Yes, that’s right. What began as a concept for a small project on my own time — hand-animating individual comics into short 10-15 second clips — has just been bumped up into something much, much bigger.

As of today, I can officially announce that I have contracted a deal with Spark-Flow Animation Studios (SparkFlowStudios.com) to produce a full 10-12 minute pilot episode of Peter & Company as an animated series. This is going to be a VERY big project and will ultimately be produced in order to pitch the series to Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and any number of other networks who would be interested.

The project is a few months off from being officially set into production, but this gives the studio and I plenty of time to plan ahead with script ideas, casting for professional voice actors (yep — more on this in a bit), and work out the specifics on the budget. The estimated cost for the project at this point is roughly $15,000, and since I don’t have the money to fund it entirely out of pocket, we will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to bring in the funds.

To those who are unfamiliar with Kickstarter: it is an online service for the organization and collection of donation funds from folks who are interested in a particular project. Bonus rewards are promised for people who donate over a certain amount, and the ones we plan to offer are going to be a lot of fun. The campaign itself will not be launched until this coming Spring (we’re planning for either February or March 2012), so if you would like to contribute with a donation, you have plenty of time to save up for it. More details on this aspect of the project will be posted as the time draws near.

What this means for the original P&C Animation Project: Well, it’s pretty much scrapped. I’ll be creating an original script for the pilot episode, so the concept of translating individual comics into animated shorts is pretty much gone. Also, since we’ll now be offering paid positions for the voice actors with full auditions, I won’t be able to use the volunteer voices who have been recruited so far. I deeply apologize to you guys who were hoping to contribute, but all I can say is that if you can make it to the east coast in order to officially audition, you can still make it into the pilot — and now you’ll be paid!

So yes! I will be creating a gallery on this site for the Pilot project with sketches, storyboards, and test animations from the studio as time progresses. However, keep in mind that ultimately the production of the episode cannot commence until funding has been completed, and once the Kickstarter campaign begins we’ll have 60 days to meet our goal.

So if you want to see this Pilot finished and posted to view online, spread the word! As of this writing, we have about four months before the donations can be accepted, so if we can get enough people excited about it and plan ahead for it, we’ll hopefully have no problems meeting the deadline!

I honestly could not be more excited. This is seriously a dream come true to be working with this studio and having the chance to see Peter & Company come to life. I sincerely hope you all have as much of a desire to see it happen as I do. I will be putting my own funds into it as much as I can, but I cannot afford to do it alone. We’ll need all the help we can get.

Thank you, everyone, for reading and supporting the comic so far. Let’s see where we can make it go from here!!