Religious Debate

A man stands at the door of another man's house having just knocked. The man inside has the door opened a crack, saying - "You can come in, but only if you promise not to talk about church."
He obliges and enters. They sit silently in the living room in front of the fire place (the story is told symbolically with no words) and once a certain message has been conveyed, the man visiting stands up and says, "All right, see you later then!" and quickly leaves.

And so it begins...

Visual Remix

About four years ago, I started toying with the idea of creating a "visual remix" - a sequential visual representation of a song, kind of like a music video in graphic novel form. I know an artist who did a cool song-as-comic long time ago, but I want mine to be a bit more free-form. Abstract elements and textures will represent patterns and sounds of the music, in addition to the characters carrying the story. I wanted to do it with a Depeche Mode song, but never got around to it.

I was at a concert last month, where an artist from Denmark, Oh Land, opened. I'd been hearing some buzz around them from friends who'd been following the headliner - the buzz was warranted! Her music is a visual feast! An eclectic blend of synth electronica and R&B-inspired beats and a silky almost jazz-style vocal.. delicious.

I love fairy tales, and have been mulling on a Red Riding Hood-inspired story called "La Luna" for years. It's a dark love story with dysfunctional royalty, legends gone awry and three little pig-witches. At the concert, one of Oh Land's songs struck me like a two-by-four: it could be the ending theme if this story were animated. It's a haunting but magical sounding tune called "Wolf & I." For YARNS, I'm thinking I'll create a "visual remix" of this song using the characters from this story.

Watch/listen to the song:

Oh Land- Wolf & I (Live) from Oh Land Music on Vimeo.

The Way of Animal Powers!

Hey all, this is installment one of the process toward my contribution for the YARNS book and beyond. For awhile now I've been baking this idea of a world where these gifted, shaman-like people unite their souls with a twin animal spirit giving them amazing gifts and powers related to their twin beast. Think strongly Hayao Miyazaki inspired (particularly Princess Mononoke) with a dash of Naruto. I have a bit of a mini-series in mind that I'll continue as a web comic, so one challenge with my YARNS contribution will be finding a logical "to be continued…" point at the end.

So far the story stars the young Honovi, a carpenter's apprentice and his work dog Noku. He and Noku are gathering wood in the forest for his master when Noku spots a strange apparition that he can't help but chase after. Honovi follows in hot pursuit and when he catches up he finds that he's no longer in his forest and Noku's getting a belly rub from a beautiful forest spirit named Sylvia.

I'll leave it there for now as I have have many more pieces to figure out and still need to develop the characters to give them a voice. I'm feeling pretty stoked about my story and really looking forward to hearing what the rest of you have in mind! Until then, excelsior! Oh wait, that line's taken.

- Mike A.

3-2-1 …

… and lift off. This post marks the beginning of the new comic venture, Yarns, due out in Fall 2011. Artists: feel free to post liberally and often. Everyone else: please excuse our dust, this is a work in progress, so the masthead and look of the blog will definitely evolve as the months progress.