ICORD 2015

Paper#: 84 Title: Sound Symbolism in Indian Comic Books: Analysis and Design exploration

Masked Reviewer ID: Assigned_Reviewer_3

The paper is well written and easy to read. The topic of the paper is interesting and may be useful for

the comics industry. However, the authors can include a paragraph on the comics industry in the

world and in India as well (market size in the last decade and in the present decade; general

demographics of the people reading comics, etc.).

Section 3 research methodology how were the words categorized? Was there any (inter-coder)

reliability check? What are the reasons behind the selection of Raj comics?

figure 2 should be Figure 2.

Figure 1 is not referred in the text.

Limitations of the research need to be mentioned in Section 5.

Review Response

The comics industry in America and Europe witnessed a decline in sales in the early 1980s and 90s

with the advent of television and internet. The declining phase has been felt in India also. However,

since the last decade the situation is getting better. Among the comics industry, Japan is

undoubtedly leading the way where 27-31 percent of the published books are Japanese comics or

manga. The Indian comics industry is also enjoying a steady growth in the present decade. The

comic conventions are an important factor for this growth. Sales have taken a leap from 25 lakhs in

2011 to over a crore in 2013. Publishers are expanding their brand from printed comics to e-

commerce stores, web applications and video games. This has given the readers choice to select

from a range of genres and publishers under a single platform, a benefit that was missing before the

internet-age. The contents of the comics are also changing. As compared to the early childrens

comics, now more artists and writers are turning towards mature adults as their target audience.

The comics deal with sensitive and serious issues and are read by people aged between 15-40

years*.

*Due to space constraints, a brief and concluding statement has been added in the beginning of the

introduction.

In this paper, Raj comics, which was found in 1984, is chosen for study because of two reasons. First,

it was closely modelled on the Western comics, which lead to the obvious choice of using

onomatopoeic words. The range and variation of sound symbolic words in Raj comics was found to

be more extensive than in other Indian comics. Second, since Raj comics have remained in existence

for more than three decades, so it was possible to collect the sample words across a long span of

time.

The words were categorised according to their appearance in comics. Different words conveying

same meaning are put under one category of sound symbolic words. Since these words have already

appeared in the comics, therefore reliability check was not necessary. The words were directly

manually counted and categorised according to their context of appearance*.

*In section 3, methodology section, the beginning paragraph and at the end of second paragraph

these changes have been accounted.

Figure 1 is referred in section 4.Figure 3 has been removed

Limitations (mentioned in section 5): Since this study draws upon the existing printed comics,

therefore the digital and motion comics was not studied for SSW. With the developing technologies

it will be interesting to enquire the collaboration of technology and elements of comics for better

storytelling. This study was also limited to only onomatopoeic words used in Indian comics mainly

because the other two categories (Phenomimetic and Psychomimetic) were not found.

Masked Reviewer ID: Assigned_Reviewer_5

This is an interesting. For a non-Indian, non-graphic design / typography or non-comic reader you

might need to provide a bit more background on the comics (e.g. are the English comics written in

India or in the US?), as well as on the letters used in the language and the conventions that surround

them. For example could the swirly letter still be recognised as such, if they were drawn in an angular

way? You could also draw stronger conclusions for the design of comics and reflect on the nature of

conventions in design.

Review Response

Editors and publishers have always faced difficulty while translating the language of comics to some

other foreign language. As Raj comics are published primarily in Hindi, so it already has developed its

limited vocabulary of SSW. Translating it in to English would require changing the SSW as well as the

text which presently has not been done yet extensively. Raj comics in digital format are available in

Bhojpuri language (spoken mainly in Eastern India), however the SSW remains the same since

Bhojpuri and Hindi uses the devnagari script.

Changes have been accounted in the conclusion section.

Masked Reviewer ID:

Assigned_Reviewer_6

This paper shows an interesting approach about the sound symbolic words of Indian Comics.

The classification of the visualization of the sound represented through the semantic factors (style,

fonts & letterings, color, texture, orientation and alignment), however, the weight of the factors is

unclear in this paper.

Please add more detailed information of procedures of the analysis.

Review Response

The weight of the SSW in Raj comics could be categorised in three categories:

1. Regular

2. Bold

3. Extra bold

Regular, bold and extra bold SSW

Unlike conventional typographic rules, the SSW in comics does not have a fixed definition for

the weights of the words. Neither have they had a universal framework that guides the artist

to use a specific weight of the SSW. For this reason, it is only through generalisation that the

SSW are categorised. The visual aspect of the SSW plays an important factor to decide the

weight of the words. In the example shown above, the first word is the sound of a swashing

tail. The second word represents a collision and the last word is the sound of a crow. The

nature of these sounds is completely different from each other. The first word is closer to

the proximity of its sound mainly due to the curvy lines encompassing the word. The second

word, due to its bold weight and a firm placement signifies a strong impact. However, the

third word, being the scratchy and sharp sound of a crow, does not signify the nature of the

sound. The curvy look, extra bold weight with small counters of the letters is closer to the

sound of a collision or explosion. Therefore, the weight of the SSW holds an interrelationship

with the nature of the sound being made. Making the words bold, just to attract attention of

the reader does not always guarantee a harmonious relation between the image and the

words*.

*Discussed in section 4.1.1 and section 4.1.