#roastedstix

Many months ago I recorded myself talking about this very thing and it was supposed to for YouTube to kinda update people about what I’m doing but I never uploaded it because I hate the sound of my voice (yes, really that’s the reason besides almost forgetting about it from time to time). So I’ll just say them here instead.

Okay so what happened. I made Dark Harvest around 2014-2015. Took me a while to develop the show and characters (and I still am) and finally got to working on the Pilot, or Episode 1 as I just called it later. Finished it around the end of 2018 and it did okay. Got around 10,000 views and then that was it. People liked it, some people didn’t. So to me, I wasn’t really in a hurry to make the 2nd one. Of course I would’ve loved to keep working on it but stuff like college or working jobs slowed down my process. I decided to just work on it when I can, it was basically on hiatus as far as I know. Fast forward to a few months later the fabled “YouTube Algorithm” recommended the cartoon to a bunch of people and it got like 2000% more engagement. It was insane. I can see that a lot of people were looking forward to the next one which made me feel a little guilty for having nothing to show yet. Was still working on the script around that time which still wasn’t even finished. A lot of people even thought the channel was dead because the last upload was a year ago.

Well, during the past few months I have been working on it for real. I’m finally at the process of animating them and making backgrounds and stuff. And also: I know a lot of people already know this but I know some who don’t so again, I am just ONE person making this cartoon, besides my voice actors. I have to write the script, make storyboards, edit the audio, animate the cartoon, make the backgrounds, do after effects for post-editing, create the music, and  finally compile them in Premiere. That’s a LOOOOT of work and such a time-consuming process so it’s GONNA TAKE SOME TIME TO FINISH. In the future, I’d happily hire artists and animators to help out, but right now I can’t do that for financial reasons and other stuff too. Someday I might, but for now, I’ll stick to doing everything myself as it’s also a way for me to get better at what I do.

So… what’s the status of Episode 2? Like I said, I’m beginning to animate some parts of it. I definitely learned a lot from animating episode 1 and I’m willing to make shortcuts and overall just do everything I can to lessen production time. Episode 1 was kind of an experiment on what I can animate and effects I can do and what I can get away with. I read a lot of the comments people made on the first episode and try to improve the problems with it in the 2nd episode. This episode has a lot more dialogue, which means a lot of it is pretty easy to animate, but also more intense animation, so I hope I can manage that. I plan to finish it by the end of this year (ok, maybe that’s too much wishful thinking, but a man can dream) or possibly around middle of 2021. To be honest, I don’t know when I’ll finish it but I’ll get there when I get there. So…. hope you enjoy this small sneak peek of episode 2. I know it doesn’t show a lot, but that’s as much as I can show at the moment. Don’t worry, I’ll get to working on the preview soon. So, thank you for reading and thank you for liking the stuff that I do.

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

(Video will be viewable once it’s public)