Spook Squad—a TV Pitch animated in Moho Pro
Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 3:00 pm
As a recent convert to Moho Pro, or Anime Studio Pro as it was when I first picked it up, I thought I would share my story of how I got involved with this fabulous software.
A couple of years ago, my writing buddy Roger Hurn and myself thought that we would try and get an idea we had worked on out beyond the very niche audience we had established for a series of books we had devised for reluctant readers.
Roger and I had always though that the Spook Squad books centred around a group of four girls who are constantly battling evil forces from a parallel universe would make a great animated series.
I devised a storyboard and we made a short animatic, which we presented to a leading UK animation studio. They really liked i, but said that to produce a polished animation would require about £20K. We just didn't have that kind of money and so, instead with the very few shekels and groats at our disposal, we booked a stand at a major brand licensing show and, with great timing, an irresistible offer from Smith Micro arrived on my email in-tray.
With three months to go to the big show and other projects on my desk, I set to with the aid of some amazing YouTube tutorials from folk such as Troy Picou, ShoNuff93 and (of course) McCoy Buck, to name but a few.
Came the big day, and I had the animation completed, we went with just banners for our stand and the animation running on a couple of laptops and we were inundated with enquiries and the amount of enthusiasm that was generated was just incredible and very validating—we even had the head of the studio that had said it would cost about £20K to animate asking who had done the animation—saying that the budget for what we ended up with would have been closer to £40K.
We are now actively promoting the idea and we have some seasoned supporters on our case, as well as being featured in a recent issue of Variety magazine (we were on of 5 IPs selected by the Cannes MipJnr jury this year)—we still haven't landed the all important anchor broadcaster yet, but we have had a couple of close calls.
Here's a link to our 48 second 'elevator pitch' teaser, complete with song by Michael Plowman who very generously has got on board with us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVVbzDqLWS4
and here is a longer teaser with a snippet of an episode titled, 'The Vampire Bites Back'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhlt1RazVhM
and here is a link to our seriously scary Spook Squad website:
https://www.spook-squad-productions.com/
A couple of years ago, my writing buddy Roger Hurn and myself thought that we would try and get an idea we had worked on out beyond the very niche audience we had established for a series of books we had devised for reluctant readers.
Roger and I had always though that the Spook Squad books centred around a group of four girls who are constantly battling evil forces from a parallel universe would make a great animated series.
I devised a storyboard and we made a short animatic, which we presented to a leading UK animation studio. They really liked i, but said that to produce a polished animation would require about £20K. We just didn't have that kind of money and so, instead with the very few shekels and groats at our disposal, we booked a stand at a major brand licensing show and, with great timing, an irresistible offer from Smith Micro arrived on my email in-tray.
With three months to go to the big show and other projects on my desk, I set to with the aid of some amazing YouTube tutorials from folk such as Troy Picou, ShoNuff93 and (of course) McCoy Buck, to name but a few.
Came the big day, and I had the animation completed, we went with just banners for our stand and the animation running on a couple of laptops and we were inundated with enquiries and the amount of enthusiasm that was generated was just incredible and very validating—we even had the head of the studio that had said it would cost about £20K to animate asking who had done the animation—saying that the budget for what we ended up with would have been closer to £40K.
We are now actively promoting the idea and we have some seasoned supporters on our case, as well as being featured in a recent issue of Variety magazine (we were on of 5 IPs selected by the Cannes MipJnr jury this year)—we still haven't landed the all important anchor broadcaster yet, but we have had a couple of close calls.
Here's a link to our 48 second 'elevator pitch' teaser, complete with song by Michael Plowman who very generously has got on board with us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVVbzDqLWS4
and here is a longer teaser with a snippet of an episode titled, 'The Vampire Bites Back'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhlt1RazVhM
and here is a link to our seriously scary Spook Squad website:
https://www.spook-squad-productions.com/