Translator: Jeong-Lan Kinser Reviewer: Stella Kang
How are you?
I am a cartoonist, Lee Jong Bum.
So far, you have been listening to talks related to formula of Physics
and various, most advanced technology,
but I will talk about comics.
Yes, I graduated from the department of psychology,
and became a long prepared cartoonist.
So, currently in Naver Webtoon,
I draw a cartoon, called Dr. Froster
that feature 4 psychologists as protagonists.
When I talked about
what is happening around the borderline of comics at first,
cartoonists around me were puzzled.
So what does it mean by "a borderline of comics?"
Not only in comics, but also in all genres,
creative authors who work around the borderline of all media,
use mixed genres with adjoining areas, right?
They export, import, and sometimes combine work.
This form, called Webtoon, itself,
was developed on a kind of borderline in comics,
in Webtoon's borderline itself, many experiments are being implemented.
When you interview many, one of frequently asked questions is,
"Why do you do comics?"
"Why do you do?", is always asked a lot,
so most people memorize and carry words that are summarized nicely.
Now, this is a well expressed summarization for an interview.
In fact, a first motivation is very simple and meek.
Well, in my case, when people ask about dreams
because a cartoonist was in the middle of a scientist and a president
when I was really young, motivations in those ages are very simple.
In my case, as a means, mainly to be acknowledged
or be praised, I dreamed of becoming a cartoonist.
From that early age, when cartoonist aspirants,
when you become a cartoonist aspirants,
do you know what they do at first?
They read comics. (Laughter) They read them a lot.
They read them greatly.
So, I, started from Treasure Island, Jump, Champ,
Booking Pang Pang, Nine Oz, Renaissance, Mink Mink, etc.,
I grew up reading all kinds of comics.
But during the period of my preparation to debut,
most magazines disappeared.
Everything was already moved to Webtoon.
I have to display what fed me while I was growing up,
but those contexts disappeared entirely,
so I felt a little out of place.
To describe my feelings,
the comics you are looking at
is called, "Choon Ang Jun," written by Jeon Jin Suk and Han Seung Hee.
It is a biography of a woman, called Im Choon Aeng.
She was an apprentice of a Korean traditional singer.
And she was a daughter of the last palace musician in Chosun Dynasty.
During that time, if you sing, you only sing,
and if you dance, you only dance.
There was a division between a great dancer, and a great singer.
However, the person, Im Choon Aeng later
became a person who genuinely developed a musical genre
for the first time in Korea.
She became someone who did not exist before.
Aspiring cartoonists who grew up watching published cartoon
from late 1990s to 2000s
shared similar feelings while preparing to debut.
Grown up as an apprentice of singer and stood up on a stage,
but a stage for a singer no longer exists.
This is a musical stage; thus,
apparently, there are many newly seen devices for the first time.
There are instruments, a curtain,
and stage setting that you'd never seen before, right?
Most of cartoonists, in that context,
continued what they've been doing regardless of the stage.
As for me, they were very interesting.
I felt out of place. I was very curious about the environment where
something is visible, yet hard to discern;
many available things are visible,
yet, have not been explored.
Now, before I show you many kinds that I experimented,
briefly, I will show my work.
This is a storyboard of cartoonists.
Well, I drew this hastily today for TED,
a cartoonist's storyboard
is a work process where the reader's perspective is scooped as if water
without dropping any elements and move it from the beginning to the end.
If the middle part of perspective becomes runny or murky,
or the story gets vague where it goes
then, the storyboard is little flawed.
Most cartoonists guide the reader's perspective in this way.
However, as soon as you arrive at the last scene, agony starts.
We all are very sophisticated readers,
so without thinking, we turn a page, right?
In fact, we haven't realized how tremendous amount of labor it is,
because we have been trained since young age.
However, "what if numerous scenes are connected after this?"
is the most fundamental concept of Webtoon structure.
As a result, theoretically
we gained an infinite canvas.
Of course, labor power, time,
and other various amount of data have limits
but at least theoretically, the physical limits that existing cartoon
had been showing to us is completely leaped by Webtoon.
I learned that structure of all kinds of media
begins really from its limits.
Say, "I can't use this feature." Then you learn to go around it.
As to cartoon, there is limit on space of a sheet,
they designed a method to divide cuts.
And because you have to turn the page,
the cut at the end becomes very valuable cut.
At the same time, due to its limit on space of a sheet,
people always feel inconvenient.
For example, currently, if I want to tell the readers
where this situation is taking place,
in fact, many kinds of cuts are needed.
This is usually called, "background cut."
After showing the background cut to readers,
and they could comprehend, "Oh, this is a place I know as..."
then, a story should proceed.
But when sheet space is limited,
sufficiently the background can't be explained.
And while there is no conversation nor action,
and the protagonist sets up emotions,
if you draw 3 or 4 cuts,
you get reprimanded by a teacher or publisher.
Because of that, in Comic Publishing, what comic aspirants do first is,
to learn what unnecessary cuts are;
learning to trim unnecessary cuts is the first learning.
However, since we moved to Webtoon,
in contrast, to deliver detailed explanation and emotions,
various descriptive style directing became available.
So, there came these types of cuts.
They don't accomplish anything but for background and emotions,
it is justified to allocate near 10 cuts.
Rather, it can provide time for readers to emphasize with the context.
As you can see, aside from taking a physical action to turn the pages,
when you read with physically minimal movement,
you experience similar to a screen medium
is flowing in front your eyes.
As a result, Webtoon, in fact,
took various characteristics from media and secured them.
Nowadays, many dramas and movies are made to be available for Webtoons,
and maybe that's one of many reasons.
Then, I thought,
"From the space where I belong, called Webtoon,
if I can see devices that I could not use in the paper publishing,
where can I use it?"
At that point, I came up with an idea.
"If we have characteristics that screen media has,
let's try to put in music first.
The program you are looking at is made by a former developer,
an author, called Tiger, Choi Jong Woo.
Music icon over there at the end, what you are currently seeing,
is detecting the distance of pixels from the top.
So, it allows the music to play at a specific pixel location.
Doing this way, when an already made invisible Flash file is inserted here,
you get an appearance like this.
(Music)
This is when I first started to put in music,
I drew this about a year ago.
Since then till now, I tried to put BGM in almost every Webtoon series,
I felt numerous limits and possibilities.
I will talk about them a little later.
Secondly, you will see my new recent experiments,
social network accounts for my protagonists in my cartoon.
It's not an internal attempt of cartoon.
At first, I started as an interesting joke,
without a direction or purpose.
In here, behind stories not appeared in the cartoon,
or personal lives of the protagonists,
or give commands of the stories' foreshadowing,
or interactions with the reader, etc. can be implemented.
Whoever looks at it, it is vey fictional, right?
Comics is art of fiction, and these experiments are of course fiction,
still, notes start coming.
(Laughter)
They come much more than you think.
When you have many, that is
when the series has many inquiry, they come as much as 100 notes a day.
"Where is Yong Kwang University?"
"I go to Yong Kwang Middle School, do I have anything?"
"Is Professor Baek a real person?"
So, they don't make sense.
In my case, I couldn't imagine,
many readers really start believing,
or get engrossed in the work.
So I reconfirmed that
"For a storyteller, storytelling is
everything that helps for a complete re-experience."
That is, these people have great desire
about likely existing people, events, and settings.
And, I thought that if it's possible outside of the cartoon work,
I can help them without limit.
Of course, from my perspective, in the direction of pioneering industry
is very likely to be wasteland.
It is likely to end 1 or 2 attempts, but it told me a lot of things.
The next attempt I am doing is
making background in 3D.
Webtoon is variously changing like this,
but limits on labor power
or considerations still remain.
As a result, for amount of work of existing 5 cartoonists,
a Webtoon writer must do it by himself.
it is an industrial perspective
but during the process, numerous authors experiment possibilities,
and also in my case, I make 3D background first
and put it in the cartoon work.
Next, I recently discovered a very interesting element.
If I watch a cartoon on my phone with Promoting Reality Software program,
what would it come out?
How it works is that
because I can't thank a person
who purchased my book individually
if you take videos through using this, an increasing text program,
an author's message shows that is hiding in there.
In fact, a person who attempted this is
the author, Moojuk Pink, who is serializing a cartoon
called Actual Objective Children Picture Book in Naver Webtoon
In his case, not like in my case of a single book,
but in his real original manuscript, he hid the author's message.
Now, it is a light joke for using the "promoting reality technique" -
if that can be used for storytelling,
for a sidestory of the story being told,
or like for a hidden story, I thought that
maybe could be developed from a different dimension.
In addition, on Webtoon, there are many attempts being done.
Authors that place themselves on that borderline,
whether it is a movie, or music,
they develop a business towards a different medium nearby.
During a new developing process,
They keep discovering that
this side is wasteland and the other side is fertile soil.
Where is wasteland and where is fertile soil
which is area of sustainable development?
Only the latter can expand the overall area, right?
In the former case, it might end one or two attemts
but at least it gives a lesson or inspiration.
Look, this direction might give you a sense of, "will never be good."
So, in my case, my discovery is a very famous foreteller in cartoon field.
He is the most famous cartoon theorist,
Watching Scott McCloud's TEDTalk and a book,
I looked into his prophecy book.
His prophecy relating to future outlook of cartoon
was correct in most part.
However, relating to timing, it was incorrect.
Most of attempts from his prediction,
"One or two decades later, cartoon will be in this way,"
are already accomplished and being accomplished in Korea.
A cartoon you will see now is the author I earlier mentioned,
Choi Jong Ho's A Song of a Cloud.
(Music)
The cartoon that you will see next is
a scene from a cartoon called, Constantz' Story
which deals with a detailed story of a rape victim.
The rape scene was discovered by CCTV.
To show the shocking context of a third witness
who was looking through the CCTV. this type of directing was used.
(Music)
There are other attempts from a different angle.
Considering a direction for Interface,
a case that combined not a screen, but game.
It is "Love Slip" written by the author, Oh Chang Ho's work.
Using the interface from a romantic simulation game,
the story is a kind that appears the most often in romantic simulation game.
(Music)
These attempts, in fact, from a 2 dimensional Webtoon,
inserting a screen, or a sound,
can be considered as a simple hybrid or simple mix.
At least, when you observe these various attempts continually
a directional attempt can be absorbed in the structure of webtoon
as it is repeatedly applied
or another directional attempt can end only with 1-2 attempts.
I worked hard on sorting it out,
"Really, which direction is more likely being fertile sole?
First, readers who are accustomed to
reading the previous books don't know
that their action to turn pages is hard labor.
However, if you start appreciating with a physically minimal movement
it is hard to go back.
Of course, for some, turning pages is delightful experience.
Whenever a technology develops
the first thing humans realize is that,
"A limit of our laziness was not here.
We can be even lazier." (Laughter)
Development of all media also make us to say the same thing
while they develop appreciation environment.
inertia of a thumb is stronger than you think.
There are not many methods to stop that.
This causes us to think that it would be better not to stop.
Of course, there is an exception like this.
The author, Horang's cartoon called," A Ghost at Oksu Station."
It is little scary.
Because it is a horror cartoon.
Making it to be able to stop the scroll in the middle like this,
means very powerful contents, exceptional.
However, most attempts except this is the reader's passive appreciation,
is to keep the rule, "Show me the screen in front of the eyes
with a least physical movement."
is likely to be fertile sole, I think.
In addition, there are many more.
An excessive technical intervention that interfere the image of cartoon
can hinder the appreciation.
However, except that, as for the most applied attempts
currently Korea's Webtoon readers
are adopting very quickly and powerfully.
In the world, here are examples of countries, having their own cartoon.
Aside from that, most countries depend on importing for their entire demands.
As you can see, Japan and the U.S. are strong.
Their own comics that has European's time honored tradition.
Among them, there is Korea.
Countries that serve Webtoon:
For the first time, only Korea appears. (Applause)
The spots next to are France and Japan.
To be exact, Belgium and Japan.
In fact, to call it "service" is little short,
because it is kind of introduction or attempts.
Korea's Webtoon, to my knowledge, is viewed 1,400,000 plus alpha.
In my opinion, there are many portals,
So approximately 2,000,000 people seems viewing.
No single medium set the record of such viewing in history of Korea.
Moreover, cartoon is always compared to Japan,
In a way, Webtoon is settling in
as a new cartoon culture, representing Korea.
Long time ago, during my middle school period,
I read an interview script of an author, Kim Jin, who drew "Country of Wind,"
when, "For prospective students who want to be cartoonist,
tell us a path to become a cartoonist,"
he said this:
"There is no path to become a cartoonist but only a will." (Laughter)
That is one side of Korean Cartoon's history
from one perspective.
Because when cartoonists led on to open a path,
censorship or numerous kinds of iron wall would remove it.
Inside is Korean Cartoon world, which was scarred existence
with struggles and surviving, for the first time,
through an independent format, Webtoon,
is showing something.
Perhaps it can be in 5 or 10 years, or even earlier,
that all cartoonists and cartoon theorists
around the world predicted, the future outlook of cartoon
we don't know what exactly is but certainly new,
and things that are only Korean,
perhaps at the closest distance and in the quickest time
you will meet them in Korea.
And also then,
I want to work on a borderline.
Thank you. (Applause)