I started writing a response to an encouraging comment Tom left on my last post, and it sort of turned into an essay, so I decided just to make a new post.

Tom brought up another option I've been mulling over, which is to start a Kickstarter.com campaign and raise money to produce Lobster Quest myself:

Tom Fulp:
"I would think with a solid proof of concept, you could raise some decent money on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is getting more and more saturated with people doing the same thing, but you have serious talent that bursts out of everything you make. Your pitch would stand out above most."

(:O That's too kind, thanks Tom.) So like I said, I'm considering the Kickstarter thing too. I suppose my reason for wanting to shop it around to studios is that they would already have the resources to produce it. However, my worry is that it would fall out of my hands and get mangled up in the process. It would have to be a studio I could trust.

If I were to do it myself, I'd want to put together a production team. I'm basically an unknown with zero experience in the games industry, so it might take a lot to get the right talent on board.

What I would need (read: want) are a few artists who could adapt to the art specifications - probably one or two for background art, a few for in-game animation, and possibly a whole other team for cutscene animation, if I were to go that route. Then it wouldn't hurt to have a writer or two to help fill out the story and write dialogue. And of course, I'd need game developers. I look at programmers as the drummers of game development, you can't have a band without a drummer. Unfortunately, I wouldn't know where to begin managing that aspect of the production. About all I could offer there is saying "I want it to do this" and hope they could make it work. Not to mention, if it were to be produced for a few different platforms, (iPad, iPhone, XBLA, PSN, whatever else) I imagine I'd need some pretty versatile coders, or just more of them.

On top of all that, if I were to include fully animated cutscenes on the scale I envisioned - and that's a big if - I would want to hire voice actors and be able to record and mix their dialogue clearly. Oh, and let's not forget music and sound design.

A lot of these things I can do myself, but I can't do them all. So a kickstarter campaign would have to raise enough money to hire all these people, fund marketing costs, and have enough left over to pay for contingencies and whatever other little expenses would inevitably pop up. And I almost forgot, I would either need to keep a part time job during production, or include some small penance in the budget for paying my rent and food costs. Part of my plan going forward is to form the pitch in a way that's cost scalable. I'll set the bar as high as I want it, with everything I want the game to be, then include options for scaling it back in certain areas to keep the cost of production down. So, for instance, I could drop the animated cutscenes and have the story take place entirely in-game, if we needed to be more cost prohibitive. Another example, cutting out development for other platforms and only focusing on iOS. The idea is to dream big, then hack away what isn't needed.

All that said, the considerable advantages to going this route would be having total creative control. It would be a daunting amount of responsibility, but well worth it considering just how particular I've grown to be about this vision. (That isn't to say I'm not flexible, some fresh perspective on this thing is always valuable.)

The great thing about Newgrounds is that I could probably find most of the people needed right here on the site. When I was developing the art style for the backgrounds, I eventually settled on something that I knew the right artists could replicate by following a kind of formula. I actually had Stamper and Jeff in mind when I went with this. I think it's reminiscent of some of the work they've done for NG. (Image attached)

(Sidenote: I have since considered retooling these backgrounds yet again as cel shaded 3D backgrounds, with the characters and interface remaining hand drawn animation. The advantage to this would be the obvious sense of depth it would lend to the environment, as well as being able to use them as sets for cutscenes without having to redraw them in different angles. Unfortunately, my grasp of 3D modeling is pretty minimal.)

The first step to picking all this back up again - rather than animating more sprites right away, as much fun as that is - is to carefully plan out everything I want the pitch to include, then schedule my time accordingly. That's where I'm at now: planning. I'm being pretty open about this whole process, so as always, feedback is welcome.

Hope everybody's havin' a good day out there!