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Dear furry artists: Tell me a story
15 years ago
General
... but if it starts out with "this one time, at band camp" I'm going to kick you in the goobs.
Seriously, though, I like stories. I quite enjoy reading stories, but I'm not looking for that today. Instead, I want a visual story.
I've been taking an Art History course this year, and one of the works we discussed was the Bayeaux Tapestry. The thing is pretty crazy, it's something like 225 feet long, telling the story of the Norman conquest of England around 1066CE.
Anyway, it reminded me of an artistic form that isn't seen much these days, which is a narrative form without necessarily being sequential (like a comic book divided into panes). Just one big, continuous scene scrolling smoothly through time from left to right.
I know there's not a lot of popufur artists who watch me here and will see this, but if you are one of the lucky few, how about taking up the challenge? Stretch that photoshop canvas to OVER NINE THOUSAND pixels wide and go to town. Draw a 4 season progression, draw the birth, life and death of a character, draw a turbulent romance playing out from first glance to last fight. Give that scroll bar at the bottom of my browser window a workout! Or heck, turn things around and make a continuous column of story starting up in the sky and ending down at the ground. Be creative!
The story doesn't even have to be stretched out over time, per se. You could also stretch it out over the people in the image. For example, imagine a scene where a pod of air-orcas are swimming through the air just above a city street. At one edge of the picture everyone's excited to see them arrive, in the middle others might be struck with awe as they gently glide overhead, maybe a kid holds up a lollipop to offer to one of them, and at the other end they'd be waving their tearful goodbyes as the last of the pod passes by.
No words, no frames, no arrows. Just a story laid out in one big picture.
Challenge yourself!
Seriously, though, I like stories. I quite enjoy reading stories, but I'm not looking for that today. Instead, I want a visual story.
I've been taking an Art History course this year, and one of the works we discussed was the Bayeaux Tapestry. The thing is pretty crazy, it's something like 225 feet long, telling the story of the Norman conquest of England around 1066CE.
Anyway, it reminded me of an artistic form that isn't seen much these days, which is a narrative form without necessarily being sequential (like a comic book divided into panes). Just one big, continuous scene scrolling smoothly through time from left to right.
I know there's not a lot of popufur artists who watch me here and will see this, but if you are one of the lucky few, how about taking up the challenge? Stretch that photoshop canvas to OVER NINE THOUSAND pixels wide and go to town. Draw a 4 season progression, draw the birth, life and death of a character, draw a turbulent romance playing out from first glance to last fight. Give that scroll bar at the bottom of my browser window a workout! Or heck, turn things around and make a continuous column of story starting up in the sky and ending down at the ground. Be creative!
The story doesn't even have to be stretched out over time, per se. You could also stretch it out over the people in the image. For example, imagine a scene where a pod of air-orcas are swimming through the air just above a city street. At one edge of the picture everyone's excited to see them arrive, in the middle others might be struck with awe as they gently glide overhead, maybe a kid holds up a lollipop to offer to one of them, and at the other end they'd be waving their tearful goodbyes as the last of the pod passes by.
No words, no frames, no arrows. Just a story laid out in one big picture.
Challenge yourself!
The thing about art is expression of self. The technical aspect is something that tends to cloud those that seek "more" from art, instead of thinking along the lines of adding actual depth to art through expression. It's not a rare thing, but it's strangely more rare among those that go after simply learning how to be a better artist instead of remembering that art can be a form of expressing one's self
I wouldn't wanna see a story about stuff that the artist is disconnected from; if there's a stpry to tell, I'd love to see one that has a part of the artist's genuine touch in it. Tends to make stuff a bit more interesting, since they'd be entitled to try and make it the best story that they can tell, yanno?
If anybody takes up this exercise, it'd be awesome, but here's hoping that they're gonna tell a story from the heart, even if it's just an exercise
That said, even just doing something generic can be a good way to study a new form or technique, so that it can later be applied to something more personal and original.
I'm just so bored seeing picture after picture after picture of "here's a character, standing around, possibly in front of some meaningless, unrelated background".
I think it's just hard for some people to get something like that going, or they feel like they don't have time. I've seen a few people do things, the most prominent so far has been Rukis and Blotch, outside of countless writers on the site
Comics are harrrrd hahaha
The ratio seems to be a bit better in the kemono community, though it could just be that I'm not seeing the bulk of boring art; that only the interesting stuff makes it onto my radar. It does however seem to be almost uniquely japanese to draw pictures where the scene itself is the subject and the characters serve to bring that scene to life, rather than the picture being about the characters, where the scene (if it's present at all) is only used as a distant backdrop.