Drawn By Pain Comes to A Close

It’s easy to lose track of where some series stand, especially when they take their time updating. Which is why I was surprised to check in on Jesse Cowell and Erica Langworthy’s Drawn By Pain, which has been one of online video’s most highly acclaimed drama series since March 2007, and find out that the final episode was about to debut.

The story of a young woman who is able to transform her art into real weapons and monsters, Drawn By Pain chronicles Emily’s struggle to come to terms with the abuse she experienced as a child and deal with that anger. Langworthy’s hand-drawn animation literally makes Emily’s personal demons into instruments of destruction, because after growing up a victim, Emily is no longer afraid to fight back — leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. The series’ focus on Emily’s breakdown gives it a strong, intimate throughline as, confronted by the reality of her past actions, Emily is finally able to confront the source of her rage: her father.

Drawn By Pain has always been open and engaging about its creative process, with a web site full of behind-the-scenes clips (which showcase not only the tools used, but Cowell and Langworthy’s friendly collaboration). Cowell attributed the delay in episode releases (the gaps between new installments of Drawn by Pain have been as long as 3 months) to the nature of the production: “the animation is hand drawn (every frame) so it really depends on how much that particular episode has in it for how long it will take to release.”

As a snobby online video purist, I’m not a huge fan of the chop-a-movie-into-webisodes process — for one thing, screenplays aren’t meant to structured in 5 to 10 minute chunks. But even though the completed series is over two hours long, and Cowell has plans for a full-length screening in New York this October, each episode of Drawn by Pain tends to have just enough story to make it feel individual — not just like 10 minutes randomly cut out of a feature. One note, though: the heavy use of flashbacks to a younger Emily, happily playing with her mother or being traumatized by her father, come off as repetitive even when spread across many episodes — it’s definitely an element that could be trimmed.

Drawn By Pain isn’t perfect, occasionally leaning too heavily on the extreme melodrama of its premise, and suffering from a few weak performances (especially Michael Speer as Emily’s abusive father). And the erratic release schedule has kept it from building on the buzz generated from its release, great press and recent Webby win (for Best Use of Animation/Motion Graphics). But it’s yet another example of why Virginia Heffernan’s loss of faith in quality web series is completely off-base — a uniquely told, dark and intimate story that would never have gotten a foothold in Hollywood, it’s right at home on the Internet.