Greg responds...

Hey, Chris.

I was hired by SIP Animation in Paris. They are my bosses. Thus the show is non-union... and there's nothing TAG can do about it.

Disney subcontracted production of the series to SIP (which they partially own). This, I'm sure, was done for financial reasons, in particular the subsidies that the French government provides for "European content". (WITCH was originally created as a comic book in Italy by Disney Publishing Italy.) The fact that the series would then be non-union was, I believe, a financial bonus for Disney.

Greg responds...

It took ten months for every step. (It's called a ten-month sliding schedule.)

That is we had ten months to write the scripts. Ten months to record the voices. Ten months to storyboard. Ten months to animate. Etc. But all of those various "ten months" overlapped. The whole process was probably more like 14 months.

Greg responds...

I'm glad that stuff works for you. It worked for us.

The main drive behind endings like that was a desire not to undercut our lead villains. Villains get tiresome when they lose all the time. And heroes are pointless if they lose all the time. (It's fun and dramatic and right to have both sides lose occasionally. But if either side loses ALL the time... well then where's the drama?)

But if a hero wins the battle and then we secretly reveal (in our patented Xanatos tags) that he may still be losing the war, then that keeps both sides interesting.

So it's not shock value for shock value's sake. But it lead us down a path that gave you the surprises you enjoyed. It forced us to always look BEHIND the obvious. Forced us to work harder. Then, I think the trick is to play fair. We may not reveal all, and -- your right -- our characters (human and gargoyle alike) may make incorrect assumptions about the situation, but all the clues are there from the moment the "PREVIOUSLY ON GARGOYLES..." starts to roll. (In fact, sometimes I feared that too many clues were planted.) By playing fair you get that double whammy at the end... both the surprise but also the "Of course..." That feeling that it's right. That it's not cheating. That in fact nothing else could possibly make sense.

Perhaps the ultimate example of that was the Owen/Puck revelation.

As for whether that's taught in writing classes? None specifically that I've taken. I've touched on it, here and there, in a couple of the classes that I've taught over the years. But I don't think I've ever focused a lesson plan on this point either. It's very much at the fine tuning end of the spectrum. Not something you'd get into in a survey course.

Greg responds...

I think the Fox thing was a bit of a risk, though none of the other things you mentioned. (You're exagerating the loincloth bit where we had full wrap-around, so to speak.) But no, there was no "lashback" at all about these scenes or episodes.

The only thing that comes close to what you are describing is the episode "Deadly Force". We had no outcry over it at the time, quite the reverse, we received a lot of praise for it. But later, Toon Disney refused to air it for years because of the realistic depiction of violence (the exact thing we were praised for). I'm told they do air it now though.

Greg responds...

Yep, and that's why the change was made of course. We got the beast wrong. So we fixed it.

Greg responds...

Well, there are SO many "ifs" in your hypothetical question, I don't know how to evalute the specifics. But I am QUITE confident that I would not have run out of material by now. The new comic book can easily go twice that long assuming sales support us.

As for how many episodes per season, that's a financial question, not a creative one. We didn't do 13 in season one and 52 in season two for creative reasons, but for financial ones. Likewise the decision to make 13 in Season 3 (Goliath Chronicles) was again financial. So in the intervening seasons, the answer is zero per season, for what Disney perceived as financial reasons. So how to evaluate financials for a hypothetical non-existent season is impossible.

Greg responds...

I can't believe I haven't answered this before here. But since Todd didn't field this one, I guess I haven't... or at least not here at ASK GREG.

Anyway... No.

We always knew there was something special about Owen, but didn't know what it was at first. Then when we first started working on "The Mirror" and created Puck, it suddenly occured to me that Puck was Owen. An epiphany. I immediately called Brynne Chandler Reaves and Lydia Marano. The conversation went something like this...

Greg: "I just realized: Owen is Puck!"

Brynne & Lydia: "We know!"

It was just so right. The references in "The Mirror" to Puck "serving the human" and in "City of Stone, Part One" to Owen being "the tricky one" were put in post-epiphany.

Greg responds...

Not everything was figured out from day one, no.

For example, while working on "The Mirror" it suddenly occured to me that Owen was Puck. Note the phraising. It wasn't: "Wouldn't it be cool if it turned out that Owen was really Puck?" It was more like: "Oh my God, Owen IS Puck."

I immediately called writer Lydia Marano and Story Editor Brynne Chandler to tell them. They're response: "We KNOW!!"

That's when you know a show is working... when the characters tell you there truths. When it all just feels right.

Much of course, was planned out in advance. I didn't have all the details down, but in "Awakening" we knew that Demona was lying about sleeping for a thousand years. Certainly by "Enter Macbeth", I knew the broad strokes of Macbeth and Demona's relationship.

We did have a plan.

I still do for that matter.

Greg responds...

I have no idea about the if or whens of these series being released on DVD. Keep in mind, I don't actually work at Disney anymore. Haven't since 1996.

For the record, none of these three series were shows I had that much to do with.

I led the original development team on Mighty Ducks, but then I moved over to do Gargoyles, and I had nothing to do with the production of the series and its simultaneous redevelopment.

On TaleSpin, I was a junior creative exec giving notes on stories, trying to be helpful. I also did the voice of one of the Pandas of Panda-La: "Father, the rockets aren't working!"

On Aladdin, I was involved with the development of the series, particularly with "The Return of Jafar". I had little to do with the production on this one either. (Although a bit more than Mighty Ducks.)

Greg responds...

Well, she did change her clothes occasionally. La Belle Elisa dress that she wore on Halloween and "Eye of the Beholder". The tough girl outfits she put together for "Protection" and "Turf". The clothes she wore briefly in episodes like "Hunter's Moon, Part One" and "Eye of the Storm". The dress she wore in "The Journey". There may be a couple of more examples that I can't think of at the moment.

The short REALITY answer is that redesigning new clothes for her every episode would have been prohibitively expensive and cause multiple animation errors overseas. So we limited her wardrobe changes to situations where story called for it.

Think of her standard outfit as a dramatic conceit.

Within the show, I just think that's a look she's comfortable with. I pretty much where the same outfit everyday myself. Tennis shoes, jeans and a t-shirt. Of course I don't wear the same t-shirt everyday. I have black t-shirts, white t-shirts, red t-shirts. And most of them have some kind of decal or design on them. But...

Anyway, the plan for the comic book is to start giving her a wider variety of costumes. But we still love that red jacket, blue jeans and black t-shirt. So that won't go away.