Knocking Out A Lotta Animation (Story #9 June 2025 Update)

Hi Patrons!

It's been a busy few weeks at Gilded Animation, LLC, please let me tell you more about it in this update post. We have a new merch shop in progress, a nearly finished Dummy/Arzon skit, and a progress update on Story #9.

Finishing Up the Dummy & Arzon Skit

So firstly, I'd like to share that we've 100% animated and cleaned up the 2-minute long Dummy & Arzon skit that will be releasing next month! I gotta say it was an extremely quick turnaround for the time we worked on it. We get a nice little look into Dummy's travelling act, and also get to see what Arzon's been up to since Story 7.

Although it's not at the usual fluidity of the main story line, I'm quite happy with how it turned out. It gives me hope that we could potentially fund more mini-episodes in between stories without sacrificing too much quality. It'll depend on audience enjoyment though!

The skit is currently being scored by the wife (Rebonkubekah). She had to dust off her old MacBook since it's the only machine that has GarageBand on it. All that will be left is SFX and some editing.

Story 9 Progress

Although our attention was split between the aforementioned skit and Story #9, a healthy amount of scenes have been animated for the new story. We are still wrapping up the cleanup & ink for Chapter 2 (of 4), which we are aiming to finish by next month. Chapter 3 (Night) is one of the longer segments of Story #9, but thanks to batching, I'm almost done with all the rough animation for the character of Gildedguy!

It's kind of "meta" whenever I draw my character, drawing himself at the desk. In Chapter 3, we'll be seeing Gildedguy grapple with some creative constipation of sorts (art block). It's a difficult feeling, one that must be pushed through in any way possible if you want to get projects done. I experienced this the most at the end of our previous animation, Violet vs Dummy. Many artists suggest taking a break, walking away from your work for awhile.

But what do you do when you get back?

When you have no excuse, and you are facing a blank canvas?

This is what Gildedguy will go through in The Stellapent & the Eraser, since he's coming fresh off the achievement of dragon slaying & castle building.

I will say it's a pleasure to be able to express these feelings through this animation, since it's something I (and I presume, many other artists) experience frequently.

I'm breezing through the Gildedguy scenes since drawing him comes naturally to me. Once I'm done with GG, we'll just have Violet and a certain evil robot left to animate.

New Storefront in the Works

While all this has been going on, I've been researching and building a new online storefront to sell merchandise from! Our current operation on Etsy works, but it also doesn't work. You see, I employ my brother to help me fulfill the dozens of orders we get every month or so. His basement is filled with hundreds of keychains, coasters, signed posters, and other wares that I've dumped on his property.

This setup works smoothly for most orders - but it gets dicey when we have to fulfill orders outside of the US. We've spent many, many hours deciphering addresses, communicating with buyers (via Google translate), and tracking packages that have failed to reach their international destinations. It stings double since I eat the cost of failed postal shipments and refunds. Although it's a tiny fraction of affected orders, it takes an exorbitant amount of time (and money) to resolve.

It also takes extra effort to design new products, since I have to think about the box sizes and packaging requirements to get a (mug or t-shirt) to you safely. There's a limit to the logistics my brother and I can pull off from home.

So to rectify this, I'm going to be transitioning away from at-home product fulfillment, to an online vendor who can handle shipping merch on my behalf. With this will come a wider selection of merch (mugs, t-shirts) as well as the old merch like posters & coasters. I'll still try my best to fulfill some US orders by hand, and offer handcrafted specials from time to time.

These changes will definitely streamline things and help me focus on animation (and designing new products), which I excel at way better than sending, for example, a 9x11, 6.2oz, irregularly shaped package, containing plastics with harmonization codes 3924.90.5500, 4911.91.0020, VAT applied shipment, to a town in Madrid, SPAIN.

I greatly appreciate our international audience, and I just hate seeing items they ordered get lost in transit.

That's all I have to report for now, thank you all again for your support. See you on stream!