I have always been fascinated by comics and cartoons as a young kid. The way that these mediums stimulate a visual sensation as opposed to just plain text is incredibly powerful. With that in mind, I want to achieve that result with my capstone project. During my summer of 2018, I had the chance to temporarily work at a food factory. My day to day routine consisted of me packing bread. It was a gruesome experience that will forever be ingrained in my mind. Words alone cannot even describe what I witnessed. One thing that I gained from that experience was empathy. I finally was able to empathize with the physical and emotional pain that my family members go through on a daily basis. In short, it was a humbling experience. Now, I want to be able to flesh out my experiences through drawings. I want to draw my experiences in the style of a graphic novel.
I am a firm believer that a picture is worth a thousand words. My goal is more than just creating a simple and cute comic book: my goal is to inform the general public of what it is like to work in the manufacturing industry. I also want to leave my readers with words of advice on how to navigate the struggles that I went through. I hope that my project will be able to deliver the message that Upton Sinclair was trying to achieve with his novel, The Jungle.
I will begin my project by journaling and sketching down my past work experience. By documenting my memories, I will be able to identify the most important key points that I would like to present in my graphic novel. In addition, this process will allow me to think critically and provide solutions to the mistakes that I went through in my time of working in general labour. From there, I will also gather survey data from my family members about their working experiences from their respective factory jobs. With the survey information, I will be able to identify common-ground data that would be crucial and beneficial to my project.
From there, storyboarding will help me create the storyline for my illustration book. Another crucial point that I want to conduct for my capstone project is informational interviews from professionals in the manufacturing industry. I am referring to people that work in the human resource department. I am positive that their insight will be beneficial when it comes to adding final touches to my final project. Finally, I want to make my project feel personal to my reader. I want to make sure that my project reflects my readers’ experience. Thus, I will add a mini section for my readers to interact.
For this project, I will be using Procreate for my illustration creations. Afterwards, I will use InDesign to organize my drawings into a booklet format. The final product will be in a digital format, for the sake of the trees. I will present this project at the end of the fall semester. I also plan on sharing my work on social media groups that involve manufacturing and wellbeing.
