Sometimes, things don't go according to plan. Sometimes, there are forks in the road, and sudden shifts in the proverbial weather. For me, this has proven to be a whirlwind of a summer thus far, especially in both regards to the series as well as my personal life. I feel this post is important to make to any young and upcoming creatives reading.
The redrafting the series pilot has hit a snag: each new idea I develop ends up having some kind of shortcoming that, despite an outline, treatment and then getting into the writing, can't be circumnavigated. The first replacement for Town of Miracles was to be a two parter called The Wasting, which dealt with a mysterious dark mist that threatened to swallow an English village. This was an idea I was very keen, deciding to take part of Town and re-engineer it to be more like a Hammer Horror story (for kids, naturally), but upon review and a bit of consultation, a two parter was felt to not be the wisest as a means of pitching the series, as it would push up producing costs and be seen more as an inability to tell a compact and accessible story to introduce the series.
So, I went back to basics and whipped up The Stormcloud Man, which saw Rucard, once again in disguise, using a mysterious umbrella that could dangerously alter the weather in London to tempestual levels. Getting it about half done in a first draft, I found the idea perhaps a little too silly for the sort of tone I wanted for VST, being more like a plot from Dangermouse. So that got scrapped and I tried one more time with The Pandora Machine, which would've seen Rucard invent a mysterious machine that foretells great disasters. This one lasted even less, barely getting halfway through the first act before I stopped and said to myself, 'Oh I'm sure even the children won't be able to figure out what is really going on with the machine's strange powers. This premise is so utterly watertight!'.
Trying to turn the series around and having to start from scratch following the collapse of my prior collaboration with Keith has proven to be more of a headache than I had originally anticipated, and combined with the humid weather as of late, and anxieties about my own future, creativity basically smashed into a huge brick wall. So, I decided to put it to bed for the moment and clear my head. Once summer is done, I intend to resume, refreshed and willing.
So, what does this mean for the blog? Never fear, more concept art is on the way.
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