PEDRO & OLIVER

(by A.A.Caselli, aka AleCanaya, aka InterpreterALE)

My Attempt at a Comic Story


Well, today I bring you some of my early attempts at drawing and writing comics.

I know it's not great, but it was a moment in my life —almost three years ago— when I was venturing into new directions to express my crazy (artistic) mind.

I've tried music (I play guitar and keyboards), poetry, drawing, novel writing and I said to myself: Why not video-making combined with comics? I have this idea, inspired by personal experiences, of talking about cultural clashes, language barriers, and, essentially, how to face them with humor.

AND THAT'S HOW PEDRO AND OLIVER WERE BORN...

Well, I'll stop with the blah, blah, blah and leave you with them. All of them have close captions in English and subtitles in Spanish that you can enable on your YouTube window.


PREVIEWS

I made two previews on YouTube for the "upcoming" show.

The comic series were based on the adventures of Pedro and Oliver...
A chihuahua (Pedro) and an old English sheepdog (Oliver) that struggle
with the funny differences and misundertandings between their own
languages (Spanish and English) and some other ones.

The first one was a "teaser trailer" with little information and a lot
left to the imagination of the viewers.

The second one was in ASL (American Sign Language) and directed
to the Deaf community in the States. By the way, I'm a LSA
(Argentinian Sign Language) interpreter —that's why the InterpreterALE
on my YouTube account— and know ASL).






EPISODE #1: CROSSWORD

In the first episode Pedro is struggling to find one word
when he's doing his crossword. Oliver tries to help, but just
to make thinks a little more messy.

The actual plot (in reality almost all of the plots in this comics)
is based on my personal experience learning English and trying
to make conversation with native English speakers :) I remember
having this conversation with my wife (American) about the difference
between "DEAR" and "DEER", they just sound the same but their
spelling is different, there are some sound in Spanish that can sound
similar, but never with vowels. Anyway, like Oliver says in this
episode: "It's just the way it is". A lot of things that you learn from
a new culture, language, etc. you just have to accept without trying
to find a reason for it (because there is none).

Oh well, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did it making it (and living it).
The best way to learn is to make fun of your own mistakes while
you are giving your first baby steps.

P.S. #1: A special thanks for my wife who proofread it and yelled
at me saying: "The plural is deer not deerS", she was right... as usual.
I love her with all my heart. This video is a redo of the original one which
contained the misspelling. This is dedicated to her and her patience.

P.S. #2: About closed captions: In any language one of the most
difficult part to translate are the jokes, especially when they are wordplays,
that's why I uploaded 2 different closed captions in Spanish: one is a literal
translation from the English, but it loses most of the jokes; the second one
it's a more open translation, but it tries to keep the essence of the
original jokes.




EPISODE #2: AFFECTION

In the second episode Oliver is a little confused about the use
of the word "AMAR" (love) in Spanish.

That actually happened to me and my wife when we were arguing
about the way to word the different degrees of affection between people:
lover, family, friends, acquaintances, etc. When I first started learning
English the idea of saying "I love you" to a person that it's not my girlfriend
or wife was odd. But as I say: "Don't try to understand a language,
accept it and just speak it".

Misspelling notice: Where it says: "Since we WHERE little fluffy puppies",
it should say: "Since we WERE little fluffy puppies".




For different reasons, but especially for being busy with other projects, I didn't make any more episodes. I still have a lot of ideas for the comic, but I need more time to seat and continue.

I'm eager to know what you think about the story, the characters and the idea. Should I give it another try? Is it worthy?

Thanks for stopping by.

ALE