I'm more of a dog person and other tales of horror

• Main Author: Yap, Denise Nicole Hui En
• Other Authors: Benjamin Alexander Slater
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Drawing, design and illustration
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/74350
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

I’m More of a Dog Person and Other Tales of Horror is a graphic novel that tells three short narratives set in a common Singaporean urban space - a single floor of a Housing Development and Development Board (HDB) block. It follows a mode of telling a multiplicity of stories located within urban spaces by exploring what goes on behind different doors. The starting point for these acts of story telling is observing strangers around Singapore and wondering about their secret lives. What do these people desire, and how do they negotiate these desires with what others demand of them? These struggles range across different generations and are translated into graphic tales that have grotesque or fantastical elements. Although there is a long history of supernatural fables and myths and stories in local culture, contemporary narratives in Singapore (literature, TV and film) tend towards naturalism and realism. Countering this, I’m More of a Dog Person and Other Tales of Horror is fascinated with the supernatural and the grotesque as a way of defamiliarising the mundane and everyday in Singapore. In exploring what goes on behind multiple doors, I’m More of a Dog Person and Other Tales of Horror also follow a mode of telling a multiplicity of stories about urban spaces. The production process involves a combination of real life references right from Singapore’s HDB blocks, my own imagination, and a variety of art and comic influences to build a visual vocabulary that can convey issues of family, identity and the brutality of humans. This project targets Singaporeans who are familiar with this mundane setting, who live in this similar urban space (HDB block) and who are familiar with these struggles. Hopefully, these stories will inspire imagination into these people reading them.