WotD Seppuku vs. Kyra

Ep. 1: [link]
Ep. 2A: [link]
Ep. 2B: [link]
Ep. 3
Ep. 4: Coming Soon

World of the Damned Round 2. I'm up against my rommate and her character Kyra. The story runs PARALLEL to Round 1 with Haiku, and it shows how Seppuku ended up in the predicament he was in at the end of Haiku's scene.

Let me begin by saying that this was ridiculously troublesome.

After the total blowout which was my Round 1 submission, I ended up with severe time restrictions due to longer working hours and another tournament commitment. So no more full animations for a while. Fortunately this hybrid comic/animation format works well enough that I can work very quickly and do a lot with the storyline and artwork without complex animation bogging me down.

Aside from time limits, I found myself beset with a very potent and extremely inconvenient case of writer's block. It took me almost a week to script this mess. (Or, to be more precise, it took a week of throwing ideas around and then out before finally one morning the Imagination God blessed me with a script that I wrote in 20 minutes or less.) The biggest problem is that the story and characters for this tourney are sort of out of genre for Baninja and friends. I need to give everyone a serious enough treatment, but it still has to have an adequate dose of Banana-nana-Ninja^TM style humor.

What made things worse is that I didn't know Kyra or even Seppuku all that well, despite the fact that I live with Nova and I freaking created Seppuku. And the first couple of drafts of the script were way too drama-laden, and the few meager Star Trek and Arkansas references I made seemed craptacularly tacked-on. In fact, it was mostly devoid of humor at all. Why? Because I was spending too much time trying to figure out what the Big Overarching Plot was going to be. So my solution? Make fun of the fact that this story setting demands a Big Overarching Plot! Once I had that, the story wrote itself.

I sure hope that ~oblivious-life doesn't take offense to me satirizing her characters... but when edible ninjas are involved, that's the only way anything can make as much sense as it sorta does.

To close yet another lengthy Artist's Comments block, I want to get it out there that I have no real preference as to whether or not I win this round. This is NOT to say that I'll be forfeiting! I have every intention of going as far as I can here, and winning would be a real thrill. But this tourney's story is rather hard for me to write for (much, much harder than Feast Master in which everything comes through like a torrent). This round was more stress than fun. Plus, in my critical-not-personal opinion, Nova's writing deserves to get farther in this tourney if it can. On the other hand I really need to wrap up this storyline for BNN purposes, and the rewards of winning would justify the stress. Back on the first hand, I can sure use some extra time so that things aren't so damn stressing. It all balances out, so I honestly have no preference.

Judges, it all comes down to which you prefer: my "kickass-ingly amazing" animations (or animics like this one) which take absolutely nothing seriously and it still works -- or Nova's "powerhouse" writing which has a great dramatic and atmospheric element and is compelling enough to keep even non-readers hooked until the end.

Well then. Now I will shut up and sleep. (-_-) .zZ