This project was . . . interesting. Video editing is very much not my strong suit, and neither is working with anything involving sound, so this whole thing was slapped together with a healthy helping of “I sure hope this works”. Getting all of the pictures was definitely a more entertaining process, if somewhat cringe-worthy. All of the doodles come from various notebooks that I’ve used over the past five years, which are mostly full of writing that hasn’t seen the light of day, and definitely for good reasons. Some doodles didn’t make it into the final video, actually, because there was too much text around them or enough in their vicinity that I deemed them ineligible.

But I digress.

There’s a very loose color-code system to the doodles: older pieces are likely to be in black ink, while colored ink or pencil are hallmarks of somewhat more recent work. The doodles are sorted into a few categories, and as I learned while assembling the video, I drew a lot of wings or things with wings. A surprisingly small number of crests were legible enough to be included; aside from the wonky ‘horned’ crest, none of those pictured are connected to any major plot points in any of my worlds.

In summary, while I’m happy enough with my final video, there’s a lot that I wish I could’ve done better, as well as a lot more that I wish I could’ve included without having to awkwardly block out everything around the doodle itself. I hope to get better over time with both video and audio editing.

By Kaitlyn Harper