Metal Family at ArtWave 2021

[The ArtWave 2021 convention was held in Moscow on March 20th. Alina and Dima were given a pretty short time on stage, so they were in a bit of a hurry.

You can watch the stream vod on VK. Metal Family part starts at around 2:40:00]

Alina: Hello everybody. I'm Alina, this is Dima, aka Xydownik, aka Fyodor. We're the creators of Metal Family!

[crowd cheers]

Dima: Well, let's go in order? We don't have a lot of time.
Alina: We're gonna tell you in short about the comic, which I hope most of you are here for. But first a little about the first season, mid-season, and then about the creation of the comic.

Let's begin by talking about the first season, after the release of episode 10, which came out on May 13.
Dima: We were actually going to do a premiere of it here at ArtWave in May, but it was cancelled.
Alina: Oh well, at least we'll show you the comic.

Dima: We wanna first talk about things that were cut from the first season. Some of you might find it interesting.

[crowd cheers]

[on screen: "Revenge on Suslik..."]
Dima: A lot of you were asking about the revenge on Suslik [aka Gopher/Chipmunk].
Alina: Originally when we were planning to make a comic, we foolishly thought making it would be easy. We wanted there to be 2 stories: the first was the one we have currently released, and the second was called "The Tyrant". It was about Dee getting revenge on Suslik. However we just couldn't make this story work, because...
Dima: Because Dee has slightly changed, just a little.
Alina: Yeah. Normally he'd have to get some serious revenge for the beating he and his brother took, but it didn't work out. The thing is, Dee really wasn't THAT offended by it to go that far, so we decided to remove that story. It would've been too cartoonish, we though.

[on screen: "Glam's mom..."]
Dima: Glam's mom. Another cut moment from the 10th episode. There was a scene where Gustav drops the ruler, Glam picks it up, hands it back to him and then just leaves. Then the mother comes in through the door in the back and asks if she could go to church. Actually she was supposed to come in thought the front door...
Alina: Yup. And she would've ran into Sebastian.
Dima: And even in that situation she would say: [negatively] "Where do you think you're going?". Sebastian would answer: "Father told me to go to my room". "Oh... r-right". That would've shown that in the house she was nobody.
Alina: Yeah. Show her tense nature and the fact that she had no weight in the family at all. We'll probably reveal more about it in the second season, but yeah. That particular scene was cut from the 10th episode.

[on screen: "Clip"]
Dima: Something else from the 10th episode that was cut.
Alina: We'll show you a clip. Should we tell the context to the audience first?
I think you all remember the moment where Ches and Glam ran together into the factory region and practiced the guitar. Originally these scenes were structured differently. We wanted to dedicate more time showing how Glam took the guitar in his hands for the first time, make it more lyrical. But there were 2 reasons why we removed the idea. Firstly it would've enriched all ChesGlam fanfictions, cuz it came out too romantic, and we didn't plan that.
Dima: And secondly we decided to use a directing technique where we show alternating bits of Glam learning guitar with Ches and then getting punished at home.
Alina: Yeah, that's why we had to cut this moment out entirely. We'll show it to you right now. With Dima's bad voice acting.
Dima: Because it's still an animatic. We removed it very early in development, but it was fun enough that we decided to show it to you.

[they run into some technical problems with the sound and were forced to skip the video for a bit]
[resume at 2:47:25]
Alina: Sadly we can't show it right now, but maybe a bit later.
I won't even talk about how much bullshit we were doing after the 10th episode, we basically didn't have time to rest. Lots of problems with the website, shop, musicians... anyway, let's just move on.
Dima: Ok. [skips through slides with "website, shop, musicians"]

Let's talk about typography! We had this image we drew for our playlist that we thought we could also use for the notebooks. So we redrew it a little bit, cleaned the lines, added details...

In the end it looked like this. We made a clear 5mm border because we knew the printing house loves cutting those off, in all different ways.
Alina: We submitted it to the printing house, and...

Dima: They decided to remove the borders and do it like this. They thought it looked wonderful.
They cut Victoria's arm off. And when we asked "what did you do" they said "what? it looks good... let's print it".
Alina: That was a little about how hard it is to work with printing houses. I think any artist who had similar experiences will agree.

Dima: Now, a little about season 2...
[here Dima gets cut off by a technician, telling the sound was fixed, so they went back to the animatic]
[The animatic starts at 2:49:56. You can also watch it separately on VK here, or YouTube here]

Ches: I thought you wanted to try?
The acoustic guitar consists of the body, heel, upper bout, lower bout, side, etc... But in our case it's an electric guitar. Grab it, carefully.
Glam: Ugh! What a heavy instrument...
Ches: Of course it is, after the violin. Now... let's begin by tuning. The sixth and first strings should sound like E. Flick the strings and rotate the pegs.
Glam: The first and sixth ones are E?
Ches: Uh-huh.
Glam: Just 2 octaves lower?
Ches: Than the first, yes.
The others after the sixth one, A-D-G-B... and then E on the first one.
Okay. Put your thumb on the backside of the fingerboard, bend your forefingers in a way where don't touch the nearby strings. And press the first fret of the sixth string, like this. And pull it. The electric guitar is too quiet, can't hear well. Is the sound clean?
Glam: Yup!
Ches: Good. Now we do this: place 4 of your fingers on the 4 frets and press the strings one at a time.
Glam: What an easy instrument!
Ches: Of course it is, after the violin... Now about chords.
[practice montage] [text on screen at one point: "think of something to put here..."]
Ches: Does your hair always do that after music lessons?

Dima: We later changed the phrase at the end a little...
[the crowd applauds]



Alina: And now we'll talk about the general cut content and about how much you have to sacrifice sometimes. That wasn't the only moment we removed. Sometimes you work on something, write the dialogue, pick the music, put everything together and realize that it feels off and unnecessary. And then you have to cut it.
Dima: As Alexandr Mitta once said: "a good director constantly kills his own scenes".
Alina: It happens a lot with artists too, when they draw something but then understand it doesn't fit the overall picture. A bad creator would leave it, saying: "Man, I feel too bad! I worked hard on it!", but you have to have strength to cut such moments for the sake of integrity.

Dima: Let's talk about the second season a little. Of course, the seconds season will show development of the old characters, as well as new ones. That's in short. As you see, Ches looks a bit different here.

Alina: Yeah, we'll show a bit more about Ches at the ages of 18 to 20. His past. We'll reveal a bit more about his complex character, as much as it's possible.

Dima: We'll reveal Victoria's childhood.
A lot about Gustav too, but we won't tell you anything about it yet.

Dima: A dude with an axe! Who is he and what was that white thing on his motorcycle?

Dima: This thing will also be explained.
Alina: Yeah, we had a reason for it.
Dima: And, well... Something about Dee, but we won't get into that now... [skips the image really fast]

Dima: It's the least interesting thing, so who cares.
Also the second season will have something from the fandom. We gotta award people for their creations. Also, originally we planned 14 episodes, but one of them was too unfitting, so we removed it.

Alina: Again, for the sake of integrity.

Dima: Now, about the comic. At first we honestly thought comics were much easier than making cartoons, but guys... now we understand. We went though hell.
Alina: I realize now that it actually would've been easier for us to make an episode instead!
Dima: But we hope it turned out fine. Out first drafts were... well, poopy. Like this.

Alina: The thing is, we've NEVER drawn comics before. Ever.
Dima: So then we looked at it and thought we gotta change something. And...

... decided to look at this.
Alina: Since we weren't really into comics, we decided to look at something slightly mainstream but still cool, the comic W.I.T.C.H. I loved it a lot as a kid. And we decided to take their storyboards as a base. Of course ours didn't turn out as cool, but we really tried.
Dima: In any case, we started to change it and it turned from poopy squares into something fairly standard, like this. We had to redo a lot of things and it took us a lot of time, but at least it slowly began to look like... something.

[Left side of the comic:
- SEBASTIAN! What's that noise? What terrible instrument is making that heinous sound?
Right side of the comic:
- I'll find out what that trash is. (?)
Glam: (unintelligible)
- I'll figure out what's making that "ju-ju-ju-ju".]

Dima: The cover! That's a great topic.

Someone in the audience: We can't tell whats going on! [in the cover]
Alina: Yeah, we know.
Dima: At first we wanted it to look like this, then this... [shows off a few sketches]

In the end, the last two were chosen. We worked on them the most.
Actually I'm curious, which one you [the audience] like best?
[audience noises]
Alina: Well, here's a marketing story. The thing is, we asked a lot of our friends, honest friends, about which cover is best. Before showing them the images, we described what would be on them. We told them "the first has 2 hands together, and the seconds has 2 faces together". They told us faces are better, since they're more marketable and stuff, and honestly... I made Dima draw the second version because I thought faces were more important. Who cares about hands, really? But when we showed the same friends the finished covers, they were like "man... no, guys, let's keep the hands". We either drew the faces horribly or its just a paradox. Everyone chose the hands, so we decided on that version.

Dima: The poster also took a pretty long time to make. We wanted it to show the whole family, so you could hang it on the wall. It looked like this, then this... [shows off sketches]

Then we drew it like this, inside Ches' shop. Then we made it bigger. Then shorter again. Then we smashed a wall in it. And at first Heavy had this sad face, so we changed it to a happy one.

In the end it turned into this.
Alina: And here's a cash register that Dima absolutely refused to remove. [to Dima] Show them the version where you put the register in the middle of the image! [she's talking about the second shop sketch] Here! He told me "Well, its a shop! It has to have a cash register!". Eventually we fought to the death over removing it from there, cuz I honestly don't think its the most important element of the image. But Dima still left a tiny bit of it in the corner.
Dima: Because Ches had that register in that one image! It has to be there.
Alina: There's a lot of references in this poster, but we'll leave that to you to figure out.
Dima: [points at poster] Here, that's me in there.
Audience: Why is Dee blushing?!
Alina: [mockingly] I dunno... Hmmm... I think someone's making him blush!
Dima: Maybe Heavy?
[audience laughs]

Alina: Well, that's it. We shared everything we wanted. I think we have about 15 more minutes to answer some questions? [checks watch] Actually, maybe 5.

_________________________________

Q&A

Q: I have a question about Ches. I see him being called "uncle Ches" a lot. Who is he actually for Heavy and Dee? A godfather, uncle or someone else?
Alina: Obviously not godfather. I can't imagine them baptizing the kids, God forbid. I think "uncle" in this case is similar to the English "mister". Like mr. Ches. He's just a friend of the family.

Q [Alina's friend]: Which poodle is better, a mini orange one or a big black one?
Alina: Firstly it's peach, not orange. But yes. Orange. Thanks for the question.

Q: Have you resolved all your problems with stir-rem.com? [a reference to BURNING #1]
Alina: I think their website got taken down.

Q: Are you planning to do more comics?
Alina: Yes, we will. We're more experienced now, so you can expect more comics.

Q: Is Dee gonna answer questions the same way as Heavy? [a reference to Heavy answers questions]
Alina: Of course, everyone will. Dee, Vicky, Glam and Ches.

Q: How did Heavy manage his haircut after the first episode?
Alina: It was fine. He has Glam, who could brush it in a way that would make it look even better than before.

Q: Does Glam have a prototype? If so, who?
Alina: He's a liiiittle similar to Zhenya [Glam's Russian voice actor] in his nerdiness. I hope Zhenya won't ever hear this... it's in a good way! That's all.
Dima: He doesn't have a direct prototype, we took a bit from everything.

Q: There's been a lot of fan theories since the release of the series. Have they ever affected the script in any way?
Alina: No, not really. The main story arcs were written out already. Maybe just the small fandom things could affect it.

Q: Black metal or death metal?
Alina: Dunno... Both, but also melodic.
Dima: Death, I think.

Q: Is Glam's mom alive? Or is it a spoiler?
Alina: It's a spoiler.

Q: What's Glam's fave guitar brand?
Alina: Gibson!

Q: Which fanfics are your favorite or most memorable?
Alina: I liked "Recover" (Переболеть). I think I told about it before already.

Q: I work as a teacher, and many of my students want to get into art and animation, but their parents tell them they will live on fried water [with no food]. How real are their concerns?
Alina: Well... We live on sausages... It's fine. Actually, it depends on the level of obsession and professionalism. If the kid becomes a real professional, he'll be able to earn a lot of money on animation. Don't look at us. We could've earned a lot more if we wanted, probably.

Q: Will there be episodes about early childhoods of Heavy and Dee?
Alina: Yup.

Q: What did Lydia tell Glam in the 10th episode, as he was leaving? Was it "Sebastian" or "Sorry"?
Alina: She said "Sebastian". The thing is, Oksana [official translator] heard it wrong and wrote "Sorry" in the English subs, that's why a lot of people had sort of a dissonance.
Dima: I think also a lot of people heard "Sorry" because Gustav was shouting in the background.