new eden pilot update

Those playing along at home will know that as of February I have been in London for three years.

What you may not know is that March 2012 will mark one year that Freek and I have been working on the New Eden pilot and hopefully the date, fingers crossed, we finish it.

Actually to be accurate, we’ve been working the New Eden series for over fifteen months now. Freek and I first teamed up four months prior to officially working on the pilot in November 2010. These first several months were spent fine tuning the script and working on the character designs plus the look and feel for the series. March 2011 marked when we first started working on the storyboards for the pilot episode.

When you’re working on something part-time around jobs, life and families things take time, especially animation. Despite this Freek and I have stayed the course and I have to say it’s been a ball. It’s still early days but we think we’ve got something very special on our hands.

Being new to animation it’s been a great learning curve for me as well. Yes it takes time but it also gives you the freedom to try and fail at various shots and even entire sequences before you succeed. I read an interview recently with WALL-E director Andrew Stanton in response to questions about reshoot on his live-action movie John Carter, which sums this up beautifully:

“You draw it, you put your own voice on it, you cut it, and you don’t like it, and you do it again. You do it every six months over three to four years. Every time you do that, that’s the equivalent of a reshoot, so I’ve been taught how to make a movie with four reshoots built in every time. And you wonder why our movies are good? It’s not because we’re smarter, it’s not because we’re better, it’s because we are in a system that recognizes that you don’t go, ‘Oh my god, okay, I’m going to paint this, but I can only touch the brush once and I’m only going to make one stroke’.”

Recently we went back and did some pick-ups with the actors and after some final tweaking I’m proud to say that we’ve locked off the vision for the pilot. We’re now working with a very talented sound designer Justin Bryant of Timesquared Audio on the sound and music. Meanwhile Freek is going back and redoing the opening titles to add some shots that will help set up the series premise a bit better.

Last weekend I hosted a script reading with the actors and Freek, who came across from The Netherlands to be there. It was exciting for Freek and I, not only to hear the entire series read, but also to show off an early cut of the pilot to the actors.

Anyone who’s follows my blog knows I’m a big fan of script readings because you finally get to separate yourself from your work, hear how it sounds and take on some constructive criticism. I’m happy to say that things went well at the reading and we’re more excited than ever.

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So what does the future hold for New Eden?

We have several international events that we’re hoping to be accepted to where we will get a chance to pitch New Eden to a room full of people who have the ability to help us get the series made – namely brands/sponsors, TV and online commissioners and production partners. We will also be doing a certain amount of pitching around the traps as well to see if we can drum up some interest.

Being an animated series this is not something we can just pull together over a couple of long weekends. That said, we have a production plan in place that will allow us to produce the entire series in less time it took us to produce the pilot, a reasonable budget plus a marketing and social media plan all ready to go.

As March gets closer you can expect to hear more on New Eden’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as right here on my blog, so stay tuned.