The blog is up early? And there’s an actual subject to discuss? Will wonders ever cease?

Some of you may be curious what goes into making a series of mash-ups. Those of you who aren’t interested will find this blog entry pretty dull. You have been warned!

I’ll use last Wednesday’s Alice mash-ups as an example of what the process is like. Incidentally, I learned a few things about the book (like it’s official title is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and its author while doing research for the Alice mash-up post, and because I believe in being educational as well as entertaining, I’ll share some of these little nuggets of information with you. For example, did you know that Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym? Carroll’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. For clarity, throughout the rest of the post I will refer to the author by the more commonly-known name of Carroll.

PICKING A THEME

Okay, so it’s time to make the mash-ups. The first thing I have to do, of course, is decide upon a theme. This isn’t always as easy as it seems. Every week, I want to pick a subject matter that’s well-known enough that my audience will recognize what it is even without reading the blurbs that accompany the pictures. You may not get EVERY character, but hopefully you’ll recognize where they’re all from. This will be hit and miss. Obviously, the choices are going to be influenced by my interests, which means you’re more likely to recognize the source material if you share some of my interests (like the Bill and Ted mash-ups).

Also, the source material has to have characters whose costumes are easily recognizable so when I draw the Animus characters wearing them, you can tell who they’re supposed to be. Everybody’s heard of James Bond, but if you saw Todrick dressed up like James Bond, that is to say, in a tux, would you immediately know who he’s supposed to be? I’d have to draw him in an iconic Bond pose to really sell it. That’s not to say I couldn’t do a James Bond theme, just that it isn’t an easy fit.

But iconic characters aren’t enough. It has to be appropriate for the audience I’m aiming at. For instance, I’d never do a Friday the 13th mash-up, because I find that it would be completely inappropriate for a site aimed mostly at kids. Not that I like Friday the 13th…slasher movies freak me out.

Ideally, the subject matter I choose will have enough characters for me to do mash-ups of the entire main Animus Funnies cast, but it isn’t required. For example, I really wanted to do Tron, but after doing Tron, Flynn, Lori and Sark I felt I’d done enough to represent the franchise. No other characters from the movie would bring anything different to the table. I didn’t feel like doing the Tron: Legacy stuff at the time.

So how did I come to pick Alice? Well, I felt like doing something other than a movie or from the comics. I thought maybe a book. But which one? Alice in Wonderland was the first idea to come to mind. It met all the criteria I look for in a potential mash-up subject. It’s well-known, the characters are recognizable and plentiful and the material is (mostly) appropriate.

DISTRIBUTING THE ROLES

Once I’ve settled on the theme, I have to decide who will play who? Usually, there are a couple of obvious picks and I’ll start with those. As I’m drawing those, I’m thinking about connections between the characters and who’d fit well with who. Atfer I’ve made up my mind about the principle chracters from the theme material, it’s often a question of who’s left and filling in the holes in the cast as best I can.

In Alice, there’s the White Rabbit. Obviously, that was going to be Cyran. The Cheshire Cat had to be Sass and Zoë had to be the Dormouse. Barnaby seemed a natural fit for a character with “dum” in the name.

Speaking of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, seeing as I’m mostly familiar with the Disney cartoon of Alice, I didn’t know that Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum were from Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There. I discovered that when I was doing a little research to write the blurbs for the post. It’s still Alice though, thank goodness!

I like to keep to the original character’s gender but that isn’t a hard rule. When I was doing Star Wars, I felt that Zoë made the most sense to play Han since she’s a pilot. In Avengers, there simply weren’t enough female roles to go around which is one of the reasons I picked Sass to play Iron Man.

So I’m doing Alice and I’ve already cast two of my female characters. That left Nektara or Deema to play Alice. Nektara was the most natural fit.

Until I actually draw a specific character though, I might change my mind a couple of times. This was the case with Deema. Originally, I thought I’d cast her as the Caterpillar (since the Caterpillar is green), but then I thought she’d be a better fit for the tea party and was going to make her into the March Hare with Todrick as the Mad Hatter. That left me thinking about Big Oonch and Red Rich.

Ah Big Oonch! He’s always interesting to cast. One of the rules I’ve made for myself is that you’re never supposed to see Big Oonch’s eyes and that rule holds true for the mash-ups as well. (Astute Age of Animus followers will know that I’ve broken this rule once. Can you find where?) This rule sometimes makes my choice for me. Rufus wears sunglasses. Scrap-Iron and Sci-Fi wear visors. If not, I try to pick a character whose eyes can be easily obscured. The trouble was I couldn’t think of anybody in Alice.

This is where my lack of intimate knowledge of Alice in Wonderland worked against me. The only roles I felt I had left to fill were the Queen which I decided would go to Red Rich (more on that later) and the Caterpillar, which would obviously have to go to Big Oonch. But that didn’t feel right. So I decided to go back to Deema being the Caterpillar and decided that Oonch would be the March Hare.

This post is turning out to be longer than I thought it’d be. This seems like as good a point as any to stop for this week. I’ll continue with the rest of the story behind the mash-ups next week.