Production Diary 5 - Burning Big Daddy Teaser

Intro

Last year (2024), I started working on longer form content (still hate to call it that).After a few years of creating vertical “shorts” based content, and the spastic performance that comes with that, I thought it was a good time to make the necessary moves to transition to a format I am more accustomed to.

So far the process has been long, but interesting. It has been a few years since I’ve made longer shorts which come with their own problems, but what also made things difficult was up until this point, my storytime shorts were practically black and white (with the exception of the more recent shorts that transitioned to a slightly more colorful look). I’ve done a lot of experimenting with the Storytime format, and to be honest while I prefer the black and white look and pipeline, there are too many benefits to performance to ignore color.

That being said, it has been a rich learning experience for me. I’ve learned a lot since I’ve started producing this short, and I think it’s a step in the right direction for my content.

Stormy Seas

When I planned to make this short, I wanted to do something that was fairly low risk in terms of ideas. Meaning, I knew in advance this would be along process, but I don’t have enough data to know which type of longform content works for my audience. With this in mind I decided to make a story that I wasn’t attached to, so if it performed bad, it wouldn’t leave me discouraged. I do this a lot actually. I call these shorts “exploratory content”. The purpose of these are to be experimental and to see what issues I can face during production and publication of the shorts. This allows me to iron out the major issues before I produce shorts that are both higher quality and have a higher chance of success.

On the subject of issues with production, this short definitely had its fill of them. Perhaps the most problematic was the length of production. I started producing the short in the late summer/ early fall of 2024. Initially, I only worked on the short on the weekends, but that was taking way too long, and I had a propensity to miss sessions. Once the winter came, and the performance of the shorts dropped, that’s when I decided to focus more time on the long form shorts. After that change, I was able to wrap up the production within a month or two.

The next issue was the core idea. The story is simple: I played a video game on my mom’s new tv and messed it up. It’s the type of story that was really funny in the immediate time that it happened, but due to the differences in technology, doesn’t really make as much sense in 2025. So it was an uphill battle trying to make a funny short that was relatable, and honestly, I’m not sure I stuck the landing on this one. Unfortunately the short feels like it had development problems, as I watched it back when I finished it up. Still, I’m grateful for the lesson.

The last issues are in the same category, which is aesthetics. The aesthetic issues started from trying to develop the Storytime style for color, but it grew due to the switch in production from callipeg to toonsquid. So in the end the final look of the short is inconsistent with itself, but also with other Storytime shorts. Perhaps it looks different from another point of view where there’s not much scrutiny, but to my eyes, I think the aesthetics are the weakest of my Storytime shorts. It’s unfortunate that it turned out that way, but I can say that this will be the worst the colored Storytime shorts will look.

Outro

Overall the production was rough and uneven, but I’m glad I was able to get it done. It was a very important learning experience and will definitely help with making longer form shorts better. That said, since I am currently building a backlog of long form shorts, I won’t be able to release this short just yet. I wanted to release it by the summer, but due to my back issues, it will be a little while longer before it sees the light.

See you soon!

-Until next time-