Art & Story Blog

Here’s another story tidbit to chew on. Gene Deitch discusses the importance of finding your story’s premise in chapter 7 of his e-book, How To Succeed In Animation. I have not read the rest of the book, but stumbled upon it and the title of this chapter jumped out at me. He acknowledges that story rarely starts with a premise, but rather, character — and knowing your characters well. The premise is what you need to make sure that there is a story that you are telling with those characters and not just showing us what you can do with them.

Hmm, where’d it go? Oh, here it is.

On a side note, Gene was born in Chicago, but has chosen to live in Prague since 1961, so we know he must be a very smart man.