Explanations

Naturally, you’re wondering about what I mean in the titles above. Let’s start with “The Memories of the Failed Storyteller”.

I love storytelling. But I love drawing more. You would think that drawing and writing comics would come naturally, right? My first college degree was in Illustration, the closest thing I could get to comic books at the community college I went to. With positive feedback from one of my favorite teachers, I transferred to a college that had a major in Sequential Art. It’s not animation, but there is a required class for storyboarding. No, the major dealt mostly with comic books.

My best classes were in conceptual design and in script writing, but I admittedly struggled in everything else. I was able to prove myself on two occasions to two of my toughest teachers. One was in the character design and storyboarding glass. I had gotten a B on some character designs I did for the western zodiac. I had this teacher before for an introductory class, and he was known to be hard on anyone mimicking the Japanese Manga drawing style. He has nothing against the style, but sees a lot of people lacking the training simply butchering it. Because of how close my style is to the manga art, as well as how messy my work can be, it was hard to get a good grade out of him. But I pulled through. During my character design and storyboarding class, I went to him for help, picking his brain and getting his opinion through out the process of my projects.

After pairing me with one of my classmates to rework his storyboards while he reworked mine, the teacher marveled at how well we had helped each others’ stories flow better visually. We were also assigned to work on sketch books, primarily doing quick figuring drawings to add to our reference collection. But he never collected them, deciding he didn’t have time to look through everyone’s sketch books. If we wanted to, we could come in during office hours so he could give them a quick glance. I did just that.

I was using the back of the sketch book for my personal use, and after looking through the reference sketches, he found my other drawings. One small piece he found was of a witch character design that I had planned on blowing up, inking, and coloring later down the road. The proportions were better than anything he had seen before, a vast improvement on my work since I first had him as a teacher. He boosted that B grade I mentioned above to an A, which boosted my over all grade for the class. I later found out from my conceptual design teacher that my sketchy, free hand, never cleaned up style of drawing is far more captivating than any of my works that are cleaned up. Something changes between the sketches to the finished product that simply makes it less. Reminds me of a drawing teacher I had, who didn’t like rendering things to perfection, but instead simply sketching and making the messy lines bring out the image.

The second teacher I proved myself to, though in a very small and insignificant way was my inking teacher. I took him because the last inking teacher I had didn’t make me feel like I learned anything. The class was too easy, I guess. Anyways, this one guy, known for his prowess with ink and pen, was tough. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything right, though I enjoyed disturbing him with one project he made us do. If I can find a cheap place to get it scanned at, I’ll post it sometime.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty good at getting side tracked. Anyways, there was a fund raiser that he was helping out with, he had us spend some class time working on insect designs. Something monstrous looking, but designed from insects. I don’t remember what I did, and I’m not sure if I even have it still, but he liked my design so much, that he wanted me to paint it on a board to be auctioned off for the fund raiser. Apparently, the fact that he liked it took him by surprise. It sure took me by surprise. I know, not a really good and inspiring story as the one before this, but it still made me feel good about myself in some small way.

How does this correlate to being a failed storyteller? It was during those three years I spent getting my degree, and during the time of a short lived web comic that I worked on with a roommate, that I found that as much as I love to tell stories, and as much as I love to draw, I don’t have the ambition or energy to do both a the same time. I was completely drained, and literally didn’t draw or even doodle anything for a very long time. You should hear the pride in my dad’s voice whenever he talks about me, telling them how there’s never a day where he hadn’t seen me drawing. If I had been living with him still during that dry period, he wouldn’t be able to say that anymore.

But I’m getting better, and ideas are coming back into my mind again. Role playing helps me deal with my yearnings to come up with story ideas, and actually collaborate with other people to making up a fun plot and resolve that are character driven. And occasionally, I’ll be inspired to draw up someone’s character to help make me feel that I’ve accomplished something artistically.


But now, I’m sure you’re wondering even more about “You will Never Remember what I will Never Forget”.

I don’t know if it’s because of the way my brain works, that I find some things more important than others, or it’s some hopeless curse that strives to torture me through out the rest of my life; but I’ve learned that even though I can’t remember stupid quotes from some funny movie, I can remember random conversations from so long ago, and replay them over and over in my head until I get completely frustrated with myself when I can’t stop thinking about it. However, I get more frustrated with anyone else that I had said conversation with, because they don’t remember a single word of it.

It’s ten times worse now, because I’m dating a guy who can’t remember anything I told him seemingly five minutes after the fact. I can repeat to him, over and over again at random points in the day, week, month, or year about something, either a soap I like, or about an appointment, anything and he’ll react like he’s just learning about it. Same goes with commercials, he’ll see something, repeat the same thing he said last time he saw it, and act like it’s all new to him. He’ll be half way through watching an episode of his favorite TV show before he realizes he’s already seen it. I love him, but I’m wondering if he’s coming down with some early stage of Alzheimer or something. I know I’m not perfect when it comes to remembering things, but you’d think that an appointment was important enough to even try to remember.

It’s not just him, though. I’ve had roommates who wouldn’t remember in depth conversations with about something that important enough to effect our way of living, socializing, what have you, but don’t remember ever discussing said problem. And so when it gets brought up again in a later conversation, they deny the whole thing from every happening, or blame it on some short term memory loss when it could have been a year ago when the conversation originally occurred.

What my favorite thing was when I recommended doing something at one point and then someone else comes up with the idea some months later, no one remembers the fact that I had mentioned it before. Of course they wouldn’t, because I’m the one that originally mentioned it.


I am a firm believer that I am not one who is meant to be remembered. It’s why I’ve failed as a storyteller, and why no one will remember anything I will never forget. As much as statistics like to say we all work the same, we really don’t. What treatment might work for one person doesn’t necessarily work the for the next, and there are simply not enough people interested in taking special care of someone who reacts so differently from what works for everyone else.

I thank you for your time in reading this, and I hope you enjoy reading what has yet to come.