Masters Changes.

I finally saw my main supervisor yesterday to talk about my confirmation review results. In particular this following suggestion has been pretty vexing.

The candidate made the committee aware of her rationale and use of differences in style being representative of in comic book form of the candidate's own differences in becoming! being transgendered. However, the committee felt that the use of so many comic book styles seemed to be clouding the issue. The committee saw the value in a focus on the 'Second life' virtual program for displaying imagery in real time along with hard comic copy versions of this and advised the candidate to move the visual along further in this virtual electronic form and via hard copy if need be to maintain her interest in comic book format.

Terribly jargonese isn't it? See my main goal here was to show gender transition as a journey within a journey. For Real Life Trips I have five biographical accounts and a framing story of myself telling these accounts to a friend. The framing story was done using second life and  accounts were to be drawn in different page formats (the first mimics a Rupert Bear annual). But it seemed that the reviewers rejected my drawing and preferred the Second Life stuff. Not only that, but from the above it also seems that instead of me making a comic, they'd prefer some form of animation via Second Life!

I have a major issue with that. Making comics with multiple avatars in Second Life (or even with one) is like arranging dummies  in a store window. You set up the background, props, poses and clothing on each, take snapshots (or screen dumps), and then make slight alterations for the next shot/dump. Repeat until you have enough photographic material to use in your photo comic. There are variations, like posing a character in front of a blank background and then cutting and pasting them into a scene, but neither is live, like TV or film production.

A masters is meant to showcase one's art in the medium(s) one has mastery in. Going from Comics to Animation to jumping from one medium which I have experience and expertise in, to another in which I have very little experience and expertise! And I have less than 16 months left to do all this. That being the case I've rejected the idea of live Second Life stuff entirely. This left me three possible changes to the RLT graphic novel:

1. Leave it as is with the framing story done via SL, and the other segments hand drawn;
2. Do it all in Second Life as comics; or
3. Do it all in hand drawn artwork.

Out of those options, #3 shows the most of my "artistic character" so I'm going to go with that. The differences between accounts will be shown mostly in page layout. And if they don't like that stuff them anyway. There are issues surrounding my research question, which was:

Can graphic novels and narratives bridge the gap of understanding between the mainstream and minorities - in particular queer and transgender minorities.

..and relevant to that was the comment:

The candidate was advised to reduce the inclusion of other minorities in the study and focus on the transgendered as this complicated the research and did not support the interest in the transgendered minority position.

...which might be fair enough, but neither .graphic novel is focussed on the concept of "transgender": in particular (a term which I consider to be a political one for expedient use) but of Gender Transition, and there is a difference. Other comments support the notion of changing the research question to:

How with the artist's graphic novels and narratives bridge the gap of understanding between the mainstream and persons who undertake gender transition.

...but I think I need to talk that over with my other supervisor, who I'll be seeing next Tuesday. It'll make a world of difference on what I write and research, and hence my lit review (which I flunked out on in the review).