busy
wbm, is organizing a graphic anthology. I sent in some poetry, thinking it might be adapted to that format -- and it worked. He took "The Engineer in His Cups" and rendered that into three hilarious pages of wacky, somewhat inebriated science fiction comic. The body language is just wonderful, the way the characters use their hands to shape the story.But it's more than just fun; it's food for thought. The original poem was almost all dialog, with just a few bits of framing and other description that's now rendered visually. It isn't a poem anymore, per se, but the poem is still in there. The cadence and shaping of free verse remains, hidden, within the frame of poem-text-become-comic-script. Somehow those visuals were available for an artist to tap, and they're quite close to my original conceptualization, allowing room for individual interpretation -- some of the renderings are things I'd never have thought of -- but the interaction between writer and artist is also there, between the lines.
I've long said that the one form of writing I don't do is script. I tried it a few times and hated it. But this was cool. I always love seeing my work illustrated. Somehow, though, this is different. I think it's because in graphic format, the art carries half the storytelling weight and the text carries the other half. It has me thinking, maybe I could do this again. So now I'm kind of keeping my eye out for little projects on the script side. I haven't written much that's heavy enough on dialog and light enough on description that it might translate over, but there's some. And who knows, maybe sometime I'll try writing straight-up script.
You never know what will turn out not to be impossible after all.
"The Engineer In His Cups"?
August 23 2008, 15:36:44 UTC 12 years ago
Re: "The Engineer In His Cups"?
August 23 2008, 16:07:40 UTC 12 years ago
August 23 2008, 16:22:02 UTC 12 years ago