There are only a handful of sentences that can guarantee
your life is about to change. For me,
this was part of a journey that started in 2014 with a random webcomic
on a random website. It was like stumbling
upon a hidden treasure, lying dormant,
waiting to be discovered and what a treasure it was. No encore? What happened to you
that made you hate fun? Oh, is it playtime now? Time to tie up some loose ends. It is 1927 and prohibition
is in full effect. The city of St Louis is dry on the surface,
but there is a wellspring of illicit beverages
underground. Created by Tracy Butler. Lackadaisy follows the fortunes of the last members
of the Lackadaisy speakeasy. They're half gangsters,
half bootleggers and 100% cats. In the summer of 2014,
a young me. Well, I was actually 20 years old,
but I discovered this webcomic
and I was immediately hooked. Its world was so well researched
and the characters, they were alive. At that time I was going through
a 3D animation program at a local university. But I decided
I wanted to learn how to draw to switch to 2D animation. And Lackadaisy
was the first time I could actually appreciate the draftsmanship
behind that drawing. They were not just cartoons. I was very painfully aware
that someone somewhere sat down to draw this gorgeous panels
and I was terrified but extremely motivated. When people talk about
Lackadaisy, they usually talk about
the sepia tones from the early pages, but I can't put in words
what the comic evolves into. It's something I wish
you can experience for yourself and you can for free
in Lackadaisy.com. But a funny thing
kept happening to me when I read a new page and
thought about it the next day. The memory was an animation
in my mind and I thought, Wouldn't it be the coolest thing
to see this all animated? That would have to wait until 2020, when Tracy launched
a Kickstarter alongside Iron Circus Comics for what
initially was an art book, plus an animated short
for $85,000. And you know how people say it's
impossible to time the market? Well, Lackadaisy did just
that and launched its Kickstarte on the very day the market
plummeted to a rock bottom. But the Lackadaisy
fandom stood strong. You guys hit your Kickstarter
goal. On the first day,
how many hours was it? Six hours. Jesus. It has worked out so far. It goes to show
how badly people want their animated cat people. The Kickstarter
went up to gather $330,000, which skyrocketed the project
to a fully fledged animated pilot. Of course, I backed it myself
and wished it good luck. And this is where we need
to introduce another character to this story. The director for this project
and who actually managed to bring the idea
of a Lackadaisy animation to its full potential. Fable
Siegel is a force of nature. They are hands down
the most talented artist I've ever had the pleasure
of working with. When you're talking to them,
it just energizes you and makes you want to give your very
best at what you're doing. Also, you can tell you're
in a voice call with Fable because suddenly everything has chicken noises
in the background. Flash forward to a few months
later and I saw a post by Fable and it was an open call
for animators. For Lackadaisy? For a lot of people
it may be a foot in the door or a stepping stone
on the way to their career. You know, we're reaching out to people who have experience,
but also people who are maybe who haven't
had a studio job before and who just have a nice looking
portfolio and reel and stuff. That was me. The only thing that I had
was my graduation film, which I had finished
literally weeks before the hiring call,
but it was Lackadaisy and I wouldn't
miss it for the world. So I put my best scenes
into a reel and applied as a clean up artist and on June
7th of 2020, I got the email. You have gotten the job, and as an animator
nonetheless. I don't have words to describe
how excited and happy I felt, but then the panic set in,
Oh my God, I got the job. It is not an exaggeration
when I say that Lackadaisy changed
my life’s course, and by the end of the video
you will understand why. But here's what
this video is not going to be. I won't tell you
how working in Lackadaisy opened the doors of the industry
for me, even though it did. Because I know
you don't care about this. I want to open a window to what
working in Lackadaisy was like. Obviously
this is my subjective opinion, but I'm doing this in the hopes
that more animation productions can take note
and utilize these same elements. I truly believe there's value
for every animation production
and every animation fan. But first we need to talk about
Crowdfunding. Ever since animation
started appealing to the masses, someone whose only goal
is to maximize profit. They have different names
in every industry Hollywood executives, production
committees. They get to decide what
we as an audience get to watch. When the machine is working
correctly, they give a chance
to original ideas that try to be different. Some of them thrive,
while others not so much. But as profit goals
keep growing, the industry becomes
more risk averse. And we as an audience
have absolutely no say on this. We did put a pitch together and we got told
to make our own animation because that would be
the best way to get noticed. It was said
with a lot of love. It wasn’t, well,
go and do your own. People like the artwork
and everything, but it's just, you know, they're like, unless there's like
certain names attached to it, it's really hard for us
to, like, take a chance on something
that doesn't already fit a certain formula. Yeah, if you're not children's entertainment or young adults
and if you're not. New York Times bestseller
lists thing or you know if you're not that prominent or you don't know
the right people, you aren't a celebrity's child or something,
then you really have no inroads unless you go out
on the internet and make a bunch of noise
and then get that attention. It is thanks to brave
individuals like Tracy, Fable, Iron Spike
and the entire production team who decided to take
on a lot of risk, not only financially, but
literally giving entire years of their lives so that projects
like this get to exist. And let me make this very clear. Big production companies
and studios are not the enemy. I am convinced that
if a project like Lackadaisy wants to continue on this road,
they do need to get picked up by a production house similar
to what Hazbin Hotel did. There is benefits on the production and investment
power that this giants have, but the industry has become severly risk adverse and
we need to force them to listen. This video will go out
at the same time the pilot goes live. So I do not know yet
how it's going to go. But I do know, because I watched
the pilot one week before. And as you probably know right now, studios should really pay
attention to the indie animation scene
and the power of crowdfunding. Here's what's magical. Everything you're seeing exists
because of you, the audience, a big group of people, each
giving a small amount of money to create
tremendous impact in the world. Now we truly have the opportunity to help these new ideas flourish,
and we need to keep pushing. If by some reason
you're watching this video and you haven't
watched the animated pilot, please go watch it. The link is in the description. This is your chance
to tell the studios we are tired of them
preying on nostalgia and being afraid of new ideas
on the screen. But especially we are freaking
tired of animation being treated
as children's content. Vote with your view, but please
keep watching this video. Watch it after this one. Now let's get into what
working in Lackadaisy was really like
and what was so unique about it. There is no escaping it. The pandemic, which meant everything
had to be done online from the very beginning. And they managed to do this
by creating a Discord server. And while this is not the first online production
to do this, it is the only time
I've seen a structure like this. You could see everyone's work,
and I truly mean everyone's work. I could see what the background
artists were painting when the storyboard team
was working on changes. And here's where I get
to make you a little jealous. We even got to sit in
on the voice acting recording sessions
if we promised to be quiet. I cannot put in words what
a learning experience this was. We all had to sign an NDA,
which meant nobody was about to leak anything to the public. Hence why I’m blurring
this part of the video. But even in that regard,
we were allowed to stream and post progress
on our social media. That's right. As long as you asked
for permission. And it wasn't a crucial scene
for the plot, you could post your animations. Personally, I only posted a test I animated
when we were starting, but the entire crew was so
supportive that even Tracy, Fabl and Michael Kovach himself,
the voice actor for Rocky, were sharing it with their fans. This is actually so smart,
and I think most productions should do this
as they will benefit from this. I know in some cases,
like Marvel Studios, they would never be able
to do this because obviously they have
to be secretive about it. But for indie animation
productions, you are both helping
the production get more traction and helping the artists
grow and social media as well. You never know what a small push
can allow your team members to do. Going back to the perks of having total access
to the work of your animation peers is the environment
it created. In online productions,
you would interact with production assistants, your animation supervisor,
and that's that. But in a discord server,
you get to see not only what they are doing,
but their process and the notes they get. And a funny thing
started to happen. It makes you competitive
in a good way because after seeing so many beautiful animations
by everyone else and the fact that we all love
the original source material, you just have to make your shot
the very best. And that's why this pilot looks and moves
and sounds how it does. We got to challenge each other
as artists, but also learn from each other, which takes me to my next point. Everyone noticed that there was so much value
going on in these channels that the team came up with an
idea. Doing a process swap, which is getting together for a couple of hours
once per week and just sharing your process
with the entire crew. Guys, this sessions
blew my mind. Before this animation was like
these bunch of different pieces floating all around, and it was the very first time
that I saw everything else, like cohesive building blo
that you can use to bring
characters to life I'm not going to geek out too much about, like,
what animation is. But this sessions
made me go back and start doing studies again
and realize that there were just things in animation
that are possible that I didn't even know
where possible. It was also an ambient that invited to be
creative with your shot. Here's a funny story
with one of my shots. I decided to add an extra gag
for Freckle at the end where he just basically- he was just
pooped carrying the coffin. And when I posted it for review,
Fable was actually streaming at that time
and this is their reaction, this thing that got
added into the animation Freckle is just collapse at the This is great. Oh my God. Okay, this is great. I'm going to say that
this is approved now. As someone who works a lot
in outsourcing. Deviating from the storyboard
would have been a retake. But here
we got to make our shots our own and make them shine. We were also defining how some
things would look as we went. I helped figure out how Zib’s
cigarette smoke would look and the crew
got on board with that. And in all honesty,
it was all luck. I've never in my life animated smoke before,
but that's the fun of it. Every new scene
that an animator posted for review felt refreshing
for the entire team. We also had a lot of fun events. We played games,
we played Gartic Phone, we had guest talks. But over the course
of a long production, there's going to be a lot of feelings
coming through. There was a point where
I was feeling a bit overwhelmed since I felt I wasn't good
enough to be part of the team. And Fable told me one of
the most important messages I think I've ever gotten
from a director. You got the job. That same phrase
that started this journey. For me, what they meant is if you got the job,
it wasn't by chance. Trust yourself that you can
do the thing and just go do it. Imposter
syndrome crawls upon you quite often in an art career. So this phrase has been an incredible reminder
for me to both stay humble. But remember that
if I got the job, it means I can do the thing.
And do the thing we all did. After exactly three years
and five days from the date the Kickstarter launched,
it was finished. I can only imagine how taxing
this must have been for Tracy and Fable. They were literally On at all
times. I don't want this to sound like
this was a two person project. I know they would both want me
to also say this The crew was over
170 people strong, and every single
one of them had a crucial role in making what
the Lackadaisy pilot is today. There's a link
in the description to all the crew's names
and links to their profiles. Every single one of them
is incredibly talented. What I'm trying to
highlight here is it really takes
a metric ton of determination to see a gargantuan
task like this one. All the way through. We even had an emote named GoToBedFable,
because they never did. This part of the story
is being written as you watch this and it's up to you
what happens now. I want to make this video
as a love letter to not only Lackadaisy, but crowdfunded animation
projects. You, as the audience,
have the power to breathe life into so many projects and
stories that are worth telling. And it doesn't take much. Whatever
you can give to support them. And if you really can't afford
it, then just your time watching and enjoying this productions
is already more than enough. Lackadaisy showed me there is a world where if you
have a story worth telling, you don't need to wait
for someone else's approval. And that has been my goal
ever since. That is the reason why I started
this YouTube channel. I wanted to give creators
the tools to tell their own stories
to the world and hopefully inspire them
by also telling mine. I know I'm not alone on this. I want to also shout out other projects that you should
definitely check out. Zeddy Zi’s Ramshackle and Ashley
Nichols’ FarFetched. They were both members
of the LackaCrew, but they've both started
on a journey for projects of their own
that we get to support. So there's links in the
description. To the entire crew. Thank you for taking me
under your wing and for all the friends
I made along the way. Words can't begin to describe
how proud I am of what we did. And how honored I feel to have
been part of this production. This pilot stands on its own ground
in the history of 2D animation, and I'm sure a lot of young
animators will look back at it as “Yeah, I got into animation
because of the Lackadaisy pilot.” Thank you all for inspiring
others to pursue what we love and congratulations. Abyssinia! I’ll look at that again
cause I just enjoyed it so much. When you play it and like it makes you smile,
something's working. Just the way he collpases
on it Those shoes are really
satisfying.
