Welcome to Eltingville: D&D Monster Cut Scene

Only one scripted and boarded scene was cut from the Welcome to Eltingville pilot. It's a bit of business from the opening D&D sequence where Bill, Josh and Pete's characters face the villainous Lord Atrocity. Atrocity first unleashes a magical arrow attack to wipe out their goblin minions, and then uses a freeze spell to kill Pete and immobilize Bill and Josh.

In the original script, instead of a freeze spell, Lord Atrocity conjured up a monster. I thought it would be a nice visual and lead to some action. If I recall correctly, the creature was supposed to bite Pete, swallowing his body and decapitating him. Pete's head was going to keep talking, I think, reflecting the fact that it was a game being played. Bill and Josh would have died fighting the monster, as well.

The reason the monster was cut was for time. The pilot was stuffed -- like the comics -- and the monster required a few extra bits of business that could be cut. I'd have to look at the original script or the boards to try to figure out what exactly was cut, but in the end the monster was switched out for the freeze spell that's in the pilot. It didn't require any back and forth fighting o reacting, Pete is instantly killed and decapitated (a holdover from the monster bit, I guess) and we have the bit where Bill smashes Josh's head in anger. Which I kind of like.

I wish the monster remained in the pilot, because, well, I like monsters. Who doesn't? And I liked that the monster has the eyeball motif of Lord Atrocity's magic staff. But whether it's a comic book or a cartoon, you have to hack off the things that stick out and won't let you close the lid on it. You only have so much space or time.

You can see in the scan that the top monster drawing was cut out and pasted down. I probably goofed up some other drawing(s) on the original page, so I transferred the sketch to a new page and started over. One thing I needed to understand was that neatness wasn't super-important as far as getting things done. The sketches didn't need to be pristine or beautiful, they weren't presentation art, they were a means to an end. I have a tendency to be precious about original art when it comes to making comics, and I transferred that antsy approach to the animation work I did. Meanwhile, storyboard artists are drawing corrections on post-it notes and slapping them down on the boards. Examples of which you'll see when I get to scanning Stephen DeStefano's storyboards.

I also have some original design art from the freeze spell sequence, which I'll be posting soon.