I took a whole week of paid holiday and was able to work most of the time on the final scenes for the pilot episode. I’m happy to tell you that now there’s only 1 final scene left and I’m done with the basic work. The pilot episode in its current form is 22 minutes long and I’ll have to double check whether standard animation for TV formats can be longer than 20 minutes or not, so I might have to do a little trimming to get it down to just the right length.

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Done ≠ Done

I said I’m basically done with the pilot, but that is not really true. Now that all the pieces I thought I needed are in the timeline, I found several things that I want to fix, before I’m calling this a wrap.

• Need more b-roll footage to connect some scenes, like spaceships passing by, and other small connecting shots
• I’m noticing lots of tiny quirks, mistakes that I need to fix and rerender
• Some of the animation at the beginning is too “stiff”. From the latter half of the episode onwards I mostly got the hang how to animate characters to make it feel more smooth and natural and I’ll have to do a little fixing of some of the first scenes, so they don’t stand out too negatively
• Sound effects aren’t in for all shots yet, need to go on a hunt on freesound.org and other places to complete the picture
• Music is mostly in, but for 1,2 scenes I haven’t found the right music yet.
• Intro/Outro the intro still uses the old non outline style that I abandoned early on in the project, need to rework it. The outro uses the wrong ship (one design I abandoned), and needs to be redone entirely

Mo’ Marketing

Now that the pilot is as good as in the can, I really want to go out and start some promotion & marketing. Here’s my little plan for the next weeks and months.

1. Send the pilot to several movie festivals,
   which should be a breeze with http://filmfreeway.com
2. Make a proper teaser/trailer for the pilot
3. Start vlogging about how I produced this pilot, and what I learned during the 18 months it took me. I’ll be hosting the vlog on YouTube, Vimeo, BitChute, and DailyMotion
4. Interact with more people online and post (a) trailer(s) for Phungus & Mowld until the cows come home. And then some.
5. Once I’ve done everything I can to promote Phungus & Mowld via festivals, start producing episode 2, and also start selling the pilot via Vimeo On Demand and also through Amazon Media on Demand as well as Amazon Prime Video Direct
6. Start promoting merchandise (tees, mugs, etc.)