JULY 1/2 Update: FINAL Animation Pitch Update

Animation Pitch

Originally, an employee from Princess Bento reached out to me wanting to adapt the project into an animated show. Offering that we both be partner showrunners on it. At first I was incredibly excited. However as we continue to discuss, I realised that we had different visions with how the show would be. What he wanted was a casual slice of life, and I wanted a more serious serialized base to the story, my reasoning is that other media with countries have done the exact same casual slice of life thing, Country Balls, Hetalia, Country Humans, etc, etc.

We eventually settled on it being a race to the middle road adventure, and we were very proud and content with the vision we chose. In one of our meetings, I mentioned that I've been talking to someone at Studio Yotta, the founder Jake Ganz, who is my friend, and penpal for a couple of years now.. It came to be as a surprise that Bento and Studio Yotta have worked together, specifically the animation for Smiling Friends. I was confident enough to propose that I could try and pitch the idea to Yotta as a collaboration linking both of the studios.

I met with Studio Yotta earlier a week ago, we went to this neat BBQ resturant in LA where they served decent ribs. We had a beer and started geeking out about animation.

We went through a massive amount of subjects, how overseas workers from South Korea and Canada have taken a lot of remote work in projects. How university graduate expect the industry to be, to how our interests as animators were when we were children. Then I pitched the show to them as a collaboration with Princess Bento.

However, it seems like S2 of Smiling Friends was a bad experience on the Studio Yotta side, with them hinting the reason why Yotta was brought onto it in the first place, was that the quality Bento gave Smiling Friends S1 was not up to the standard the creators imagined. It also seems like they personally dislike the values they had, which really got me.

After hearing about this and looping around the same topic over and over, I decided I didnt want to continue the project with how scuffed things seemed to be.

It's such a shame. I think we do have something really worth developing more. Just.... maybe with a different company.

Below are all the ideas which are going to be put on the shelf. At least you guys can see it here on Patreon... I wouldnt put it publicly for the sake of my partner, and I dont want someone running off with something similar too lol

The continent with multiple biomes they were going to travel on

Old prop ideas

Original Setting adjustments and plans

Character brainstorm

Story brainstorming, trying to get the vibe right

Thank you all for being really paitent and kind with this side project ;) I will continue as planned now.

Character poll tmr, if you have suggestions let me know! Not in a fantastic vibe for a Discord stream this month though.

See you all in the next update!