Work In Progress - Group Sex

Hello there

No wait, please come back, that title isn’t a new patreon perk, it’s the name of a project I’ve had on the go in the background for a while which I’m going to explain to you today.

It’s just a working title at the moment, and the fact that Patreon has already flagged this post for containing it, means I will almost certainly dig my heels in and keep it.  I can’t remember if I’ve told you anything about it before, perhaps a mention of it on Cabin Fever maybe, but I’ve been adding to the writing fairly regularly.  Today (I’m writing this on Sunday), I was intending to have a proper day off, but events/moods conspired to not make that a possibility, so I’ve been chipping into it a bit more.  I’ve done a bit of concept art, which I’ll show you tomorrow, and have structured the writing I’ve done.

I’ve been doing that thing where I have a notes document on my phone that I just keep adding and adding to. I’ve also got one for the Tales From Castle Diablo stories, which - like the one for Group Sex - is enormous now, and I’ve started transferring them all to a bespoke notebook.  I’ve nearly finished a brand new one of those, and will fit it in here as soon as its done.  Really fond of it so far.  But I digress…

I’ve always wanted to write something pornographic.  No please, come back again.  I don’t mean an actual bit of writing for people to get off on, but rather something that makes no concession to standards of decency. Something comedic and smutty.  I’ve just never quite got the idea right to funnel the filth into, but earlier in the year I was having a long think about the logistics of Rocky Robot.

As you know, we made a decision early doors that Rocky Robot was going to be family friendly.  The characters and situation would easily lend itself to an adult cartoon, but the fact that it would have been such an easy route to take is what ultimately dissuaded us.  So it was, that the writing of the episodes became a satisfying challenge, in creatively keeping it up to speed for all ages, whilst not being able to get out of situations by just having Rocky call Chip something obscene.

When I was pondering this, I did think it would be interesting and fun to have a project where I didn’t have those limitations. To see how it would play out if I removed all rules of language and content.  To actually make that the mood of the piece, that it could be raw and uncensored. I've actually done a similar thing with the Cactus Man comic (I found the script recently after I thought it lost, and will be dipping back into it), but that was primarily with violence. As I thought about the project I was forming more, I thought I could not only make it tonally different to Rocky Robot, but also logistically different. The Rocky Robot animation has a lot of moving parts, and a lot of the characters actually shifting around.It's very rarely static. That’s hugely time consuming, whilst also being very rewarding when it is all fit together.

I get a massive amount of satisfaction whenever I complete any animation.  It still feels like I’ve completed an impossible task, so imbued is the thought of animation being a relentless and menial process.  Obviously, I’m not drawing individual frames, it’s mostly done in the computer, and I don’t think I’ll ever get my head around how it was ever the case to do this stuff frame by frame.  Perhaps because I am imagining myself doing it all, as I do with the Rocky work.  Of course, in the old animation studios (and the modern ones for that matter), the worker bees have a minute or two of an episode allocated to them, and put all their efforts into that before it is assembled as a whole. I draw, animate and direct the whole.

Which is what I was trying to negotiate with a new idea.  I started thinking of what I could do in animation that had limited animation in it.  Something that was essentially static, and brought to life by animated expressions and voice sync. That’s where I hit on the idea of a show that all takes place with the characters sat down talking to each other.  Which led to the idea of a show taking place in a group/therapy chat.  Couple this with my desire to do something very adult, and I settled on a Sex Addicts Group Chat with a mediator.

I had several ideas straight off the bat, of topics that they could discuss and be pretty revolting about.  As I started accumulating ‘rules’ for it, I decided to make everyone objectionable. By design, there is no ‘touchstone’ character who represents the audience, they’re all pretty monstrous and unsympathetic.  There’s the further issue of representing folks sexuality in an insulting way, so if everyone gets a hammering (not like that), then that’s negotiated with a sense of fairness.  They are all extremes.

Not only is it tonally a counter to the work I’ve done on Rocky Robot, but it’s also structurally a counter.  Again, coming from a place of trying to streamline the actual process of making it.  The Rocky Robot episodes are all over the place in their moving about.  They have adventures every week, move to different locations in the puppet workshop, go off exploring and getting themselves into scrapes. So the scripts don’t really follow a formula or structure as such. They don’t start and end the same way every week.  We, of course, try to hit beats within the plots, so there is a degree of structure in that respect, but if you want to give off that it can truly spiral all over the place, then an inherent abandon of repetition is essential.

Group Sex is the exact opposite.  It follows a properly tight structure.  I want the episodes to be no longer than five minutes (ideally three), so the dialogue is very rapid between the characters, but – more importantly – the structure is rigid.  Actually, 'template' might be a better word for it.  It is being written to a regimented template.

I don’t really want to include any script out of context here, particularly given how blue it is, but I can tell you that the whole thing is set in one community centre, with a circle of chairs containing all the characters.  Each character is broadly drawn, with little nuance, and – as I mentioned – entirely unsympathetic.  Except perhaps the group leader, who is encircled by relentless degradation whilst trying to be understanding and just do their job.

Each episode begins with the group leader recapping what happened at the last group meeting.  This is always the group leader saying “Now, we finished off last week with Terry telling us about…”.  Then there is a different scenario of suggested (or blatant) decadence.  For example, today I wrote an intro where the group leader says “Now, we finished off last week with Terry telling us about how VPN’s work, and how you can view things online whilst hiding who you are and your IP address…which was very interesting Terry, but I must again reiterate that I’m duty bound to say that you shouldn’t really be looking at that.  So today…”

Terry, who I’ll show you early concept art of tomorrow, never speaks in the episodes.  He is always present, and we know that he does speak in the group (because of the intro), but we never witness it.  He looks absolutely innocent and harmless, we just hear retrospectively about how much of a sexual degenerate he is, which sits incongruously with his appearance. There's another character that is near mute, but says the same two lines every week.  I've not drawn her yet, but it's a good running joke.

You get the idea.  There are other structural points which will be repeated in each episode, but it mainly focusses on the bickering and contrariness between the members of the group.  Each of them is adamant that their attitude is correct, and none of the attitudes are palatable.  No matter what they are talking about. It will hopefully be a comedy of extremes, with everyone insulted and insulting. Let’s say I’m not aiming to represent anyone well.  These characters are not fine upstanding examples of what they are.

So it’s actually a similar challenge to writing Rocky Robot, just at the other end of the spectrum.  Rocky is about writing to a family audience, and negotiating situations to maintain that, and Group Sex is about writing to definitely not a family audience, for entirely unsympathetic characters, and making it still somehow engaging within the awfulness. Maybe the awfulness will be what is engaging.

I mean, I’m not sure comedies like this get written any more.  There’s a good chance there’ll be something for everyone to get annoyed about.  Or maybe (hopefully) it will be so ridiculous and filthy, that nobody can possibly take it seriously.  It’s certainly not being made with the intent of being taken seriously.

Every chance I’ll just bottle it at some point, but I really hope I don’t.  The scripts currently make me laugh a lot, and it’s mega-cathartic to be writing such decadence and striving for something that will ultimately be unleashed rather than released. It’s just really, really naughty.  Whenever I complete any of it, I assure you it’ll be flagged up with every possible warning. In all seriousness I probably should check those Patreon "community guidelines' just in case.  It is ultimately just a smutty cartoon with a load of pervs talking about being pervs.

Never too far from mischief am I?

Really hope all is well and happy for you, and that the week is going as fast or slow as you would have it.

Very much love your way

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