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<\/p>\nIn my spare time I’ve started storyboarding scenes for the new Smuggle Brothers pilot I wanna make. I’ve boarded maybe 10 or so pages and I’m already running into problems with my mental conditioning after having worked in the animation industry for 10 years. I’ve been so beaten into this idea that the characters must be clearly defined and motivated, that the plot mechanics need to hook up like puzzle pieces, and that the entire show needs to move like a well rehearsed orchestra. I’ve also been beaten into this idea that I somehow need to convince people with money that this product is entertaining and relatable; that there are jokes that hit at a rapid clip.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in my comics life I don’t feel this pressure at all and the story flows out of me with very little resistance. What I produce in Forming always feels like it’s channeling straight out of my passion, while what I sometimes produce for animation feels over-wrought and one step away from my creative core. I notice this in television a lot: a tendency to service plot mechanics over real ideas. I most recently noticed this in the pilot ep of His Dark Materials on HBO. No real emotions stand out, no ideas stand out, no artistic risks, nothing to really shock or inspire. The pilot comes across like forced charm, a meek sense of danger, and the plot mechanic of getting a girl to leave her home. They characterize her rebelliousness by showing her running around on rooftops\u00a0 (who gives a fuuuck). My girlfriend fell asleep and I grew impatient within the first 10 minutes of his hour long bore. I guess this style of storytelling is just not for me and I’m really paranoid of my work coming across in this way, which is making me worried about doing jokes like this:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My animation-world instinct is to put a joke like this in to illustrate how Sunday is unhinged and playful while Monday is introverted and conservative, but I’m worried it feels contrived. Just writing that makes me feel like a hack. It’s not like I’ve never gotten a red-eye-screamer from a buddy of mine before but well… I don’t know. My doubts are starting to fold in like a mobius strip. I think the only way to really know is to keep writing in isolation… different scenes that speak to me without trying to connect them with plot, until I feel like my animation work is getting closer to my comic work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my spare time I’ve started storyboarding scenes for the new Smuggle Brothers pilot I wanna make. I’ve boarded maybe 10 or so pages and I’m already running into problems with my mental conditioning after having worked in the animation industry for 10 years. I’ve been so beaten into this idea that the characters must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4691,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions\/4691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}