Story, 2019

Sprout & Stone

2019

Original wordless comic, 16 pages

Sprout & Stone is an original 16-page wordless comic that Subin Yu (유수빈) wrote and drew in 2019. The balloons hold small drawings instead of words, so the pages read the same in any language.

Four panels: a tiny red shoot pushes out of the ground beneath a tree and straightens up, looking around. — Start / 시작

Four panels: a bear sits by the sprout. The sky turns dark and the grass fills with skulls. The sprout stands exactly as before. — Still / 버젓이

Four panels: the sprout notices a mossy stone with flowers on its back walking by on short legs, and the stone stops. — Bump Into / 만남

Four panels in rain: the stone shelters the sprout, water pools, and small fish appear in the puddle. — Rain / 비

Four panels: the sprout and stone talk in picture balloons showing a map, a view and a face. The sprout imagines riding on the stone's back. — First Class / 일등석

Four panels: the sprout sneezes with a drawn 'AH-CHOO', a gust strips the stone's garden, and the sprout sniffs guiltily in the dark. — Sneeze / 재채기 (rough)

Four panels: the sprout squeezes its eyes shut and opens them again. The stone appears in a thought balloon. — Peekaboo / 다시 눈을 감아 보지만

A sprout grows in the dirt and cannot leave. A stone with a small garden on its back wanders past and stays. I gave myself one rule, no words. Every beat had to land through the staging, the faces and the weather. When the two of them talk, the balloons show pictures of what they mean. A map. A desert. A crying face.

Each page is a square with four 4:3 panels, a size that fits a phone screen without scrolling. The camera hardly moves, so the story has to happen in small changes. A leaf turns. The sky goes grey. A sneeze blows the garden off the stone's back.

Seven of the sixteen pages are here, in story order. Some pages stopped at the rough stage and are labelled that way.