IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ART... NO, THE STORYLINE... NO WAIT THAT'S GOOD MUSIC AND SOUND... OR WAS IT... ?
Why you will never be able to create a perfect story but raise your chances for a truly good Kami
Tastes are different. Thank god - otherwise every man on this world would try to hit on the same woman, everybody would like the same wine (what of course would let the prices for this wine explode!) and everybody would create the very same Kamishibai Stories. What a blessing that due to different taste there's a broad variety of Kamishibai Stories.
Let's remember when Kamishibai was a quite new feature on Otakuworld. Amongst the first stories available we had some potential 'blockbusters' like "Adventures of Amy", "The Adventures of Kafka" or "Angel of Destruction" (which process of continuing are dead as it seems by the way). Maybe some of them had stolen art, maybe some of the stories weren't all that original but those were the beginnings of Kamishibai. Since then the authors learned a lot and more and more Kamishibai stories have been produced and also today the list is open for more submissions to Otakuworld's server. But what on earth is the secret of a good Kamishibai everybody will enjoy? Is it awesome art a thrilling story of fabulous sound effects?
Well, as stated before tastes are different so there is no such thing as the secret ingredient that will blow everybody away. People who like comedies may not enjoy epic tales as well as those longing for superb art won't enjoy stories which storylnes totally appeals to them. However there are some hints that might get your Kamishibai story into the Kami Olymp some time. Long for the best you can achieve in storyline, art, and good music and sound effects. A perfect symbiosis of those elements won't automatically make your Kami perfect to everybody, but it would definitely help to make it attractive to a way bigger audience than some 'half-assed' story with semi-good art and stoyline. Of course you also may want to focus on one specific thing -however this only works out very rarely in stories like "The Bus Stop Of Doom" which has awesome animations for just some stickmen or some Kamishibais with horrible art but drop dead funny jokes (well, those jokes might not appeal to everybody, but I find some of them VERY amusing ^_^).
So why am I writing all this? This is supposed to be a rough guidelines to newbies in Kamishibais. Wanting to make a story is a good start - really urging to make a great story is better. Just go for it and ask other Kamishibai authors for constructive criticism. Why do you think they put their email adresses in their Kamishibai Stories? We're one community and love feedback as well as helping others.
No matter how hard you try you will never be able to create a Kamishibai that everybody will love, but you can create a Kamishibai story that won't be bad and will get away with lots of good criticism if you only try (and maybe are willing to accept some construcitve criticism by others). Also Otakuworld offers a lot of good tips for example last month's update with an editorial and links to sources on good story writing.
Oh - and just for the records - in my case it's great art combined with comedy. Just in case you want to blow me away ^_~
- Chris
Back to the author index