Hi there. This is the post I mentioned in
TUC 393. There was some things I couldn't really put into commentary, it may spoil things or didn't really have a good place to talk about it. There's also removed materials, ideas and alternate takes on each strip that I worked on, before Ayasu comes over and changes half of it.
The first thing that I wanted to talk about, the reason behind it. Since Ayasu asked me to co-author, we have been trading ideas. One of them being 'what about my author character'.
One of the things about comics in general is that authors shouldn't be interfering,
as Sarab explained here. But in TUC and TOC, the authors pretty much been part of the comedy from the start. While I could have played backseat and simply offered the strips and ideas, it was too tempting to make something else about it. Namely, including myself in the shenanigans.
So even before Ayasu's new look was revealed, I was planning on mine. First, went over the personality flaws and quirks that I express in RL. Something that we never fail to mention over voice chat. I'm French Canadian, already there's a potential there. French accent, mispronunciations, Canadian memes with Hockey and Poutine and Maple Syrup... Me and Ayasu were bouncing ideas that I was writing down for later use.
Then came the part 'how am I going to introduce myself?'. I could just
appear out of nowhere or Ayasu could present me
"This is the new co-author". But no, I wanted to do more.
And since we had a bunch of ideas pulled together... I made it into a story.
Unsurprisingly, the whole The Author's New Groove story was created to introduce myself (if the title wasn't obvious enough anyway), and at the same time it served as my training wheels. Aka, do I have a good grasp of TUC's characters and universe.
As we saw during
this story, most of my sprite work was done for B&G subcomicing back in the days, in 2001 to be more precise, and it was on CorelDraw even. Since then I got better at Photoshop and adopted it. I wouldn't go back either, there's so many things made easier, although I missed the fact that I basically had all of my sprites as different objects that I could move 'out' of the canvas when I didn't need them. In Photoshop, the only thing you see is 'inside' of the canvas, but you get used to moving between different sheets as well.
Anyhow, I didn't want a story that revolved upon meeting me either. So I threw more ideas at it. And the first one was 'If X and Zero can steal anything, what if they stole author powers?'. It sounded crazy enough to work. And by stealing Author powers, then Ayasu would need to seek help. Yeah, this ended up being an 'author' story as a result, but I do think it was a good idea in retrospect.
I wrote down at least 7 strips worth of dialog, preparing in advance, all while Ayasu was putting up the
introduction/reboot strips. And I made my first
two strips because they sounded too good to pass up.
By the time the first part of The Author's New Groove rolled in, I already had 10 strips ready, and had written ideas up to over half of it. I like having a general plan for where I'm going, although the final product often ends up different.
And at that point I wasn't even introduced yet either. The plan 'included me' rather than 'evolve around me'. And even in the planning stages I never intended to make myself a hero for it either. I'm simply a tool for the story, like all of the characters.
Story Size?There are several things that I could simply not fit in the story, or it would have made it much longer. I know some of the storylines lasted for over 50 strips even in TUC, but several things bothered me :
- One Shots that would interrupt/break rhythm
- We are at a very early stage of the reboot, don't want to upset the pace
- How long or short do we really want this to be?
I had pretty much everything planned up until
TUC 388. That's where I hit my first major roadblock. Not writer's block, I still had that running. It was more about how much longer did we want this to go on with?
By luck or happenstance, Ayasu got busy with other things, namely the new website that we're using now, converting old Flash movies into YouTube since they don't support Flash anymore. It gave me all the time I needed to produce almost 2 months worth of strips without interruptions. This buffer of strips was quite welcomed to start things off with the reboot at least.
But that didn't solve my problem though. Here are some of the ideas I was brewing :
- Megaman would be shrunk so that it'd infiltrate X's systems, and in an 8-robot-master style would shut them down one by one until he could find the Author Powers.
- Alternatively, could have simply met and interacted with various recolors of X that would be like his personality traits or computer systems (like weaponry, personality matrix, self-aware system...)
These are good ideas, but not here, they needed to be fleshed out more. It could have potentially doubled or tripled the size of the story as well. Did we really want this to reboot TUC, as interesting as it may be? Sure, Ayasu could toss in One Shots at anytime, but it didn't change the issue I had with it.
And then that's where it hit me. The powers got stolen at first, they can be stolen again... and by some strange luck Zero WAS in the Author Space with the others. I had already set myself up in the best way!
Then had another smaller hurdle, wrapping the rest in 5 strips. Because me and Ayasu had realized that we wanted to end this on 393. Because 394 was April's First. That timing was perfect.
Alternate Scripts and StripsSome of the strips underwent some bigger changes than others.
Ayasu often fixed some text so it flows better, more coherent, or sometimes I didn't pick the right choice of wording. Other times, it wasn't really matching how the character talks or would say. Those are minor gripes though, it's normal that I made those mistakes as well.
This is one example where a minor edit was made. This is the original version I made of
TUC 368, which was misnumbered as 369 at the time due to a goof in counting the strips. We had talked about one more One Shot before I started my storyline, but Ayasu didn't use it and I forgot to correct the numbering as a result.
The smoke was added by Ayasu shortly after I made it.
The
smoking Bass corpse also was added later, as I didn't know how to do it at first.
Some strips underwent changes in the humor entirely. I mentioned it briefly in the comments, but
TUC390 had a pretty big change.
Ayasu mostly looked at this one and pinpointed problems :
- I changed the scales of Gundam-X. That way he looks much bigger than Celedh and Zero. I was afraid of making Celedh too small in the first version, and didn't realize the scale was off compared to Gundam-X.
- The first panel was changed to something more amusing, anime-related.
- We flipped Celedh over to the other side, so it seems he appears between Deathscythe and Gundam-X.
- I also reworked some of the text in the other panels while at it.
- The idea was that Zero appeared from behind all ninja-like. That was changed to speedlines. 'Yoink' also was deemed a B&G reference, which I thought it was from somewhere else myself. So instead I added the 'that's what she said' joke.
That is a lot of changes for a single strip. The next ones are changed to a lesser extent, but there's a few interesting things.
TUC 391
The problem Ayasu brought up with this is the missing city in the last two panels. It also tickled me at first, but the terrain for the city, that you see in
TUC 389 where they are fighting, didn't really allow me to make a hole for X that would look good. The floor is simply too flat, no perspective. I could have tried to give it some perspective, but I was afraid of the results. So my first idea was to put it back to the normal strip style, for simplicity. We didn't like it.
So I went with another idea Ayasu proposed, is that the city is a produce of X's author powers, which means it would disappear at the same time. To go with that, I also added more 'speed blur' to X's morphing down for effect. That was a simpler solution that worked out well.
But it also led to changing the
next strip to some degree.
As you can see, the position of the fore and background characters were different in the first version. I thought it'd make more sense to put the focus on Ayasu rather than Celedh removing X from his cavity.
After flipping the position, something still wasn't working in the script, Ayasu didn't think the whole 'stealing the ground' made sense. Personally I thought it was funny, since Zero steals everything, he'd break his fall by stealing the planet. Guess that's thinking a little too big. So with the whole city being part of X's creations, I changed the joke so that Zero would question about it. It works I guess, but I still wanted to keep my 'stealing the ground' joke as an alternate, that's why I'm showing it here.
Modified IdeasMany ideas I wrote at first couldn't be used as they are. Some of them were entirely removed and might be used in one shots or outtakes. I felt there was a problem with the pacing if I used them during this storyline.
Here some of them :
- It was supposed to be a Cyber cutout that appears in TUC 385, reference to the fact I made a few one shots for Ayasu before, but they have not been published (yet). I figured a cutout of my old avatar may fit better instead.
- Pi being there in TUC 385 was planned from the start, but dedicating a whole strip for it seemed odd. That's why I made him slide in in his pan. Why? Because it's Pi, of course.
- Some of the characters were meant to interact with the B&G characters more, like Megaman and Pi, which was reused for the ending joke TUC 393 instead. I wasn't sure how to end the storyline at some point, but reusing that idea proved worthwhile.
- I decided against stretching the B&G style anymore because... TUC is not B&G. The old style 4-panel was a fun kickback, but that's all. I didn't want to push the references more than this, so I mostly limited myself to Megaman, and the few unique characters I used, rather than the entire cast.
- Celedh would have been swarmed by his characters after he appeared, with mentions of 'it's been so long!'. Could have been amusing, but mostly by me. Scrapped entirely.
- "The fuck is that!" in TUC 382 is quite literally what Ayasu said over voice chat imiyating Megaman's voice from the flash animations. He's reacting to the panels themselves in this case. This strip didn't exist at all in my original script, but it fits in just so well.
- The 'smidge less author powers' comment was an early idea that didn't pan out with how the final script went. Some of those ideas were that Celedh would face off X with author powers, and since X is not used to them, Celedh may get an advantage. This would have gone with the other ideas of entering X's circuitry/body to retrieve the powers, perhaps while Celedh played distraction.
I kept some notes aside of what I wrote originally for the final strips. When I put it down as comic, sometimes it feels like it needs to be adapted, either by how it will fit in bubbles or with the visuals. Some of them end up being pretty different.
First, the first version of
TUC 387 :
<Celedh> Do you mind if I fix things around here first?
<Ayasu> I was going to ask about that too.
<Celedh> I haven’t used this place in years, so it’s pretty much as I left it.
*Giant box with all old characters inside, including Pi*
<Celedh> Okay, here we- wait, Pi, get out of there!
<Pi> But I made new friends!
<Celedh> You can come visit them later!
Then for
TUC 388 :
*A quick recap later, strips back to TUC style
*Celedh dressed up*
<Celedh> Alright, I see what’s going on. Problem is, I’m only co-author, so I have a smidge less power than X does right now.
<Ayasu> But X doesn’t know how to use those powers yet, so this is my best bet.
<Cyber> Meanwhile, X is wrecking our house in a Gundam.
<Celedh> Nothing Ayasu can’t Ctrl-Z once we’re done. What we need to figure out is how to get the powers back to Ayasu.
<Ayasu> Well I can’t ask X for them, he’s against dismantling, and I can’t will them back either…
<Celedh> You’re thinking the wrong way. How did X get your powers in the first place?
<Ayasu> Well he-
Ayasu !
Ayasu looks at Zero
<Zero> … What?
It feels quite different than the final version honestly. It was trimmed down, and the reactions were much better in visual.
This was pretty much the 'short' version that I wrote to span the last 5-6 strips. Gives out an idea of how I write the 'overarching' ideas I have, and then fine tune them :
Return to the normal comic, Deathscythe is holding on but breaking down.
<Ayasu> Looks like we’re back just in time.
X goes for finishing blow
Zero appears behind X.
X shrinks back down, and falls down, making an X-shaped hole in the ground
Zero is holding a glowing ball next to Ayasu
<Ayasu> Things can finally get back to normal.
Megaman is sitting in Pi’s pan
<Megaman> I like Ice Cream
<Pi> I like flails!
<Sarab> What’s wrong with Megaman?
<Ayasu> Uh oh, looks like we brought back the wrong one!
<Megaman> *inside the box* Uhm, hello?
Then when I figured out how many strips we wanted to make total (which was exactly 5), it changed form.
Deathscythe is breaking down
<X> Now for the final strike!
<Celedh> *appears floating* Not if I can help it!
<X> And who are you?
<Celedh> The Canadian Cavalary, or the co-author, whatever.
<X> And what do you think you can do against me? Repair Deathscythe?
<Celedh> That’s a good idea, but I’ve already done my part.
<X> What did you do then?
<Celedh> Distract you.
*Zero appears holding on to X’s back.
I write these thinking of how the text would be cut into panels, and try to make sure I end up on an even number, although that changes. It depends on my mental image of it often.
<X> Oh no!
<Zero> *In X’s back* Yoink!
*X shrinks back to normal, and falls*
*X lands in an X-shaped hole*
<Cyber> Uhm, are you okay X?
<X> Pain circuit overload, waiting for my extra life to kick in
<Zero> *holding a glowing ball* He’ll be fine.
As you can see here, my first plan was to have Zero appear in the first strip, and then steal in the second one, so they'd both fall at the same time. But since we fixed the strip so that Zero clings to a building before I made it in comic, I don't have it in comic format to show, only in text.
*Zero hands Ayasu’s powers back*
<Zero> Here you go.
<Ayasu> How did you not get hurt while landing?
<Zero> I stole the ground before I landed.
<Ayasu> You know what, good enough for me.
Ayasu was the one asking how Zero landed. And not questioning it further, safely. Instead I had an interaction with Celedh here, and Cyber asked the question to Zero.
<Ayasu> Well everything is back in order now.
<Celedh> I’ll go back to clean up my author space then, I’ll be around.
*Pi sitting in his pan with Megaman*
<Ayasu> Uhm, what’s going on here?
<Pi> I like flails!
<Megaman. I like ice cream!
<Ayasu> *facepalm* We didn’t bring back the right Megaman.
<Megaman> *inside of Celedh’s box* “Uhm, hello?”
This one didn't change overly, but Megaman's text changed. It even changed more after Ayasu's suggestions. In my first version, Megaman asked "if there was any video games, Netflix or anime in Canada". Ayasu though the french manuals was funnier. Either way works with me mind you.
