Recently, the Comic Strip sector has been shaken by the arrival of new tools and processes of creation and distribution. Cooperation is taking shape, new perspectives are emerging. Webtoons inspire cinema for adaptations on the big screen, TV series, video games, and print publishing. French comics could already move from paper to screen: distribution models are evolving. The porosity of the creative industries is confirmed. In a 2015 opinion, the European Economic and Social Council on the Creative and Cultural Industries stressed that they are a European asset to be valued in global competition. Consideration was given to their technological dimension and added value in terms of the creation and dissemination of goods and services with a high cultural, artistic or entertainment content. Europe drew attention to the innovation and creative renewal that they embodied, the specific nature of demand and the behaviour of audiences which were difficult to anticipate. The particularity of a sector marked by the non-systematisation of salaried employment as a means of remunerating work and the predominance of micro-enterprises, self-employed workers and auto-entrepreneurs was also highlighted. The news of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy and particularly on the creative industries has dramatic effects, but it's also a great accelerator for the intrusion of digital technology in the practices of creation, production and dissemination of works. It changes the relationship with the public, and provides the creative industries, which include graphic design and comics, with strong challenges for maintaining or relaunching their activity. New technologies have radically transformed Culture and its means of access, cultural policies and practices, as well as intangible heritage. The crisis of this sector in the face of the coronavirus has precipitated the necessary adaptation of its actors. In the field of comics, uses and services are experiencing a notable acceleration. Publishers and booksellers are currently boosting their digital reading platforms, strengthening links with libraries and media libraries, where the number of simultaneous loans is exploding. Hundreds of titles are distributed free of charge. Bookshops are trying to organize themselves against Amazon and other GAFA. What will happen to the authors tomorrow? How will they live, especially in the comic book sector? Their future is no longer limited to the graphic arts, but more broadly to the creative industries, bridges being created between practices and works to access new audiences, new modes of creation and distribution. It was necessary to train future professionals, and today this is an imperative and an urgency. Our project aims to ensure that students in formal higher education and young professionals, in self-training or via tutos and MOOCs, can take hold of technological solutions that prepare them for these synergies. Thus our project brings together 4 countries (France-Italy-Spain-Turkey) via a group of teachers, professionals and students to produce educational material developed in peer-to-peer, and test it on a sample of art students (comics or digital arts) in order to give them the means to master new creative solutions for their own graphic designs and comics and also to explore the fields of co-creation of works mobilizing comics in relation to animated images, video games, interactive books. This pedagogical material and the open source solution that will be used aim to develop the students' skills in 2 directions: 1) within the framework of collaborative works (interactions between scriptwriters-illustrators and digital production teams) in the light of new digital creation tools 2) in (inter)comprehension of the project languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish), and in specialised English. Our challenges: the acquisition of skills and employability, open and innovative practices in the digital age, more dynamic access of women authors to the comic book market. The position of female comic book creators also concerns us and we wish to develop a strong focus on this subject in our project. The levers that will be used to help young women are: a meeting with the Collective of female comic creators against sexism in France or abroad, Masterclasses during the Festival for the transmission, etc. The mobility of the teachers and professionals who will develop the teaching material, and that of the students who will test it, will be organised in each of the partner countries and backed, in three countries, by a festival to encourage meetings with authors and the professional integration of students: Rencontres du 9e art (France/Aix-en-Provence)/Comicon (Italy/Naples)/Dumlupinar Comics Festival (Turkey/Kutahya).
Our main objective was to enhance students' skills by tackling the issue of digital tools for comics and cooperation, in a European and multilingual context, by stimulating the creation of collaborative works. We offered students the chance to play an active role in their professional development, by providing them with an exciting human and creative experience based on the discovery and appropriation of new writing styles in comics, and by encouraging them to think about their practice on the scale of international creative cooperation. The aim was also to raise awareness of cultural differences, so as to be able to develop collective projects, work with others, establish healthy communication with them and facilitate exchanges, in the image of Europe, which coagulates a mosaic of languages and cultures around shared democratic and civic principles, without erasing local cultures.
As part of a collaborative process, comics and new creative practices mobilize a wide range of expertise: graphic design, animation, production, translation, etc. They also call into question digital literacy and the economy of the book and creative industries. Tomorrow's comics creators are largely today's authors, whose profession is being transformed by the addition of complementary skills. Digital technology is changing the way they work: by bringing the profession closer to other forms of production (cinema/video games/applications) that target comparable audiences, it is opening up innovative creative avenues for young professionals. It also provides them with transnational distribution and economic development prospects. With new processes, it offers everyone, regardless of social, economic, political or cultural conditions, the opportunity to express their talents, skills and life plans. This is one of the promises of the emancipating potential of digital technology. Our project aimed to align these needs with resources for intercomprehension in collective, multilingual creation processes, and through the apprehension of digital tools for teleworking and co-creation, but also to fill a gap in intercomprehension training.