A Thousand Words – the Power of Pictures, Paint and Visual Storytelling

How do images add or take away from a written story?

What is Visual Literacy in the Modern World?

What is the future of art in visual storytelling?

Our guest is Patrick McEvoy - an artist working in comics, illustration and multimedia animation, working professionally for over 25 years.

"In terms of genre, I've done Fantasy, SF, horror, and educational work (for ages ranging from kids to high school to college)."

"In the past I have worked on contract with Marvel, doing dozens of pictures for the Marvel Style Guide, lots of advertising, and other behind-the-scenes art. And you may have seen my work on a lot of game art, such as Arkham Horror, Call of Cthulhu, Warcraft CCG, Legend of the Five rings, and even about 100 cards for the Game of Thrones CCG."

 

Folktellers Studios | Folktellers Universe

 

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Well, welcome everyone to the folk tellers stories to be shared podcast. It's week 11 and we're talking about 1000 words, the power of pictures, paint and visual storytelling. And I wanted to, uh, before I warm everyone up with our little thoughts for the day, let's introduce my compatriots. We have the stunning Steve Sadler. Oh, I like that word. Do you know why? Because I understand that word and the uh incomparable, that's good. There's two words we can understand and you can feel good about yourself. So I appreciate it. I just can't believe this has been a week 11 now. I mean, that's unbelievable, but it's a good thing. They say time flies and having fun, but it's still fun. We're still having fun. That's what I'm saying. This is work and this is, this is a conundrum. This is a OK. All right. So here we are week 11, we're talking about visual storytelling power of pictures. Um We're gonna have uh Patrick mcavoy on a little bit in a little bit. Um Patrick's a uh incredible artist. He does a lot of work for folk tellers and he's a big fan of Jack Kirby and people don't know who Jack Kirby is. Jack Kirby was um the Marvel artist who came up with all the biggies. He came up with the Hulk and Spiderman. And you know, it's funny, people always think Stan Lee. Stan Lee wasn't an artist. He was a writer. Uh Jack Kirby was the one who came up with, with the, the look, the, that the Marvel look. So one of the things Jack Kirby said was says, I achieve perfection. My type of perfection through visual storytelling, storytelling was my style. And then I've got another quote here. It says um this is Anthony Demelo. Um He's a uh he, I think he's actually a priest and uh uh he's a famous storyteller speaker. Um You have to understand that the shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story. So those are our two icebreakers, gentlemen. Like, so one of the first big questions is we're gonna get into visual storytelling. So to you, what, what do you think visual storytelling is? I leave the floor open. Well, uh an image is 1000 words, right? Yeah. Pick a picture or a picture is 1000 words. I don't know what, what is the the exact phrase we're supposed to be a picture is worth 1000 words or an image, right? Or an image, right? Well, we, we're in digital today. What does that mean? We'll, we'll use image because what, what what does that really mean? Is that true or is that just a absolutely sure it is. I could look at an image and, and pull a lot of context out of that image just by looking at it just like I can if I'm driving my car down the road, I mean, that's an image that or, you know, or a picture that I'm looking at, right as I'm driving and uh and I'm pulling that story out of it. So, yeah, definitely without, without words. So from an audience perspective, and this is what, what, what I found as, as a writer, um as a writer, what I've chosen or what's been put upon me is the uh the craft that takes the longest to engage with uh where visual media, it's instantaneous, like music like you hear, you hear a couple notes or you see something visually. Um There's an immediate response reaction and either rejection or engagement where in writing it's like you have to read it, you have to process it and then you have to reflect on it before you're really engaging with it. So it's a, it's a much longer process. So, Kurt, what's your take? Yeah, for me, you've brought up music it because we did a couple of episodes uh or a couple of episodes ago, we talked about music. To me, it's the lyrics and, and the melody coming together. That's where the story with the visuals come together, right? It's like the music has the melody line, but then you have the lyrics that match it with, with the vision part of it. To me it's a, it's a, I have to see the vision match the narrative. In other words, I could have this story. But when I see an image that attaches to it, oh my God, you, you know, you brought up