Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25247233-20160513080632/@comment-14909251-20160515213601

Having read through most of the letter I do understand some of the complaints he is raising. A lot of the technical stuff is particular, in my opinion, and to be expected in a big transition phase, but there is some validity. The main area where I feel concerned is the apparent attitude towards Sheena playing a role in production and trying to keep things true to Monty's vision. While it is a collaborative effort, Monty's death shouldn't mean that essentially Monty's part of that collaboration died with him. Obviously, his wife and the animator he worked with most closely are probably in the strongest position to represent Monty's perspective.

I am always concerned when it seems an artist's creative vision has been co-opted by business interests, especially in the wake of said artist's death. Of course, that doesn't mean staying true to that vision will be successful in creating a stellar product. Precedent supports cases where departing from the original creator's vision benefits the work and cases where it hurts the work. One thing I would be adamant about is that saying what is or is not important storywise is not always going to be clear until later in the story. Raven attacking JNPR could have been extremely important later on in the narrative or be revealed as an important bit of foreshadowing.

There are some examples in fiction where things that would make little sense initially suddenly make complete sense much later in the story. Futurama has a pretty notorious example of this in the very first episode with Nibbler's shadow, something that wasn't explained for years. Granted, that happens a lot in any story featuring time travel, but there are many instances where you don't realize the significance of a scene until you go far further into the story.