Sound Symbolic words in Indian comic books- A study on textual representation of sounds in comic books


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Creator/Artist: Ishu Kardam

Category: Communication Design

Document: Special Project

Batch: 2017-2019

Source: India,   IDC IIT Bombay

Period:  2009-2018

Medium: Report pdf

Supervisor: Prof. Prasad Bokil


Detailed Description

Sound symbolic words (SSW) are the visual representation of the sounds in comic books. It helps the reader to imagine the ambience of a particular panel in the comic and hence plays an important role in enhancing the mood of the panel. Consider examples such as CRASH, DHADAM, BOOOMM, and so on. An SSW is designed by two elements: (a) the form, i.e., the visual representation of the SSW, and (b) the word itself that represents the sound. This paper focuses on the following topics: 1) The determination of a suitable SSW for some common sounds through a survey. 2) An individual study of SSWs in the comedy genre of Indian comic books. For the first topic, forms were created for the survey and were distributed online and offline to take inputs from participants. The forms were then analysed based on the data received. For the second topic, a bunch of Indian comic books (mostly Raj comics) of the comedy genre were studied, and observations were recorded.