I'm kind of a human trash fire today, so we'll see how this goes! My sinuses have decided that they hate the pollen and the heat, and are thus trying to kill me. Oh, Wednesday! So fun. This page haaaaated me. Hated. I think I lost most of a day of work trying to get the script for this to work. In the end, I'm pretty pleased! I mostly ran into issues with trying to figure out how to get a guy who doesn't say much to convey "It's good that you're not actually having a crisis right now, because the dudes upstairs will think you're an easy target and come down and beat you up some more." Because like, he's not that verbose. Vincent's dialog is still a little clunky, but it works and I'm happy with it. I ended up adding this page in, rather than the one I was originally planning on where they're already working on getting out of the chains. When I actually sat down with my thumbnails to start finalizing the page, I realized it wasn't a good transition. Elias is still a little too mentally beaten up to be making a daring escape, and physically needs to heal, so they have a good reason to be sitting around a bit longer. Plus, like I said in yesterday's page, that means I would need to set up the next scene already, and it's too soon to do that. When I looked at my notes, I realized there were a few more bits of dialog I wanted to cover, and they wouldn't make sense after they figure out how to get out of their chains. Anyway, my point is, I ended up doing a lot of editing to this part of the chapter rather on the fly, which was much needed. My original plan wasn't bad by any means, but it didn't accomplish all the things I wanted it to accomplish, and I've never had regrets about changing things in the past. I think it's easy when you're working on a large project that's very close to your heart, to just keep holding onto it as this perfect thing that shouldn't be changed or tampered with. For example, the people who spend years and years doing worldbuilding and character development, but never actually write the story. On the one hand, I totally understand those inclinations because the development parts are fun and imaginative, but on the other hand, if you never actually commit what you're making to paper (or whatever media), then you never get to see in real time what works and what doesn't. I worked with a guy on a freelance animation project years ago. It never got off the ground, for a LOT of reasons, which I will firmly put on someone else's plate, because this is my story. Anyway, I did storyboards for his script, and he was very specific about what he wanted. So that's what I did. I made animatics and showed him the storyboards, and he kept complaining about little things (these were sketches, obviously very loose, and not meant to be polished), but wouldn't admit that the overall product wasn't working. I would make his nitpicky changes, but I finally got fed up and storyboarded the whole thing in a way that clarified a lot of the shots, added establishing shots, made things less flat overall, and then made an animatic and showed it to him. His co-producers were super happy with it, and it still told his story in a way that visually worked much better, but he was pissed. He ended up firing me/I quit from the project, and it never got made. (SUCK IT.) The point is, it was easier for this guy to blame me that the perfect film he saw in his head wasn't working, rather than admit that the reality of his vision didn't have the impact he was looking for. And I did understand what he was going for, and maybe in live action it would've worked, but I explained multiple times and warned him before getting into things, that animation has its own rules, and representative drawings read in a different way than actual film. (My sub-point to all this is that working with clients on creative projects makes being eaten by sharks seem like a better option most of the time.) Very long story short, I never mind making changes to a scene, or a whole chunk of my story, or a line here and there, because ultimately, even if the first thing I came up with was good, I know I can make it better in some small way. If I look back at pages (or totally different projects) that I've already made, and find fault in them, then that's normal. But I'm not pursuing perfection here. I just want to make the best thing I can, not shy away from tearing it apart and putting it back together occasionally, and get it out into the world, flaws and all.