Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

creative process

I’ve run across a couple interesting blog entries about various points in the creative process from people whose work I enjoy:

Jackson Publick offers a glimpse into the making of an episode of the animated series The Venture Brothers:

So the first two weeks of production are the domain of the design department. We have a meeting on the first day of the first week, we go over the script, and I give the character/prop and background design supervisors any notes, sketches and guidelines I have for the look of said script. If the script is too “heavy” — i.e. too many brand new, used-only-in-one-shot things have to be designed—we try to talk about streamlining things a bit so they can stay on schedule …

Also during this first two week period we record the episode…

Slugging … is the process of editing said Pro Tools project to create a sort of Venture Bros. radio show. I sit with the engineer and more or less imagine what the pace of the show will be. We pull tracks together that were recorded hours apart, overlap them and so forth, in order to try to make the show sound like live conversation. When we hit a part of the script where big action is described, I have to kind of imagine how long that action would take, and we leave that part silent (unless of course henchmen are screaming during the action, or Brock is grunting or something)…

We give the cd to the storyboard artists, who begin their work in week 3…

For some reason, I always thought the process worked in reverse, with the animators working according to the script, and then the voice actors working according to the animation. (“Comicon Postgame and Production Journal” - 07/22/05)

Meanwhile, author Neil Gaiman writes this weekend about the process of signing soon-to-be-published books, and his flashback to doing the same thing back in 2001 for American Gods: A Novel.

“What’s in that box you just opened?” asked my daughter.

“Pieces of paper,” I said.

“It says American Gods on the box. I thought it was books.”

“No. They’re just title pages. 5000 of them.”

“5000 in that box?”

“750 in that box. 4,250 still to come.”

“Why are they sending them to you?”

“Because I have to write my name on them?”

“On all of them?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because America is a very big place, and not everyone can get to a book signing. This way stores who order them will be able to sell a signed, limited edition for the same price as the regular ones, and so people in Texas or Florida or Utah will be able to buy signed books. See down at the bottom where it says ‘This is a signed first edition of a limited number of 5000 copies.’? I’ll sign above there, like this.”

“Does that say ‘Neil Gaiman?’ It looks more like ‘Nel Gurgle.’”

I love the way Gaiman writes. (“Deja vu. Or anyway deja scrawled.” - 07/30/05)