Find Your Voice Week Four

This week's Find Your Voice lesson was entitled: "What's your storytelling style?" and it touched on lots of important storytelling topics such as character, theme, setting... etc. After doing my homework (filling out the worksheets), I decided to do the crafting based prompt once again. This was the prompt: "Pick out two different storytelling styles, and tell the same story using different styles. Make sure to use styles that push you out of your comfort zone."

Lately I've been making a lot of black and white comic strips. I love creating these little cartoons, and I've been toying with the idea of creating a flip-book style hand drawn movie. It seemed too hard, though, so I hadn't tried it yet. Well, this prompt just shouted "TRY YOUR MOVIE!", so I did. I chose a story that came from a dream I had about growing plants that produce rabbits instead of flowers. I'm calling this epic (kind of) tale Rabbit Bloom. View it for yourself below:

I was surprised to discover that creating my entire cartoon movie took only about 2.5 hours. I like the finished product, it's short and sweet, but it would have been even more great if I'd added color and more detail. However, my movie is only about 10 seconds long. I can only imagine what it would be like to A) draw a 10 minute (or longer) story B) add color C) include a detailed background. Yikes! I have some serious appreciation for any old-skool cartoonists that made their creations by hand, this takes time!


I chose to create a comic strip for the second storytelling method. I used color for the first time ever (I'm always afraid coloring my comics will ruin them, but I like it in this one.) I also added a new character, thus causing this story to be narrated differently. In my movie, the viewer is simply watching from the outside, but in my comic strip we get to witness the rabbit bloom through the eyes of this witty little lady bug. I definitely like the addition of this six-legged narrator.

I like both methods for storytelling, however, the movie certainly took more time than the comic strip. There are some stories that need motion to be told visually, others will do just fine in a comic strip. I'll have to carefully consider my options before selecting a storytelling method in the future - especially now that I have a new skill set to utilize!

If you're excited about this project - you can still join Find Your Voice and start telling some stories of your own. Check it out:

Find Your Voice Week One

One of my never ending goals is to continually challenge myself creatively so that the things I create will forever be evolving - whether it's a new line of items for Tangents, a fresh recipe for supper or a new idea for a comic for my blog. So, to encourage my creative spirit this summer, I've joined a free online storytelling seminar called Find Your Voice (Check it out HERE.)

The first week of the seminar involved a worksheet with a variety of questions about storytelling and what it means to us as individuals. I finished my written "homework" and decided to expand upon one of the questions for my journal. I was especially interested in exploring what my favorite stories are and who my favorite storytellers are. A lot of my favorite storytellers are musical artists (Paul Simon, Colin Meloy, Gordon Lightfoot, plus thousands more.) I love how they can take a minimal amount of words and make them work to create an image in your head. So, I used my minimal paper-crafting skills to make a journal entry with some of my favorite lyrics to remind me of how I want to practice writing.

My 'journal' for the workshop.

Some writing inspiration - I'm obviously not a paper-crafting genius, but I try my best.