Thursday, October 13, 2005

Notes: Gray's Anatomy... a conversation

Myself and Bif live within twenty minutes walk from each other but we rarely meet up, opting instead to stay at our keyboards, at a safe distance.

Communicating via instant messaging provides an invaluable resource in the form of records of conversations. I thought this one might interest one or two people (me and bif probably) as it illustrates further how we work together.

We made the decision a while back to use recurring characters, which we felt would add to the whole BifSniff experience, and this conversation primarily revolved around who should star in this weeks funny cartoon.

Frank says: what toon should i be working on as we speak??
Frank says: :)
Frank says: hang on.. phone...
bif says: i was thinking Gray's Anatomy
bif says: but that's largely because my brain is fried and i can't think
Frank says: ha ha ha
Frank says: it's a good one. let's go with it
bif says: thank God
Frank says: :P
bif says: what name is being used in it
Frank says: well, it's reg... but i wonder should it be Stephen again...
bif says: nah, i was thinking maybe Doctor Singh
Frank says: hmmm...
Frank says: i get you... but he's not very sinister looking...
Frank says: guess I can change that when I redraw him...
Frank says: mind you he *is* a doctor...
bif says: yeah?
Frank says: whereas Reg is a thug and Stephen is a psycho who might have medical delusions...
Frank says: both of whom would be scarier with a scalpel perhaps?
bif says: true
bif says: but it's a little too early for another Stephen
Frank says: well, that's what i thought... but then I thought again and I realised that it might not be - because it's not a Stephen *heart* based cartoon...
bif says: and Reg has kind of lost ground to Clive in my mind
Frank says: yeah, I wasn't happy with the way I drew Reg anyway, so if we do a Reg it should be a different reg most likely.
Frank says: As far as characters go, I think this is most suited to Stephen...
bif says: and we maybe shouldn't be too worried about how quickly characters reoccur
Frank says: yeah, I think really we should only worry about recurring themes...
Frank says: ie, the devil hands one would be too close to the boss's wandering hands
Frank says: too close too soon I mean
bif says: yup, so go with Stephen
Frank says: great.
Frank says: now i just have to figure out how to draw it...
bif says: good luck and god bless
Frank says: ha ha ha

This is how decisions get made on BifSniff. At the last minute.. ;)
Really though, it's interesting (to me at least) how BifSniff.com takes shape - we do actually meet up semi-regularly to discuss direction and so on, but little ongoing decisions like this fine tune the whole process... so from now on you may be noticing even more recurring characters.

By the way... resident psychopath Stephen now has three cartoons:
The current Gray's Anatomy, the recent Have a Heart and Februaries The Last Romantic.