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Two cents from a DoD team member.

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Two cents from a DoD team member. Empty Two cents from a DoD team member.

Post  Sweetalker Sun Jul 18 2010, 20:32

Hi, Sweetalker here. Director, voice actress, Writing Coordinator and Audio Group coordinator.

Just wanted to throw in two cents that this was NOT a personal attack on Kiffer. While I didn't always agree with his methods or his decisions, I supported him. I'm known as "The Bitch" to a lot of members because my directing style is sometimes abrasive (I wasn't given the part of Azula for nothing), but Kiffer and I always got along very well.

We tried. We really tried. It breaks my heart to have Kiffer gone from our little family. But we cannot move forward when one person has complete control, and abuses that ability. I'm not blaming him; I'd wager that most anybody, given the amount of power that Kiffer was given here, would start feeling like he was a king and everyone else was a useless peasant. He threatened anyone who suggested we weren't happy with our situation.

The last straw for me was the manga. At first, I couldn't put my finger on why I was so furious to see the Manga -- not "how" it existed, but that it existed at all. After all, we wanted the story out, right? What was I getting so worked up over?

  • First and foremost, Kiffer didn't tell us he had decided to do a manga until it was already done. He had no desire for our input at all.
  • Secondly, Kiffer went to an outside source* rather than asking artists who've been working here for years.
  • Thirdly, Kiffer didn't give that outside source ANY of the storyboarding, costume design/facial design, and barely any of the hair design that other team members have spent years coming up with.
  • Fourth, he released the manga to the public without telling us, without giving us a chance to edit it or decide if anything needed to be changed/clarifed. EVERYTHING ELSE that has been produced by DoD members has undergone extreme scrutiny and sometimes had to be redone over and over again until it was perfect. It took three months of daily work to get the script complete -- daily work which Kiffer never participated in. Not to mention, the script you see in the Manga was "tweaked" at the last minute by Kiffer. He'd had almost a year to tell the rest of us that he wasn't happy with it, but said nothing.

    Last but not least, by deciding (all by himself) to make DoD into a manga, he automatically makes the Voiceover, Animation, and Audio teams obsolete. He also gave complete Art control over to ONE PERSON no one had ever met, discounting the piles and piles of artwork that had already been done and not used "because they're not perfect". His split-second decision was that now, all other Art Group members were "concept artists". In fact the published manga mentioned only two people: the manga artist, and Kiffer.

    After some complaints about that, suddenly he backtracked and sputtered that he had meant to "add credits" all along. Yet the Manga was already released to the public as a two-person deal.

    (*The manga artist is very talented and we're lucky to have him. He had no idea what was going on.)

    Let's forget the manga for a moment. We've worked on so many DoD projects that Kiffer shot down without warning over the years. So many good ideas were dismissed without consideration. The name change from "Jillian" to "Tikomi" comes to mind, as does the idea of a comic in the first place (Kiffer was formerly stubborn about NOT letting us make a less-animated version of DoD, as team members may recall). Yes, eventually he came to see how his views were wrong, but it took a long time, and we had to get permission from him -- ONE person not always available -- in order to move forward on anything. It took months just to get a promo released.

    Not to mention that any decision that the rest of us came to as a team, could be immediately shot down at any time on Kiffer's whim. To him, we weren't teammates working together. It was his way or the highway.

    So, we took the highway.

    A walk-out was considered. BUT we believe enough in this project to keep OUR work alive. We are parting ways, not "kicking someone out". Kiffer is welcome to what he contributed -- which isn't much. The rest is ours.
  • Sweetalker
    Sweetalker
    Coordinator

    Posts : 554
    Join date : 2009-05-14
    Age : 39
    Location : Tennessee, USA

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