Application to "WHAAM!" residency

I recently spent quite a bit of time working on a residency proposal for a comic book residency opportunity. Outside the pay of £3,000 plus expenses for a 3 week job, applying was a good experience in itself. Being a very new art practitioner, I had never done this type of application, and it has been over 5 years since the last comic book competition I participated in. So this was quite a lot of work, and I was sure I wouldn't get a place, although I gave my application 100% of my capacities. I think it's not a bad application for a first try.

I did pass the textual 350 word limited written proposition onto a few other eyes and tried to get as much feedback as possible. I worked the most on this part of the proposition, refining every word and developing the 350 words to the full literary capacity my underdeveloped writing skills.

The main trouble of this proposition was only 3 images could be submitted with the proposition. I constructed my proposition around comic book design, mainly applied to digital comics. Therefore I had to submit artwork that reflected the ideas in the textual proposition. 3 was a horrible number, I could've done 2 or 4 seeing as I mainly work in 2 styles. So "which style should I choose for the 3rd piece of art?" was my main trouble. I decided for another digital comic done on computer because it probably fitted slightly better into the whole proposition.

After one email saying they were reviewing my proposition, and a second one saying they had quite a lot of proposals to go through, I finally got one rejecting my proposition.

Please find the proposition here:

For this firstsite residency I would like to consider comic book design and its essential role in comic book narration. My intention is to bring to the residency opportunity various methods of comic book designs and how they can enhance story-telling and demonstrate that design is an integral part for effective comic book narration. Within the scope of "comic book design" I am looking forward to the opportunity to be able to work with various artists and authors to draw more attention towards grids, page layout, functionality, and overall harmony between text, images and story-telling.
The scope of activity including design would involve considering the overlooked importance of design in comic books, and webcomics. This would involve workshops in which the public could tell different stories and layout stories in various ways by using cut out speech and thought bubbles and combining with comic book artwork in order to create various layouts, grids and designs to tell different stories or to explore the many possibilities of comic book design and its impact on narration. In order to do this I also have specific authors I would like to view the project alongside the work of artists such as Chris Ware, Hannah Berry, D'Israeli, Harvey Pekar as well as French comics and comic book authors such as Enki Bilal and Winshluss, and refer to webcomics such as Cyanide & Happiness, XKCD, and White Ninja to illustrate online web design.
On a more specific note, I would like to bring forward the importance of design in webcomics, the new era of self-published comics. Webcomics have allowed the birth of comics based solely on simple design, simple layouts, simple story-telling and simple artwork; but in order for these webcomics to be effective comic book medium, they need to emphasise on design and story-telling, to compensate for amateur artwork. Thus webcomic artwork does not push forward excellent artwork but charm, and intuitive and logical design. Looking at this new era of digital and computerised comics would allow analysis and evaluation of the strict impact of sole design and simplicity on the comic book world.

And here are the 3 images that went with the proposal:

This comics is very reflective... but as the following one illustrates, that is what I do... Yes. No secret, I write about what happens to me, and by submitting this I thought I put my cards on the table.