Round Robin

First, the stories:

Mine:

Today is the most important day of Harold's life.

Today he found out that he is fact one of the

prickliest hedgehogs and not an incredibly

dull-pointed porcupine.

 

Malori:
Harold nervously prepared for his date with Thistle by carefully brushing his spikes.
On his way to her house he gathered as many delicious berries as he could. 

 

Wes's:



 

Emily's:

Harold and Thistle could not pay off their debt to Marty the Porcupine.

The hedgehogs were suddenly regretting their gambling habit.

 

Drew's:

 

 

 

 

Artist's Statement:

This is by far one of the more interesting assignments I’ve ever had to do. I’ve tried to do collaborative pieces before and I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of control I have over the end result. Through the frustration didn’t completely disappear for Round Robin, it was greatly lessened and I really enjoyed seeing how other people interpreted and added to my story.

With my stories, I always tried to incorporate either some kind of twist or a thoughtful element to make the story stick a little bit. “Very Short Story” on Twitter was very inspiring because he was able to create such three dimensional stories in such a short space through humor and irony. Some tweets that particularly influenced my work were, “Darla’s beauty was staggering…literally. When men saw her, they staggered, and fell down. Lonely, she resorted to dating blind men,” and “Climbing into the dirigible, we embraced, thrilled to elope. Everything was perfect. “Uh-oh” said David, “one of us has to cast off.” These particularly shaped my story for Emily’s series, which features a princess who locks herself in a tower with a dragon rather than being sentenced there. I tried to avoid making a direct sequel to the story I received for the sake of retaining the assignment’s similarity to the exquisite corpse pictures. They would go together, but not exactly continue the story/picture, just as I continued one theme or character of the story, but tried and avoid a direct copy of it.

As for my drawings, I also tried to have them expand the story rather than just represent it. The test scores for a hedgehog and a porcupine (mine), the screaming kid in the bed (Drew’s series), the smile on the dragon’s face (Emily’s), the yellow background versus the blue shirt for the sad man (Malori’s), and the speech bubble of the ninja (Wes’s) all attempt to add a new element to the story, however small, or simply emphasize an emotion or element in the story. I found it interesting that the characters in my story were featured in each story of the series, and that Harold went from discovering his true identity to joining a circus after a failed date and running from a bookie. The general, overarching theme is one of defining self-identity, getting past mistakes, and living with no regret.

I drew upon one outside source in particular—the book Sorcery & Cecelia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. This book was a collaboration, written as a series of letters they initially sent back and forth to each other as a writing exercise. They wrote from the perspectives of two cousins and although the stories exchange characters and events seamlessly, they never planned out the story ahead of time. They would only give hints as to the direction of their next letter, much like we were able to see only one story of the whole series.