of participants in conflict zones, and other logistical reasons on the ground, that would make keeping to assignment deadlines problematic, I decided not to rely on visuals from that project. I decided to continue to use visual outputs that I already had from other processes in Pakistan, India and East Africa – also because I had already started to work with these.

Assignment 3 was re-titled ‘Lines Walking’ to focus on a detailed exploration and experimentation of communication in animating line drawing styles using media used in the participatory workshops. , based on community drawings and work of illustrators:

  1. The visually diverse empowerment and gender drawings from Pakistan, India and Uganda continued as part of my artistic inspiration in different community drawing styles and forms of semiotic representation. This being the main focus of my work for the assignment.
  2. The Tanzania leadership drawings were added because they were conceptually interesting as the basis for humorous narrative, though not so interesting in terms of drawing and communication styles. Development of resources on leadership is also a key work priority.
  3. I also added a series of role play photos of the consequences of men controlling money from coffee to provide a simple community story sequence to start my playing with narrative in Assignment 4.

After my research into iPad animation software I now use a range of iPad software as relevant to the particular style and requirements of the translation.

I looked at a broad range of contemporary animation for artistic inspiration, focusing on approaches and styles that I thought could be manageably adapted for my work on an iPad.

Visual Work 4: Telling Empowerment Stories – core work Assignment 4.

The next part of my visual research in Assignment 4 will be to look at ways of producing alternative translations of three community empowerment narratives from the drawings, and also from photo series and video of role plays:

SUBSTITUTED: Narrative on child marriage from work with Oxfam

Here I will work with Adobe Animate, After Effects and Premiere Procreate and other tablet animation software looking at a range of graphic styles from line drawing, coloured cartoons and more ‘realistic’ image sequences, digitally converting photos and videos and/or redrawing depending on the type of source document and type of style produced. Working with photography and video will enable me to carefully analyse and observe body language and posture, and how to draw people from different cultures based on how they present themselves.

I will experiment with different narrative treatments, experimenting with different framing, composition, timing and sequencing and different formats eg:

  • strip cartoon comic pages with simple panning and sound effects
  • stick drawing animated gifs compiled as an interactive ‘what’s next’ game in Adobe Animate
  • cartoon-style animation video in Adobe After Effects, including animation to music and write-on techniques

NOTE: Animate, After Effects and Premiere no longer work with the older graphics card on my pc and laptop and I will not be able to upgrade my pc until much later this year. I am not planning to replace my laptop but switch entirely to iPad for mobile work. Animate or InDesign/Acrobat can still be used to add interactivity in my final presentation in Assignment 5. But for animation and storytelling I am now proposing to use the much improved animation features for tablet and iPad (click on the links for my preliminary search on other peoples’ work and tutorials) :

Stick Nodes for tweening of stick figures that can be done in quite a range of styles just using different line widths and shapes, colour and size
Toontastic that has animated lego type figures that are easy to manipulate to create different characters from different cultures and construct a range narratives with your own image backgrounds
Procreate 5 for a wide range of styles with short frame by frame animation

with supplementary software:
Flipaclip for storyboarding
Rough Animator for fine tuning the animation

The added advantage of using tablet software is that this is also accessible to use for many staff and also people in communities if they so choose.

Selected animations will be uploaded to a You Tube channel and embedded in this blog. Less ‘successful’ work will be placed in this blog or on my Adobe account and linked for reference.

This work will be draw on examples from other illustrators and animators. I want to leave my investigation of other designers and illustrators somewhat open and contingent on emergent requirements of the question as my research progresses. As well as the artists and illustrators from Assignment 3, I envisage including:

  • flash stick animation styles like those of Raymond Bollinger
  • illustrators and animators producing sequential narratives who have innovated with framing, layout and narrative sequencing: manga, Chris Ware and ‘Introduction to…’ graphic guides consulted on theoretical frameworks for this Assignment and/or being studied for Visual Communications Advanced Practice.
Subsequent changes: Transforming Tales

Changes went through a number of iterations while I was waiting for confirmation of the consultancy contract. First changes are shown as crossings out on the original text on the left. But these changed by the end of Assignment 3.

Assignment 3 rethink: Initially I thought of refocusing all my visual work to produce resources ‘Leading Tales’ on leadership for the Oxfam project. With the idea of producing a ‘Leadership Game’ but that would require use of Adobe Animate. Then the Oxfam project changed to more of a gender review and I got the IFAD contract as well looking again at gender and empowerment.

My review of iPad software and animation styles also indicated that as long as each animation was short, that it would be more interesting for myself and also users of the blog, to do series of very short animations in different styles and different iPad software. My initial experiments indicated that this would also be manageable.

So I decided to broaden things out again as ‘Transforming Tales’ incorporating further research on narrative and story-telling approaches in short animation. Considering particularly importance and techniques for humour as well as shock, and differences between animation and printed graphic stories.

To be updated in Assignment 4.

Visual work 5: On-line ‘interactive empowerment experience’ – core work Assignment 5.

My work for the final part of the module will bring all this together as an integrated animated on-line experience. This will require further visual work and upgrading my understanding of html coding and how to customise WordPress themes to reflect the empowerment styles and content developed. The animated experience will be hosted on the front page of this blog and/or linked from my Adobe account and/or a separate website depending on what proves most efficient in rendering the styles and animation.

My selection of styles and content and interactive design will be based on period of consultation with English speaking friends in communities with whom I am in WhatsApp and/or Facebook contact and colleagues in development agencies.

This top web page will link to sections on the blog that contain my sources and background research selected from a series of 3 Sketchlogs (see blog sections and green sketchlog outlines in diagram above):

  • Sketchlog 1: ‘Translation bricolage’: (A3 ring bound) containing the hand-drafted Concept Maps and info-graphics from Assignment 2 and graphic design experiments and sketches for further refinements for Assignment 5. Also my design maps for interactivity of the final on-line experience.
  • Sketchlog 2: Empowerment translations: (A3 ringbound with glued-in sheets or sections from cheap local notebooks and printouts from my digital work). This will include annotated examples from other illustrators and my experiments with visual dynamics of sketch-noting and doodling to produce new ‘translations’. Physical sketching is a freer RSI-friendly way of working that will be done alongside my digital work.
  • Sketchlog 3 Empowerment stories: (A2 with flipcharts glued-in sheets or sections from cheap local notebooks) will include annotated analysis of storyboards and layouts of other animators and illustrators and sketches of some of my own ‘stories’.

This visual on-line content will be accompanied by a written downloadable pdf, summarising my conclusions about:

  • theoretical ‘translation bricolage’ framework encompassing semiotics and visual communications theory and potential interlinkages and tensions between theoretical/methodological clarity and flexibility in a global context.
  • the ways in which different media (drawing, photography and collage) have been, or could be, used for wordless narratives.
  • innovations and challenges faced in translating community empowerment visualisations and narratives for a global audience discovered in my own visual research and earlier practical experience.
  • experience and possible ways forward for participatory on-line feedback in terms of both visual critique and dissemination/impact for advocacy
  • overall conclusions about community-led participatory visual communication practice for empowerment advocacy and issues for further innovation.
Subsequent changes

Assignment 3: My format remains development of this blog as a resource for people working in development. But focusing now on animation and also developing a new skillset that I myself can offer going forward. I now intend to use interactive pdfs in Acrobat and/or InDesign instead of Adobe Animate in presenting the final outputs.

I started to develop the Sketchlogs:

  • Sketchlog 1: Participatory VisCom: Theories and Practice : (A3 ring bound) containing the hand-drafted Concept Maps and info-graphics from Assignment 2 and graphic design experiments and sketches on Participatory VisCom for further refinements for Assignment 5. Also my design maps for interactivity of the final on-line experience.
  • Sketchlog 2: Empowerment Voices: (A3 ringbound) with glued-in images from the community drawings, linkages to work and style of other animators and illustrators with my own annotations, sketches and draft storyboards for translations.
  • Sketchlog 3 Animation Doodles (A4 old ‘scruffy’ lined exercise book with gouached pages over old text) for me to freely practise my own character animations and just ‘doodle’ as I explore different styles and ‘think outside the box’.
  • Sketchlog 4 Transforming Tales (planned A2 with flipcharts for roughs and sheets for charcoal and other experimentation) for me to experiment ‘big’ with storyboards and layouts of other animators and illustrators, and develop my own ‘transforming tales’ prior to or in parallel to my iPad work.

Draft literature and resources review

I will be using a range of primary sources that I will examine in sketchbooks as the basis for developing my own ‘translations’:

  • Primary sources from communities (see above)
  • Primary sources from other illustrators and designers (see above)

I have developed quite a large bibliography – mostly my own books that I have collected or articles I can easily access on-line.

See Primary and Secondary Sources for an Assignment-wise time plan.

Subsequent changes

Key addition to the resources for the theoretical framework are papers on translation theory selected by Bryan Eccleston and frameworks for critical analysis of artworks which provided the basis for checklists of questions for semiotic analysis and assessing my translations in following assignments.

My reading for Assignment 3 and 4 came to focus much more on animation, and ranged outside the sources initially envisaged. Following up on leads as they came up.

Reflective Commentary

I am confident that the above choices will enable me to produce some very innovative ’empowerment translations’ in answer to my research question. The question itself, with the subsidiary narrowing questions, is still quite broad as is my list of possible primary and secondary sources. Following the contingent approach of bricolage, I do not want to narrow this down at this stage. I will review and dip into these and other relevant sources I come across as I progress further with my visual work, focusing only on those sections and sources that I feel are most relevant for producing impactful translations. Although this will be a lot of work, and I will need to pace myself to manage RSI, it builds on and upgrades existing skills and I am motivated by its importance for future professional work with development agencies.

I think that my research covers quite well all the assessment criteria of:

  • creativity: the translations and interactive on-line experience.
  • research and idea development: semiotic analysis of community drawing and exploration of different visual translation possibilities in the Sketchlogs and digital work.
  • visual and technical skills: digital drawing and animation across Adobe Draw, Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Animate linked to parallel software skills development in VisCom Advanced Practice.
  • context: theoretical frameworks and researching illustrators and animators and work of other designers and illustrators in development agencies.

Subsequent changes

Assignment 3

  • creativity: the new plans for more but shorter animated iPad ‘translations’ opens up much more possibility for developing a broad range of creative responses and experimentation that will then be carried forward to the final interactive on-line experience.
  • research and idea development: contextualised semiotic analysis and visual comparison of five different community data sets, exploration of the approaches and techniques of early and contemporary animators to broaden the range of visual and narrative inspiration, together with fpcused experimentation with different visual translation possibilities in the Sketchlogs and digital iPad work.
  • visual and technical skills: new iPad drawing and animation technical skills, and further development of drawing/sketching/concept drawing skills and addressing a weakness in narrative and storytelling skills.
  • context: theoretical frameworks and researching illustrators and animators and work of other designers, illustrators and animators in development agencies, Africa and Asia as well as Western traditions.

Reworking the assignment

In general my tutor seemed fairly happy with my theoretical work and the way things are progressing, except that I seemed to have taken on too much and would need to focus down for a dissertation at this level.

In answer to specific questions:

A2 Exercise 1
– Reflection on previous assignment 1 feedback is given in red at the end of Assignment 1: Research Questions and Plans
– See comments on Excellent Dissertations text
– Yes this is’ a career-oriented area of focus that might generate data’ ie:

  • Assignment 3 ‘Lines Walking’ : the semiotic and visual analysis of community drawings, review of animation approaches, principles and techniques relevant to my iPad animation practice
  • Assignment 4 ‘Transforming Tales’ study of narrative principles for 30 second animation and their use in my experimental animated translations for training and advocacy.
  • Assignment 5: Participatory VisCom overview of translation issues and audience responses to my animations and implications for my role as ‘translator’ of community voices for training and advocacy resources.

A2 Exercise 2 and Exercise 3
I will need to think carefully as I work through Assignments 3-5 about ways of avoiding different types of bias at different points (mine and that of others and the assessors). To some extent I have enough experience I think to anticipate some of these, and in my Assignment 3 posts on community drawings and Assignment 3 Gathering Data: Lines Walking, I highlight the ways in which people were involved at different levels, and the potential biases that might be involved. Inclusion and comparison of responses from different people involved (community people, NGO staff and consultants at different levels and VisCom forums) through my work and associated social networks will help reduce bias. My conclusions in Assignment 5 Participatory VisCom should also bear this in mind.

Community Voices and Context: Pakistan

The community empowerment drawings from Pakistan are by women and men clients and staff participating in gender workshops for micro-finance programmes 2004 – 2005.

Many of the drawings are in the form of ‘Diamond Tools’ that I developed for identifying community criteria for assessing empowerment, ‘happy families’ and differences between women and men’s poverty. The Diamond shape was chosen because if you just ask ‘what does poverty mean here’ people just say ‘everyone is poor’ or ‘has no power’. In order to tease things out I started to ask ‘what do the richest people look like?’ ‘what do the poorest people look like’, the Diamond shape representing that one might think those are the fewest people, with most people in the middle. If it turns out most people are at the bottom, then that is a discussion point. For full discussion of the Diamond tool and its various uses see post on my professional blog: https://gamechangenetwork.org/gamechange-methodology/diagram-tools/diamonds The other drawing is a very early ‘Road Journey’ showing progress over time from bottom left to top right.

These drawings were done before I had developed a systematic process for participatory drawing where everyone has time to reflect and draw for themselves, and then everyone shares and contributes their ideas. The artists are unknown, and also there is limited documentation on the drawing process from Kashf where staff conducted the workshops without me.

Findings and analysis

The same themes recur on most diagrams from different places, and also by men as well as women:

  • Signs of empowerment and wealth are cars – sometimes driven by women or at least at women’s disposal with a driver, mobile phones for women and men, love, affection and respect between husband and wife. In one case also flying in an aeroplane for women. Men also identified being able to educate their daughters (learning to use a video camera and computer) and being able to go out freely with their wives to cinema and elsewhere as being part of a happy family life.
  • Signs of disempowerment and poverty: violence by men and women (mother-in-law??), dirty unkempt hair and stress, too many unruly children, men’s drug addiction, sickness and lack of medical care. Where these are quantified based on assessment of their frequency in the community these issues affect at least two thirds of the population/micro-finance clients.

There are a wide range of styles of figure drawing, even on the same diagrams and using the same media – markers, biro or pencil:

  • Some of the drawings have very expressive faces. Sometimes this is intentional – frowning, tears, smile. Other times this is from ‘happy accident’ where expressions are because of lack of drawing experience. But still relevant for my own adaptations either because they are so expressive or they make people laugh.
  • Type of clothes are important markers eg between rich and poor. But significantly women are rarely drawn with veils either by men or women, even where they were in reality wearing full burqa.
Selection of key drawings
What happened to my airplane?’ story line ideas

In terms of storyline, the most poignant is the image of the woman lying dead in a cemetery with her children crying around her – so many women identified with that. Compared to the vision of flying in an aeroplane and the happy couple.

The animation could actually be quite simple. It could focus only on women, or more interestingly/accurately/less stereotypically include the visions and situation of men also expressed in Taraqee Foundation:

  • Scene 1 Visions: A foreground drawing of a woman with (probably unkempt hair) with a series of flashed up dream bubbles of aeroplanes and happy family etc. This could also include men’s visions.
  • Scene 2 Reality: A sequence of what actually occurred : violence, too many children etc. These could just be sequential still images. Or a series of very short 3-5 frame looped animations. This could also include men’s frustrations and the reasons for their descent into violence.
  • Scene 3 Tragic Result: The final shot of the cemetery with the children animated then replicated to show the numbers of women in that situation. There could also be an image of a man distraught at what he had done.

Damen and PRSP, Lahore

These Poverty Diamonds and Road Journeys were done by women as part of of a community visit during a gender training I gave for microfinance staff from Pakistan Microfinance network, funded by Aga Khan Foundation Canada and Pakistan 2004.

Taraqee Foundation: Baluchistan

These drawings were from Taraqee Foundation in Baluchistan – a conservative rural area next to the Afghan border. This workshop in 2005 was facilitated and documented by me with Afghan refugees as well as local Baluchi women and men. I only have one photograph above because the women did not want to be photographed.

In this exercise I had done a bit of an experiment – women and men’s groups were in separate rooms and I asked some groups to draw ‘most empowered and least empowered woman’ and others ‘women and men in a very happy family/unhappy family’.

Interestingly the men in the women’s empowerment group walked out and left, but the men in the ‘happy family’ group were very interested saying they wanted their daughters to learn computing and video and they wanted to be able to take their wife out like they saw in the movies.

There were two groups of women one of Afghan women who were all wearing burqa and another Baluchi women who were not. It was the Afghan veiled women who were most firm that women should have their own name on everything.

Note the women in the pictures by women and also men are not shown as wearing heavy veil or burqa. They do not see themselves in that way.

Kashf Foundation, Lahore

Kashf in Lahore – a more cosmopolitan urban area in workshops facilitated and documented by micro-finance staff initially trained by me in 2005. I was not present. The staff documentation was quite thorough, but I have a lot of questions I wish I had been able to ask.

In the second Diamond at the top were 2 women who had gone in an aeroplane and had a mobile phone to communicate regularly with their daughters.

The third Diamond in particular is very poignant.

  • top left is a picture of an empowered woman and husband holding a flower with big lips out for kissing. The other top drawings have money for medicine, the husband has a job and the woman as well as the man has a car to drive. Only 1 member was in that position.
  • at the bottom left by contrast is a woman lying dead in a cemetery with her children crying around her because she could not stand it any longer. The other symbols at the bottom are for violence, a child working in the market, injection needle for drugs, a bed for sickness and a woman carrying a heavy load to the market. 80-100 women in their near community were in that position. Many on the verge of suicide they said.

Further details can be found in the reports below.

Microfinance:
Kashf Foundation

Pakistan Contextual Research

Poverty and housing

One of many documentary videos on You Tube about the extent and severity of domestic violence in Pakistan – and elsewhere. These often also show the ways in which women’s organisations, and occasionally governments have responded. Only some of the regional governments in Pakistan have passed legislation against domestic violence.

Pakistani Cinema: Bol

Bol (lit. Speak Up) is a 2011 Pakistani social drama film written, directed and produced by Shoaib Mansoor. It was part of a maternal and child health project, PAIMAN (Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns), advocating for women’s rights by bringing the focus of media and the elite of Pakistan to family planning and gender issues and implemented by The Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs. Bol was a critically acclaimed and commercial success, and became one of the highest-earning Pakistani films of all time.

Set in Lahore, it tells the story of a conservative religious Muslim family facing financial difficulties caused by too many children and declining demand for the father’s traditional medicine services. The film starts by showing the protagonist, Zainab (Humaima Malick), about to be hanged for the murder of her father. She tells the story of her father’s violence and oppression to the media on the night of the hanging.

Official Trailer

Community Voices and Context: India

Community versus External Voices?
Overview

I selected these drawings from participatory workshops in India 2003-2006 because they show the diversity of drawing styles. In the case of West Bengal and Gujarat I also had extensive background knowledge of the context from my own academic or participatory research.

The distinctive use of line by tribal women in West Bengal and Gujarat who had never held a pen before. Tribal women also work in the fields, forest and with livestock. They do not have such a strong tradition of handicrafts (unlike Pakistan for example) that give them an immediate facility for drawing. Particularly in the case of older women, they tend to use very abstracted stick figures but add symbolic elements and gestures. Certainly to a Western eye (eg my own) fascinated by the expressiveness of cave drawings and petroglyphs these abstracted drawings are in many ways more artistically interesting than the more figurative drawings of people with more education. I had earlier done short Flash videos of the workshops showing the context, drawing process and interpretation of the drawings.

The drawings from Chennai in South India are done by women and men who have some literacy. These attempt more figurative representation of women an men – hair, clothes and status distinctions. Some indicate very clearly the differences between women and men’s perceptions of ‘women’s empowerment’. Others do not visually distinguish between different forms of empowerment and rely more on verbal/written explanation.

There are many professional Indian animators producing artistically creative animations, often based on traditional handicraft styles or drawn animation. I found them to generally lack the distinctive visual expressiveness/rawness of the community drawings. Moreover, the animations I found on-line all relied heavily on dialogue and/or text in local languages or English.

Animation in English about benefits of women getting loans and training for handicrafts.
This has nice very simple white on black drawing. More arty than detailed concept. By Arcsoft Animation.
Artistic Sand Art on women’s empowerment.
Cartoon of apparently random drawings of different aspects of women’s position as a card for International Women’s Day.

See other videos on post:

Jamghoria Sevabrata,
West Bengal

Jamghoria Sevabrata is an NGO in West Bengal – most of the women they work with are tribal Santal who speak little Bengali (at the time when this work was done) and most of the paid staff were Bengali men who did not speak Santali. This livelihood planning workshop – for women to plan how they would use a grant from Trickle Up in US to invest in and increase income from different livestock – using pictorial drawing was the first time they had really communicated. The staff also drew and said they had ‘never felt so liberated’.

Most of these women had not held a pen before. I was facilitating 60 women in relays on 20, starting with the first batch for an hour then they taught the next batch and the next batch, with me catching up to take the first batch further to more advanced drawing once everyone was happy. From being very shy and not talking initially, within an hour they were confidently laughing, talking and teaching each other.

It was explained that everyone can draw and that all drawings are just different types of lines (straight, curves, wiggly etc) and circles (round, rectangular, squishy, loopy etc). With a bit of thought anything can be represented that way. The first woman below had quickly worked out a way of drawing lots of different types of goat – plain ones, stripy ones and foreign ones with bigger horns and needing to be tied with a rope on one leg. Others drew pigs of different types. The filled dots and circle lines represent different money to do their income calculations.

This shows that this type of mix of symbolism and figure abstraction comes easily. As can be seen from the video, some of the line drawing is also very expressive – Basquiat-like. That sort of ‘attacking the paper’ is less common when people try to draw ‘artistically’.

Contextual Resources

For Jamghoria Sevabrata I have a range of contextual information: drawings and workshop photographs and video – including footage not used in the 2004 video above. I also had photographs of the landscape and village. Including women feeding pigs and a singer.

I also looked at some Bengali videos on livestock farming on You Tube to see how general the issues raised by the women were. And to see if there was any suitable material for rotoscoping.

As my anthrolopogy PhD was on women and gender inequality in West Bengal, including tribal women, I also have some understanding of power relations and economic issues. I also speak quite fluent Bengali to understand contextual resources on-line.

One of the participants feeds her new foreign breed pig while her children and neighbours watch.
Santhali singer. A really beautiful song performed for us just before we left. But unfortunately I do not have translation.

On-line resources: Goat and pig farming issues

Main point is that goat raising is potentially very profitable with an expanding market. But it needs a lot of investment, medicines, vets etc. Or there are serious issues with disease. Although this can be done gradually, it is more risky. Particularly without training, credit and where vet services are not available.

Goat farming in Bengali (I understand it, but need to make detailed notes.) Main point is that goat raising is potentially very profitable with an expanding market. But it needs a lot of investment, medicines, vets etc. Or there are serious issues with disease.
Goat farming in Bengali (I understand it, but need to make detailed notes.) Advantages and disadvantages of different breeds.
Pig farming in Bengali (I understand it, but need to make detailed notes.) How to start: breeds, feed, disease, buildings.

On-Line resources: Pig Fight

Other Voices 1:
ANANDI, Gujarat

ANANDI (Area Networking for Development Initiatives) is a women’s empowerment organisation working with women in tribal, muslim and scheduled caste communities of Gujarat in Eastern India. These drawings were made as part of a 2003 participatory review on empowerment impact of their organisation, focusing particularly on response to the 2001 earthquake that devastated the area.

The drawings in biro on paper were part of an Empowerment Diamond exercise. As can be seen from the video, many of the women had never drawn before. Many are very expressive. Some can be more or less understood by an outsider eg goats (but what type?) a woman with a car (does she own it? drive it? woman carrying a bundle on her head (but is it a profitable bundle? is she carrying it for someone else?) etc. Other drawings are better understood by people who know more about the context (types of crops). Others are only understood by people in the process who are accustomed to common ways in which people draw things like rectangles for land. Others are symbolic and innovative eg use of a fan? for development.

They look quite ‘scruffy’ just doodles on very cheap paper. It would be interesting to see if they would be treated better if they were cut and framed as ‘works of art’ like Tracy Emin drawings with more Basquiat-style text.

They really need annotation to understand the full richness of expression. For example why is a stick woman with a red stomach ‘healthy’, what is the thinking behind that.

  • Empowerment Drawings of old women
  • Empowerment Drawings of Middle age women

Other Voices 2:
Hand In Hand,  Chennai

These drawings were done as part of an international gender training for micro-finance programmes, hosted by Hand in Hand in Chennai, South India. Hand in Hand worked with men and women, most of whom had some education, some were quite educated. They were not nearly so poor as the tribal women in JS or ANANDI above. Hand in Hand had not focused on women’s empowerment, and the aim of the exercise was to get some community indicators of women’s empowerment and happy families and see what differences there might be between women and men. The women had a strong handicraft tradition and so could draw quite easily.

The women’s concepts when they explained them were clear – around owning property, being able to go where they wanted, having a sense of identity and respect. The drawings however were not clear without the explanatory text. There was some difference in drawing style between powerful (confident marker line) and powerless (wiggly pencil) but it is not clear whether this was intentional or just a difference between media and group. There is also some differentiation in clothing and appearance, but on the whole all the figure drawings look quite similar.

  • Man's view of an empowered woman in a happy family
  • Women's view of a powerful woman
  • Powerful woman
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerful woman
  • Women's view of a powerful woman
  • Powerful woman
  • Powerful woman
  • Powerful woman
  • Women's view of a powerful woman
  • MFI staff drawings of empowerment
  • Women's view of a powerless woman
  • Women's view of a powerful woman
  • Women's view of a powerful woman
  • Women's view of a powerful woman