So here it is, the last episode of the year 2021, titled “Obfuscated”.
What is it that Toni & Charlie an the Beatles have in common?
Maybe I’m a bit of a loud-mouth, but while I was working on episode 69 “Obfuscated”, I realized there are parallels between this episode and two albums recorded by the Beatles.
“Uh-huh, acting the pretender,” you’ll say to yourself, “Isn’t he?” Well, let me share my thoughts with you.
The last two adventures of Toni & Charlie were exceptionally colourful. Episode 68 – To Walk a Dog came along shining in the colours of an Indian Summer. The episode 67 – Blue Lagoon takes place in the Caribbean and boasts the colours of the underwater flora and fauna.
In 1967, the Beatles published their eighth studio album: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . Not only does the album cover show the Beatles themselves in fanciful and colourful uniforms, but also the bands name in an arrangement of red hyacinths, accompanied by more hyacinths in yellow. The colourful artwork compliments the psychodelic sounds, the whimsical and sometimes even surreal lyrics.
A year later, in the fall of 1968, the Beatles released their nineth studio album, simply called the Rutles. Hang on…, did I say Rutles? No, I actually meant The Beatles. The album became known as the White Album for its plain white sleeve which the band chose as a contrast to Sgt. Pepper.
So, as I was brooding over the scribbles and the storyboard for epsiode 69, I felt the urge to use a reduced colour palette this time. No wonder that I chose white, the lightest possible colour. At that point, I realized the parallels (moving from colours to white) both in the Beatles’ and my own work. Being a huge Beatles fan, you can imagine, I was rather pleased with this discovery 😀.
From white to the idea
Having chosen white as the key note for the story, I wondered how to incorporate this into an episode of Toni & Charlie. At the bottom of my heart, I am quite a simple person and so it was no wonder that “white” meant to me a story with either snow of fog.
It was a bit too early for snow, so I settled for the fog. Once I had sorted that out, I sat down and thought up a story worth telling. And hence, I came up with this nice little one-pager for you.
