April 17th

Holy cow! We are moving at crazy speeds! We met up with a 3D wizard who's animated on feature films like The Avengers that may be helping out if we can figure out a rate, told a 2D FX guru who worked on Final Space that they're hired to animate our bad guy, hired a prop person who worked on Final Space, Rick and Morty and every other animated show that exists and met with over 15 background artist all of whom actually want to do the project. We were a little shocked! Our budget only allows for a small team of BG artists, but every one of them is insanely talented, and we would be lucky to use any of them. Now we have to go back to them with an offer next week. We did hire our first BG artist, and I'm not sure if we're allowed to mention who it is because this person is starting a full job soon and will be helping us out in the free time they have. But this person is killing it as we try and find the look of the BG's; here are some exploratory pieces.

I also really appreciate everyone sending their portfolios; so many amazing artists are out there! And if it's not this project, I have your info for any others that may pop up!

I have to shout out, Ben! He has been an all-star boarding the entire project on his own and putting a design guide of over 70 pages to help keep this project visually on track. And Rosa! I couldn’t do this without those two!!

Next week is big; we NEED to hire BG artists to start so that we can have something to start being animated by the top of May. What adds to this wrinkle is we're still waiting to be approved for SAG (Screen Actors Guild). Once that happens, we can start recording our actors, so we're prioritizing the scenes with just facial acting and not lip flap (voice acting). Our 3D truck is finally done! Done by the amazing Kyle Bowman, and the color we picked isn't in here, we went with a two-tone look, but you can see it's fitting into the style of the world now.

Everyone really is wearing nine different hats, and that's how it is with independent productions. Still, it was a super encouraging week to hear from talented artists that want to be a part of this project. It gave us a little boost and reminded us that we are trying to make something that is against the grain of what is being made in the industry...and it's something everybody wants to see. We're excited; everything is on the edge of a knife, and we're already working through fires that are popping up but were experienced enough to find ways through. Onwards! Olan