Welcome to 6 to 12 September 2015. This week’s graphic is a version of Scene 2 that’s being reworked. Read on to find out why..

Enough time has passed since I finished off the story art, so it was time to decide – good enough? Needs more work?

Late Sunday evening, I took a look at the story comic. I decided that it was all crap and I suck and why the hell did I ever bother to start this stupid project, what the hell made me think I could do this. Self-knowledge prevented me from taking this emotional outburst at all seriously. I waited ten minutes and looked at it again. This time I was full of enthusiasm for the project and affection for the characters and how could I not go ahead with this?

Sometimes Sundays are hard to get the hang of.

I left it until the following evening to make the call that yes, the blueprint I had was good enough – definitely not perfect but certainly good enough to make a film out of.

Then came the exciting part that every film maker looks forward to: spreadsheets! Shot lists, dialogue sheets, asset breakdowns..

..but then I remembered I hadn’t shown anyone else what I had. I’d missed a crucial step.

The thing is, I’ve lived with this story for so damn long that nothing about it confuses me. I know how it works. But is it going to make sense to anyone else? And even if it makes sense, will it be clear what’s going on? Only one way to find out…

Today I showed the story comic to a friend. The big thing that came out of that feedback was that at first he thought the intended entertainment value was a case of schadenfreude watching Pointy come to grief. We talked it over and he said if it was more about Gronky trying and failing to help Pointy, I should establish that Gronky is a helpful person – his suggestion was that Gronky should help out a worm before he gets to Pointy. That way his upset at failing to help Pointy would have a clearer context.

This is where it helped to know my characters. Gronky is more henpecked by his own conscience than a desert-faring boy scout, and Gronky’s already aware that helping Pointy is not going to be easy (though the audience doesn’t quite know why yet – it’s hinted at, then revealed). The whole reluctance to help Pointy out is shown in Scene 2 (this week’s graphic), but this is animation – instead of hinting, I can manifest Gronky’s conscience as an actual character that literally nags him into helping Pointy out. No shame making the context a bit more obvious.

This of course means the story comic and spreadsheets will have to be adjusted very slightly once I’ve worked out the specifics. And if I go ahead with the conscience thing, I’ll have to do some concept art and tech dev for Gronky’s conscience. But it’s only a little bit of work. Probably.

See you next week!

EDIT: The day I posted this, it had been 500 days since production started – a production anniversary!