Writing book one had a surprising effect on my own life, but writing these sequels impacted my mind, body, and spirit in ways I didn’t even know were possible. I’ve emerged the process stronger and more resilient both mentally and physically and the story continues to be a reminder of what strengthens, heals, and builds me further!

That result would have been sufficient reason to create this project. To add to this success, In even a difficult economy, we were were able to fund the printing of book through Backerkit!

The trilogy continues to be available for pre-order here:

An additional transformation came in the visual art process:

I made a vow in this project (and beyond) to completely avoid using generative A.I. even in my search for inspiration and reference (which was a challenge when searching through saturated online image websites – we’re looking at you, Pinterest!). Scrolling past all ai-generated images, even when one seemed to resemble the vision in my mind, resulted in some surprising and fun creative decisions. 

Because of this, I made great strides as an artist and even found ways to do illustrations twice as fast, then three times as fast, all by combining real-world skills in inventive ways.

Here are screenshots documenting the process on one of the most challenging illustrations:

Additionally, Contributing my animation skills to Spice Frontier’s pilot episode has truly pushed my skills to a new level.

Recently, we surpassed 1 million views, which in an internet world buried in algorithms, is a remarkable accomplishment!

Go Steamroller Studios!!! It’s easy to see that this studio does premium work, however, the real reason I love working at Steamroller is the way we treat the people!

Here’s my animation work, the full episode, and some treadmill dance reference for your enjoyment!

And more and more information is being released about Steamroller’s original I.P. “Spice Frontier.” It’s a high quality project and again, one of the best collaborative experiences I’ve had in this industry.

Here are the bits of news I can share so far:

Enjoy and I’ll have more news for you soon.
~Scott Wiser

The first 10 pitches opened so many doors. I became a director at Spacestation Animation, almost got a full greenlight for “The Unsingable Song” soon after that. And when that door closed another possibility opened and another. This lead me to supervising and animation at Steamroller Animation, the best studio I’ve ever collaborated with.

The process was the same: develop 50+ ideas, narrow them down to 10, ask for votes to narrow them to 5, develop like mad, get lots of feedback, and get Tarzan/Enchanted/A Goofy Movie director Kevin Lima on a call to chat about them.

But this time, for your viewing pleasure, you can get all 15 pitches in just over 15 minutes … or watch the extended versions.

Which Pitch is YOUR FAVORITE? Let me know in the Youtube comments.

Before Nathan Riddle (producer) and I came on in August, the small talented team Shonduras and Jordan Nguyen assembled to animat the 1st episode of A for Adley had been churning for over 8 months. We helped them finish in about a month.

Episode 02 took 3 months to animate, but we also re-designed and re-built the character and main environment, shifted to Unreal, and did our first NFT drop with Quarter Machine.

We hired more people and refined our processes to get Episode 03 done in a month and a half, Episode 04 done in a month, and Episode 05 in a month as well.

Of course, each of these has a month for storyboarding/concepts and a month of modeling that happens 2 months previous to production, for a total of 3 months for the overall process, but we’ve gotten better at overlapping the processes for monthly releases.

Full Momentum

Episode 05 felt like a sweet spot for many of us. While working on episode 03, we decided that it was time to start developing the new series so we can someday release one of each every month. To do this, I began to hand off directing responsibilities to other team members while I took time to storyboard episode 05 to give that production one last push. The goal was to layer in more poses to speed up the animators, to get more production design done along with the boards, and push the clarity of storytelling.

One lesson learned when it came to productions is that I should have done the first pass on the concepts. My lack of communication there caused a lot of rippling complications. But we have such a great team that we ironed the problems out and delivered a great episode:

[Edit: Animation industry colleagues have reached out to me asking why the quality of lighting/animation/texturing/rendering went down so far from episode 04. These kinds of conversations are important to a director because they inspire improvement. When the storyboards were presented to the team, there was such an excitement about the quality of the boards that we began saying, “this episode is going to be fast and easy.” On episode 04, the plan was to hand off responsibilities and become a co-director. On episode 05, the plan was to hand off the co-directing role because the new series required so much attention. The further episode 05’s production went along, the more I jumped in to fix many things, worried we might have a quality issue on our hands. It was important to keep team morality high, as we had another episode and an NFT project starting immediately after the 3 weeks of animation finished. I was concerned about quality, but everyone around me was talking about how great it was. In retrospect, I should have done at least rough concepts along with my boards and communicated more at the beginning of the episode production. There are many other small things we could have done better. I’m grateful for these lessons because they’ll make me a better director in the future. That said, this is still projected to be our most successful yet in terms of views.]

Of course, in showing that video out of order, I’m denying you the privilege of watching how our team pushed quality steadily higher with each and every episode. Here’s 1-4:

The Next Chapter:

As some of you know, a potential partner and I almost funded “The Unsingable Song” feature film back in August, but it’s actually good that hasn’t happened yet. Spacestation Animation has been an amazing place to learn and grow. I’m constantly saying, “Glad I learned that lesson before directing a feature film.” It becomes more true each passing month, especially now that I’m developing this new series.

And that next series is shaping into something fun and special, with fantastic collaborative voice artists(tba), story artist Brant Moon, and character designer Shawn Boyles! More on that exciting development coming soon … once it’s ready to share!

Thanks for all of your support these many years and I hope we have even more inspiring content coming for you soon.

~Scott

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts, so after you’ve watched the video, please leave a comment on youtube.

And if you are a producer, executive, or investor and would like to officially review the pitches, please go to scottwiser.com/collaborate. Apply to see the pitch packet complete with full-size posters, pitch essays, links to exclusive animatics and digital copies of the books, etc.

As I share my 2021 New Years’ resolution here. I hope you’ll share yours with me down in the comments!

My Goal: Direct an original animated film in the capacity of director, with a producer experienced in financing independent films as my main collaborator.

And since I’ve come to realize that the more experience I have developing feature-length content, the better, I’ve decided to pull out all of the stops and put out 7 feature pitches in addition to the 3 I typically display on my website.

New Pitch #1:

As I’ve done with some of my former animation pitches, Misfit Supers, Vanishing Ink & Cirque De Solitude, the first of these 7 new pitches is formatted as an illustrated novel. Unlike the other books, however, the illustrations are in full, glorious color!

I have a couple of publishers considering adding this book to their lineup and I anticipate that with a bit of rewriting, it will be ready to publish soon. Depending on how negotiations go, however, I may still consider self-publishing as I did with the other books, just as my friend Isaac Stewart did with his new book, even though he has a robust network through his employer and New York Times bestseller, Brandon Sanderson.

I can’t wait to share more about this project with you soon!

New Pitch #2: (This might be the one!)

Seeing that my short film Layers has been a great tool in attracting potential producers with chats about a feature-length version, I have begun to realize that books may not be my best strategy to get a feature financed and off the ground.

In August 2020, I saved up enough in my animation freelance business to write the opening song to this Animated Musical Fantasy Pitch and then storyboard rough drawing to create an animatic for the first 5 minutes of my film. Music composer Michael Bahnmiller was an excellent collaborator when it came to creating a demo version of the instruments and a create an excellent surrounding score. Megan Heaps, Myself, and Aimee Geddes were the vocalists.

The animated and accompanying video pitch, which I revised at least 5 times, did so well with private screenings for potential producers that I actually may have a producer who wants to put money into animating a high-quality teaser trailer (which I’ve already planned out in animatic form), and help me get the financing to produce this lush animated musical!

This may be my lucky break, but why stop there?

New Pitches #3, #4, #5, #6, #7:

After challenging myself over a couple of months to come up with more than 50 film ideas, I narrowed the list down to the 11 ideas and had peers privately vote on their favorites to narrow the list down to 5.

These pitches will be different in that they won’t be as developed as my former project. They will each include a poster design (featuring unique character designs and styles) and an essay about the film I want to make, as my animation Idol Hayao Miyazaki does when proposing his films. This may sound easy, but each essay will include a comprehensive story summary along with my unique vision for each film.

As I recently learned pitching along with 8 others to Sergio Pablos at the recent CTNX Pitch Perfect Bootcamp, creating a concise and compelling pitch for a film is extremely challenging. And being an animator who is passionate about storytelling, developing 5 at once is shaping up to be the perfect challenge for this point in my career. I’m currently reviewing every screenwriting book, recall every lesson I’ve learned, and studying great stories, such as Aesop’s fables, deeply.

Conclusion

So when will I be able to share this new content publicly?

Well that depends on how my freelance goes and how the chats with this potential producer goes. But from past experiences, I can tell you I will be learning and growing from whatever collaborations come my way.

When can I share them privately? Well, I could share them anytime with the right person, as long as that person is an experienced producer or executive who believes in my work and wants to collaborate.

And while I wish directing an animated feature as my full-time job, I have to say I have been having a blast collaborating with independent directors like James Bourne on his short The Abandoned Block (samples below), directors Bryan Lefler and Travis Deming in their work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (sample below), and many others. Each collaborator has inspired me with their unique vision and talents.

Oh, and I can’t forget the great lessons I’ve learned from the many guests I’ve interviewed on The Directing Animation Livecast. You’re all so inspiring to me and I can’t wait to create work that will inspire you in return!

The 1st episode launched September 10th and several more monthly interviews are coming soon!

Here’s the first episode:

In episode was, we discuss:

• Tony Bancroft’s book, Directing for animation – would he add anything?
• His experience directing Animal Crackers in contrast to Mulan
• What are key factors for a successful virtual animation studio
• What it would take for a person like me to obtain the opportunity of directing a full-feature film remotely or virtually.
• What moral obligation does a filmmaker have to the world culture
• One of the biggest stresses of directing a full-feature film
• And more!

Subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode:

And Finally, if you have any questions you’d like to ask or any suggestions whatsoever, let me know in the comments below!

Thanks!

Without any introduction, because the Kickstarter page explains everything
Here’s the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scottwiser/cirque-de-solitude-an-all-ages-illustrated-novel

On the first day, we were the most popular in the fiction section. As more news comes, I’ll post it below!

[Edit: So far, reviews have been glowing. Buy your copy on Amazon!]

Prince of Egypt and Brave Director Brenda Chapman gaved it the following glowing review: “How beautiful, poignant and lyrical!! Well done!! I enjoyed it immensely! I needed that nice moment to stop and enjoy something so enchanting!”

Several others have said: “Amazing!” “Inspiring!” “Beautiful.” “Moving.”

If you are also inspired by the film, please share it with as many others as you can. And now, without further into, here is: Layers: An Animated Short!

Along-side Layers, I’ve also developed another illustrated-novel/feature about a timid woman who buys a private island to be alone, only to discover it is already inhabited by circus people.

I would love to have your support in the Kickstarter campaign, and thanks in advance for engaging with my content!