Cross-posted from the Peter and Company Pilot Tumblr

I wanted to put together a quick post that kind of gives a glimpse into why the process of making the P&C pilot — or any new animated series concept, for that matter — is taking a bit of time. While the updates are coming along at a slow and steady pace, we still have quite a ways to go yet.

For an established animated series, there are a lot of steps that go into the production of a single episode. Script writing, editing, storyboards, voice recording, and not to mention the animation itself and later editing/compositing/etc. Before any of that can commence, though, you have to get through a mountain of preproduction work on the series itself. Essentially, you have to establish the “series Bible,” wherein all the rules and guidelines for animators to follow are contained.

Character models have to be refined and streamlined for animation, since the original comic art is often too detailed. Every character has a specific set of rules and guidelines which have to be set in order to maintain continuity. For a blend of traditional and Flash animation, individual pieces of each “puppet” model need to be designed and tested. The ultimate goal is to get the final look and feel of the cartoon to be as close to the style of the source material as possible.

Thankfully, all of that only has to be done once. The downside: it definitely takes a while.

So far, we have made significant progress on prepping the character models and facial shapes for animation tests. These tests will determine the methods and procedures which we then use to create each episode. In the meantime, the script is already 100% complete for the pilot, and we are preparing some initial voice recordings of the characters to use for test animations. Additionally, I will be cranking through some more backgrounds and begin work on the storyboards while the remaining character models are being completed by the studio.

And yes, voice auditions are coming up as well. I’ll share more information on that later down the road for anyone interested in trying out for a part.

Lastly, I want everyone to keep in mind that this entire journey is all being done exclusively in our free time. Everyone involved in the project has their own regular 9-5 full-time job that pays the bills. Once the series gets picked up for a full season we’ll finally be able to focus all of our time on it, but until then we have to balance our time and energy to get through it and keep the updates flowing.

All of this is also why there hasn’t been a new Peter & Company comic page in a couple months, and why commissions have been taking a lot longer to get through than expected. But all of that will see updates very soon, too.

If anyone has any questions about the process of creating an animated series, please ask away! It’s been my dream since I was a kid to take part in the creation of a cartoon, and I want to share the experience as much as I can.

Thanks to everyone for following and supporting Peter & Company! You all are truly awesome. Stay tuned for more.

-Jonathan