EDO said:
BEEEEEAAARRRS said:
did you always have an idea on how it was all going to play out or make it up as you went?
The comic was completely improvised up until around chapter 30. As we approached that one, we knew there was going to be a shift from the fight between the protagonists towards the fight against the mayor, but how we moved towards that point was up to each of us individually. From then on until around chapter 40, the comic continued as semi-improv, where we knew the basic structure of the fight, but not how the details would play out. Towards the end of the comic, we then dropped the improv to make sure the ending is coherent, properly structured and climactic.
Actually, iirc, by Chapter 19 at least, we knew our conflict was going to end in us teaming up to get the evil mayor, although my original idea was that there'd be one gag panel at the end with everyone in a lynch mob - Edo had to talk me into doing a whole Part 2 for the story, and even then, the Mario conflict ended up
much longer than I thought it would. I feel like we started doing the broad strokes planning closer to Chapter 26 than 30, but I could be wrong; either way, it was still mostly things like "34 is going to be a flashback chapter" (hence Edo wrote 33.1 as a lead-in) and "there will be 4 chapters of fighting powerup-spam-Mario", and we were both thinking ahead to increasing amounts. But we kept most of what we were planning to ourselves so that we could both be surprised like the earlier improv days - although it backfired a couple times where we accidentally fouled up each others' plans, so eventually we just laid out all the major plot points to make sure we were on the same page, and then divided up the remaining chapters (having decided to end at 50, since we were already somewhere in the vicinity of Chapter 42 at that point). The last four chapters were planned out and worked on concurrently; Edo posted in-progress panels of 47 and then 49 so I could work on 48 and 50, and I typed up my full script drafts to make sure there was no conflict and to try to ensure everything that needed explaining got said by one of us.
The improv was more fun to do, but the planned out stuff was more satisfying once completed.
BEEEEEAAARRRS said:
so that toilet being away from the wall made no sense whatsoever until you tied mario into it?
SiFi said:
He's the only plumber in town, Walkazo would never want to hire him, and he'd never want to work for her. It's only natural that something would go hilariously wrong like that.
Haha, yeah, originally I just drew myself standing behind the toiler so that it could be seen that it was a toilet, and when that got pointed out, I lampshaded it in a later chapter, and then retroactively made spacious "plumber-friendly" toilets one of the many acts of Mario's tyranny:
The whole comic's really a mix of things later getting repurposed into references, and things meant to be foreshadowing or the groundwork for later developments all along, and most of the callbacks were improvised right until the end.
SiFi said:
But what becomes of the mustachioed gentleman at Loic's?
In the absence of a waitress to guard the place, he snuck into the kitchen, feasted on cheese and pie all night, and made off with all the frozen hamburger patties shortly before the breakfast shift started.
