Twisted ToyFare Theatre: Behind the Scenes Week 6

August 28, 2008 on 9:10 pm | In TTT, Twisted ToyFare | 1 Comment

Continuing our behind-the-scenes look at the making of Twisted ToyFares, here’s TTT # 129: Smurf City. This is one of the darkest strips we’ve ever done…literally! It was presented almost entirely in black and white!

Zach Oat did the storyboarding honors here, and the first thing you’ll notice is that he had to leave notes in the storyboards telling our designer, Jairo Leon, which things in the strip needed color, like the blue Smurf blood and the gold Smurfs.

This was a tricky strip in any number of ways. It originally started life as Smurf Heroes (Smurf the Cheerleader, Smurf the world), but too many of the writers hadn’t seen Heroes at that point to make it work, and I forget whose brilliant decision it was to do Sin City instead. But there was much hand-wringing in the early stages that the strip would basically end up being exactly like Sin City, just with “Smurf” dropped in every third word.

To avoid that comedy pitfall, we decided to adapt the story so it uniquely fit the Smurfs’ world, including having Smurfs that turn into gold (Gargamel’s actual original intention for capturing the Smurfs, which ends up making a ton of sense when you consider that a Smurf named Goldie Smurf would HAVE to be made of gold), and having the mastermind be a red-hatted authority figure. Of course, in our version, the ACTUAL mastermind is Jokey, which doesn’t make too much sense if you think about it too hard. But the point is that we TRIED to put a bit of thought into it.

It’s also worth noting that the Yellow Bastard was nearly just a yellow Smurf, and then we remembered that there was a yellow Snork. Also, in honor of Jon Gutierrez’s last week as ToyFare Price Guide Editor next week, I have to mention that the Peyo line (which he suggested, although his was worded slightly more rudely) is my favorite thing he’s ever written.
-Justin