While Raymond Briggs has not written the story for The Snowman and the Snowdog, he has apparently overseen it. The job of creating a new story fell to Hilary Audus and Joanna Harrison, both of whom were involved in the original. In fact Briggs insisted that many of the original team worked on the sequel, which cannot be a bad thing. They told The Independent that they considered everything from a love interest for the snowman, to having a girl instead of a boy, to having a 'snow-hamster'. Eventually though, they settled on the snowdog. Starting the story with the death of the boy's much loved pet is an idea Briggs would surely have approved of. It allows for the magic and enchantment of the story to take both the boy and the viewer away from the earlier sadness. That impending realism though, that brought The Snowman to such a bittersweet end, will be in the shadows throughout. The young boy in the sequel has in fact just moved into the home of the previous boy. In the floorboards he discovers a box with the remnants of the previous snowman in. It is hard not to look at motifs such as rebirth with clues like that, but on the surface, it is nice just to think that the Snowman always endures, as long as there's a little boy to rebuild him. Giving the boy two companions allows the story an extra dimension, and from all accounts, the snowdog will be suitably lovable. Harrison, who is the art director of the sequel, said in an interview recently that the second film had been much harder to make due to the huge expectation created by The Snowman. And people will expect it all; laughs, tears, epic scenes, quietly touching moments, wonderful characters, an engaging story, and everything in between. The Snowman delivered on all of those. With the same team on board, hopefully The Snowman and the Snowdog can too.