Welcome back, my fellow creatives! As promised, my daughter Blondie is here with a guest post. After a summer of creative exploration, she’s ready to share her own insights and inspirations about her art and how it influences her own storytelling.

~*~

Drawing and coming up with stories are some of my favorite things to do in my free time. There’s nothing more entertaining than imagining my little cast of characters being up to their shenanigans, and then drawing them in various funny expressions. So my mother asked me: How does your art inspire your stories? (and vice versa?) And I thought to myself: What a good question. I do suppose I shall throw in my two cents on the matter, as I am somewhat knowledgeable on the subject.

Firstly, how does art inspire storytelling? Well, a part of it involves character design. I’ll spare you from a very long winded rant about character design and its different properties, as I have watched waaaaaaay too many videos on the subject and the information is just hanging out in my brain…

…but I’ll give you the important bits. Character design itself can tell a story. Like, let’s say I have my character Cyclone.

You look at his coveralls and workboots and infer that he might be some sort of mechanic. You also notice that he has a robot eye and arm, and conclude that he is a cyborg. A character design can also show bits of their personality as well, like how you see a glimpse of an AC DC shirt, and infer that he’s a fan of rock music. Or even see the pose he’s in and conclude he’s a pretty nonchalant and chill guy. All of these are pretty true about him, and just from the clothes a character wears or different visible traits you can guess a lot about them. But with this you also have room for questions: What kind of mechanic is he? How did he become a cyborg in the first place? What other stuff does he like or dislike? What kind of person really is he? You can provide the answers to these questions in your story, and explain and show how these physical traits relate to the character in writing.

There is another way that a good clear character design can help with your writing. If you have a solid reference on what your character looks like, you can more accurately describe them in the actual story. Sometimes when you only have a mental image of your character, the details can shift in your brain and the descriptions could be inconsistent. But with that drawing you can always make sure your description is on point.

Now, how does writing stories inspire art? Well, there is definitely one example that I personally do all the time. I know how the story plays out, and what kind of events will happen to certain characters, but there’s a slight problem. It’s all in my head. Wouldn’t it be cool to actually see people do the stuff you always think about? I probably sound pretty vague right now, so I’ll give a few examples of my own little guys doing things. Now my little gang of goofy goobers definitely have endless amounts of fun interactions between them. So what I do is draw little comic-esque doodles of them messing around, mainly for my own entertainment, but also to actually see them bein’ silly. Like my character Hurricane stealing Cyclone’s sandwich when he looks away for less than a second, or my two characters Gila and Manatee bein’ all cute cuz they’re married and all.

Little doodles like these help flesh out their personalities more and get my ideas on paper. I can do this in writing, but I think actually seeing each person’s reaction to their situation is a lot more fun to me.

A fun thing to do that goes along with this is finding a reference, maybe a screenshot from your favorite show or movies, or a pose you found online, whatever works, and drawing your characters into that situation. I mainly have been using funny screenshots from the show Cowboy Bebop or pictures I took of panels from the Fullmetal Alchemist manga to do this. (Can you tell I like anime? Lol)

They both have many expressions and poses I really like, so I insert my characters into certain ones I think fit them as a fun little exercise that builds onto their personalities. It’s just really entertaining to see them make funny faces or reacting to something in their own goofy ways.

Anyways, that’s pretty much all I have to say! Hope this made you think a bit about the connection between art and storytelling, or you found my ramblings entertaining, I dunno. (If you wanna know more about my lil guys, or see more drawings of them, I’m always keen to rant about them and their misadventures >:3) See y’all later!

Thank you, Kiddo! x It’s always cool seeing your art throughout the years. Remember your turkeys from the future? lol

What’s next, you may ask? Well, we’ve got a final foray to a sinister summer camp, a resource spotlight, a publishing conundrum, a podcast, and more. Stay tuned!

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!