Experiment - 4. 'Clams' Cartoon by Berkeley Mews

To investigate into how altering elements of an image can affect the feelings that are being portrayed and therefore the feelings the viewer is experiencing.

In this experiment I am going to investigate into the power of words. This cartoon is intended for comedy purposes, it is generally quite funny and up beat, which would make a viewer feel happy and will make them laugh. I am going to see if the image on it's own, without any writing has the same effect or if it changes the feel of the image. I will also change the words that are written in the speech bubbles to see if this can effect the overall feeling of the cartoon.



'Clams' - Berkeley Mews

 

 

 

In this experiment I have taken away all of the writing. I did this to see if the illustrations could communicate the same feeling as  when the writing was included and if the funny factor was still apparent.

I think without the writing, you can focus more on the expression of the clams face, as the eye is no longer drawn to the writing. The clams expression looks really scared, sad and worried, so you do feel sorry for it. But the end drawing is comical as the end destination for the clam is on the mermaids chest. This quickly changes your emotions of sympathy to those of comedy.

 

I then played around with putting my own text in the images to see how this effected the feeling of the cartoon.

 

 I did a number of experiments, using sentences that I felt would help the viewer to sympathise with the clams. I used sentences that showed how scared the clams are. I used quite dramatic sentences to emphasize feelings of loss and fear. I used sentences that people could relate to, and things that maybe some people would say. And although, within the first two images you do feel sorry for them, when you look at the last drawing, it's always got comedic value because of where the clams are ending up.
Maybe if the clams were ending up in a seafood dish and being cooked the cartoon wouldn't be so funny.

As the general feeling of the cartoon was continuously coming back as funny and comedic, I thought I would try and influence this even more so in changing the writing. Instead of having words of negativity, I swapped them with all positive sentences. The clams are happy about being chosen, and they are crying tears of joy. I think this changes the images completely. There's no longer any feeling of sympathy for the clams as they are happy about their final destination and it's an honour to be chosen. This makes the viewer feel happy and have a little laugh at the clams reaction.

 

 

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After experimenting with how words can effect an image, I have put some text into my original illustration to see how this effects the image.

 

 

The writing in this scan isn't very clear, the first snail is saying 'nom nom nom, I like lettuce' and the second snail is saying 'Here you go Mr. Snail'.
I wanted the text to help give the impression of children playing dress up and taking on their characters, and for the text to show that they are having fun and enjoying themselves without caring about what others may think.

I think this is an effective way of helping to keep the illustration light hearted, and I think it would work well with the quote, "Be who you are and say how you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind", as it is emphasizing that the character are comfortable with what they want to do.