Gender is war in Kickstarter animated series "Urbance"

[Darklord Rooke]

EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE - 

 

Steambot Studios has begun its Kickstarter campaign for a transmedia project called Urbance. The studio plans to make the TV series, video games, artbook posters, comics, and original outfits of characters; the Kickstarter campaign, if successful, will enable the production of an animated pilot for the TV show.

 

Urbance is intended for mature audiences due to its subject matter. In a crumbling city, sex has been prohibited because of the danger of a genetic virus. Men and women grow up separated from each other and form gangs. The youth subculture gathers in an underground nightclub called URBANCE to dance and drink. One man and woman become close to one another despite the gender wars.

 

Steambot Studios, which is a collective of artists who have collaborated on TRON Legacy, Godzilla, X-MEN: Days of Future Past, Thief, and Batman games from Warner Brothers, hopes to raise a minimum of $189,000 for the completion of the pilot episode. At that amount, the team will make a six-minute pilot. At $299,000, it will produce part one of the first episode (at 13 minutes in length), and at $499,000 it will produce the full first episode at 26 minutes.

 

Urbance will show a variety of characters' sexualities, and much of the cast is people of color.

 

Should the Kickstarter campaign be successful, Steambot will bring on Hiroshi Shimizu to work on Urbance. Shimizu, an animation director and character designer, has worked on Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Michiko & Hatchin, and Space Dandy.

 

"The character designs and the colors of Urbance are incredible," Shimizu said. "There is a charm that I don't have in my designs and I would love to develop."

 

The Kickstarter campaign launched yesterday is nearing $35,000 as of publication. In 43 days on November 6, the campaign will come to a close.

 

 

Article page - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/137599-Urbance-Crowdfunding-on-Kickstarter-from-Steambot

Kickstarter page - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2088672139/urbance

[babiker]

The animation itself is jaw-dropping

[solidbatman]

That is a lot of money for one full episode. Not really interested at all if there is no promise that a full series wont be made. 

[Down]

That looks an alright amount of money for an episode with a good quality animation.

The trailer doesn't really demonstrate that, since it's mostly still cuts and simple movements, but well, 1m30 of animation is already expensive I guess.

 

 

The premise absolutely doesn't interest me. But Hiroshi Shimizu is a really cool key animator. Not sure if I'll have money to toss at them, but he's definitely a selling point.

[arakura]

Isn't that roughly the money given to each Young Animator Training Project OVA?

[domeniko]

Hi! I am part of the creative team behind URBANCE and I just wanted to clarify a few things mistakenly pointed out in this thread:

 

1 - Urbance has partners and there is broadcasters interest in the serie but they want to influence the story and make it more conventional. We refused those deals. The Kickstarter aims at producing the show we want independently. With this pilot, we will be able to impose our style to broadcasters.

 

2 - We haven't got the money to produce a pilot so far. The Kickstarter money is precisely for that purpose. By "increasing the quality" we meant produce real animation, better than what you can see in the trailer. The animation of the trailer is something we did ourselves. With Hiroshi Shimizu on board, we will be able to go way beyond that standard as you can imagine...

 

3 - We can guarantee that if we reach our goal to produce the episode we have in mind, Broadcasters and producers will follow for the full serie. Those deals are already on the table. They want to be sure that there is a potential audience and KS will allow us to demonstrate that as well.