I’ve heard so many things about the organisation PositiveNegatives and the amazing humanitarian comics and animations they create for NGOs and charities. So when I got to meet with their founder Ben Dix, and we decided to work together, I was delighted. This was one of the most ambitious experimental comic projects I’ve ever created. It was inspired by the true testimonies of 4 Eritrean refugees who fled their homes to make the dangerous journey across Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya to Europe.
I wanted to make a comic that created renewed empathy with refugees by literally drawing you into their journey. The ‘zoom’ mechanism has been used in films and online, but I’d never seen it being used to tell a narrative. The amazing Jonathan Plackett worked his digital wizardry to create the infinite zoom mechanism for me and then It was months and month of drawing. I was delighted when the amazing Lula Mebrahtu came on board with us to bring moving spoken word poetry to my images. To find out more you can read an interview with us on the SOAS University blog.
