Category: Books

Posted on

Friends and neighbours

I noticed that some of my favourite cartoons, anime, and children’s stories have a rather slowly developing storylines, without dramatic culminations. One example is Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbour Totoro.” I’ve always wondered how it was possible to tell such a compelling story without either beginning or ending, at least in the Western, Hollywood-nurtured sense. The audience is simply allowed to watch over the main characters’ shoulder at a few days of their lives. Of course, there are a several places, where the plot thickens (e.g. Mei gets lost, for example), but I feel that this is not the main point. Overall, the pace of the story is quite even.

My four-year-old daughter is also a fan of Totoro, and her make-believe games also prominently feature friends and neighbours of whoever she pretends to be at the moment.

Here is the latest episode of the Girl and the Egg story that I have been sketching out based on my daughter’s play.

“The Girl’s neighbour, the Baby Squirrel, came to visit and asked if he could play with the newborn Dinosaur Ella. The Baby Squirrel brought some flowers as a gift. The Girl put them in a glass with water.

Baby Ella was sleeping at the time. One-day-old babies sleep a lot, as the Girl and her friend Squirrel found out.”

Girl_and_egg_04-06-2016

Posted on

Twists of the storyline

At this point in my daughter’s make-believe game about the baby dinosaur, who hatched from an egg after a mandatory incubation period, multiple possibilities exist in the storyline. One day, we play a certain scenario, another day – a different one… By making this book of sketches, I feel that I am starting to shape the story, and not just the look of the characters, as my daughter is getting used to seeing a new episode every day. Here is the latest one:

“Mommy and Daddy Dinosaurs were very grateful to the Girl for taking care of the Egg and protecting it from the Cat. They were delighted to see their Baby Dinosaur. After much thinking about different names, they named her Ella.”

Girl_and_egg_o4-05-2016

Posted on

The devil in the details

My daughter is taking a progressively more active role in our collaborative making of the story of the Girl and the Egg. She specifies the colors of the characters and asks every day whether I have sketched the next panel.

As her requests become more detailed, I have been thinking about what makes a good cartoon or children’s book character. Among other things, I think that it is the sparingness of the details and the strategic use of negative space, in the broad sense. The viewers are allowed substantial freedom to fill in parts of the characters, the scenes and even the storyline for themselves. There is a fine line between providing the children with enough details to feed their imagination and over-defining the rules of the game (because, as I am finding out, nearly everything is a game for a four-year-old).

Here is the long-awaited hatching episode of our story:

“When the shell finally cracked open, it was not a chick, who peered from it, but a curious, purple-coloured, Baby Dinosaur with blue spots. The Girl was delighted and danced her happiest dance, which she learned just the day before.”

IMG_0037

Posted on

Anticipation

Anticipation is the big part of the overall experience. For example, Tim Ferriss repeatedly made the case in his podcasts that planning a family vacation is at least as pleasant as the vacation itself. In the illustrated story that I have been sketching, following the games of my daughter, I have been prolonging the incubation period as long as I could. Next time, we are going to have a new character.

“One day, the Girl noticed that the Egg started shaking. Then, tiny cracks appeared on its surface. The Girl held her breath in anticipation.”

IMG_0036 (1)

Posted on

On collaboration

In sketching up the plot of my daughter’s make-believe games, I am actually collaborating with a four-year-old. The process is fascinating for both of us. I like observing the way a child’s mind weaves the storyline, and she is curious to see the next sketch and realize that she already knows the story – it is the one she made herself.

Here is today’s episode.

“The Girl was always there to protect the Egg. The Cat had to retreat, leaving the Egg alone.”

IMG_0035

Posted on

The plot thickens

It is fascinating to see that children are often drawn to rather stylized drawings and minimalistic storylines. Some of my daughter’s favourite illustrated books are those by Oliver Jeffers and Genevieve Cote. There are many commonalities between these authors. They both explore imaginary worlds created by children and they both tell the stories visually, through illustrations that are made to resemble children’s doodles. As I explore their style, it becomes clear that the apparent simplicity of both the writing and the drawings is actually hard to achieve. The challenge is to capture only the essential elements and not let the unnecessary details detract from the clarity of the image.

My daughter’s make-believe stories often involve a nemesis, in the form of a mischievous cat, from which the main character, played by herself, needs to be protected. So here is the continuation of the illustrated story of the Girl and the Egg.

“It was not an easy job – taking care of the Egg. It had to be kept warm. Not too hot and not too cool, but just right. Bit most importantly, the Girl had to watch out for the Cat, who was always looking to steal the Egg when the Girl was not watching.”

IMG_0034

Posted on

Character development: a make-believe approach

image

Playing make-believe is a big part of my four-year-old daughter’s life. Her stories and games about the Baby Chick or the  Baby Dinosaur (anything involving hatching from an egg) become more elaborate as the days go by. The main plots repeats over and over again, but the details are added as she matures. At the same time, a lot remains unsaid and left to the audience’s (most of the time consisting of her mom and dad) imagination. This reminds me of the storytelling style of Oliver Jeffers. In fact, I became a fan of his artwork by reading his (I can only assume, autobiographical) books about the Boy and his penguin friend to my daughter.

I thought that it would be a pity not to capture the development of my daughter’s make-believe games, so I decided to add a bit of focus to my short motorcycle rides by sketching some of the episodes as I drink my cappuccino. So today the story starts, as my bike is parked in view of Mt. Baker, on a fantastic sunny afternoon at the Oak Bay Marina cafe. 

“Once there was a Girl, and on a particularly sunny day, she had a very important job: to take care of a great white Egg. The Egg was smooth and shiny, and the Girl didn’t know what was inside. She could hear tiny tweeting noises coming from the egg, and she hoped that it was a chick, who would become her friend.”

image

Posted on

A glimpse of the sacred

AA5Q1811_02-20-2016

Cal Newport makes an interesting argument in his book “Deep Work” that craftsman mindset is so appealing in the modern days because it provides an opportunity to engage with something that has an intrinsic value. Specifically, the value, the meaning of the craft is not created by us but is already there, in the material, in the purpose of the final product, in the process of creating it, in the setting in which the process takes place. The craftsman simply cultivates a skill of uncovering this meaning through her daily practise.

I am writing this on a ferry on my way to a kendo tournament – the largest annual competition that I attend. For amateur kendoka like myself, there is always a question of whether the shiai experience (which often ends after a single lost match in my case) is worth all the inconvenience of getting there, not to mention the stress of the competition. I was thinking about this again this morning, sitting in the dark, waiting for my ride to the first ferry sailing of the day. I think that the reason we do it (practice kendo and go to tournaments) is to experience The Way (the ‘Do’ in “kendo’). It has an unmistakable flavour of the sacred, something deeply spiritual. Just as craftsmen, we do not need to create the reason to follow the way – it is already imbedded in the process itself.

AA5Q2282_02-20-2016

Posted on

Why fiction is better than non-fiction

9522611468_681e88de1f_k

Lately, I changed my view of fiction literature from a somewhat time-wasting entertainment to a rather efficient form of teaching. I think the usefulness of fiction stems from human ability to relate to good stories. Perhaps, our liking of storytelling is a result of evolutionary adaptation to quickly and widely spreading information within the society in the most efficient way – a way that employs our capacity to relate to emotional content. We like a good story, and a good story can teach us, in an implicit way, something that would take libraries-full of scientific literature to describe analytically, i.e. by defining every term, concept and rule.

I recently came across an example of this while re-reading Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”. There is an episode, where a charismatic Russian commander (prince Bagrtation) raised and maintained morale of his troops during and uneven battle against French forces that vastly outnumbered the Russians. When receiving reports from his aide-de-champs about the disastrous events that were unfolding one after another in all parts of the battlefield, Bagration created an impression (through his remarks and body language) that everything was going on exactly as he had expected it and that everyone, even the routed units, were doing a good job.

I believe that this scene, which took Tolstoy a couple of pages to describe, might be worth a couple of shelves of modern non-fiction books in a bookstore’s “Leadership”. This battle scene is a succinct description, through an example, of a fairly complicated leadership principle, rooted in stoicism (another fashionable non-fiction area these days): faced with the circumstances that were beyond his control, Bagration did not let them alter his way of relating to his men.

I am sure that this leadership approach can be very effective in the far less dramatic circumstances of everyday lives of most people (in the first-world countries, anyway). From coaching a kendo team to leading a research group to directing models during a photoshoot – projecting confidence and remaining calm is undoubtedly a useful skill.

22378932830_dd20a152a2_k

Posted on

Substance vs. method

9234924759_6b344155b7_k

“The Chairman said, “What is your substantive field?”
Phaedrus said, “English composition.”
The Chairman bellowed, “That’s a methodological field!”
— Robert Pirsig, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“

We tend to define ourselves by what we do for living. This is particularly true in North America, where the stereotype is that people live for work. Perhaps, this is how North Americans like to think about themselves more than how they actually live, but apparently, Europeans are a bit more relaxed in this regard. One way or another, this relationship with work surfaces in many forms, including the dilemma of whether to specialize in a narrow field or to strive to be a polymath.

Robert Pirsig’s brilliant “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” has an interesting insight into the root of this issue – a discussion of the difference between the substance and the method of work. He says, “Substance doesn’t change. Method contains no permanence.” Perhaps, there is hint there, that we should not let the methods that we use define the substance of what we do. Also, no matter how much we work on diversifying our arsenal of skills and techniques, this doesn’t automatically mean that the underlying direction of the work has to change.

16631990829_26e3834518_k