Midnight Pub

Adapting Videos Into Comics

~nsequeira119

Now that I consider it, I'm currently adapting a video series of mine into comic form for the first time ever. This process has a lot of unseen obstacles present, particularly in how to translate the work between two vastly different mediums without sacrificing the essential core of the story- that is to say, the feeling you get when you look at it.

I've always been somewhat of a sucker for the impact art can leave on people, and from a young age I recall vivid categorizations I would create, in my head, of the feelings I got when I viewed a certain image. I remember one of these images, which really struck a chord, was the purple banana on the cover of a Velvet Underground concert tape. I assume it's an extension of the classic yellow cover, however I really preferred the subtle lavender texture of the redesign, all the little folds in that potassium sheath. Viewing the piece was, in many ways, a formative chapter in my discovery of the relationship between art and the subconscious, the neverending process of give and take between the creator and the creation.

Now, in bringing my video series to comic form, I am obligated to rekindle what made the videos so special to so many people. What made the videos special will vary depending on experience. Some people probably found certain frames of the videos more distinct than others. Maybe it was a millisecond-long soundbyte, maybe it was a fleeting impression or a half-baked recollection. Whatever it was, it has to make its way onto the printed page in some capacity.

This shouldn't be too hard. Creating a unified and coherent vision is very easy when working by yourself in the late hours, your entire mentality devoted to the proliferation of the universe you've created, the one that sprang up out of nowhere and gradually expanded into something beautiful. Nonetheless the subconscious must be taken into account, as well as the inherent limitations of any one medium when contrasted with any other. This process, of choosing what to keep and discarding the fat, mostly goes on in the background.

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