ACDC 2006 - Day 2 (3/24): Story Craft

Mark Breitenberg

!Radical
- 1st definition: "pertaining to roots, foundations"
- 3rd definition: "extreme departure from traditional"
= tension of new and old!

Resurgence of craft is reaction to two centuries of mass production

!"Homo faber" = "makers"

!Think new thoughts w/ your hands



Dave Eggers: Selling Peglegs and Grappling Hooks to Third Graders - Strategies, Pitfalls and Legal Implications
- McSweeney's Editor

Wanted 826 Valencia to be "not school"
- pirate supply store up front
- glass eyes, peg legs, eyepatches, "authentic!"
- had to do store because of zoning laws
- 950 tutors now, sending them to schools
- pirate supplies pay the rent!

! Took random idea, constraint (store) and see it transformed, reinterpreted over and over

- New store in NY: Crimefighter and superhero supplies
- Seattle: Space travel supply (soda shop style)
- LA: Duty free shop for time travelers (7-11 style)
- Chicago: Spy supplies, but it won't say Spy, it'll be the "Boring Store"!
- Ann Arbor

!Need volunteer publications designers to help get kids work into published form
- can work on own schedule
- 826Valencia.com

- Trust gap: starting out, people didn't know what to expect. Worked w/ teachers; teachers sell kids and parents

!- The constraints help: still working on Quark 4.0 on System 9



Jessica Yu, Documenting the Radical
- Director, Master Fencer, Trustee @ Sundance

How to convey what is the thinking about subject?

"In the Realms of the Unreal"
- 15,000-pg novel
- illustrated w/ watercolor
- journals, lyrics, battle songs
- creator was trying to live as much in his imagination as possible

What are the parameters of taking liberty w/ art?
- animate w/ elements in paintings, according to actions in paintings
- don't clean things up

Current movie: Euripedes

Limitation forces you to be more creative



Bob Mankoff, The Art and Science of Cartoons
- New Yorker cartoon editor

- as cartoonist, editor, seller (Pres., Cartoon Bank), is there a conflict of interest?

!Craft is dependent on rejection
- it's how you hone your craft
- persistence, need appetite/tolerance for rejection

- gave up career as experimental psychologist in 1974 to be cartoonist
- sent 20-30 cartoons/wk to New Yorker until accepted

Craft = I'm feeling it, showing it to another person
- you do what you want to do, we hope we like it, we hope you like if we publish it

Cartooning melds cognitive and emotional
- humor = normal + violation of normal
!- cartoon creativity as "conceptual blending" - pix!

!- creativity process like dreaming while awake



! UERs!: Applies experimental psychology background via research and analysis of cartoons
- Quadrant analysis
- eye tracking - different for different types
(e.g., 1. picture to caption, end vs 2. (we completely child-proofed the place"): picture to caption, then every element of picture, end)
- pupil size as indicator of comprehension: when people get it, pupil size jumps