A quick sketch, 1 hour. No reference used, just off the top of my dome. Trying to practice that muscle memory 💪🏾
Time lapse included. If I really wanted to push it to completion I think it would be a solid 20+ hour endeavour right now.
NARRATIVE EMPATHY DEFICIT: How to Lose an Audience
A Thread 🧵 by “F”
One of the most fundamental mistakes, I see when I review or critique other people’s scripts, story boards, or story outlines is a lack of clarity.
This usually stems from what I call a “narrative empathy deficit.”
What the holy heck is “narrative empathy deficit”?
It’s when the writer has failed to put themselves in the audience’s shoes.
It’s a common mistake for novice, storytellers to forget the fact that the audience has not lived in your “head canon” 24-7 the way you have since first conceiving of the story.
Whether you’re talking about a script, outline, or storyboard, clarity is the foundation upon which your entire story is built, and if it is not strong, solid, and stable your audiences attention will crumble at the first cracks of a narrative empathy deficit.
Unless you have explicitly illustrated to your audience that your antagonist becomes enraged by the smell of brussels sprouts, because their tyrannical parent used them as a form of punishment when they were toddlers, they aren’t going to get the gag where he dangles the protagonist above a steaming hot bowl of brussels sprouts.
This forces your viewer to subconsciously pump the brakes in their mind and for a split second ask themselves, “wait… What am I missing?“
On a sidenote, I have confronted young artists, and writers about doing stuff like this before, and there response to me – because they don’t want to make changes – is usually something along the lines of, “I put that in there as foreshadowing!”
Unless or until you are a thoroughly experienced storyteller, I advise against attempting fancy devices like foreshadowing or symbolic punctuation because they almost always fall flat and almost always create speed bumps for the audience.
These speed bumps are story killers.
Your goal as a storyteller is to instantly take your audience hostage, and by the time the story is over, you want them to have a severe case of “story Stockholm syndrome.“
The moment your audience ceases to be fully immersed in your story, you run the risk of losing them forever.
You should assume that every single person who engages with your story knows absolutely nothing about what is going on… If you are writing something episodic, you should assume that every single person is coming in blind.
Constructing an effective story is, like so many other things, very similar to building a house… You start with blueprints, move to the foundation, move to scaffolding, etc., etc.
Novice writers and story artist have a tendency to spend way too much time fussing over which pattern on the curtains for the guest bedroom will go well with the “quails egg blue” wall paint than they do ensuring that their foundation will last more than a week.
(Continued in replies)
Dear artists...
If your clients give you references with heavy lighting or ambient lighting and you cant seem to get the right skin tone...
THROW FLESH CUBES AT THEM AND HAVE THEM PICK ONE.
I've been using these for years and I've never had anyone tell me I've gotten their skin tone wrong.
When in doubt skin cubes.
I have no idea if the artist who made these has an X but their username at the time these were posted to deviant art was Puppsicle.
Story of my life - you're not black enough for black people but not stupid enough to believe others won't see past you being black.
If you don't conform to the mainstream culture then you're a coon who needs to be taught how to 'act right'
Same is true for black Americans in general. If we don't act certain way, or if there is no drama-filled angst in our lives, we're either called lame, Oreo, fake or just flat out "Coon" or Uncle Tom. If we have an interest in anime or Japanese culture we immediately get categorized as hood-weebs or street-greeks. This is even more apparent for black men and boys. If they don't project the "gangster" or "hoodrat" image, they are immediately discarded as "not black enough".