Box Peek July Update (Patreon)

We can all stop nervously staring at our clocks, the next Box Peek update is here!

PRODUCTION UPDATE
Despite my three-week caffeine prohibition and eventual Red Bull lifetime ban, it was a pretty productive month. It did however get a little slow at the end here. I wrapped up the snipping for Episode 8, so that's now ready to start shooting. Episode 9's art is complete, with the exception of this one tricky visual element I've been trying to crack all month and I still can't quite figure out. It'll come to me eventually, or I will just end up doing something boring and bad in its place.

August is essentially a half-month on account of my Gamescom trip, so my plan is to have Episode 9 ready to shoot before I leave, and then upon my return it will either be time to start shooting Episode 8 or drawing Episode 10 (gulp). As we enter these final months I'm feeling pretty good about progress, but I won't even start to pencil in a release window until I'm a good chunk into Episode 10, as that episode is a surefire Doozy of Doozies. 2019 is happening. It's just I still have no idea if it's going to be like late October or New Year's Eve.  

BEHIND-THE-SCENES THOUGHTS
I'd say around 1% of my time spent watching anime I pull something useful out of it. This month I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion on Netflix and I gotta say it's helped with me with Box Peek a little. I had ignored this show up until this point because I always thought the Evas looked so stupid compared to Gundams (I stand by this) but it turns out there's a lot more going on than my assumptions gave it credit for. They bring you in with the giant robots, and you're like "wow the animation is great, the art design and mechanical design is great wow wow," and then you're like "okay whoa these are some nice shots. This is whoa, actual good direction" and then you're like "whoa whoa this is well written even. These are wow, these are smart character moments and this is a perfectly hidden mystery." I was surprised, both pleasantly and unpleasantly.

All of this to say that Neon Genesis Evangelion will not be inspiring Box Peek in any meaningful way. As much as I'd like to, I'm afraid it's a little too late to implement horrifically dark tonal shifts or even a cool penguin that lives in a fridge. What I did pick up on, and I think had actually read about before, is that this show was artfully frugal with its diminishing animation budget. You'll notice shortcuts like reused shots (I'm still too proud to do those (except for that sweet box summoning sequence obviously)), or focusing on the person who isn't talking so nobody has to animate a mouth, or so many shots of people standing motionless, or deliberately cutting away from actions you really would have liked to see. All of these might conceivably diminish the quality of the show, but they didn't affect my enjoyment of the stuff I actually cared about. There's this one unseemly long and silent elevator ride that at first feels cheap, but as it drags on you really feel the weight of this interaction and it starts to work. In my eyes it's accepting a limitation and finding a way to make it benefit your story.

There is this part of Box Peek Episode 9 that I was concerned about: SPOILER ALERT: a door swings open. I sat at my table, peeved about how much it just sucks to have to get the door's proportions right, get a convincing background outside the door, make the paper around the door firm enough to not wiggle too much as I convincingly swing the door open from beneath the frame, and then have these puppets waddle through the open door without knocking into anything awkwardly. It would be possible, but so time consuming and annoying.

And then I thought, "Hey bud. How about they just open the door off camera?"
And that was a good idea. Sure it would have been cooler to see that door slam open, but really, it's not going to make the show any worse not to see it. You'll hear the sound effect, a character will walk into the scene, and you will understand what happened. Evengelion style. Anime can teach you about bonds and existentialism or whatever, but it can also teach out about budgeting your production. Really I can only hope I pay it forward and someone finds that 1% of value in Box Peek.

There will be another Box Peek update around this time next month.
Thank you again for your continued patience and support,
Kyle