Tech and time weren’t my friends this week, but I did manage to mostly edit a video that I’m excited to share because it shows the evolution process of the script for “Runaway Train,” my and Maggie Shang‘s collaboration for the Let’s Go!: A Kids Comics Anthology. But instead of having all the cool captions and corresponding pictures added to the video, I ran into tech issues that I couldn’t solve in time to tag team with Maggie’s post about her process.

So here’s the video with loads of info about how we started our collaboration, how the scripts changed over time, Maggie’s artistic decisions plus really valuable insights she learned along the way, my scripting decisions, and what I learned from the comic’s scripting process for this anthology project. For the time-limited among us, I’ve included time codes and supplementary graphics and info below. I hope you have as much fun watching this video as Maggie and I did making it.

Time Codes:

.04s: Intro–the purpose of the video with brief background info

1.48s: Space whales…I have another story in the anthology with Cesar Lador, called Junk Wars, which is the story I had mentioned to Jade. It has space whales in it, so that’s the origin of where the confusion started.

2.51s: The train, concept and design–scroll to see the final design

5:21s: The script evolution

6.13s: First script

9:39s: Second script

12:18s: The conductor

17:47s: Tip on visual pacing

19:16s: Killing the darlings

20:33s: Third script

24:37s: What we learned

28:18s: Our wish

29:20s: One last tip: Comics verses picture book illustration and Marisol’s evolution

32:05s: Maggie’s other comic in the anthology