Starting with Jung’s archetypal motifs, I think it’s best to remind why they’re called ‘archetypal’ first:
Archetypal motifs replicate themselves in stories across time and culture, in all human endeavors to create.

Motifs in general are tokens in a story that appear several times and symbolize something ...

This beautiful image is from the movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang, it shows Atlas the giant carrying the weight of the entire city on his shoulders. In this image Atlas represents the combined might and labour of the working class. Interestingly the same theme in imagery is often used for ...

From the Best of Banes Collection…

CHARACTER SHAPES

I've never consciously designed characters this way, but I recently remembered hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated movie or show. I don't remember which one.
Characters derived from basic shapes can ...

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith beheading Holofernes, 1611-12, oil on canvas, (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples)

There are several different ways to read a painting. The perspective of the reader adds a new insight to the history behind the art. For the purpose of this article, I have selected Judith beheading Holofernes ...

Aight y'all, go ahead and fasten yer proverbial seat belts, on account of we got a lot of ground to cover with this one! Actually come to think of it there ain't really too many proverbs about seat belts; more like I'm stretching out a turn of ...

So I suppose it is no secret I like activism, standing up for a cause and giving it your all no matter what. From my comics to my actual life I have been doing so.

But what about the imagery that gets such a thing across to an audience in ...

A character will stay stuck in their ways if they can, just like a real person tends to. It takes effort to move forward and achieve things. And we resist.

In the beginning of a story, a character might feel comfortable where they are, but they are usually incomplete in ...

Welcome back, gang! Er, can I call y'all “gang”? Is that too informal or too assumptive about your willingness for complicity in my extra curricular activities? Eh, too bad. Once you're in the gang, there's only one way out. Now, while you're letting that sink in ...

Huh. You're still here? I'll be damned.

Well then. Let's just go ahead and pick up where we left off last week, which if I recollect, was the beginning. Or at least, that's where you stepped into my world. Now, how you think about beginnings has ...

Deep in the forest lives a pale, white squirrel (that might not be a squirrel at all) and it instills fear in the hearts of the country folk who believe it to be an evil beast. The prince of the kingdom has vowed not to marry a bride until the ...