Thank you for all the love on Jay's Day! I've been insanely flattered by the reception, I really did not expect people to fuck with it as much as they have. Just wanted to say some thank yous and share all the supplemental material for this episode--
First of all, THANK YOU to Newgrounds. it was fucking crazy waking up to see it on the banner spot the other day, this was the first time something I’ve made ended up there. Newgrounds was kind enough to sponsor the production of this batch of Ratbasterdz episodes we’re working on, which to put it bluntly is literal childhood dream shit. This site has been a part of my life for a very long time, so many formative memories and lifelong friendships are a direct result of NG. I never would’ve started animating and certainly wouldn’t have started pursuing it seriously were it not for this site. To say I’m honored that Newgrounds saw enough value in Ratbasterdz to put the NG name on it is an understatement, hope we’ll do you guys proud with these.
We premiered the cartoon on April 6th to a packed house which was super fucking cool. Once again, thank you to everyone who came out to that. I was really floored by the response. I plan on doing a longform postmortem blogpost thing like I wrote out for the last episode where I’ll share some more pics from the event and go more in depth on the whole process. The whole show was filmed as well, and we’ll have another edit coming within the next month or two.
The online store is restocked with all the leftovers from the premiere show– we’ve still got a handful of Jay shirts, and a good amount of logo tees, stickers, and prints. With each shirt I’ll throw in a few stickers or a print.
The soundtrack EP dropped on bandcamp and spotify the other night too! Alongside this, Tyler and I also put together a playlist of inspirations for the episode like we did for the last one– songs that inspired the soundtrack/placeholders from the animatic, songs referenced on jay’s ipod, and bands that played the premiere. Each episode’s got a different vibe in terms of sound and I hope to put some people onto music they wouldn’t normally seek out. This one’s a lot more mall-screamo/emo influenced with some heavier stuff here and there.
(cool art in the above image is by Michael Shantz!)
If you’d like to support the cartoon we launched a patreon page back in february too! I’ve been posting a bunch of sneak peeks and updates on there as well as doing monthly drawing request streams for patrons. I rarely draw for non-ratbasterdz stuff lately so that’s been a lot of fun.
We’ve got a little over a minute of animation done on episode 3, which out of all of them is my personal favorite. The work the team's been doing for that one is looking crazy good. Hoping to keep up the momentum and have that one out at the end of this year/early next year. Another live show to accompany that one as well.
As mentioned above I’ll do another postmortem writeup for this episode eventually– @sugarpolyp was suggesting I record them which I’ve been seriously considering. As much as I like longform writing, most of the time I’m working and need things to listen to, and am always craving stuff that gets into the weeds of creative work– thought it would be nice to fill that gap for others potentially. Lmk if that's something people would be into!
Thats it for now, peace!
Spinalpalm
The event was immaculate, the episode fantastic, and the reception is so sweet to see!
Excited for episode 3 and many more!