Back to the Digging - part 2

Having mentioned in the last post how certain ideas can lead nowhere, I've just unearthed a perfect example from the bottom of a storage box. Here are a bunch of drawings I made from a part of the script that ultimately got cut out before getting anywhere near the animation stage.

An early sketch of Wally sprawled drunkenly at home. I dumped
this sequence early on, but kept the shirt and tie design.

In the early drafts of The Last Belle script our drunken character, Wally, haplessly journeying through London to reach his date on time, had his bad-taste shirt (but not his tie) torn off during a slapstick incident and then needed to realise how ridiculous he looked, before deciding to buy another - equally revolting - replacement shirt. When I started to think about this sequence I played around with how to reveal to Wally his own state of undress. Here was the first attempt at that moment of self-revelation, scribbled in a sketchbook:

The idea was he'd just catch sight of himself in a shop-front reflection. But then I figured there would be extra humiliation for him if he saw himself reflected many times over:

So the idea of a TV store came up (these sketches can be dated by the lack of flat-screen TVs!) This seemed a better idea so I began to draw up some animatic panels:

He flies across the street (from a previous bit of slapstick)...

...ends up by the TV shop window...

...and sees himself blinking back.

So far, so good. But then he had to go to a shop and find a replacement shirt. And the new shirt needed an even louder and busier pattern than the original.

The original shirt pattern, from a very early storyboard panel. 

Next week's post: the hunt for a new ghastly shirt design...