Hi everyone. I just received this nice email from
Carl Potts who, as you'll see, is now teaching visual storytelling techniques at the State University of New York as well as other academies. He regularly updates his own blog on the subject as well.
Thank you Carl.
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"Hello Marcos,
Just read your book and was suitably impressed!
I occasionally give a presentation on the principles and techniques of sequential visual storytelling for comics and storyboards at SVA, Parsons/The New School and R/GA. In the spring I'll be teaching classes on creating comics at SUNY, Purchase and will highly recommend your book to my students.
I'm very glad that you are educating visual storytellers about maintaining action flow continuity ("Staying on the Same Side of the Line"). This has become a lost concept to many of today's comics and film storytellers. Part of the reason is that many of these creators were raised on music videos created by directors who either didn't care about the "Staying on the Same Side..." concept or were only interested in the energy and visual splash they were making. Some of those directors went on to feature films and continued to ignore action flow continuity.
Now, years of playing in 360 degree video game environments have much of the younger market used to not having a consistent action flow direction. I still feel strongly that, unless there is a specific storytelling reason to violate the "Staying on the Same Side..." concept, visual storytellers should keep the action flow continuity consistent. Your book provides clear examples and reasoning to help me drive that concept home to my students.
In case you're interested, I've written about this and some related subjects on my blog, General Eclectic:
http://generaleclectic123.blogspot.com/2008/08/using-map-orientation.htmlhttp://generaleclectic123.blogspot.com/2008/09/frame-formats-and-visual-storytelling.htmlThanks for producing such a fine book!
Carl Potts"
