12/22/24 second post

 

NOTES: Ha-ha..."I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek" is a very esoteric novelty single put out by a band called The Go-Go's in 1964. The joke went two ways: first, either his friends didn't know it and he went, "Just kidding!" or second, they did know it, causing him to do a double-take in confusion.

12/22/24

 

NOTES: This was Mom's old nativity scene, which she made at Marshall Field's in 1982 at a ceramics class. If I remember right, the figures were sold in a kit as unfinished pottery--she painted, glazed, fired, and gilded them. The original special had Magic Screen showing scenes of nativity plays, and there was no doubt about using this set to similar effect for the one moment in this whole thing that's played with absolute sincerity and reverence. The speech is taken word-for-word from Magic Screen's original. 

The script initially called for Magic Screen's "face" to frame the scene, her speech shown in a word balloon. In practice, I wasn't satisfied with any version of that idea, and it came down to simply having the image shown straight-on, with Screen's usual Jokerman text changed to the more solemn Times New Roman.

12/21/24 second post

 

NOTES: "The one-armed man" is from The Fugitive by way of The Mask and the Leslie Nielsen spoof Wrongfully Accused. And I believe his sentiments on the holidays are a paraphrase of Dave Ramsey: "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like."

12/21/24

 

NOTES: This came about when I was working on the earlier Pterri Fetch shots: my fingers slipped and hit the "Transparency" control in PowerPoint. After fixing it and reflecting for a moment, it occurred to me that I could exploit the mistake to depict speed. I blew one Pterri up to enormous size and made that the most transparent (75%); inserted another, slightly smaller one at 50% transparency; and then shrunk the "real" Pterri down substantially and added speed lines in Paint to the end result. 

12/20/24 second post

 

NOTES: Randy's interference went through a number of drafts, and was originally intended to be slotted in with Pee-Wee, Ricardo, and Cowboy Curtis outside decorating--this was also where they would run into the Scooby Gang. The first draft had him hanging onto the walls and setting firecrackers behind the decorations with the intention of lighting them so that they'd go off as soon as Pee-Wee lit the tree. The second draft had him setting up a fulcrum so that he could jump onto the beam and tip the tree over. The third and final draft, which you saw earlier, had him play "fetch" with Pterri to set up a Pavlovian reaction to chase the shiny disc. This last one stemmed from the idea that bullies always disrupt things by proxy so that they can get away scot-free. 

And Randy is, very briefly, the old Matchbox one! Nice little cameo to make him more dynamic-looking.

12/20/24

NOTES: The fruitcake machine came about from just not wanting to build the entire fruitcake wing from the original special. You have to prioritize things when doing model-work all by yourself--remember that I wrote this while still working, so the script and story had to be worked around how many Sundays and days off I had. It started out as something like a hot-dog cart crossed with a gaudily painted set dressing from The Bozo Show, but I never really did any sketches of it. Finally, it became a Star Wars prop I'd seen on Facebook and then bought on eBay; it arrived while I was halfway finished with the photography, so it remained unaltered. As I recall, Feliz Navidad was one of the last few remaining scenes--second to last, before the She-Ra scene. 

 

12/19/24 second post