the original screenplay consisted mostly of dialoge and featured only a few changes from crumb's stories. the script and storyboards went largely unused in favor of more experimental storytelling techniques. bakshi said, "i don't like to jump ahead on my films. the way you feel about a film on day one, you may not feel the same way forty weeks down the road. characters grow, so i wanted to have the option to change things, and strengthen my characters  ... it was sort of a stream of consciousness, and a learning process for myself." bakshi wrote the characters without feral animal behavior to lend the material greater realism.