BLurry
Project Overview
Made in association with 555 Comics, the ongoing Twitter-based webcomic BLurry was written by me from its launch in November 2021 to my departure from 555 in February 2022. It was my responsibility to take the comic from four character concepts and a tonal direction to a fully-realized creation.
Although 555’s pivot to blockchain technologies led to my premature departure, my time with them was remarkable, and I have nothing but well wishes for everyone there.
Pre-Production
While the comic was originally intended as a mundane, queer college-age slice-of-life, I knew our target audience would find the material more engaging with a distinctive premise. I pitched a fair number of spins on the genre, but the team kept circling back to my idea of magic as a mundane technology, seen through the eyes of an arcane IT student. Soon enough, our protagonist was born: The melodramatic yet competent Tyler, who in spite of his love of spell-coding was completely new to much of the internet.
From there, I built personalities for the other three characters designed by the project's illustrator, Bekkomi. Tyler was played as more serious than the suave, attention-seeking Adrian, but more adventurous than his agoraphobic hometown friend Alyssa. I envisioned the crush Carter as a complicated man burying toxicity under charm. I also had plans to bring Carter's girlfriend Valentina on as an ally to Tyler later in the story, to play with Tyler's initial envy towards her.
Writing & Publishing
Of course, with any unique medium comes unique guidelines. Twitter's character limit was just the beginning - at 555, we had incredibly thorough rules and guidelines devised to hook and keep attention amidst seas of content. Not only that, but we were constantly experimenting with these guidelines and adapting them as new methods or rules to maximize engagement became apparent. I got the hang of these limitations quickly, and soon I was thriving within them.
They want me to make them an application.
It'd be a simple project…
But I'm obviously not going to fold that easily, not when this kind of thing is a paid service all over the web.
Nevermind, they want to pay me like $50. I'm doing it.
BLurry was divided into episodes, each representing about a week's worth of posts from Tyler. I would hash out the plot I had in mind with the lead editor, then outline the script in the studio's unique format. Once the outline was approved, I'd write the final text, develop precise image descriptions for Bekkomi, and take another round or two of edits. It was also my responsibility to upload the tweets in an online tool, images and all.
The real treat with BLurry came when the episodes went live. As the writer, I was privileged to not only to compose the story, but to interact with the audience live and in-character. The fans were engaged and intrigued from the get-go, and gave me plenty of delightful questions to answer off the cuff. Better yet, they played along, all roleplaying with me as if we were in the same universe. Their passion and enthusiasm was worth the world to me.
So, if you read BLurry and you're reading this now: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!
Postmortem
Looking back on my work with 555, I feel both pride for the quality of my work and a bit of embarrassment about its heavy-handedness. Still, I'm grateful to 555 for giving me the chance to build a playground for myself and our audience alike, and it was a true pleasure to work with them.