Over the years I've started far more photostories than I've finished. Sometimes other tales came along and wanted telling first... or life would throw me the proverbial curve ball to distract me... or the ambition of the story exceeded what I could cobble together here (and it's a bit of b*gg*r when you get halfway through a tale and suddenly realise your planned denoument is to be staged on a set virtually impossible to build with a budget that runs to a bit of card and some PVC glue). I've also played around with a few 'trailers' and suchlike which never went any further. So here's a collection of various bits and pieces taken from the dusty, forgotten corners of my Hard Drive and tales of the hows and whys they ended up in the limbo of Development Hell.

Yes, I have some Tonner dolls in my collection... and I keep trying to work out ways to hang photostories around them; but the lack of props, limited poseability and lack of decent male characters is a headache. This little trailer was just to test some ideas out.

Again, knowing where I was going and seeing how much work still lay ahead slowed me up something rotten here. And then I got (pleasurably) side-swiped by life. With the passage of time I always find it hard to go back and restart a stalled tale so another Toyville 3 got consigned to development hell.

Set Building 101

Note to brain - when making a photostory about building a set then build the darned thing first! Guess who didn't plan on the floppiness of large sections of mounting board? What I should've done is used something thicker like foamcore. But by the time I'd worked that out I was already in the midst of another story.

Here lies a problem I find with too much story planning. I knew from the outset how this story was going to play out... and with other plots starting to bubble away (whether they'd come to anything or not is another matter entirely) this began to become a bit of a chore to work on and inspiration started to dry up.

... and the first ever appearance, albeit looking very different, of the Clearance Bin Bar, with a variety of old and discontinued toys. Unfortunately I needed an Alan doll for a little later on in the tale but while waiting to find a cheap one 'Dark Days in Toyville' came along. One day I want to revisit this tale and reveal more of Midge's past!