No, not like the mind-bending Christopher Nolan sci-fi.

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I first came up with Son of a Witch in early 2018. Funnily enough, at this point it was nothing more than a lighthearted animated slice of life comedy revolving around the daily mishaps of a group of ancient, super-powered teenage witches after finding themselves in present day London: hence the title. 

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I started to conceptualise the characters, coming up with their initial designs - whilst the majority of their personalities stayed mostly the same, their visual designs most certainly did not (it hurts to look at this old art).

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At this point, the witches are little more than a bunch of bulletpoints in a Google Doc and a couple of poorly executed illustrations.

So, around a year on from "The Inception" as I like to call it. By this point, I'd discovered the witches' powers, their backstories and identified some key plot points/major events.

 

With these discoveries, the story begun to take on a more serious tone; but I couldn't bear to part with my silly little title - so instead I decided to keep it. Thinking about it now, I'm really glad I stuck with the name - it makes for quite the ironic title considering the present mature themes of the show and overall dark motifs.

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I started writing up some of the episodes (again, very poorly) in Google Docs with incredibly basic formatting.

2020: the year everything to pot.

 

Lockdown was terrible. It coincided with my long summer holiday as it was during my last few months of Year 11, which meant that I didn't get the summer holiday I'd been dreaming of for years. However, there were much more important things going on in the world, and there were admittedly positives to the situation for me: one of which being that I had plenty of time to work on Son of a Witch.

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So, I got myself a proper screenplay program: WriterSolo. Thus begins my official screenwriting journey. I genuinely loved—and continue to love today—writing the episodes for this show - each one is about 40 pages long (I have a background in narrative and descriptive writing, which has definitely bled into my screenwriting).

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I begun researching how to write for TV - formatting episodes, scene changes, etc. and started implementing those more technical aspects into my writing. This is where things really started to take off for me in the writing department.

In 2021, I continued my focus on writing the show but with a similar but different approach.

 

I started to integrate shots and camera movement, sound design, transitions, different compositions into the screenplay: essentially stronger direction. Of course I knew what I wanted the show to look and feel like - I knew what angles I wanted scenes to be "shot" from, but whoever read the script wouldn't. And, seeing as I intend to direct the show myself, I wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes. As a result, the episodes tend to come out more cinematic - which was the result I was hoping for.

Following my (not so) grand return to social media in late 2021, I made a few slightly very important creative decisions: at first, I was writing Son of a Witch as a straight-to-animation series. The more I thought about it though, the more I started leaning towards the idea of telling the story as a webcomic first.

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Going from a webcomic to animation has a a lot of advantages - first, you have source material that you put to an audience and you get to see how the story unfolds. Like a test run of sorts. A very high effort, time consuming test run; though if it allows me to preview the story and identify what works, what doesn't and what needs moving around before I jump into animation, I think it's worth it.

 

On the topic of audiences, it'd allow me to build a fanbase that first of all would mean the world to me, and second of all help me prove that the concept has value: people enjoy it and are invested in it. I'd feel more confident walking into a pitch presenting a potential animated show that has a) source material to work off of and b) an already established fanbase.

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So - Son of a Witch webcomic coming soon!