This is the pilot episode for my adult animated show "Stepaside".
Set in England, the story follows Aiden Arterberry, a 12-year-old boy with the cynical and emotional disposition of a middle-aged office worker. When Aiden's father is made redundant, he and his family are forced to relocate from their home in Highgate, North London, to the roughest and most impoverished town in the country: Stepaside.
For anyone who watched the original "Meat" short, I apologize that this took so long. Since July 2019 this project has come a long way and undergone a lot of development. This was actually completed in June 2020 but we held off on making it public on any platforms while we submitted it to animation/film festivals, agencies, production companies, ect., but this is in desperate need of exposure. I'd rather people see it.
Obviously I'm not an industry professional, and there's a lot of ways this could be improved, but I'm standing by this as the final product for my pilot episode. I animated and edited this entirely by myself and I can't do the same for episode 2, because I was basically a recluse for nine months. Should this project go further (which I want more than anything) I want to stick to the writing and voice acting side of production.
The show is mainly a fish-out-of-water story, and a clash of classes, as the middle-class Arterberry family struggle to adapt to living in a far more economically depressed and poverty-stricken area than what they’ve been accustomed to, and exploring all the social, cultural and economical divides such a town struggles with. I envision Stepaside as being an accurate, albeit cynically heightened and exaggerated for comedic effect, portrayal of a rough, working-class northern English town that peaked during the industrial revolution, and has endured a steady decline in the decades since. The goal is to create a culturally/socially relevant show, which would satire and critique contemporary issues effecting poor northern working-class areas, as well as Britain as a whole.
We're currently seeking representation so that we can officially get this project off the ground, give it a platform, and hopefully amass an audience. Aside from the pilot, we have a Series Bible, a treatment, scripts for additional episodes, concept art, promotional imagery, all that jazz. The episode was finished in June 2020, and we have since been emailing talent agencies non-stop (mainly in the UK, and mainly ones which specialize in representing writers and animators) in the hopes of finding representation. So far we've had little to no success. We're also considering alternatives such as Kickstarter, Patreon, ect. As our avenues appear to be becoming bleaker we'll likely release the project online on several platforms in the hopes of gaining attention and popularity that way.
I welcome all feedback, even though it's too late to change anything in the pilot now. I will definitely take it onboard for the future of the series though. And if anyone has any advice, suggestions, recommendations, or perhaps even contacts, for where to go next and how to get this project seen and potentially funded, please let me know. Especially if you know any agencies or distribution platforms which accept unsolicited submissions. Thank you.
nograssproductions@gmail.com