Sam Sweetmilk Seeks Sterling
Sam Sweetmilk is the ambitious dream of Jason Lee Weight a London based writer and director who, along with a crowd of volunteers and friends is attempting to gather funding for his pet project by going through the crowd funding route. After a previous Kickstarter campaign the series is now seeking the help of IndieGoGo donors to fund a second episode of his sci fi series starring Pirates of the Caribbean star Kevin McNally as Ghostworth, robotic assistant of the amnesic Sam Sweetmilk as they voyage across the stars on their adventures. With a twist of Hitchhikers Guide and a flavour of Red Dwarf to the writing, the show faces both the challenge of fundraising and finding the right audience to savour captain Sam Sweetmilks own brand of intergalactic idiocy. However such challenges don’t seem to hamper the team working on this project and the passion, humour and dedication to their idea is translated in the marketing for the campaign.
Successful crowd funding demonstrates a waiting and willing audience for whatever project is funded so we were happy to hear from Jason Lee Weight about his experiences in creating both the show and finding the right crowd funding campaign – an art in itself.
Tell us about Sam Sweetmilk and the crew behind it.
Sam Sweetmilk is the least sci-fi -sounding name I could think of for a sci-fi comedy series. It follows an egotistical space captain as he wanders the universe fighting evil doers, good doers, and himself. We released a 25-minute animatic/animated hybrid episode in October, after a year of hard work by dozens of talented artists, and now we’re raising money on Indiegogo for a sequel episode. As for our crew, we’ve been staffed almost entirely by volunteers, all trying to make a name for ourselves.
Could you tell us about the design and look of the characters?
We’ve taken visual inspiration from all over the place. I mean, we’re really into Venture Bros, which you can see in the ropey limbs, but Toby Nicholas Clayton’s character design comes from a wide range of sci-fi influences. For example, Sam’s jumpsuit takes cues from Spike Spiegel’s spacesuit in Cowboy Bebop, but with a design across it like a Tom Baker scarf. Ghostworth started as a series of mismatched bits a’la Short Circuit but he ended up as a rather svelte Marvin the Paranoid Android.
There seems to be a definite feel of Hitchikers with a British comic edge to the writing and concept, did you have any other influences?
I grew up on Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Red Dwarf and The Young Ones, and they definitely shaped my sense of humour, but for more relevant modern influences, Classic Ghostworth was very influenced by Archer’s caustic Blackadder-ish wit, just about everything on Adult Swim, and Adventure Time’s joy of exploration. But overall, you’ve hit it on the head. Douglas Adams all the way.
Artwork: Toby N Clayton
Could you tell us about the characters and the kind of adventures they run into?
An animated series about a reckless, narcissistic space explorer – Sam Sweetmilk – the absurd, abusive relationship he has with his robot assistant, Ghostworth, and a neglected but enthusiastic young alien heiress named Vela. They’re the core characters. The first series concerns them receiving a contract to capture or kill a 7ft tall genocidal religious zealot, The Avianaut, and follows Sam’s undeserved rising significance in the universe, leading to an eventual showdown with God. Or a god, at least. It’s exciting to plan the series out. There’s a lot of character progression. Our first episode paints Sam in a very negative light, and our sequel episode shows you why he’s like that.
You attracted Kevin McNally to the project, how did that relationship come about, was he always in mind to play Ghostworth?
He was! And luckily I had an inroad—a friend of mine knew his daughter. He read the script and he said he wasn’t sure who the cartoon was for, and I took that to mean ‘I don’t get why you’re making this’, so I wrote out this panicky mission statement, including a long characterisation of the animation industry as this backwards, dogmatic thing that only funded kids TV. He said he was impressed by my passion and my “erudite” email, said he agreed that animation is for all ages, and that it would be wrong of him to do anything but voice Ghostworth. So essentially I got him on board with a whiny letter written in defeat.
Besides obvious successes such as Red Dwarf both british sci-fi sitcoms and british animated sitcoms don’t seem to have much success on TV often picking up a cult status if anything, is this causing any problems finding any traction with television networks or other media platforms?
Funding and audience are the issues in the UK — animation is ridiculously expensive, even with the new tax breaks, and there’s just not a large-enough audience for it here. So networks don’t want to fund it. People will watch US animated sitcoms, but even then it’s The Simpsons or Family Guy. I know Family Guy fans who won’t watch American Dad because it’s too little like what they’re used to. It’s insane. And the UK hasn’t made any decent comedy since Black Books and the Mighty Boosh, so all in all there’s no television animation industry, no talent, and no audience. There’s a hard core of people who will watch animation on TV here, but today I had a conversation with a colleague who refused to watch Archer until she was forced to by her boyfriend, and then she loved it. There’s a real strong conviction among the general TV-watching audience that animation is for kids. I get the feeling the UK doesn’t want its own animated series, which is why we’re looking for an international audience.
You attempted a kickstarter and are now running an IndieGoGo campaign, what have you learnt from both experiences and do you have any tips for would be campaigners?
It’s hard to pick out positives and negatives, as we failed our funding but raised $33,000 in that round of funding despite only having 50,000 views, so we were a very successful failure. There’s no better publicity than having quality work on offer, so any would-be crowdfunder should focus on that initially. For after that, though, I do have some advice. We had help from other Kickstarter campaigns like Bee and Puppycat, and I think approaching similar campaigns and trading exposure (promoting their work to your fans in exchange for the same from them) is a great idea, because it’s direct to the sort of people who fund animation. Also Reddit is fantastic for gaining fans, as there’s a big audience for the sort of thing we make there, so long as you know how to phrase your title and when/where on there to post. They’re big Archer fans, and we get compared (undeservingly) to that show so that helped us reach their front page late last year.
Why have you decided to create a series now, most animation teams tend to build up a portfolio of commercial work before attacking such a daunting task!
We had a year at a place free of rent thanks to my friend Ed Saperia, the creative director of Original Content London, and so we had a short window to get this thing out as perfect as we could. The animatic was done off-site by our lead artist and character designer Toby Clayton, who has talent squeeging out of his ears like Play Doh, but for the animation we were very conscious of time-constraints. I petitioned Reddit a lot and we made production videos for Youtube so we had a fanbase of 4000 or so before we released, and our first round of funding made $33,000 out of 50,000 views, so we didn’t do too badly out of the lack of portfolio!
What are the plans for the future of Sam Sweetmilk and the company behind it?
More episodes! The series is planned well into season 2, and the learning curve is so steep with producing animation that we can’t wait to get stuck in and make better episodes. Here’s to hoping the Indiegogo succeeds!