BACKSTORY 02: THE MAP FOR MY BOOK "FORMAS"

FORMAS is an eighty-page silent book and a good example on how to tell a story only with pictures. At the beginning of the story we might thing it is the woman's journey, but the surprise comes when we realize that the main character of the story is something different. Being a journey and story told only with pictures, I had to create a map of the place for the sake of clarity and causality.

This is a detail of the map showing the first pages of the book. The girl descending the stairs on the left will walk from left to right, meet some people on the street walking in both directions and then she will meet the person who is carrying a shape that fits exactly with hers. The thing is, the story will not be that predictable, and that becomes one of the themes of the book. You can see in the book that the P.O.V. on these pages keeps the same distance for all the scenes and "the camera" moves for left to right in order to follow the girl.

In these first pages, I keep the horizontal line for the ground on the same level so it's easy for the reader to understand the actor's (the girl) movement on the stage.

When the fish falls into the water, the "camera" zooms out so I can show the boat. Later it's going to zoom in again in order to show what will happen on board.

Here's an interview where I talk about about the book at the Guadalajara Book fair in Mexico.

FORMAS was originally published by Editorial Oceano in 2009. It was then translated to Korean (Damphus), French (Alice), Portuguese (Hedra Educaçao) and Chinese (Phei Publishing House).

You can PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE