To understand better how things can be expressed in visual commuication and art, it is necessary to analyse others' work and how they have communicated / expressed their perspective on things. Entire catalogues of options can be developed for specific narrative contexts in this way. This is what theory is good at, obviously. To understand actual production and communicative limitations better, it has become necessary for me (at least) to enhance my comics- and character design-research by doing and learning from producing.

With focus on comics and pictorial storytelling, all kinds of combinations of text and image, mostly picture stories and comics, allow me to understand better why a specific way of expression might have been preferred, what effects are given on the textual and on the pictorial plane. Also, how page formats and style choices in drawing, writing, colouring, etc. do influence the actual production process and final product.

In regards to character design, my work in pupperty has added considerable insights, too, as the building materials do influence the production of puppets. Also, the design and execution of their respective controls do influence the expression of character, moods, contexts, of course. Even pop-cultural and other references can sneak in that are then hard to limit in their effects on the audience - storytelling is as always not dividable fully from character design.

As I have come quite far in my research by including practical production in my reflections on media productions, I consider this to be artistic research, but then the term is used differently by different people. This is my take:

If a professional visual artist or graphic designer produces material that is aimed for visual expression of some message, it can be a run-of-the-mill production that adds to the experienced routines of the producer but adds no new knowledge or understanding. A reflective practicioner (see Donald Schön 1983 for details) can easily design and produce visual communications and even visual art without challenging her/his/their routines and without expanding abilities. What is needed or at what point does the reflective practicioner do "artistic research"? Is it in the process of search and experiment that is integrated in a production that tries to expand on given routines? Or is it rather in the communication about the processes and experimental / researching aspects in the production or does it even depend on communicating results of some specific research?

Sometimes, we need well-established routines in media production to accommodate for highly experimental work on specific aspects within this production. Some topic can be quite challenging itself, it might be better communicated in a very established form: established visual narrative routines are used to express a story / negotiate a topic far from the everyday experience of the intended audience. But working on a specific visual expression demands for experiments that deviate from or avoid narrative routines outright. Etc. etc. Some things need to be done to know if they work or not - theoretical reflection over how their visual qualities work on the page remain theoretical until they are applied and tested, then.

Any systematic learning, be it in an apprenticeship or in whatever comparable educational development of knowledge and abilities, grows a repertoire of routines for doing the work, starting with easy assignments that in the course of advancing abilities become more complex or specialised. After having sucessfully finished a specific education (e.g. an apprenticeship), continuous work asks for and allows to grow more knowledge and abilities, as new tools and materials, new contexts are encountered. At what moments in these developments a person can reflect on their routines and methods and in response develop new different approaches, depends on contexts and individual abilities. A craftsperson, designer, artisan, or artist who sets her/him/themselves new challenges, grows their toolbox and repertoire for future work, obviously. This development can stall, but it does not have to.