Designing Hope Amidst Disasters
Or, Why We Started NaoBun Project and Won’t Ever Quit
“You’re a researcher? What university are you from?” people would ask me.
“I make comics,” I would answer with a smile.
It’s great to be making comics. For me, especially, as one who often mingles with crews not usually associated with comic book crowds — researchers, academics, activists, journalists, and writers. When they ask me what I do, and I tell them, I always get that amused smile. It’s priceless.
You see, for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to make comics. After graduating from high school, though, I became disillusioned by what it takes to become a professional in the world of serialized comic books and graphic novels. I was not ready for that kind of production capacity, and so I took a detour into social and critical theory instead.
I don’t mourn this, of course — in fact, diving deep into liberal arts gave me so much ammunition for ideas and a brand of critical thinking that has somewhat become a staple of my works, and I am immensely thankful for that.
I never gave up on comics — they remained both a pastime and freelance profession in my university years. But they were nothing more than just that — no big dreams of hit series or groundbreaking graphic novels. Of course, this changed last year when I quit my job to write comics. But even then, the idea of making a comic book studio seemed far away.
And then, I joined the HANDs! Project fellowship. The impact was profound.
On Surviving and Storytelling
From September 2015 to March 2016, The Japan Foundation took me and 24 other fellows around Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Japan, to visit sites struck by disasters and learn first-hand from communities and survivors. Tales of courage and despair, resilience and regrets, and everything in between, filled our days.
We were also taught design skills, and, in the span of a few days, were tasked with making games and events for the local community.
What took me by surprise, then, was a realization of the obvious: How profoundly stories matter.
Just some simple facts:
- Communities with nursery rhymes that teach children of the dangers of tsunami had a much higher number of survivors in the 2004 tragedy than those that do not.
- Survivor and refugee camps with professional volunteers whose job it is to tell stories and play games with the children in shelters fared much better in terms of psychological health and trauma healing — and the willingness to go back to schools afterwards — than those without.
- Shelters that employ volunteers with a sufficiently critical mindset to take the time and consciously teach tolerance, counter-racism, and counter-sexism (yes, these are still very strong, if not stronger, in times of disaster) while doing their aid work foster better social coherence than those which don’t.
I don’t have the exact numbers for these, but you see what I mean.
For the first time, I realized that what I have been doing so far, and what I have been wanting to do, can converge into something that has the potential to transform lives and save others.
For someone who has spent the majority of his career being derided for having his head too high in the clouds and his hands too busy with child’s play, this was an important moment.
I want to keep doing what I do — no, I have to keep doing it. And I have to keep doing it better. There is just no other choice.
The Birth of Bunny & Nao
So I decided that I would make a comic book series, and decided that it would need puzzles and games to make it more engaging. I decided I would very much need the help of a decent product designer, and so I called in this lady, who has since become one of my favorite people in the world:
It so happened that Naomi Saddhadhika and I share so much of the same vision for the world, and the things that we ought to do for it. So, naturally, as when you find someone who sees the world almost exactly the way you do, things started rolling — and fast. Let’s make ourselves cartoon alteregos! Let’s have them do this, and design it like that! Let’s make an official firm for legal power! Let’s go go go!
We received grants, invested money, accepted pro-bono services, negotiated with publishers, and everything else — all within the span of a few months. It’s been a whirlwind ride, the intensity of which I can’t possibly do justice to here, so I’ll just leave that for another time.
In any case, these girls we born — and I love them to bits:
And, From There, NaoBun Project Grows…
We didn’t stop there. We noticed how much people support the work that we are doing, and want to take part. The Japan Foundation founded our launch expo in Manila (which I will talk about some other time!), in which we worked with Grace Wiguna, Yustina Antonio, and Dwinanda Edo to make merchandise.
We are now building a website that will accept submissions, and have worked with other comic book artists (Dwinanda Edo and Jihan Madihah) and publishers to develop a couple more titles.
And thus Bunny and Nao move forward in their cheeky, mischievous agenda for social transformation, aided by a fashion academy amateur sleuth and four young elementary schoolgirls who make robots for kicks.
And that’s where we are right now — on the precipice beyond which so many exciting things are bound to happen.
“So you are concerned about social transformation, as well? Are you a writer? Are you a researcher?” people would ask me.
“I make comics,” I would answer, with pride and excitement I can barely contain.
The NaoBun Project is a Jakarta-based comic book studio, storytelling consultancy, and artists development initiative focused on social transformation. If you’re interested in collaborating with them, or just saying hello, shoot an e-mail over to hello@naobunproject.id.
Follow their exploits here on this Medium blog or sign up for their mailing list below, or on their website at http://naobunproject.id/. Don’t forget to ♥ this article if you think more people should read it!
