Kyle Platts

0:42 So storytelling what's the point so I think life is like a sandwich filling between two maps of infinity I've made a diagram especially for you guys to demonstrate this.

1:00 So there's many wondrous and amazing things in life but on either side as is these great chasms of infinite darkness and I think it's I think it's the fact that life is so finite that people decide to document and and share their experience of it through storytelling so if you look at all kinds of art there's like this storytelling in in all of our weather it's like fear music painting or sculpture and that allows people to pass on their experience from generation to generation. And it's a successful I it's a successful thing because like when we look at ancient civilizations it's because of the art that they leave behind that we get to discover we get an insight into like what life was like for them and what they believed in and even if your storytelling is fiction.

1:56 That's still a reflection of your reality whether it's whether it's abstract or not so here are a few abstract reflections that I made for Vice magazine it's a series of three panel comics one of the named brain noise and I thought these three panel comics were a good way to sort of like show you how I approach storytelling because it's quite simple process you've got like a clear beginning middle and end so in the first frame there's the set up in the middle frame. There is like a chance to push narrative and add another element and then in last frame there's punch line so in this story I use this character dick nose man-boob engine I've been drawing since since I was in college and I like to use him in different in different roles and stuff like I like seems like a versatile actor now drop him in in two different situations like sometimes he's white sometimes he's black like whatever works so this time he's like a wizard scientist guy and he's just he's just made this frankenstein bride by harvesting bodies and he's finally brought it to life and as he brings it to life he gets a match on tinder and the and he's like Right see you later so he leaves her jilted upset this comic is about a kid mucking around in school with a propelling pencil and pretending it's a hypodermic needle and that he's doing heroin and stuff which I'm sure you all did as well.

3:40 And then in the punchline of the comic he actually becomes a drug addict ten years later and overdoses in a condemned building somewhere next to a candle his boob and chin again he's playing a different character this time it's playing a bloke that's consoling his mate who's going through a divorce and he's in a bar getting drunk with him and he says look there's plenty more fish in the sea so he goes around to his mates house the next morning to make sure he's all right and stuff and he's getting sucked off by a fish and it's like it's not the same.

4:24 And then in this one this is a Halloween one that I did a woman goes to her son go make a pumpkin with your brother. So it goes to her brother like BOM said to make a pumpkin with you so he makes a pumpkin she finds a human fetus in in her eggs it's the thing she least expects it to be delicious.

4:55 So I like to use humor as a mechanism my storytelling humor why even bother so biologists still aren't totally sure like where laughter originated from but like not interesting anyway like my favorite theory is that it derived from like an act of aggression like when primate groups got bigger and like a more sort of like became more complex socially it was like necessary for for them to to have like this expression.

5:37 So I like that theory because I use humor in in my storytelling to deal with you know adverse situations or heroine subjects so whether that theory of the derivation of laughter is true or not like Hume is definitely like an effective mechanism to like to combat adversity I want to share with you like the process of making some of these stories and characters and stuff sometimes like I'll be lucky enough to just go about my daily business and like I'll just see something funny and then that will be a story or I'll just see a funny person that we have character but the favorite things to do is to just sit down and draw and then like eventually I'll come up with an idea for a story or like a new character or maybe just like a new way of drawing a nose or a funny sentence or scenario like like a kid trying to hit a pinata but killing his mate or pinhead from Hellraiser saying politely can have your soul please I enjoy the irreverence in a sentence like give peace a chance or whatever accompanied by an American soldier holding hands with a member of Isis what's so good about that well because I have this approach to my personal work I feel like it benefits my commercial practice too.

7:08 So we'll use this V&A project as an example via the V&A do this thing called the Friday lakes and they commissioned me to do the program cover for the for the Shoreditch takeover so they're sure which takeover was about like celebrating grapes coming out of Shoreditch and tech startups and stuff like that.

7:32 So I decided pretty early on that I was gonna like do a street scene and depict 2014 shortage with a bit of humor so there's a cat cafe there as a guy on his knees praying for Wi-Fi with a pug dog as well there's a woman looking around for a boyfriend but she can't find him because he's stuck in her book and there's a brain with like a stick and bindle that's just had enough of it always wandering off and there's a homeless guy asking the homeless guy with a sign saying follow for follow back which I thought was appropriate like an appropriate juxtaposition because homeless people and tech startups coexist in Shoreditch so there's a lot of little jokes and little narratives in there that take the piss but I find that these make it overall is an image like more engaging and more interesting and yeah I use this a lot in editorial specifically because I find that often you're being asked to distill an article which is like a story into just one image so these devices have like little bits of storytelling and humor make it that much easier for me.

8:51 So that's my approach to storytime thank you