Animated narratives week4

A little girl who lost in a forest meets an old man, who looks scary, watering his tulip garden. She come to the old man and ask if he can show a way which can lead her out of the forest. The old man tell the little girl to wait and promise her that he can act as a guide. After watering the flowers, the man lead the way as he promise, while the little girl ask him why raise so many tulips, after hearing that the old man tell her a story about two loved people and their tulip garden. One of them is a soldier and he escaped from a war with serious injury, and he was saved by a lady living in deep forest, then they fall in love but both of them haven’t express their love. One day the soldier decided to leave and he set forth on a journey without saying goodbye. As he arrives at a small town, he finds there are lots of wanted posters on the walls, and seems the lady who helps him is in danger, so he back to the house in the forest. Along the way, he saw many places full of memories but when he arrived there only remains of the house and the girl’ s favorite tulip garden. “Finally he leave with a broken heart” the old man said, and point to the outlet of the forest. While the girl wants to say thanks to the old man, he disappeared suddenly and left a tulip brooch. The little girl picked up the brooch and was surprised to find this is the same one which her dead grandmother also had.

This work is a short comic, which examines idea of restructure the order of a story. I make this into a comic is because I think it is easier for people to read and find the details which hide into the pictures.

From my point of view, I agree with that the storyteller’ s job is to decided how the story is revealed and make people care about it. And I think it might be helpful to change the order of the plot to make the story looks more suspense. In this case, if I put the soldier and lady plot above the little girl lost in a forest plot, then the story might be more flow and it seems that we can know the identification about the old man, so the story can be flat. But when take the soldier and lady plot as a flash, then it may lead to a think of who is the soldier and what relationship is the soldier with the old man. Also it can gives different understanding in the end of the story, like maybe some people think it might be a coincidence of the brooch, while others might think the lady is the little girl’ s grandmother. The same way used in a movie called Edward scissor hands. The old woman at the beginning told her granddaughter a story about a man who has scissor hands, and as the story goes to an end the audience can find the old woman is Jin.

By examining the idea of restructure the order of a story, I reflected that by changing the order of the timeline sometimes can make the story telling more interesting. Because people can have their own understanding of the end by putting the pieces together.