Production Update! 3.6.22 (Patreon)

Hello Splendid Patrons!

Episode 3 is ready to view! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FGXtiYQRuM

Big update this time around because we have a lot of new stuff to introduce. As we said last time we talked, we're going to re-brand this Patreon to East Patch Productions in order to include more works than just The West Patch, which we will continue to work on as animatics until its shopping agreement duration is over (feel free to ask us questions about this process if you want anything explained more thoroughly!). With this in mind, you ought to know what our new works are! You can see previews of most of them in the art banner for this update, so I'll start with those from left to right.

- Mattress Palace: This is an animated short we're making as a writing sample. Voices have already been collected from West Patch veterans and new talent, and with the style tacked down we're going to move forward on background art and production! The exact date is loose right now as it's lower priority to some of our bigger plans and will most likely be completed in pieces between other projects. But we'll share those pieces when they're rendered!

- Under Helm: We're venturing into the world of point-and-click video games! This is a much more experimental project to see what we're capable of, so we're starting with a short demo game. With game programming more accessible than ever, though, and it being a genre that we love dearly, we're eager to see what we can do. Under Helm is the story of a shipwright on a dangerous pseudo-fantasy vessel, navigating the careful line between accomplice and enemy as the Captain's plans could risk the lives of the crew. With steampunk tech, smoke people, and an art style like an old cross-section illustration, we're hoping it's a fun world to play around in. The story and dependency chart is all fleshed out, so you'll see footage of our attempts at programming when we get through the rest of the asset art!

- Space Triage: We're going verticle in a dry, dramatic space comedy about a crew and their lack of priorities. We have little experience with TikTok and such, but we're going to try formatting this show for phones so we can dabble in Youtube Shorts, Insta Stories, Razzle, and more. We also have the opportunity to get a professional co-worker of Hannah's to supervise the making of pro-level animation rigs, so it'll be slick and have a prime-time production level that we're excited to add to our humble resume of purposefully aged animation styles.

- Shadows Have Legs: The first of two pitches we can tell you about! We've met with and had a good time chatting to the execs at 20th Century, and have the opportunity to pitch series to them at our discretion. Shadows Have Legs is a dramedy about a down on his luck wizard trying to prove his way back into the palace court. With House M.D. and Monty Python as inspiration, it'll hopefully be a nonsensical time with a lot of sarcasm. We're going to create a pitch trailer for this one, and the casting call is happening right now on CastingCall.Club if you want to see the auditions!

https://www.castingcall.club/projects/shadows-have-legs-lines-for-pitch-trailer-paid

- Death of the Deke: A love letter to the weird stuff I was into as a child, this is a pitch we've lovingly crafted in the vein of Avatar-meets-Series-of-Unfortunate-Events. I can go on about it, or you can see the full pitch here: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1irBjJAWihdW1r-BDm1RbHKToVLbuj_z8qLA6uUn0yZc/edit?usp=sharing

- The West Patch: I'll say it again, you can watch episode three now! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FGXtiYQRuM 

And we won't fully stop. As we've explained before, the rest of the show will continue without music or sound mastering but with the voice actor audio we've already recorded. Instead of final animation, it'll be polished and timed animatics so the story you've helped us bring to life can be fully realized to you here on Patreon. If the shopping agreement ends and nobody has picked up the show, we'll continue to make it ourselves and will have the added advantage of having the storyboards/animatics all finished up.

- Everything else!: We've done some pre-production on an animal drama called Mythed, have boarded and done animation tests for an animated short version of Deke, are working on designs for a sci-fi short called Shift Away, have started a comedy re-telling of the Nancy Drew video games called Andy Drew, and are always generating new ideas for more creative avenues. None of this would have been possible if your support didn't give us the confidence to go fully independent and flesh out a work ethic and flow that allowed this much to be going on for us. The talk with 20th century wouldn't have happened if your support didn't take the West Patch to festivals, and it never would've gone there if you hadn't allowed us to invest in music and mastering that's taken it to the next level. The pitches side-tracked us from our schedule so we'll try to have a more firm order of operations for the projects we've talked about soon, but one thing you can look forward to is a lot of footage, boards, and other creative process goodness in the weeks and months to come.

Thank you for everything and as always, see you next time!

-The West Patch Team