My intentions on the course and plan for semester one.

On this MFA my ultimate goal is to find a way to work writing into my practice. I have two reasons for this. Firstly if I can author my own picture books - the amount I earn per book will double. The other reason is creative control. Having already gone through the process of illustrating another authors work three times now, I have come to understand the limitations that exist between what I’d like to do and what the publisher deems commercially viable. If I can write my own book I will retain 100% of the IP and will have more control over how the books turns out. Then I would have more pull when it comes to differences of opinion and negotiations. This is important to me because I want to make work that I think has creative and intellectual value. I want to make work that is experimental, pushes boundaries, feels new and interrogates how the actual medium of the book can be used to tell a story. While it is important to me that the work I spend the majority of my time making feels fulfilling in some way, it is equally important that my practice is sustainable and will generate an income that will allow me to continue working and experimenting. The challenge here is; How to make something I would like to make that is also commercial enough for publishers to sell.

My plan for semester one:

To come out of the first semester with a finished picturebook manuscript and full thumbnails would seem a bit forced, and very much in line with the existing fast paced picturebook industries infrastructure. I want to take this time to find a way of writing that complements my illustration, that feels natural to me so that it can be repeated. For this reason, the research and line of enquiry I am going to take is less practice based (as in illustration) and lies more with reading, storyboarding and idea generation. I want to look at what has been achieved in picturebooks up to now, to see where I might take it. I want to research story, and visual narrative, and how words and text can be used. I want to do deeper study into wordless picturebooks, experimental graphic novels and the picturebooks by Jon Klassen, Saul Bass and Edward Gorey. I am deeply interested in the gaps between words and our interpretations and then even more interested in how those gaps are different from the gaps between visuals and our interpretations. I want to think about what images can get at that words can’t?

I plan to integrate my research into my practice by drafting storyboards, trying out different writing techniques, working with an unreliable narrator or using only dialogue between characters. I want to use the text and images to tell different parts of the story, to withhold information, to intentionally mislead, to explore theatrical ideas like Bertolt Brecht’s ‘alienation effect’. I want to practice using comedy and explore how page turns can be used for a joke. At the end of semester one I plan to have explored all these things and have a concept idea, some text and somewhat of a dummy book ready to carry through to the next semester for development.