I have decided to try to rectify one of the shortfalls in conservation science and human progress in general, inter-group communication.
Helping different groups to see one another’s point of view in the hopes of more people working together to create a better future for humankind (and other such idealistic hopes). While I suspect that we as a species are pretty much doomed, it brought the opportunity to work on a comic, so I said let’s do it!
Jutta Beher, biologist at University Melbourne initiated the project, collaborating with editors at the online academic and journalistic publication The Conversation to create a piece about communication psychology as it applies to the different groups relevant to conservation science, and to humans in general. After much bouncing back and forward Jutta came up with a script and overarching structure.
My first step was to come up with character designs for all these little iconographic dudes, first drawing the established designs to get to know them, and expanding from there.
Once that was done I had to get to know the story better. And you know, there’s probably a better way, but the way I prefer is not necessarily what’s objectively “best”.
It’s about understanding the characters and story on a level that’s probably unquantifiable in testing, but which I feel to be true- drawing something is a unique and complete way of understanding it.
