This creative doctorate consists of two creative texts and an exegesis. The first creative text is a graphic novel entitled Blue (2012) and the second is a short comic book called Toormina Video. The project asks: What can we learn about comics and graphic novels by looking at the “back end” of the text? How do the material conditions in the studio and the particularities of the cartoonist’s body influence the published outcome of a cartooning project?
The exegesis: (i) investigates methodological approaches to the study of cartooning practice, demonstrating how phenomenological anthropology, graphic anthropology and auto-ethnography may help us understand the graphic storyteller’s skillset as a form of practical knowledge (Jackson 1996); (ii) examines the comic book or graphic novel as a “built environment” demonstrating the structural influence that drawing materials have on graphic and literary style in comics; (iii) drawing on the semiotic theory of Thierry Groensteen (2009), it explores similarities between text and textile, comparing the process of pencilling comic to weaving fabric; (iv) suggests a natural kinship between oriental calligraphy and the practice of inking comics with a brush or quill, demonstrating how we might read and discuss the marks on the comic book page as the trace of a moving body; and (v) begins unpacking a performance approach to comics studies.
By shifting the critical gaze away from the ‘finished’ text and toward the studio as the key site of critical investigation in comics studies, this thesis argues that cartooning is indelibly a technology of the moving body and that comics and graphic novels should be critically appraised in this light.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements (5)
Abstract (6)
1. Introduction (15)
1.1. Unfinished Comics (29)
1.2. How is a comic-book made? (36)
1.3. The Hourglass: an alternative workflow model (45)
1.4. Limitations of the study (46)
1.5. The space of comics (47)
1.6. A breakdown of chapters (50)
2. Local Practice / Foreign Discourse: situated literacy and comics scholarship (58)
2.1. A nascent field (58)
2.2. A little town called Comics (59)
2.3. Comix academix (62)
2.3.1. “Representations of …” (66)
2.3.2. Comics as educational tools (67)
2.3.3. Historical texts 68 2.3.4. Formal analyses (70)
2.4. Fans and firebrands (77)
2.4.1. Critical essays (79)
2.4.2. Long-form interviews (81)
2.5. How do we talk meaningfully about comics? (83)
3. The Moving, Drawing Body: A methodology for the ethnography of a cartooning practice (89)
3.0. Fieldnotes - Watching bodies drawing bodies (89)
3.1. Learning from watching bodies drawing bodies (93)
3.2. Fieldnotes – Learning in public (94)
3.3. quiet epiphanies (96)
3.4. Accidental anthropology (96)
3.5. Framing the methodology (99)
3.5.1. Meshwork/fieldwork (99)
3.5.2. Positioning the researcher among nested texts (104)
3.5.3. Drawing with others – participant observation (108)
3.5.4 - Drawing alone – memory, narrative, images (113)
3.5.5. Reverse engineered research design (115)
3.6. Methodology (118)
3.6.1. Navigating nested fields (119)
3.6.2. Defining the participant stream (119)
3.6.3. Working in the participant stream (122)
3.6.4. Defining The Studio Stream (128)
3.6.5. Working in The Studio Stream (130)
3.6.6. Organising fieldnotes (134)
3.6.7. Toward analysis and synthesis (135)
3.7. Fieldnotes – drawing on bodies (138)
4. The Board and the Body: material constraints and style in graphic narrative (142)
4.1. Fences, walls and cages (142)
4.2. Studio notes – Toormina Video (146)
4.2.1. July 2012 – Edith St Studio, Sydney. (146)
4.2.2. July 2012. Austinmer (150)
4.2.3. November 2012, Edith Street studio, Sydney (152)
4.2.4. February 2013 – Edith Street studio, Sydney (155)
4.2.5. August 2013 – Marrickville (160)
4.2.6. August 2013 – Officeworks, Sydney (163)
4.2.7. September 2013 – Marrickville (164)
4.3. The board and the page (167)
4.4. Framing drawings / fencing bodies (172)
4.5. Board:page (174)
4.6. The board and the narrative (182)
4.7. The digital canvas (186)
4.8. Rattling the cages (189)
5. Grey Line Weaving: embodiment and entanglement in the pencilling process (193)
5.1. The multitasking mark (193)
5.2.1. Studio Notes – March 2010 - Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (197)
5.2.2. March 2010 – Leslie Street Studio, Melbourne (204)
5.2.3. March 2010 – Leslie St Studio, Melbourne (204)
5.2.4. May 2010 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (206)
5.2.5. May 2010 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (208)
5.2.6. June 2013 – Leslie Street Studio, Melbourne (211)
5.2.7. July 2010 – Leslie Street Studio, Melbourne (212)
5.2.8. November 2010 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (215)
5.2.9. November 2010 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (216)
5.3. Lines and threads (218)
5.4. Braiding (225)
5.5. Thumbs, grids and breakdowns (229)
5.7. Successes and failures (238)
5.7. The parliament of lines (242)
6. Voluptuous Diction: cartooning, calligraphy and the erotics of ink (248)
6.1. Composition and inscription (248)
6.2.1. Studio Notes – September 2007 – Pat’s bedroom, Scarborough (253)
6.2.2. January 2009 – Leslie Street Studio, Melbourne (254)
6.2.3. October 2009 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (257)
6.2.4. December 2010 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne. (258)
6.2.5. February 2011 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (261)
6.2.6. March 2011 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (262)
6.2.7. December 2011 – Leslie Street studio, Melbourne (267)
6.3. Icon, Symbol, Index (269)
6.4. The typographic character and the cartoon character (272)
6.5. Calligraphy (277)
6.6. The grain of the hand and the erotics of ink (285)
6.7. The clearing scrap as geno-text (291)
6.8. Looking at the line / looking with the line (299)
7. Conclusion: yucky feelings and funny faces (305)
7.0. Studio notes – August 2009 – Nias, Indonesia (305)
7.1.1. Creative goals (309)
7.1.2. Methodological goals (310)
7.1.3. Theoretical goals (311)
7.2. The research experience (312)
7.3. Contributions of the thesis (313)
7.3.1. Creative contributions (313)
7.3.1. Methodological contributions and their applications (314)
7.3.3. Theoretical contributions and their applications (315)
7.4. Opportunities for future research (319)
7.5. Studio Notes – January 2012 – Austinmer, NSW (325)
7.6. Bodies on the boards (327)
References (328)
Added by: joachim Last edited by: joachim
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