Original Content in Production /2023 Update-special cancelled, series has restarted production

Now we’d like to fill you in on what we are producing next!  This post is focused on our original content, but I would not count us out of making fanstuff (especially Ed, Edd n Eddy) just yet.  It always makes me a little anxious to tease anything I'm working on or planning, so I apologize for how slow production may end up being!

First of all, I’m proud to announce that we have begun production on a new Those Friggin Ferrets special!  Our independent web cartoon about two young adult ferret siblings is finally on its way back!  Intended for Youtube and Newgrounds (and of course bonus features here on Patreon ahead of time, when those are ready), we are essentially trying to achieve the feeling of a classic theatrical short in the Ferrets’ longest story ever.

The special, “This Friggin’ Quarantine,” starts in March 2020 and tracks Hattie and Garth’s lives through lockdown after they find out that all ferrets are naturally immunocompromised. This special will weave the rest of the Ferrets’ world into a story that keeps them 6 feet apart from everyone, while also widening the scope of the original shorts. Taking advantage of how isolated Hattie and Garth already were in the original trilogy, this quickly becomes a character-focused story that will test their siblingly bond, while they try their best to keep each other sane.  It might even be slightly educational!

Instantly dated, we want it to feel like an intimate journey through shared experience.  We believe that it will be a great opportunity to display how much we’ve grown as artists since our original three Ferrets shorts (way back at the launch of this Patreon!). I am currently working on the digital storyboards after work most days, and after that will come the animatic, then voices, animation/backgrounds, SFX, music, and the final editing.  Wish us luck making this homemade short film!

A quick refresher on this series: me and my spouse (who will now be credited as E. Lordi) introduced Those Friggin’ Ferrets in 2014.  The shorts were pretty bare bones back then, basically tests to get a feel for the style and only featuring a quarter of the characters. The three shorts we did ended up being the only ones completed (3 others were mid-production at the time and still exist in my backups), and we put it on pause once we had to make time for our day jobs.

We had already been talking for these past few years, planning to reintroduce our Ferrets with their now fully developed cast and setting, but when the pandemic began and started to feel endless, it made us think it would feel awkward to restart this parody of reality with crowd scenes and characters getting in each other’s faces, so we storyboarded and wrote a new special all throughout the pandemic and now post-vaccination, processing our experiences. We hope you all enjoy it when it’s ready!

AFTER THE SPECIAL:

Our intention is that, at a certain point in production, E. will take over with as much as possible, so that I can start production another Ferrets episode.  When the special is released, we hope to be prepared with a season of 10 episodes (returning to the original 3-5 minute short format)-- these are episodes that we have essentially been workshopping together for years and we are so excited to get to these!!

OTHER STUFF SIMULTANEOUSLY:

Next, I want to talk about how I’m still going to apply occasionally to industry work. Mainly, I am intrigued by the recently announced CARTOON CARTOONS Revival.  I have no idea how they intend to get applications for that, but I'm on the look out!  I have been coming up with ideas for shorts/series/characters for a very long time, so as soon as submissions are open, I've got ideas!  

I’d like to try to pitch to them my HOOP-A-JOOP pilot short film (the aquarium short), my WOLFPACK short film (with the gumball machine, I believe I posted these a few years back), possibly one of our FERRETS ideas, and since they are allegedly accepting adult-demographic pitches, I’d like to try something based on my NEAR MIDNIGHT concept, which I have barely posted about but is constructed out of my old OLIVE and DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME concepts.

Lastly, that brings me back to my Hoop-a-Joop aquarium short film, which I started production on forever ago and then had to pause for freelance. I have done a new background for this  short recently, so I still consider it in production, but the reason this is on the lowest backburner is to try and pitch it to Cartoon Cartoons.  Either way, if that falls through, I will go back to self-producing that and finish it independently, possibly working on it during the Ferrets season.  It is entirely possible that all of those ideas for shorts could be self-produced in the future.