Before I wanted to illustrate stories, even when knowing I couldn’t write them I started plotting my stories from a young age. Even taking some creative writing classes and always told my imagination has been one of my strongest skills.
What I’ve lacked is ways to tell these stories, even with some form of structure which naturally takes shape I found was still lacking.
This research task ask of me to start to deconstruct a narrative formation for the purpose of learning how to build drama, tension and interest within a story Arc.
Breaking stories down into 8 parts.
(from the course file information)
I wanted to study a different story arc to build upon my skill set for this task.
So Swan Lake
It makes sense for me to use Swan Lake as a way to break down Story Structures as it seem swans/peacocks/trees are a recurring/revising theme throughout this unit.
First I created a list of breaking down the story into key parts.
1. Prince’s birthday / has to get married / wood hunting with buddies
2. Meets Odette / hears her story / falls in love
3. Sorcerer stops them / quest to meet her again / dance on lake
4. Fall to meet bride / Odile /
5. purposes to Odile thinking Odette / Odette see
6. Odette flees / Prince chases to explain
7. Fight / and jump in lake / drown to be together
8. Other swans force sorcerer in lake / Odette & prince rise to heaven together.
Then from this I created a quick illustrated “story board” for each of these key moments within swan lake.
This was created in ink, there are some panels I would likely move around, change to make the story more clear.
Like with storyboards this is a task I can keep doing myself to improve my skills and get better at building my own story structures.
Emclemmie OCA Sketchbooks 