Abstract:

This paper presents how a comic book is developed, as part of a project on women's entrepreneurship. The purpose of the comic book is to illustrate women of any age and background on basic concepts they should consider if they want to create their own company. An independent artist was hired to design and develop the comic. Using different illustrations, she developed the material in the comic format, while the authors helped her with the writing of the script and the storyboard. Her next steps were to investigate and write the material, develop the script and storyboard, design and develop the comic (drawing, inking, labelling, etc.). For us, it took about 4 months to develop the comic.

Four female characters are created to be the main characters of the comic, each with a different age and different professional and educational profiles (from the four partner countries involved in the project i.e. Spain, Belgium, France and Germany).

Afterwards, we develop a story, and decide what basic concepts to introduce as technical cards in the comic. The idea is to easily and pleasantly introduce the concepts of management (marketing, finance, human resources, ...) to women who want to become entrepreneurs. At first, creating the comic may seem very simple, but it not only requires a good illustrator, but also a good technical content and a script of the story told by the characters. As a matter of fact, this is the Women Entrepreneurs in Action (WE'RE IN!) project, financed by the European Commission as part of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training program. This project began in 09/2019 and will conclude in 03/2022.

The priorities of this project are to raise women's awareness on business creation and to develop entrepreneurial skills through three basic lines of work:
1) Supporting individuals to acquire and develop basic skills and key competences
2) Improving access to training and qualifying for all and
3) ensuring open education and innovative practices in the digital age.

Keywords:

Comic book, women, entrepreneurship, business creation.