Rewrite, Redraw, Repeat (2 of 3)

Any story can be told a 1,000 different ways

This next round of “my little backyard” stories have grown from the needs of various workshops and classes and the demands of certain projects.

Just gonna jump right in. If you want remind yourself of what the exercise was, just pop back to the previous post.

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Example 06: Another Person

Thoughts:

This example is about leading the reader to a secondary focus, in this case a second character. I often find with student work that characters sort of pop in and out of existence and I don’t know where they are in space or in relation to one another. Describing one character and environment first, and then using those elements to establish where the next character is helps keep the reader oriented.

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Example 07: Another Style

Thoughts:

This one is about orienting the reader as a new style is established. Rather than simply shifting styles, the sequence leads us in, establishing that this new content is in the book. Once established, anything shown in that second style becomes content from the book and the comic can more fluidly jump back and forth between both styles.

Also… pretty proud of that last drawing. Parp!

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Example 08: Another Place

Thoughts:

Sometimes changing the location can really spice up a story. Here, the new location begins to feel like a commentary or visual metaphor, which I like. Adding an activity could be interesting too, like, in this case perhaps destroying the a ring of power or going to the toilet?

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Example 09: Fight!

Thoughts:

Look… when I run workshops for kids, they pretty much all want to make big ole fight scenes, so I’m leaning into it! And actually, at the last once I ran, a kid said that the monsters could be “the character’s worries”. This comic was my attempt to give kids permission to make the thing they had in their head while still allowing text and images to play together in an interesting way.

Dunno if I succeeded here, but I did get to use “butt” as a sound effect, which is obviously a win.

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Example 10: And Again

Thoughts:

Eventually, you’re going to get bored. Good! Getting bored means that you’ve run out of easy ideas and you’ve started to play. Embrace silliness! Try to entertain yourself! What’s the worst that could happen?

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Example 11: The worst that could happen.

Thoughts:

I really… don’t have thoughts on this. Probably time to move onto something new.

Kidding! Totally kidding!

I have more, and I’ll send them through next week.

xo
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