Story Through Sketches

Initially I wanted to create a film with minimal character dialogue – similar to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Seeing as how my quarter three benchmark was an analytical essay focusing on Kubrick's works, I decided I wanted to do something different and step outside of my creative comfort zone. Recently I've developed an appreciation for George Condo's paintings (You can check out some of his work here, here, and here). Through his works I have come to appreciate paintings and illustrations as mediums to tell stories. What I wanted to with this project was tell a story simply through illustration.

I knew facades would be a focus of my story, but I was unsure of what story to tell. I decided that instead of creating a story to illustrate, I would create my story by illustrating. 

I began my story by creating a few rough sketches. First I drew a man who had an eye encompassed in a rectangle. Then a blank bottle. Finally I drew a man of utter absurdity. In these sketches I saw three themes: facades, dependence, and psychopathy. I decided that these themes would be the timeline of my story – beginning with facades, and ending with psychopathy. From there I took my rough sketches and began to give them character.

The man with the eye encompassed in a rectangle became a man of two faces in a tuxedo; the blank bottle became a bottle of bourbon. I didn't realize it at first, but I was taking pieces from Stephen King's The Shining – a film Kubrick directed, and giving it my own twist. 

I really enjoyed this project as it allowed me to push my creative comfort zones. If I were to do this project in the future, I would do a few things a bit differently. I would choose to tell a story through more sketches and color. I feel that I limited my story's potential by sticking to only three sketches – though I believe that if I had created more the quality may have suffered. In the future I would also chose to create my story before illustrating.

My sketches can be found here. My story sketches are Final_Image_1, Final_Image_2, and Final_Image_3, while my rough drafts are labeled "Rough_Draft_x" Enjoy!