As I make a start on planning the Critical Review for Assignment 6, I have no real idea of how I am going to choose and narrow down a particular topic I want to write about. I find it very challenging to be productive when I do not have clear structure to follow. After reading (and re-reading) the guidance in the course notes, I decided to treat this just as I would any other Exercise or Assignment.
Accordingly, and as suggested in the guidance, I began by mind-mapping some initial thoughts (below). I am almost certain that the area I would be most interested in exploring for task is narrative illustration, with a focus on graphics novels/comics or cartoons.
However, this still covers such a plethora of topics that I decided to reflect past Research Tasks and Exercises I had undertaken during Part 3 of this Unit. I thought, for example, that political/satirical cartoons, such as those created by Hogarth used in the exercise Denotation and Connotation, would be a fruitful and insightful subject to look at in greater depth. I was particularly drawn to Hogarth’s intention of persuading the general public, via his illustrations, to consume beer instead of gin and I wondered if this actually had any impact on drinking habits at the time.
The potential topics/questions that came out of the mind-mapping, along with further thoughts, included:
- Do political cartoons/illustrations influence people’s opinion/behaviour and result in societal change?
- Is there a difference between historical satirical/political cartoons/illustrations and those is the modern day? Are there any similarities, e.g. in style, content, subjects, intended audience, etc?
- What makes an effective political cartoon?
- Are images more powerful than the textual equivalent? Does it depend on the literacy of the population? Or the democracy/freedom of that population?
- Should images communicate their message without the need to include text?
- How has the representation of women changed over time in comics/graphic novels (or illustration)?
- What makes a good character design?
- Why is anthropomorphism such a popular choice for character design?
- The power of an image to persuade.
This is my current status for Assignment 6 – slightly overwhelmed, confused and unsure of how to proceed! I will need to clarify my idea so that I can write a proper proposal before making a start on the actual Critical Review.