Visual Storytelling - 6 reasons why stories with pictures are awesome.

I spoke in a panel at BlogHer14, called "Developing Your Visual Voice". My segment was about eighteen minutes pulled from my workshop on Visual Storytelling. The response was positive enough to follow up with a more in-depth "how to" series here on my blog. I am nice.

Let's get started.

Why should we tell stories with pictures?

1. Welp. The world is full of noise.

If you're doing business, if you're an educator, or an independent artist, writer or blogger; if you're content marketing in any way, images will help you stick out of the pile.

There's a lot of bloggers out there - not a lot of them draw. And NO ONE draws like you (whether you think you can draw or not).

2. Stories will pictures have sticky-power. People have short attention spans - they often skim rather than read.

I'll bet you're reading this.

So putting your message into pictures is a perfect way to be instantly seen...

...and remembered. And shared.

Hurrah for sticky-power!

3. Be instantly recognizable. Use certain colours and styles consistently to establish your visual voice. Remember that visuals add your personal touch to any kind of media. Some folks call this 'branding', but it really means you being 'you'. Know who you are.

Your "look" should be visible on all your social media platforms, your audio-visuals, PowerPoint presentations and your print media.

4. Pictures are empathy triggers. They grab people and make them feel something. The more personal your drawing is the better, i.e. if you draw it yourself, then you're using your own authentic visual voice.

And if you can engage on an emotional level, it becomes a two way conversation.

You talk to them and they talk back - people like to be heard, it makes them feel good. We all want to feel that we are a part of the story.

You can capture the hearts and minds of your audience with visual storytelling.

But that's not all. These four points contribute to one great result:

5. Drawing is good for your brain. Whether you draw it yourself or hire someone else to draw it for you, being able to think and express yourself visually will make you a better communicator and a better storyteller.

6. Duh. Stories with pictures are fun. You can put things in drawings that enhance a story and add layers of meaning. Visual storytelling is value-added.

I mean, which book would you go for?

Next up in this series: simple digital tools. 

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Visual Storytelling at #BlogHer14

I'm so over Italy already! Heading out to California tomorrow afternoon where I'll be hanging out with my cousin and her husband at the very cool Ink + Smog in LA. I'm also going to see some animation industry friends because Hollywood, and then I'll be heading up to the BlogHer conference in San Jose. My friend Neil Kramer is driving and someone has to make sure he doesn't fall asleep at the wheel. That someone would be moi. I make an excellent passenger.

This will be my third BlogHer. If we've never met, and you come up to me IRL and say "Hi JC!" I may stare blankly at you. This is because I'm a visual person and I'm used to seeing your avatar and stuff. Also, Internet friendships are contextual, you know? I might know you as the person I talked about magical dog poop with on Twitter. So if I space on you, try saying, "Hi! I'm the magical dog poop person!" And then I'll totally know who you are and we can hug IRL.

Alternately, you can simply whisper the Secret Password:

The Secret Password is "monkey farts".

If you do I'll know that you're MY PEOPLE. You should only whisper the Secret Password if you don't mind being hugged, squeezed and possibly accidentally groped.

There will be Toonswag. Here is a sample (it's Neil. And by the way he will not be taking Instagrams while driving to San Jose...unless he wants to get thwacked.):

This adorkable dude blogs at Citizen of the Month. He hates being called "dude".

Also this is happening:

I'm speaking on Friday afternoon, in a panel on The Visual Web track called "Developing Your Visual Voice". The other speakers on the panel are Jill Krause (Baby Rabies), Melanie Perkins (Canva) and Vanessa Bell (De Su Mama) and you can find out more about it here. My bit will be on visual storytelling, with tips and tricks on how to use simplification techniques to illustrate stories and concepts. Also it will have drawings and animation.

If you're coming to BlogHer I hope that you'll find a way to make it to this session. I can promise you that it will be fun (because cartoons), you'll learn something (because cartoons) and it will likely be somewhat different to what you're used to seeing at social media conferences (...because cartoons). And there will be a free monkey button for everyone who comes.*

*While quantities last.

Wish me luck getting over this beastly jetlag. Who wants toonswag?

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Next book coming soon.

Just a quick hello as I am waist deep in stuff over here.

I'm just putting the finishing touches on my next book, which will be available for print and Kindle from Amazon around the third week of April. 

The book is called Motherhood and it's a finessed, expanded and completely redrawn version of my award-winning (totally) blogpost of the same name. This book will have no text, pictures only. And I'm publishing it through my company, Little Animation, just like The LAST Snowman.

Here's the inside title page:

Coming soon...in time for Mother's Day, as a matter of fact.

So yeah, that's what I've been doing. What have you been up to?

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Self-publishing a picture book is really fun!

Well that was a gigantic lie.

I've been busy. Making a book. To self-publish. In other words, I am in HELL.

I thought I'd start making some of my stories into books. I've got some BIG BOOKS planned baby! But instead of starting with one of the biggies, I thought maybe I'd better test the waters with a story that's already proved its mettle, so to speak, on my blog. I selected a story, a well loved family story, with a universal theme - the junction between childhood and adolescence - The LAST Snowman.

This story is fully baked. Should work fine as a book, right?

Wrong.

Oh so wrong.

I have never been so wrong...(unless you count that time with that guy).

I noticed things in the drawings that bothered me and I had to finesse them. The pacing suddenly didn't work when I imagined another parent reading the story to their child. Establishing context became more important to build the tension. More drawings were needed.

And the text - where did all these repeated words come from?

What did I mean when I wrote this?

Do I really need to write that something happens in the story if I
show it happening in the illustration?

I reached out to those with more knowledge than I, and received valuable editing suggestions and advice. I honed, crafted, massaged, second-guessed and streamlined the story, and tried to stay true to the feel of the original blog post. I don't know if I've succeeded. A blog post is one thing; a book is another.

And then came formatting the bugger. With digital publishing, there's different types of files that you can make for a book. Oh wait....you're making a picture book? And it's landscape...as in "horizontal"? Sorry, but NONE of the eBook sellers out there (Amazon Kindle, iBook, Nook, Google Play) seem to be there yet. Here's the skinny (as far as I grasp it, which is not nearly as far as I like to throw this book):

You're supposed to start with InDesign and bring your pretty pictures in there. I hate InDesign with the burning intensity of a thousand suns. Then you export them to the different file formats: PDF, ePUB and MOBI. You really have to install plugins and screw around with the settings. My goal was to achieve a "two-page spread" - that is, one image spread over two pages, in the horizontal aspect of the device.

The PDF looked beautiful in iBooks on my iPad.

iKnowright?

But it failed at displaying
horizontally in the Kindle app on my friend Stephie's Android tablet. The bottom was cut off.

Stephie screencapped this for me while she was in a bubble bath; that was nice of her don't you think?

The ePUB file supposedly works well for text heavy books with a vertical (portrait) aspect ratio. Horizontal picture books? Not so much. Also, the colours were a bit washed out.

Some kinda weird artifact glommed onto this page and it won't shake loose.

MOBI (for Kindle or a device that has a Kindle app on it) - same dealio.

Two different sized frames on the vertical. WHY???

Remember, I'm looking for something that delivers a single image on each page change. I want to control all the things!

And then...I discovered the Kindle Comic Creator. KC2 is made by Amazon just for creating comics and picture books for Kindle, it's easy to use and it's free. I downloaded that baby, and threw my images into it hoping for the elusive two-page spread. Ten minutes later I had this:

Success!

Ideal preview results on all the Kindle Fires. No messing around with InDesign and all those crazy export settings.

Just for fun, here's the Kindle Paperwhite:

Woof.

But I still had to check out how it would appear in the Kindle apps on actual tablets. The Android passed with flying colours.

My friend Brandie screencapped this on her new Samsung tablet. 

And then I tested the KC2 MOBI (KF8) file on my iPad. It was a fail.

I blame Steve Jobs.

The KC2 Guide says it will work on the iPad Kindle app, but from what I can see, it did not deliver my "two-page spread".

AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A TEST BOOK.

I hear you laughing.

For all you Apple-cores, I'll be checking out the iBooks Author at some point. Or I'll just go with Blurb. We'll see.

Now the next big question is, "should I hire a publicist?" 

The LAST Snowman will launch during the first week of December 2013, Kindle version on Amazon. Holy crap, that's next week.

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Picture THIS.

FACT: People remember more from images than from text. Do you ever wish you could express an idea by drawing it?

Visual thinking is the key to creating concepts that play out in pictures.

And I've noticed that quite a few people could benefit from it so I developed a workshop to inspire people to see "stories" as "pictures".

I'll also be sharing a few of the little tricks I use to convey my stories and concepts using some of the most straightforward and easily accessible digital tools.

Maybe you have a story, article or PowerPoint presentation that you want to illustrate; or you'd like to promote or teach something with images or video. Whether you draw it yourself or hire someone else to do it, having a clear idea of what you want is invaluable.

My workshop will give you skills to distill your concepts to their most basic forms: lines and dots.

I'm keeping it uncomplicated - there's no hi-tech blathering.

Also it will be funny.

And sweet.

If you're interested in bringing The Art of Visual Storytelling to your event, contact me. I am nice.

If you're in Montreal, you're in luck. The Art Of Visual Storytelling is being hosted by ELAN English Language Arts Network, Tuesday, MARCH 12. It's right downtown in a great space - the Visual Voice Gallery, BELGO building, 7-9PM. Fee for ELAN members is $10 ($15 for non ELAN members or $5 for full-time students). Perfectly do-able prices, amiright? 

This workshop is filling up quickly, so you should totally register now!

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Montreal Girl Geeks - TOON swag.

Last week I got to geek out right here in my hometown! I presented The Art of Visual Storytelling to the Montreal Girl Geeks; a breakdown of the inner workings of my visual thought process with illustrated stories and animation. The event was hosted at BDO, complete with snacks and tech dude. Seriously, the tech was great - he let me use this über cool headset mic that actually looked like an alien probe. FUN right?

One of the things I covered in my talk was the iPad and how I'm using it to do (amongst other things) toon swag. So of course I could not resist tooning the three women who run the MTLGG: Sandy Sidhu, Liesl Barrell and Leann Brown. 

The @MTLGirlGeeks are @SandySidhu, @LieslBarrell and @LeannZing.

These women are fun, smart, lovely, interesting, and they're doing cool stuff in tech and social media. And the group? They're my homies! All ages of women and even some dudes. It's fun to travel to geek out about my passions, but to find this coolness in my own backyard? Priceless.

Cake all round for #MTLGG.

The Art of Visual Storytelling is one of my public speaking topics. Contact me to book this talk, toons & tech.

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Abstracted...

Tomorrow evening I'm doing a talking on The Art of Visual Storytelling. I'm always learning, always striving toward expertise; I wish to command the medium so that I can express myself, deftly, succinctly, with humor and grace.

Anyways...tomorrow is the first time I'm speaking on this particular topic. In breaking down some of my stories for the presentation I realized how much I'm falling into natural story arcs without even thinking or planning. The visual devices that I use to create tension, the pacing of a story, the emotional triggers in an image or expression; all the subtleties and nuance of my lines and dots lay before me.

I found that I was deconstructing my self.

I've delved deep into The Heart of ME before. Scary...but also freeing. Do you ever feel abstracted?

My talk, toons and tech on the Art of Visual Storytelling, hosted by Montreal Girl Geeks.

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