#But I'm vague blogging about a storyboard artist on

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

*Husk Voice*

I'm a bit pissed off tonight so I'm just gonna say this... There's "Media Literacy" and then there's "I am aware and can accept this type of genre I'm getting into for What It Is and I respect the inner workings of the type of artists who willingly help make the type if genre I'm willingly getting into What It Is even if I don't necessarily agree with/understand them, because really... What did I expect and what other "respectable" person would be willingly putting that much passion into this kind of job to start out with if they weren't just some kinda fuckin' stoopid fucked up sexy lil' Weirdo Freak who had some years upon years of Disrespectful Kinks and Fetishes under their belts to begin with?"

And I'm convinced 99% of Adults who treat Adult Cartoons like prestige late night live action television Don't Get That...

Anyway, friendly reminder that no matter what they're depicting, Cartoon Characters Aren't Fucking Real And Can't Hurt You...

OKAY WOAH THOUGH! EMERGENCY EDIT TIME:

I CAN HAZ FULL ACCESS TO BEETLEJUICE CARTOON? I CAN HAZ?! YAY.

[kustas]

If you feel comfortable talking about it, could you please speak about your experience with the animation industry ? (Love your blog btw)

This is a rather vague question so if you have more precise ones don't hesitate!

I'm currently in my last year as a student in animation, aiming for a spot as a character animator in hand-drawn 2D. I've studied animation for three years but used to study concept art for video games. (and have minor experience in that industry, though mostly as a hobbyist) Over that time I've studied other animation things like storyboarding, character design and puppet animation too, very jack of all trades, but I don't want to work in those fields yet.

In my studies I got to meet with a lot of industry pros, mostly as teachers and some more briefly for masterclasses or in festivals. I've only attended three/four festivals so far, one big distant one and the other local ones, one of which I help staff with an organization I plan on teaching for too (they do a lot of that). I've not worked for an animation studio yet. My only laughable pro experiences were a VG internship and doing festival bumpers...

Since pay isn't high and it's an artistic industry nobody's here for the money in animation workers proper. Lots of nerds though the crowd is very diverse. In my country is is not an industry that is well known from the public - every one knows what cartoons are but little on how they're made. It sucks sometimes, in particular there's no big unions that can help you, but we are lucky to qualify for state aid for artists so you can make do between gigs without too much issues, and while you do work hard it's not like VG where it's hardly compatible with having a family...Also way more diverse than VG though the usual social bias against minorities also appear in work ofc...

The industry people I had the chance to meet where all lovely, little pretentiousness and a lot of childlike whimsy, although some are super hardcore hard workers which can be scary! But we are all passionate about the same things & animation as a craft is crazy diverse anyways so convo is always great upon meeting new people. You do sometimes run into a celeb and it's awkward for all sides so its best to treat anyone with the same respect level haha

I'm both excited and scared to find my first job </3

On the bright side I should finish my studies without carpal tunnel syndrome which I'll count as a W. Don't really know what to say more

[itlivesproject]

could we get a peek at the writing process for ILW? like did you make character playlists? pinterest moodboards? storyboards about how scenes will play out that you then have to write or anything like that? are there any abandoned plotlines you initially wanted to add but they didnt make the final cut? and who was the first person to want to create this project? was anyone at all friends before or everyone was atrangers? when did the project start? did yall have zoom meetings or sorted everything out on tumblr through text? sorry for the amount of questions! its ok if you dont want to/cant give answers to everything, i just really admire the ILW team for coming up with this masterpiece a lot haha

Ooh this ask looks fun! I'm gonna add a read more because this is getting long.

So once upon a time in the summer of 2020, the choices fandom was getting more active (I think) because of COVID. A bunch of people were bored and lonely and playing choices. So I got involved in the fandom and replayed It Lives, and it got me thinking about a book 3. I became obsessed with the craft of telling a choice based story. I was analyzing choices books, noticing things I thought they could’ve done to make more impactful choices, trying to figure out how to go from novel writing to VN novel writing where there are multiple paths, etc. So I started talking to my sister who also plays choices and we came up with the basics of ILW. We created the bare bones - character sketches, basic lore, potential endings, etc. I then downloaded renpy and started to teach myself coding.

Cut to January 2021, when It Lives 3 was officially canceled. I made this post:

I got my original recruits from this post, including mod maggie and mod eri! Aside from my sister and me, none of us knew each other before the start of the project, aside from being vague acquaintances, though I think maggie and I were actually mutuals at that point because we'd bonded over noah x mc a couple of times. Once the project was further along, we ended up getting more writers/artists/programmers who are active on the team now, including mod sugar, mod m, mod evie, and other members who aren't mods on this blog.

Anyway, after I got some recruits, I made a discord server and shared google folder. The server has a million channels, channels for each writer, artist, for backgrounds, for music, for characters, for programming, for nonsense. In our drive folder, we have different folders for art, planning, writing, and each writer has their own folder where they put their scenes into. Once their scenes are finished, I copy the scenes into a compiled folder where I put everything together and we can freely edit the scenes.

When we first started, the most important part was planning and sequencing out the story. We didn't start writing until we had everything planned from beginning to end (mostly). We had the endings and figured out how everything would work, we planned out all the lore docs and complex background lore. The only thing we didn't fully plan out beforehand are scene details, but we had the general arc/main point of each chapter from the beginning. While planning, we used to talk basically nonstop every day. We had voice calls on discord once or twice a month on the weekends, and we made a chart with google sheets that had everyone's time zones so we could plan times that everyone could attend.

Anyway, once the planning stages were ready we made the outline. We took the different arcs and interspersed them through chapters. We try to make each chapter have a mostly cohesive arc as well. The outline has the short version, which is split by scene with a small description and an assignment of who's supposed to write it. Then we have a detailed outline that the writers refer to before starting their scenes. In the detailed outline, it has more information about what's going on in the scene. For example (ch 8 spoiler) the short outline scenes were:

Scene 1 - Linc shows up at Matthy's house/argument - Lindsay

Scene 1A - Lincoln diamond scene - Lindsay

Scene 1B - Abel diamond scene - Maggie

Scene 2 - Annie convo - M

Then if you go to the longer outline, there are more fleshed out descriptions. However, often times there's just a short paragraph explaining the scene, like "Linc shows up and gets mad that rowan is with matthias. you find out matthias is lincoln's dad, rowan can either side with him or not. they get back to the cabin, linc and abel get into an argument about matthias, and again you can either side with linc or abel or neither." So important plot points are mentioned in the scene description, but it's still up to the assigned writer to flesh out the scenes. Often times, in our personal writer channels, we'll ask other team members to help us come up with ideas, figure out how to make things happen, improve dialogue, etc.

In addition, we often have little writing parties on the weekends. We have a bot that does word sprints for us, and the winner of the writing retreat will sometimes get some kind of reward from yours truly. You know, to increase motivation and whatnot.

We don't really have pinterest boards, moodboards, or playlists. I just don't bother with that because it's not something that particularly interests me I guess, and I haven't seen anyone else do any of that either. Mostly we just talk a lot and when we finally sit down to write, we're constantly messaging each other in the channels haha.

There are some things we were thinking about including that have been cut or changed. But I feel like for the most part, we surprisingly have somehow managed to keep a lot of our original ideas. I guess a lot of them just evolved from one form to another, so even if it's not the same thing as the original idea, I feel like it is because I was there for the process of how it changed.

Anyway, hope this answered your question! It was fun to write up <3