Continuing form our previous Article "Our Story Part 2 - The Painful Learning Curve - 4Villains & The Pirates of Haven -Twitch Pixel Studios"

With Hollywood at the time having little interest for an indie team making ridiculous web series, both Natalie and I felt Hopeless. Years of work ignored, in a time when web series were considered but a small nuisance to the masters of the entertainment universe.

Denied entry to the elite club, we had little choice but to step back and focus on more important things, like paying our bills. 

It wasn't an easy transition, we had just spent the better part of 4 years living and breathing film, living in a villain's lair set, and producing our own ideas with no one in our way.

It felt mundane returning to the grind of employment. I got pulled into the mobile and video marketing world in its infancy, and Natalie sucked down the retail rabbit hole.

At least I got to be somewhat creative making videos and banners and imagery shilling this brand and that. Natalie however was stuck in a service industry, being ground down leaving little motivation when she got home, and i didn’t blame her, she was exhausted.

Before we knew it nearly a year had passed and we hadn't done anything of our own. It was driving me crazy, but I didn't realize why. Nat was feeling trapped, and combined we were both back to Hopelessness.

Once again from our defeat, and frustration we cultivated something new, through some hard conversations about our emotional states, we both realized we wanted the same thing, we yearned for another project, you’d figure by now we’d know it, but it took a break down to help us build back up. 

Bright Future full of Hoplessness.

So instead of letting our hopelessness feed more procrastination, we instead flipped it around. We made it the theme of our next 2 years and developed our first Animated Series Lost Hope. We saved every penny, we could, we barley managed to upgrade our computers to handle it, and we purchased our first software licenses for Toon Boom Harmony, at the time a relatively newer software gunning for mainstream adoption.

From it’s name, its titular strong female lead, right down to the name of the ship, this sci-fi smattering of Battlestar Galactica with X-Files, became our first drama comedy space epic, and I fell deeper into our creation than I ever had before.

6 straight months, everyday, every waking moment I wasn't at work, I was up. Most nights ended in the wee hours of the next morning, spreadsheets and google docs, full of notes, timelines, characters, and scripts. 

Natalie too, although with less free time, became a focused concept artist, trying to keep up with my ideas sketching and ideation to bring the visuals from my head to the page.

And it literally was the page, pencil and paper sketches and drawings, she hadn't yet become accustomed to digital art, but this would be her first foray. 

We have stacks of drawings she did, concepting Clara Hope, Dawson Conner, and their team of fellow misfits, that would be the last guardians of the human race.

Meanwhile I brought the world around them to life, and brought these characters souls to bear, suffering through the loss of their planet, and using their comedy and humor to deal with the fallout of a destroyed world, and being charged with protecting the last of their kind as they hurtle through space and in a unfinished ark ship, hunted and alone.

Outmanned, outgunned, and low on resources the crew's situation becomes more and more dire as they not only run for their lives, but take their first steps into the galaxy, one more crowded then they ever imagined.

Natalie had to come up with our crew, and our alien worlds, while I developed our seasonal arcs, and character backstories that would be revealed through a complex web of intrigue.

It was our first project where we both aligned in a more professional way. We treated this like a real company, and built our entire world for production. ( which we still have and can’t wait to revisit!) 

The Fox in the Box

With this we founded our first company Fox Box Creative Studios, and we began production on our first trailer for Lost Hope. It took our life savings to that point to gear up and get the software, and even let Natalie take some time off work to focus on developing our rigs and storyboards.

But now we need to voice this cast of outcast heroes, and at the time we didn’t really have anyone in mind. We knew people we liked, but we also had to be reasonable with expectations. That didn’t stop us from asking every single actor we loved, and we were fortunate enough to actually get replies!

We were fans of Felica Day's creation "the Guild", and one character in particular stood out to voice our titular wise ass, trouble-making nerd-turned-special ops: Dawson Conner, and that was none other than Vince Caso, aka Bladezz. He had done radio shows, and web series, he had a passion for cartoons, and voice acting, and we were very lucky he said yes.

Not a week later and I got a message in my inbox from the lovely and hilarious Marisha Ray. Now best known for "Critical Role", Marisha and her husband Mathew Mercer had been voice acting, making indie films and web-series themselves.

She agreed to join our production and offer up her voice to bring to life Claudia Fitzsimmons, our fiery strong willed fighter of our group, and bring her to life she did.

I had been speaking with another friend  from New Zealand named Lewis Roscoe. He was an entrepreneur like me, obsessed with animation, making his own shows, and we bonded immediately. He took on the role of Cole Fletcher. With Lewis came an extremely talented and fun human Anna Hewlett, who would voice our Main Heroine Clara Hope, on whose shoulders bore the burden of the survival of the human race.

Anna had another friend, and it was a fan moment for both Natalie and I. being Hercules and Xena fans growing up, Anna brought to us one of the best parts of Sam Raimi's world, Michael Hurst, known for portraying Ioulus, Hercules best friend and sidekick for over  decade in both Hercules and Xena.

Michael took on the role of our time frozen old captain trying to be a better man in the face of a new world, and the quick and decisive end of it all.

We even took a trip to meet them all, bring them out to dinner and get to know our cast, who all proved nothing short of damn decent human beings with a passion for what they do. Our people, our tribe.

Together our cast recorded our trailer and pilot episodes and we began to hit the ground running. And with the trailer well into production, and a full 4 Part Pilot Planned, we began looking for funding.

But as always, without money no one wants to give you money, regardless of the fact that we had years of prep work, and nearly all production completed, sweat equity seemed to mean nothing to these people.

Watch our Re-released & Re-animated Trailer!

No Money For Nobodies

Grants, Loans, Investments, Partnerships, everyone either wanted to take it away from us entirely, offer the incentives to their friends which we were not, or wouldn't even speak with us because we're not some big name or money bag they can sap off of.

We pushed and promoted, we were on the radio, we we blasted across YouTube through interviews and podcasts, we laid our souls bare, and nothing, except for spent savings.

It was in the middle of all this that we decided f*** If they don’t want us, we don’t want them, and we decided to try a new idea, something that at the time was just budding, something never tried before with animation, Crowdfunding.

This was just as Kickstarter started picking up mainstream attention, and the first of its competitors started popping up including Indiegogo. 

We spent months planning and executing a full campaign, we were so new to it, and the trust just wasn't there yet. Kickstarter was under fire for several campaigns evaporating and leaving their supporters hanging, and Indiegogo didn’t quite have the hype, trust and viewership, and alas our first campaign failed.

It hurt, we had asked all our friends and family to help and support, we had spent months advertising and bootstrapping like crazy. We went on the radio, we did podcast interviews, events, we did everything we were “supposed to do '' to get people to notice us. And nothing. A few thousand dollars, and less than 1 % of our funding goal.

That 1% stuck with me for a while, I was done trying, Natalie couldn't even pick me up this time, she was alone battling my severe depression, and my unwavering belief that no one cared about us or our ideas. All I ever wanted was to tell stories, and not one wants to listen.

This 1%, it proved it. It was a tangible numerical valuation of people's interest in supporting us and our ideas. It hurt more than I liked admitting. 

After sinking our lives and money into Worlds beyond the Grave, Daytripper Saga, 4Villains, and now this, I was exhausted, hard work doesn't pay off, only who you know and how much you own matters, a reality that finally set in.

I shut down Fox Box Creative, I shut down our website, pulled our socials, and half heartedly announced our failure. It was a big ball kick, I felt it in my stomach, it sat there like a pit. I got sick, my own fault of course, I wasn't taking care of myself.

Once More Into the Void

The Tests and medications were a wake up call, nothing insanely serious, but it was enough that my quality of life had descended into inhospitable territory, and I had to find a way back up to my feet.

A Mounting Frustration that I was sitting on mass of potential with the only thing stopping it being money, or status. My Ideas we're well thought out, pushed through pre-production out of pocket, and all the sweat equity, all the effort, all the proof of work meant nothing to the gatekeepers.

It was with the failure that someone would enter our lives, bringing something we sorely needed. A friend who would elevate our ambition and get us back on track. Someone who would ally with Natalie and pull me out of my disbelief in life, the universe and everything, one Mr. Michael Murphree.

Founding and growing Gaming Wildlife on YouTube in its youth, Mike was at the height of his success with the project when he found us. He reached out from the blue and offered just to have a chat about what we are doing. A single call that lasted hours, where both of us amid our frustrations with the industry, and the lack of support for those who have the most passion for it.

It was a breath of fresh air for me, it was a conversation I talked about with Natalie ( I’m sure to her boredom *grins*) for days! I was excited again, and Natalie was relieved. I found a person disenfranchised with the way things are, but who still had optimism and ambition to match our own. 

From there he helped us launch a second campaign redux, offering insight to get eyes on us, sharing us with his community. With our final trailer done and a bunch of content under our belt we launched to a much better reception. But did we succeed? Alas no.

A Different Perspective

But for some reason this time, I didn't lose heart, Natalie even made a notable observation of it, finding I had not slipped back down the slope she would have suspected from my track record, but I became more invigorated with the failure.

It was a keystone moment for my brain, a realization that no matter what I’m going to just do my thing, I’m going to create my ideas, and if I die and they never got made, at least I left behind a legacy that others might find and appreciate one day, and who knows, maybe I'll be one of those creators who only get discovered after they are gone. And you know what, I was alright with that.

I decided I would just make my ideas, take them as far as I could alone and then make a new one, and I would keep doing this until I had developed a library of my own intellectual properties that I could share & pitch for the rest of my life if I had to.

But once again, our efforts had drained us, our savings, and our energy, and once again we needed work. This time I was going to work in the industry, I was going to learn the ins and outs of animation production, and find where I can improve it for our own pipeline. 

I had become determined to build a studio that could make its own ideas, on our own terms, and the idea of a pilot centric studio was born. Our studio would focus on creating regular new ideas, and taking these ideas from script to screen all our own. But I needed to know how every aspect worked. 

Lost Hope had helped me find my hope. Ironic but true. Although Lost Hope now sits awaiting re-birth, it set the foundation for our animation studio and our pivot to become Twitch Pixel Studios Inc.

But first I needed that new job, a job that would take us from our comfort zone of Vancouver Island, somewhere we had built roots for the last 12 years, and throw us into fiery, floody, snowy, interior of B.C. to join a  fun little show by none other than the Creator of Rick & Morty, Dan Harmon Himself, the show… HarmonQuest.

That adventure opened a new part of our lives… With a lot of change, some for better some for worse.

But that's it for this part, catch up next time!

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