I've had a slow week
Character Design
I finished the character design sheet and I have coloured it. Although I'm not 100% happy with how some of the poses turned out as as Ben has pointed out the top left pose looks as though her chest is about to break also show the position of the bun changes slightly in each pose. I also struggled with facial expressions and features I couldn't seem to get the proportions right in relation to each other that made the comment that they looked scary and disturbing.
Rough Draft
I shave submitted a (very) rough draft of chapters 1 and 2 and I have now started chapter 3. Which is about the 1st case study of the anime Perfect Blue which deals with multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia.
Survey
I also created a survey to find out if people think the portrayal of mental health and disability in Japanese anime has had a positive or negative effect on Japanese society. The results will be collected at the end of this month and will be used to triangulate my research.
Analysing Comics
Following on from my discussion with Ben at the start of the week I have also been analysing comics in order to understand how they use panels to create a narrative and to find inspiration for my own zine. I will write everything up next week and post it to the blog.
Rough Sketches
From here I have started to sketch out some rough layouts. As next week is MAF I will be only be doing practical. Although I will still be taking notes and developing my ideas.
Research Poster
To inform my essay I have started to create a research poster on the last 500 years of Japan's history. As for the design, I took inspiration from my triangulation poster that I made last year and made the poster look like a bored game or dungeon maze game. Although the primary focus is the last 500 years I will reference to what is considered the very start of Japanese history with a Dogū statue I will also be making other references such as a Dōtaku, a kind of Japanese ceremonial bell and the Byōdō-in, a historical Buddhist temple. I chose the key dates based on what I though to be the most socially and culturally relevant to modern Japan. I asked myself what has made up the Japan I know today? This was in part due to Dr Alan who gave me some helpful advice.
Chapter 2
I also started and finished a rough draft of chapter 2 which explores this history of Japan. It doesn't go into as much detail as I did last year but I tried to pick out points that I would be able to call back to later on in the essay. I have also started the rough drafts of case studies Deathnote and A Silent Voice.
Developing a Narrative
I developed a narrative for my manga zine. It is going to be based on the Shōnen genre of manga, but for girls. As i want to portray a positive image and role model. It will be about a girl who struggles to get into dance school. Once in she feels like an outsider amongst all the other girls because she sees herself as inferior to them. When in fact it is all in her head and actually a lot of the students like her and admire her for getting in despite not being not coming from a dance background. She becomes depressed and develops an unhealthy attitude towards food and begins to see herself as fat whenever she looks in a mirror. She struggles through the academic year, nursing an unhealthy body image. dealing with the paranoia and anxiety and the auditions for the end of year show are coming up. Her teacher casts her as a backup dancer. But her classmates are all there for her to support her and seeing how upset she is at only getting a minor part, they petition the tutor to re-cast her in a better role. Instead her tutor gives her her own solo. The solo is what I intend to create for EP.
Character Design Sheet
I started the character design sheet. I made good progress. Starting off with doodles in my sketchbook. I played around with size and proportion. I initially wanted to do it in an adult chibi style but I decided not to because a) I couldn't find any manga that used this style as examples and b) I want to be able to rotoscope the character for extended practice so the proportions need to be realistic.
