The DWPFF Journey - Part 8

ITEM - The one word script I missed out on posting on Friday of last week will be posted at some point this week, along with a new one for THIS Friday. Also, I suck... that is all.

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Ok, so the last time we talked about the "Digital Webbing Presents - Future Fairy Tales" project, 'lo those many moons ago, I talked about how Chris Stevens - editorial genius that he is - told me that the script I'd written hadn't stuck to the source material of the original "Rikki Tikki Tavi" story as much as he'd like. The story was good, but it wasn't really a story that Rudyard Kipling could be proud of. Not that I'm saying Rudyard Kipling would be proud of any story I wrote... he's not my daddy or anything, but you know what I mean.

Chris' words were like a revelation. He told me what he told me on November 23rd, and by November 26th I'd re-written the entire script. My fingers literally flew over the keyboard as I crafted a brand new story. I sent it in, and I eagerly awaited a response from Chris. Chris got back to me the very same day, and this is what he had to say:

this is a winner, mike.

nice job.

Okay, so I know what you're thinking. The last time Chris sent me a short and sweet response I freaked out a little bit. Back then, I had this feeling in the back of my head that was telling me that Chris wasn't all that pleased with the story. So what was different this time? Well, for starters, I was pleased with the story this time. When the first script was sent in and Chris came back to me with a succinct reply, I thought it meant he didn't like the script. But what I've realized now is that Chris will almost always come back with a matter-of-fact response. I was just using his brief reply as an excuse to scrap the script I'd sent in because I didn't really like it anyway. I knew I could do better, and I wanted to do better. Chris gave me the guidance, and I felt like I'd finally written a script that was not only good, but was a proper homage to one of my favorite childhood stories.

Now all that was left was to tweak the dialogue and panel descriptions here and there, as I'd written the script in a bit of a rush, and wait for Chris to find the perfect artist to bring the story to life. One of my favorite aspects of the DWPFF project is that writers and artists in the Digital Webbing community that might never have spoken or interacted with one another in their lives are now collaborating and forming friendships because of it. Chris started a brilliant thread on the Digital Webbing forums called the dwpff: work journal (which is now over 30 pages long) where he could post updates to the project as it continued to develop. It started on November 11th with Chris posting artwork and following not too much later with a preliminary list of creators and stories that would be included in the book. The reason it was a preliminary list is that it originally consisted of 33 stories. As of this post, the number of stories has grown to 41 (as far as I'm aware, that is) and the list of contributors providing stories, pin-ups, editorial help, etc. has grown exponentially. It truly is a project that people want to be involved with. My name was on the original list posted on November 14th. It was placed in-between the title of my story and two other words. Those words were "need artist". On November 26th of the year 2009 Chris had my completed script. On February 9th of the following year the first page of my Rikki Tikki Tavi story was posted up in the work journal thread on Digital Webbing by the artist we eventually decided to go with. Why in the world did it take so long? We'll talk about that part of the journey next time.