I’m not sure when I decided that Stick Lady was going to be a major character. In Episode 2, I just needed a random bystander to point out that Mr. Stick’s accomplishments in Episode 1 seem exaggerated. But having Mr. Stick rescue himself was never something I considered, and I liked the idea of having a random bystander save the hero. Thus, Episode 3 was born.
By this point, the computer class that had provided me with the software and excuse to create the series was already a memory, but I was having too much fun to quit. This was during my creative Renaissance, in which I was making all kinds of completely useless things, most of which have long since been lost on corrupted hard drives or defunct forums or something. And like most of those projects, The Adventures of Mr. Stick!!! was getting bigger, more ambitious and technically challenging with each installment.
Hopefully in a sign that I’ve learned a couple of things since then, this episode includes some of the biggest changes I’ve made since the original. My original plan was not to change the script, leaving the text just as it was in the original animated GIFs, right down to the punctuation. But in this one, I decided not to have Stick Lady destroys the robot sign with her pistol. This was for a couple of reasons: Recreating that many energy bolts and explosions would have been a pain and probably thrown me off my update schedule, and I wasn’t sure that Stick Lady really would say that “Senseless destruction is fun!” Plus, that line seemed a lot cooler when I was in high school, even if it was always meant ironically.
Even so, I hesitated to change it, because I didn’t want to compromise the artistic integrity of the piece. But then I realized I was working with an animated GIF about stick figures fighting robots.
I made a few additions as well, like the building Stick Lady runs past before arriving at the teleporter and the flashing lights on the teleporter itself. And I redesigned the robot sign to make it look more robotic, as well as Mr. Stick’s prison cage. Which probably ate up all the time I saved by not having Stick Lady destroy the sign. Go figure.