"Some
people have quick tempers, Harvard has quick boredom. Or,
as he prefers, 'Overactive boredom circuits'. This wouldn't
be such an issue if he lived somewhere bustling like New
York. But as luck rather inconveniently stuck him several
thousand years into the future, and on Baconsthrope, a nearly
vacant planet, he has a tough time of it now and then.
The
core of the Vacant Planet idea is the by-product of several
other Projects. The first (Dim-Bot v. Door-Bot, 1999) featured
a character who has become a staple in all my project ideas
since then. I've always tried to squeeze him in somewhere.
Then
something seemingly insignificant happened; I made a silly
little Live Action short called "The Cigar Box."
It had no story, but this quick project began the creation
of several worlds. I wanted to make a series of shorts based
on the slim idea in the first. Of course I needed some real
story to make the series interesting. With the help of Ray
Kamb, I started a two-year effort to find the story. It
evolved a lot in this time and went in many directions.
(The back story became more like serious science fiction
and we eventually separated those ideas into a different
story. But that's another yarn.)
I
took the sillier bits of this effort and, through many more
iterations, came up with this world. The final drive came
from the idea of fighting boredom. I used to joke that I
had a malformed boredom gland -- obviously the inspiration
for Harvard's overactive boredom circuits. When I gave Harvard
a bored but more content friend it all started happening.
I started coming up with several situations to throw at
the two. The occasional clash between Harvard's feeling
of superiority and Higgin's general enjoyment of life would
never shake the bond of their friendship, but provides interesting
chances for their interactions.
The
most interesting development, to me at least, was the story
not really being a comedy. My original intention was a gag
cartoon, but this eventually got squeezed out. The stories
have many humorous elements but there are parts that extend
far to the opposite end.
As
far as the length of the project... I don't have a specific
number of episodes in mind. I'm guessing around five, with
the final story taking a half hour or more to tell.
For
the look of the film, I wanted a mixture of simple, somewhat
stylistic designs and complex realistic textures. Also I
had been toying with the idea of doing very unsaturated
colors -- nearly to the point of being black and white --
for a while. After days of experimenting I settled on having
the backgrounds unsaturated while the characters remain
normal. It helps a bit in showing that these mechanical
beings are the only source of life on the planet."
--Chris
Neuhahn, October, 2003
