I have been working full-time on this and freelancing for the past year–Resigning my day job at the end of 2013. It has been scary, humbling, exhilarating, depressing, gratifying… all over the map emotionally.

While I was able to create the first short by myself, I also realized that it would have gone faster working with other artists, and it probably would have been even better…

I realized that I have a lot to learn when it comes to distribution, or pitching, or fund raising–or just getting people to watch it for FREE on YouTube! Yet I look at my poster of TAR on the wall, and I know that I can’t give up…I’ve wrestled with the idea of trying to do it as a graphic novel, or something easier for a solo artist to pull off, but I think that is just that familiar fear of failing….

True, I’ve proven that I can create an animation! It isn’t as polished as it could be, and I had to cut some corners, but, I did it. I have been in a kind of creative drift since uploading “Marked for Death“… I guess that I just thought that if I finished it, that people would see it and then somehow I would be successful/validated/loved? I dont know..It’s kind of crazy. The after-birthing of a huge project seems to take as long as the delivery!

Now I’m ready to continue, to take it up a notch, to bring my (our) dreams to life. I want to create an Open Studio where other aspiring artists an animators can join this project.

I believe that an open project like TAR of Zandoria is the hope and future for the Animation:Master community of artists and animators. It isn’t about just software.. an Open Studio creates the ecosystem for the artists to collaborate, for newbies to aspire to learn, for mentors to coach, for the software to gain subscriptions, There is something in it for YOU, whether you are a modeler, rigger, animator, programmer, or fan!

Since I have no funding up front, I have to figure out how to divide royalties among what are essentially co-creators of the final product. Whether YouTube royalties or DVD sales every participant has a stake in what we will create.