When a young man stumbles upon five tiny people scrambling over the body of an old man wearing an ugly sweater, his mind begins to spin a scheme.
Music: “Dwarven Settlement” by Benjamin Carr
Video description
Video Description: “The Swindler and the Sprites” Trailer. Duration, 45 seconds. “Dwarven Settlement” by Benjamin Carr. Digital drawing. A sprite, a humanoid person with butterfly wings and pointed ears, seen from waist up with arms crossed, turned to the left, wings partly extended to the right, facing forward, and smirking. Swirling above the sprite’s head are the faint glowing forms of five pairs of butterfly wings. Title card with the words “Short Story” and “Genre: Fairy Tale,” is displayed at top. Tagline is displayed at bottom. It reads: “When a young man stumbles upon five tiny people scrambling over the body of an old man wearing an ugly sweater, his mind begins to spin a scheme.” Lines from the story appear in sequence at center and then bottom: “He gasped as if he had just jumped into a lake of cold water in naught but his own skin. The little folk watched as the young man’s eyes first grew wide with worry, and then shifted to and fro with scheming. For the sweater told him its story when he donned it. A story both grotesque and fantastic.” Animations: At video’s end, a cluster of butterflies appears and hovers. Site URL appears at bottom center throughout and fades at end. As the last line disappears, the story title appears at center, and a text card appears at top that reads “Available to Read Now.”
Welcome to Year 10 of Storyfeather
Every year’s short stories (mostly) follow a theme. For Year Ten, every month’s stories share a genre or theme, some anchor point that the reader can rely on. But within that, there are strange concoctions brewing. The genre’s merge, archetypes collide, mythologies mash…welcome to the Year of Fusion.
February Base Element:
🍕🍓 FOOD-UARY! 🍰🍫
FUSION RECIPE
Base element for February: Food!
Fusion Element: Ugly Sweater
It’s Food-uary, and I already had an idea for a story about a conman who’s trying to sell ovens that can turn raw ingredients into finished dishes like magic, because he has actually managed to harness some magic. So, what does an ugly sweater have to do with that? Well, that’s how he’s harnessing the magic. Also, why is it ugly? Because the magic is stolen. So, how was it stolen and who was it stolen from, and does this guy really think he’ll get away with it?
Here is a quick transition video that shows how I drafted the image for this story.
Video Description
Video description: Drafting of story image from Sketch to Final. Vertical rectangle within square with lightbox background. Duration, 17 seconds. Digital drawing. A sprite, a humanoid person with butterfly wings and pointed ears, seen from waist up with arms crossed, turned to the left, wings partly extended to the right, facing forward, and smirking. Swirling above the sprite’s head are the faint glowing forms of five pairs of butterfly wings. Text at top reads “Digital Drawing for Short Story. In the middle, a flip animation displays a pencil sketch of a human figure from waist up with arms crossed. The words “Sketch to Final Drawing” appear at top right. All the text and the final image fade to show the full starting sketch. The video then transitions through several images showing the sketching of the butterflies overhead, the butterfly wings for the figure, then the inking of the figure, the blending of the sketch lines, the laying down of base color for the figure and the butterflies, the addition of a color gradient as a background, and finally, the addition of shadows, highlights, and textures to arrive at the final image. The story title, “The Swindler and the Sprites” appears at top. A watermark of “Storyfeather.com” appears vertically along right side of image throughout.
Genre: Fairy Tale
Tags: Charlatan, Enchanter, Fairy, Five, Food, Oven, Sprite, Sprites, Sweater, Swindler
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