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Hello everyone!
2022 has officially come to a close and we're moving in to a new year. Ol' 22 was pretty decent to us. We saw the premiere of our latest feature, a new animated short film and a handful of great collaborations. As you can imagine, we're still very early into 2023, so there is a lot to be determined. However, I'll do my best here to highlight everything we're looking to accomplish. PERSONAL HISTORY With the film having made its debut, there has been a long waiting period on what our next move will be. That said, it may be a little longer before we know. Broadly speaking, the film will see a digital release, likely in the middle portion of the year. In less important news, we released the soundtrack album a few weeks ago. That can be found HERE. SHORT FILMS We have a couple of co-produced projects that have yet to be released online left over from last year. Fritz Robinson's GOOD LISTENER will likely be released after wrapping up its festival run. The Take36 project, CHEKHOV'S HAND GRENADE, is just waiting on a bit of ADR. Briefly mentioned on the latest episode of our podcast, we have been working on a horror project with Kurt T. Choate. We will be shooting this in the first part of the year. The short is called BLINDISGHT and will be helmed by David Wayne Young and Kurt. We're also continuing to work on another short film with Fritz Robinson called DEATH IN LAVENDER. This is a 16mm crime short. There is one more day of shooting left to go in the spring before we move into post-production. Finally, we are producing a short film directed by Gina Bryant called HOLE IN THE GROUND. Also to be shot in the early part of the year. Needless to say, we'll be busy for the next few months. NEW FEATURES We've sorta softly announced these in the past. We are currently developing a live-action horror feature as well as a new animated comedy. It wouldn't be smart to say much more this early in the game. It will probably be a while before there is any news of substance on these. I'll leave it at that. ANYWAY! COMICS It's probably a good time to throw out an update on where these projects sit. Ideally, we would love to release THE DOG PARK Volume 2 this year. We made a good amount of progress last year. The animated short definitely sidelined it a bit. I'd say at best, we could try for the end of the year on this one. It will be a big undertaking no matter how you look at it. As for A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY, there has been no major movement since the last time it came up. It's a low priority at this point. We are still determined to get it out there eventually. This project has just been a victim of circumstance. PODCAST We're about to move into the ninth season of our movie podcast. We'll be kicking things off with our annual tradition of The Golden Jamie Awards, running down every new film we saw in 2022 and declaring our top five favorites. We're all very excited for the line up of episodes we have this year. We have a lot of fun topics and guest appearances that we can't wait to do. The future remains unwritten as usual. We'll see how everything goes. Bottom line, we hope to putting out cool projects for you to enjoy. Have a Happy New Year! - Tyler
Additionally, we have done a few co-productions with other local teams. First was Fritz Robinson's GOOD LISTENER. This was a fun little comedy short we shot in the spring and it will soon be premiering at No Coast Film Festival in Emporia, KS on September 10th.
We also recently participated in Take 36 (a 36-hour film competition) with our friends Gina & Roy in which we made a short film called CHEKHOV'S HAND GRENADE. This screened at the Orpheum here in Wichita and at the Tallgrass Film Center a few weeks later. We've decided to do a little bit of extra ADR work before releasing it online. It was a lot of fun to make and we plan to work with them again fairly soon. Lastly, we've been working on our animated holiday short for THE DOG PARK for the last few months. Animation is well underway and while the upcoming busy months will surely bring turbulence, we are still on track to release the short on time. After screening the animatic, I think everyone will really enjoy it. With that, I'll disappear again until the next update. See you when I see you! - Tyler
COMICS
I'll do this as an all encompassing thing. This year as a whole will be fairly quiet on the comic book front. We've been doing some work behind the scenes, but it'll be a slow process getting anything new out there. We do have something happening today though! With Free Comic Book Day happening, we always like to do a little something. Check out a special edition of THE DOG PARK PODCAST with a little free something-something. This is something we're doing just for fun. Not to the caliber of a genuine Dog Park story. But I do think anyone who is interested in the history of this project will be able to appreciate it. Other than that, we'll talk more about THE DOG PARK on the podcast. Including everything we've done so far this year. I won't waste your time making you read it now. As some of you may remember, we do have another comic. A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY has been on a long hiatus. It went mostly unannounced because it was totally up in the air for a bit. The long and short of it is, Beth hit some major burn out with the project after Issue 3. Getting the fourth going was a struggle, so we gave her some time off. That expanded to several months and that turned into making the mutual decision to take it off her hands and find another way to deliver it. We have two final chapters left. It's been an awkward run. The second we started off, Beth's work on LEFT HOOK prevented her from working on the next part. I think that shook things up more than we could have anticipated. It's certainly not her fault as far as keeping momentum is concerned. It was virtually impossible to do. That said, with some cool down time, I have jumped in and penciled the last two chapters. Layout is totally done and it took me about a week of focused work to get it done. This was generally the longest stage on the first three issues. That said, with other things kicking into gear, ink and color will take longer than usual. I will not promise a finish date for the final parts of the story, but it will get done eventually. For one last piece of bad news, we teased a full length motion comic to go along with the release of the omnibus version. That's not going to happen anymore. We recorded most of the dialogue, but that was back in 2020 when we were doing everything remotely. Those who were not used to remote recording, had a lot issues. It was too much to deal with, especially since it was meant to be an easy project any way. I'll probably use some of the scenes as promotional videos, but the goal at this point is to move forward and finish the book itself. Companion material is of very low priority. All this said, expect another long silence before we jump back in. When it's all said and done, it will be a fun read. I hope it will be worth the embarrassingly long wait.
Another new year is approaching and with it, several new things on the horizon. 2021 was interesting to say the least. We stayed busy from beginning to end. A feature, a short and a graphic novel certainly saw to that. Before we get into what is coming, I'll take a second to mention that on January 1st, our holiday sale will be coming to an end. All of our movies and comics will return to their regular prices. In the meantime, head on over to the store page to take advantage of some discounts. THE DOG PARK A few things to mention here! We've wrapped up everything we needed to with this first volume. Previously, in the deluxe digital edition, we hadn't finished every motion comic upon release. I'm happy to let you know, they are all now available. We have also finished the lineup of companion podcasts. David and I go in-depth on every chapter of Volume 1 and there was quite a bit of fun to be had in doing so. Feel free to check those out HERE. Although this was covered in the last episode of the podcast, I feel like it's worth mentioning a few spark notes on the future of THE DOG PARK. Firstly, Volume 2 is currently being written. However, we aren't expecting to have it ready for release until about 2023. Some prep time will be necessary to make sure it comes out as good (if not better) than the first one. That said, 2022 will not be left empty handed. We are currently working on an animated holiday special to release just in time for next November or December. The script is great and it should be a lot of fun when it rolls around.
Wow. I can’t believe I haven’t made a blog post since Halloween. Yet at the same time, I can. Things have been busy around here, but there has also been a lot in the air. That said, I believe it’s time to unpack all of it. HOLIDAY SALE Before we start getting into the meat and potatoes, I just want to mention that we do have a holiday sale going on over on VHX and with our two films on Vimeo OnDemand. We knocked $2 off of everything. Movies, comic books, you name it. Okay, pretty much just those two things, but still. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve been wanting to get any of these things. This will be going on until December 31st. LEFT HOOK This month, we’ve been releasing some fun material for LEFT HOOK on our social media pages. Mainly mini-featurettes with some of the cast. Also a special IC TRIES where we do the One Chip Challenge to bring attention to the film. The biggest development however, is that among all the other spots it has landed, LEFT HOOK can now be streamed on AMAZON PRIME! It took much longer than I would have liked to get that finalized, but I’m just glad I can finally say it. Recently, I was interviewed on INDIES ON INDIE to talk about the film. It was nice to follow up because I also appeared on the show back in early 2018 to promote the fundraiser. It was nice catching up with Patrick Poe and I hope everyone enjoys the episode. While the main focus was LEFT HOOK, we also touched on a few other things that I can announce here today.
A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY Our current comic book, while moving slowly, is moving along. With 3 out of 5 parts released, I fully expect for this to be wrapped up next year. The idea is to finish releasing the singles digitally and then to print an omnibus for conventions. While that is cool news, the even cooler news is the additional plans we’ve been putting together throughout the second half of this year. When the omnibus is released, we will also be putting out a motion comic movie paired with a fully voiced audio track. We pulled in several of our good actor friends to be a part of it and I’m equally as excited to get that out there as I am the other two issues. With cast members like Elijah Muldrow and Harrison Hallows leading the project, how could I not get excited!? It will be similar in presentation to this promo for Issue 3. I don’t want to give a solid timeline for it just yet. However, we do expect it to be out next year. THE DOG PARK Well-well-well! Something new!? That’s right. I announced it a little sooner than I originally intended on that interview I mentioned earlier. But I couldn’t pass up the chance. Honestly, I’m super passionate about this one. It’s a big deal to me. I won’t do a deep dive into exactly what it’s all about until later, but it’s a graphic novel featuring multiple episodic stories following a very fun group of characters. They’re all dogs. Don’t worry, there are no bad dog puns or anything. They just happen to be dogs. Seriously. It’s not even a big deal. The approach to this one will be different to that of A SCRIPT CALLED MISERY. Aside from being released all at once, we are going to try out a pre-order format through Indiegogo this time. That seems to be the common way to handle indie comics these days. Though, we do plan to have copies at conventions as well, whenever those get going again. THE DOG PARK is a series that I used to write when I was a kid first learning to be a writer and an artist. So like I said, it’s a passion project. This time around I’m illustrating things myself and mostly writing by myself as well, with fantastic contributions from a story team of Beth and the Davids. All of this said, DOG PARK will be more than just a comic book. We already have plans for companion cartoons and a few other fun things to go along with it. Alas, these are all things we will need to cover later as well.
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