The YP Foundation, is a nonprofit organisation to protect, promote, and advance young people's rights by developing youth leadership for social change. Mardon Wali Baat, a program by The YP Foundation works with young men and boys in campus and community settings to facilitate a deeper reflection on masculinities that can lead to a rejection of patriarchal gender norms and gender based violence.
I was given the task of creating a comic for mardonwalibaat.com, a website that aims to engage young boys between the ages of 14 to 18 from tier 2 cities. The website offers a variety of interactive stories and resources that explore the concept of masculinities and its role in our daily lives. The stories present different situations where the reader can choose what happens next, and their response will determine how the story progresses. The objective of the website is to deepen the understanding and practice of feminist allyship among young men and boys, and encourage a rejection of violence. It promotes positive masculinities in thought and action, helping to bring about a positive change in society.
I started the process by first exploring various illustration styles that our audience would relate to. Keeping Tinkle comics and Chacha Chaudhary as reference I came up with 2 styles.
Two visual styles were considered for the story: the first was realistic with life-like proportions, while the second was cartoon-like with exaggerated expressions and big animated features. After conducting user testing and considering the popularity of comic books, it was decided to use the second visual style.
The characters of the story were then created with careful attention to their character background and details.
Lead character Varun and his brother Sanjay
Since the comic was available in two languages and had to be responsive on all devices,
I developed a visual system. The system ensured that all comic panels would be designed in such a way that the subject matter would be at the center, with text, and the rest of the background occupying the panel. This approach made it easy for the developers to crop the images efficiently.
All the 200 panels were then created by the same rule.
Click here, to read the entire story: https://mardonwalibaat.com/stories/varuns-secret.html
