I have much interest in creating and sharing stories. Written works, oral lore, and even artworks depicting scenes can help us understand ourselves and others in much more profound ways. They can be inspirational, disturbing and make us question peculiar things in life. Here I’ll talk about some key developments in making a few art forms, such as writing and drawing.

The process of it all is also fantastic; the characters, scenes, lore, and the more minor details make it all complete. Crafting a person and making their story from scratch may have magical results despite the steps done to bring them to life. As Blair Somerville said, the “most pleasure” you’d get would be the designing phase and the “horrible phase” where you have to make it. Making it is tricky, but the work becomes worth it in the end. So trust in yourself and the process. It’s important.

Lost & Found from Joey Bania on Vimeo.

Another essential part of writing or making art is to have the passion behind it. It would help if you put feelings into any piece of art to portray emotions, or it’d be dull to an audience- unless that’s what you’re going for. A great way of this would be putting action into a character’s movements. You could write about their motions in detail or even perfectly capture them in lines of sketches. Gesture drawings are the best example of this; they’re lines loosely drawn to picture a person’s body language and actions. When making gesture drawings, according to Koizu, studying from life would help improve dynamics when you “apply it to your own characters.” Gesture drawings are one of the first steps in bringing a character’s movements to life, and it helps us see the liveliness in any scene.

Lastly, you should aim to have observers spark questions about your work. When someone looks at an original creation, many things must stir in their head. They’ll observe it once more and notice details they hadn’t seen before. The final and most fun part is when someone finds hidden messages through your writing or art and begins to ask themself questions about it. I’ve made it a goal to create things that make people think and take notes on details they deem thought-provoking. Take the film “Scavengers,” for example, an animation with no words spoken yet still intriguing for the audience. 

Now earlier, I mentioned my passion for creating stories and art in general. I didn’t write on paper, but I did plan a whole script in my head about my original characters and their designs throughout quarantine. I even came up with a sequel to it as well. The story takes place in an era of peace that humans can finally live in, but with a price. Their souls are split into two beings that take on human forms. The purpose of the first halves, which are considered “the good,” is to fight the second halves. The second halves are deemed “negative” or “evil.” The first side will forever fight the other just for the sake of humanity but will discover that there’s more to living than serving humans that sit and do nothing. They’ll become aware of their lives, that they can go through trauma, and there are consequences to making reckless decisions. Both sides will find out there are never any individuals that are completely good nor bad. Every character has reasons behind every action they make, and they all struggle with different situations, much like people in real life. I want to bring morally gray characters to the audience to make them think deeply about their opinions.

Luke Castellan from the Percy Jackson series is an example of a morally gray character.

I’ve also included multiple world issues and their effects in the story, such as homophobia, sexism, racism, domestic violence, rape, abuse of religion, etc. These are all meant to show people the horrible reality of “human paradise” that negatively affects both sides. Never-ending battles that break them down more than preserving the peace of humanity they so badly want to defend. If it’s possible, I’d love to have my ideas animated and put on a screen for people to see and learn. Not only would it be entertaining, but it would hopefully have someone learn and change for the better from it.

We’re now back to wrapping up the main topic. In conclusion, whether you’re writing something or making a piece of art, it’s best to have patience with yourself, put feeling into your work, and be creative with what you want your audience to see and question. These steps, by my standards, are what makes a story great.