Episode 10 Update - 10/10/19 (Patreon)

Hello friends - I'd like to start off by saying thank you. Thank you SO MUCH for your support on Episode 9.  Your pledges allowed me to really step up the quality of the episode.  I was able to hire animators, musicians, get all the models I needed...just...I really couldn't have done it without you guys.  In addition to that, you guys were so supportive throughout the creation process.  Your kind words really boosted my morale during the long, long production period.  I'm extremely grateful for your continued support.  Episode 9 was the most successful video launch I've ever had in the thirteen years I've been on YouTube.  I'm really happy with how it all came together.  So thanks.  And now it's time to move to Episode 10.

So, I'm currently in the process of writing the script.  It's a weird and very delicate process.  A lot of it involves me taking long walks, drives, and showers while thinking about the motivation of the characters and envisioning what I want to see.  I've also been hashing out the story details with a few of my co-writers.  So far, I have an outline of the story beats, but I'm still struggling with how I want to get there.  I'm trying to be really careful about writing process.  I don't want to rush it, and I want to really make sure the script is exactly where I want it before moving forward.  Because of this, I probably won't be doing weekly updates for a while, not until I'm at a point where I have anything significant to show for it.  But what I can say now is that this next episode is going to be very Squirtle-heavy.

Until then, I'm going to try to be occasionally updating the Patreon with more Behind-The-Scenes content, as a lot of it I'm still behind on.  I'll soon be updating the way you can choose your Sprite for the episode, as that spreadsheet was terribly inefficient.  But I won't worry about that until we're closer to the episode's release.  And if you were a $50+ Patron for the last episode, I'll soon be working on sending out your personalized scripts, but I wouldn't look out for those for at least a couple weeks.

In other news, I'm going to be moving soon.  If you've been reading these updates for a long time, you'll see that a large part of my struggle for efficiency was attributed to my living situation, and I'm planning on moving this January.  I'm hoping that this move will be the seed of setting up a little studio of my own where I can dedicate myself to doing Squad full time and finishing out the series.  Now that I'm no longer in animation school and I've completely learned how to use Blender to animate, I can safely say that this next episode will not take as long as the last.  After the move in January, I plan on going full speed ahead with production with weekly updates on progress.  

On that note, it's been suggested by several people that I should switch the Patreon to monthly payments rather than per-episode.  This way, I'd get a more steady stream of income that I'd use exclusively to hire more animators.  The character animation has proven to be by far the most time-consuming process, so having a consistent revenue to pay even more animators would probably speed that up.  However, I will not be making this change (if I do) until we're in full production mode, and I would ensure that all current $5+ pledges get in the credits, even if they decide to un-pledge.  I still haven't figured out how I'd be making the transition with the reward tiers, but I thought I'd let you guys know what I'm planning before suddenly switching to monthly.  Let me know if you'd be for or against this idea.

That's all for now.  I'll be updating you when the next significant milestone comes for this episode.  Thank you all, once again.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.