Harry Chalk 3 - Matt fights back by etourist
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I was reading my previous post on Harry Chalk 2 and was reminded that the whole reason I started this series was to do a really cool stick figure fight - which I've yet to do in the series. Ahem... well, I guess I failed miserably with this episode on that goal. However I hope I still delivered with a cool story.
Previously I've voiced every character myself in this series but with Sally White having so many lines my really poor female voice (that you can hear in Harry Chalk 2) just wasn't up to the task. Thankfully GoAnimator, Rocque, answered my call for female voice talent and did a great job recording her lines.
Mathieu Leader a.k.a. GoAnimator, Cartoon King, volunteered maybe as far back as February to voice Matt and Coach James. Which makes it seem like he got in early but in actual fact I was hoping to release the third installment in March.
Truth is, I've been trying to come up with the script for this episode since about October 2010. The only thing I knew for certain was that Matt would enter the blackboard world. It was the obvious progression and quite a few fans of the series had suggested it.
So, when I say 'trying to come up with the script' that's basically a lot of thinking time, trying things out then going off and working on something else because inspiration hasn't hit. I didn't start working on Harry Chalk 3 properly until perhaps February 2011. By April I'd animated about half of it and got stuck (at the point where Matt and Sally head to the drama center). Then in June I had a brainwave and finished off the second half.
The problem was that this episode started to become much bigger in the themes covered by script. I wanted to take it into a story about an oppressive school establishment that was trying to crush creative and imaginative thinking among its students. Hence the inclusion of a closed down drama center.
In the process I was trying to superimpose characters like Sally White and Bill Duster onto people in Matt's real world - this is why Matt question's if Ms White the Geography teacher is actually Sally White.
Unfortunately it all got too complex and my brainwave in June was to scale it all back down and make it all just be about Matt, Harry, Sally and Bill. If I hadn't done that, I think I would've still been working on it for another couple of months.
Thanks to Chaostoon's wonderful custom Wolfman and Dragon characters I was able to clearly show that all these events really do take place in Matt's head and that finally he discovers he can control what happens too.
Beyond that, there's not much custom work involved other than prop masks of the the desks in the classroom background so that the characters could walk behind the desks - as the standard background doesn't allow it.
Obviously this episode leaves the way open for a fourth installment but whether I'll do another I don't know. This was very hard to write. Maybe if I do another I'll try to focus on that Stick Figure fight that I set out to do in the first place.
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