#production guide

Anyway, I’m hoping that once I get settled into my new job I can get 1-3 pages done a week. That’s my goal for the second half of February. 

And finally, an example from the last tab. This one is about some side characters I want to be a small part of this adaptation. This tab also just has some general notes about all kinds of things, including how I want to do scenes that are way in the future. Just pages of general notes, unofficial character designs, templates for character sheets, stuff like that. So, here’s what this particular set of notes is about: I have decided I want to break up some of Blackjack’s adventures with the adventures of another group of ponies from stable 99. This is due to two reasons:  1. BlackJack’s story tends  to be dark. Even when it’s funny, it’s dark and cynical and not terribly light hearted. I want to have something to break that up, and contrast with her struggles. When BJ’s stories are serious, this one can be silly, and vice versa. I am pretty sure this is a recognized narrative device but I don’t know what it is called. One that might work is to say that BJ’s group needs a foil. This group will be that foil. 2. When reading FOE:PH, I noticed many things. One of the things I noticed is that we weren’t really given the chance or space to get to know many of the side characters, or anyone else from Stable 99. My primary goal with the second group from Stable 99 is comic relief. But I also want to spend some time getting to know the other characters, like big daddy and brutus. As the story moves forward I’ll figure out spaces to put those guys.  3. The first person perspective of FOE:PH is really restricting. When I was reading it, it bugged me that it was always blackjack’s perspective, just, BJ, in your face, all story, no escape. She is the main protagonist, so it makes  sense-but since I don’t like that particular narrative restriction i’mma break it.  Long story short, I’m planning on having large blocks of BJ interspersed with slivers of side story. I think this will help the narrative. So far, I’ve got about 15 pages of BJ and then I’ll have 4 pages of side story before continuing on with the BJ story. 

This is what the character pages look like. I label them with the pony’s name, the date I drew it, and since I’m expecting I’ll end up doing revisions of these character designs as I get further and further into the story, which version it is. These are all version 1. duh. I have them all on the same scale. the highest line is supposed to be average pony height. the left box is for the cutie mark, the left set of text is for physical details like eye and mane color, and the right box is notes about how I want to portray the character. Left one is p-21, right one is Scotch Tape. Since I have read this book from beginning to end without stopping-it took like 2 months by the way-I know a few things that make me want to have Scotch Tape look a little older, so I decided against using a standard filly template.  Also the more I look at these the weirder the butts look from the side