I want to talk about an episode of Craig of the Creek that I’m so so thankful and proud to have been able to do: “Scout Guest”
I’m just gonna go through bits and pieces of the process, and I apologize if it’s a little disjointed or messy as I do.
Back in 2020 I made these tweets:
I was so simultaneously happy and saddened to read how much this resonated with so many people. But also I’ve been thinking about these things… my whole life! Trying to navigate the messiness of childhood, family dynamics, love, nurture, care and self worth. Everyone on Craig of the Creek has always been open to listening and exploring people’s stories that they wanted to tell and this was a topic I wanted to talk about, it just took a while to figure out a way to do it that made sense for the show and our characters. I think I pitched a couple ideas here and there but nothing was quite working out yet.
Then I finally pitched an idea revolving Jason, one of our characters I got to play around a lot with in previous seasons. They liked it, and asked me to write up a little run down of what I envisioned the story would be. This is what I sent them:
The amazing writers took this idea and ran with it and when the time came for the outline to be handed out, I was so thankful I also got to board this story as well. They brought in the super talented Danny Cragg which I was so thankful for, too ‘cause I really felt like he’d be able to handle this kind of story with care.
Here are my original boards from that episode most things stayed the same but it’s fun to see the little bits that got changed or cut.
Boards_ScoutGuest_part1.pdf
from
DeenaBeck
Boards_ScoutGuest_part2.pdf
from
DeenaBeck
It took me a while to figure out how to frame a story like this while also maintaining the POV being with one of our main characters. So I thought about a time in my life from the perspective of a kid outside looking in and having to interact with the messiness. I shared a little bit of that over on twitter as well:
So, in a way, through Jason, I got to tell a little bit of my story. I know when we did the first pitch of the boards one of the things that came up was the question of what IS the reason Jason can’t be at home that night? And I purposely wanted it to be unanswered. I wanted to cast as wide of a net as possible for anyone that maybe didn’t have the same story as me, or someone else, but that we all could understand the FEELINGS that Jason has. I wanted as many people as possible to be able to see themselves in Jason in that moment.
Again, I am so glad and yet so saddened to know so many of you resonated with this story. I’m sorry it’s a story that needs to be told, but I’m so very thankful we got to tell it.
Thinking about the webcomic I started making when I was 13 but never did anything with. Ghost girl traversing the afterlife with her other halves fighting rogue devils and angels who are all up in the living people’s business.
Girls don’t graduate out of animation, they leave spaces where they don’t feel welcome and go out to seek the spaces where they do feel like they belong, and when that fails, they will create the spaces themselves if need be.
Hi, it’s been a few years. Go check out instagram.com/deenarrhea/ if you wanna see what I’ve been doodling during that time. But I’m thinking about resurrecting this tumblr. How’s it been over here??
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