I collaborated with my friend, Boris Senatorov, who is currently stationed in Guinea in the Peace Corps, to create a comic strip about malaria prevention.
Boris told me that malaria persists because many people don’t use mosquito bedding nets around their beds. Instead, the nets tend to be used to keep animals away from vegetable gardens. Other factors include not installing window screens and keeping stagnant water around outside the house.
We aimed for creating a one page-comic so it can be easily printed with the fewest amount of paper and quick to read. However, this required packing and transforming a lot of information into an easy-to-absorb, engaging visual story.
Boris fleshed out a possible storyline centred around two friends wanting to play soccer but one of them ends up waking up with malaria symptoms. It’s soon discovered that malaria prevention tips weren’t followed.
I added a humour to make the story more engaging. Boris suggested that the main characters wear soccer jerseys since soccer is really popular in Guinea. As someone of Italian heritage myself, I can relate to this. So I used this to add a humorous touch for our overall message – follow these malaria prevention tips so you never miss playing a soccer game!
Since I was unfamiliar with Guinea and I have never been there, I picked Boris’ brain about:
- Typical daily life and why and how mosquito nets tend to not be used in the way they were intended.
- How mosquito nets are acquired and the barriers to acquiring them.
- How to accurately draw Guinea. Boris sent me photos of what typical street scenes, markets, home life, etc. look like.
- Which animals to use as the main characters (monkeys because they are everywhere in Guinea and the elephant is the national animal). I decided to use animal characters over human because animal characters work well for humour and whimsical storytelling while also forming strong emotional connections. This makes them especially endearing to younger audiences.
- What to name the characters. Boris suggested two common names in Guinea, Abucabar and Mohamed, and I asked if they had corresponding nicknames to make them more cartoony. Thus, Abu and Momo were born! I love their names!
- What happens when someone gets malaria. Are they contagious? Are they quarantined? Is there treatment? This was valuable in fleshing out the story since I needed to include the sick character going to the local health centre to get better.
Abu the elephant didn’t take long for me to design. I pictured what he looked like in my head and there he was looking back at me from my sketchbook. He was the one to get malaria because his headship was perfect for the scene!
Momo, on the other hand, was a tricky little monkey to design! It took me several tries and I might have driven Boris crazy at one point by asking his opinion again and again! Who knew something so simple could be hard to redraw consistently over and over?
I pencilled a draft of the comic strip along with retrofitting Boris’ story outline on my iPad using the Procreate drawing app. I wrote the dialogue in English even though the target language for the comic would be French. My knowledge in French is very basic so I drew in English in order to get the copy, story, and pacing finalised.
Boris then used Google Translate as a quick way to translate into French since we had a short deadline and no budget. We asked Boris’ Francophone colleagues to verify and suggest any changes needed, particularly to include any local dialects or colloquialisms.
We also added a side story featuring the mosquito who gave Abu mosquito looking for more family members to infect with malaria. It was a fun way to explain the effectiveness of the malaria prevention tips.
It was also my first time in a very long time working with colour. I went for a light pastel kind of palette to keep the overall comic positive and not literally too dark.
This was a lot of fun to draw and I enjoyed learning about Guinea and mosquito nettings. I also couldn’t help but notice a lot of parallels with UX design as I researched and drew this comic!
I created an English one for my own records (and for sharing here).
The comic was received very well from Boris’ team with his director of programming and training saying “This is FANTASTIC Boris!!!”.
Due to Abu’s reaction to the idea of never playing soccer, I am itching to make more Abu and Momo comics.