Hi! First time posting on the Forums. I wanted to talk about something about the Pilot I've noticed and haven't seen anyone else bring up, and that is how the different characters' pesterlog quirks (be typing quirks or general online persona when chatting) was adapted into the new Pestercall format we're going with for the Pilot (and potential serialization).
One of the biggest challenges when approaching Homestuck (especially early in the comic) is taking the interactions from the pesterlogs and somehow cramming them into the new animated format. Obviously there's not as much time to deliver information and long winded rants from each character, I think this is where a lot of the personality and characterization differences were conceived but that's for another post.
Characters feel different in how they engage with conversations. One of Andrew's biggest talents as a storyteller is their ability to write character voices in text, but obviously this isn't something that can easily be done in an animated show where you mostly lose on things like typing quirks, text colors, emojis and symbols.
Let's start with Dave, since he's the character who talks to John the most during the Pilot:
One thing you'll notice about John and Dave's interactions earlier in the comic is that they speak to each other as equals. Dave talks in a way that makes it clear he respects John even if he sometimes belittles him jokingly, the same is true for John towards Dave.
The pair have a constant back and forth during conversations, which was translated into the Pilot in the following format:
This is great! While there is a few cases of Dave and John using a different format (split screen), this is the main one they use to represent their conversations. Letting each other peek into the others' room and actions to poke at each other with comments and remarks about what they're doing, similar to how they engage in the comic. They use these stylized (and sometimes not) displays with jagged comic-like tails (I imagine to represent older flip-phone static and choppy audio) that give them the amount of screen presence they probably respectfully allow each other as they take turns speaking.
Moving onto the second character we see John interact with, Rose!
One notable thing about Rose is that she enjoys leading conversations and generally having control over the topic of them. She doesn't rant as much as Dave but will absolutely take whatever chance she gets to deliver her thoughts in efficient little bursts of messages that get across whatever information she wants.
This is one they did VERY well in the Pilot.
Rose's speech is always accompanied with a split screen display of her and John, in which she's always pushing at the line between them (physically!) to take over the screen and enhance her own presence.
Interestingly enough, the only time they intentionally defy this dialogue dynamic is when John does the same to her as he becomes more confident and is about to end the call, which Rose is visually shown to be annoyed by!
Moving onto the last character John speaks to through these Pestercalls, Jade!
Not only to John, but Jade reads as a very cheerful person in her text messages. She uses exclamation marks and emojis the most out of the human kids. She's extremely expressive.
She exclusively types in lowercase, making her sound "smaller" than the rest of the characters she talks to. This is the one I think they stylized the most for the pilot for good reason!
There's obviously more examples of this, but she quite literally has the smallest screen presence when speaking out of the four kids! I'd also like to point out how she's been animated in a chibi-fied design to stylize her and make her significantly more expressive, which is the best way to translate her use of emoticons in text conversations!
Anyways, the Pilot was fantastic! There's a lot of other things I'd love to talk about in terms of the writing by Andrew and Skye, and the wonderful job the creative and art design team made when bringing Homestuck to this format.
