'An investigation into the relationship between narrative and Illustration; can I challenge the misconception that diverse styles of narrative should generally be accompanied by Illustrations associated with that genre. Or by using different styles of images can the meaning of the narrative be improved; and can I then use this research to produce a more emotive and compelling story visually and written'.

For my final major project I produced a comic in which I intended to produce an emotive story depicting basic human emotions such as love, loss, obsession, violence and passion; as they are the most emotive and compelling stories. I started to write the story based upon stereotypical comic book literature and illustrate it using typical techniques used in this genre. However, I felt that the style left the narrative lacking in depth and there was no connection and relationship between the characters appropriate to the emotive text that accompanied it. The main influence for my story was the graphic novel by James O' Barr of which he wrote as a response to the grief he felt at the death of his girlfriend. The graphic novel is broken up into chapters relating to the five stages of grief, which is introduced by song lyrics and poetry from other writers. I felt that this eclectic take on narrative makes the story more emotive and powerful in expressing loss and pain by drawing on these diverse literary influences. I intend to draw on these influences and research fields such as film noir, sonnet, rhyming couplets and stereotypical comic book style text to challenge one of my original sections of writing as to which if any of these styles would improve upon my storytelling and intern; produce a more passionate and compelling story.

To go along side this writing, I also intend  to experiment with my own image making based upon my researched styles of Illustrations that would typically be associated with these genres of narrative i.e. pencil drawings with poetry, heavily shadowed images associated with film noir, cartoons with comic book style text etc. I intend to widely experiment with varied styles of images and investigate as to whether a different style of image making or text would be more powerfully emotive and expressive than the typical comic book style Illustrations I would usually use and use these influences to improve upon my original narrative in which I felt was lacking depth and emotion.