The Promise of Rad Sechrist’s “Project City”

In November 2021, Rad Sechrist, creator of the well-regarded series, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, announced the creation of a platform known as Project City. Writer, comedian, and musician Ethan Becker, director and storyboarder Chase Conley, and character designer, storyboarder, and illustrator Coran Kizer Stone, joined on as co-creators of this platform.

Project City was formerly named the Rad How to School, when it was only an animation school. Sechrist recently described the platform as “like several small creator owned studios banding together” to tell stories they wanted. In this article, I’ll examine Project City and projects on the platform. I’ll also discuss the project’s impact on the animation industry and indie animation space.

The official website of Project City describes it as a “project based platform for learning how to create animation.” It proposes a way for artists to fund their own projects by “splitting up the Intellectual Property into Fractional shares” that anyone can buy. This will allow fans to “fund the projects that they want to see happen and artists get to create their vision.” Future profits go to the IP holder. They are then “divided amongst investors and creators, according to their ownership percentages,” in a process known as fractional intellectual property or F-IP for short.

The site says it is trying to seek stories from creators providing “diverse perspectives that explore controversial subject matter” that larger studios wouldn’t touch, while trying to “teach students the ins and outs of animation…[and] allowing them to invest in animated projects.”

The website’s FAQ says that Project City lets people “learn how to make animation” by working on their own projects and offering classes about the “different stages of the production process.” [1] The same FAQ states that there is a Discord, notes that people can access classes they paid for until their account is inactive, and answers specific questions about projects and teachers. All in all, this platform, which reportedly has a small staff, shows promise beyond anything in the usual studio system.

Project City’s section for animation classes has courses taught by top professionals in the animation industry. These classes focus on voice acting, animation programs, storyboarding, artwork fundamentals, pitching a series, and concept art. Others talk about character design, life drawing, film making, writing for animation, and fundamentals of animation storyboarding.

One of the more interesting sections is about investing in your favorite projects. There are four projects ready to be funded as soon as the F-IP process begins. All four have begun pre-production: Wonna the Wanderer, Robot Hunter: Rossum, Delinquents, and The Brave War.

The first of these series is by Coran Kizer Stone. Its story is simple: a young girl named Wonna wanders into a forest, meeting an old man who sends her on “the most dangerous missions to meet and destroy the most powerful beings” in this world. Currently, it has a script, storyboards, an animatic, and visual development.

The second series is by Chase Conley. In this series, artificial humans known as Primus Proxies have taken mankind prisoner. When a robot champion, Robot Hunter Rossum, appears to kill off the robot oppressors, the real champion, the real Rossum, watches, deciding whether it will aid or stop the impostor.

The third series is by Ethan Becker. It is about “kindness and having fun” with a series of short stories. It is set in the real world rather than a fantasy one. There are characters, such as Pat and Titi, who struggle over whether to kill people, Bo, who has a crush on Zoey, best friends Zoey and Su, and a boy named Max who misses his family.

The final series, The Brave War, is a unique one because Sechrist is one of the co-creators, with writer and director Andra Gunter and Daniel Rojas. This animated film focuses on a group of young graffiti artists “from Watts make a punk song that goes viral.” Before they fulfill their wishes, a “kaiju apocalypse happens, destroying the world and their plans.”

In keeping with Sechrist’s desire for more young adult animation, this is a young adult “2d animated movie with all original music,” featuring Nya Durango, a painter and clothing designer who is 16 years old, an avid drawer C.J., also known as Caleb James, who is 12, and wants to prove himself to Nya and her friends. There’s a crew leader known for his incomplete ideas, Knowledge Croswell, and his little sibling, Essence, who has a “quiet dry sense of humor.”

The series has already been promoted on the Kipo subreddit, where it is described as the “next project after Kipo.” [2] Andra and Rojas previously both worked on Kipo. Specifically, Andra wrote some songs for Kipo, while Rojas composed music for the series.

On the Kipo subreddit, Sechrist said that music for The Brave War will be composed by Rojas. He described it as separate from Kipo and stated that The Brave War may turn into a bigger series in the future. He argued that The Brave War, in terms of its content, is “somewhere between Guardians of the Galaxy, Walking Dead, and Attack on Titan. Sechrist noted that one of the film’s character, Essence, is non-binary. He further explained that in the film, creatures/monsters are affected by people’s energy, whether they are good or bad. He also argued that the film will have the highest quality animation possible. The show was promoted on other subreddits as well. Sechrist is also working with Gunter on Kin, an animated music series about a demon girl named Kin who falls in love with an angel, and after the angel’s death, goes on a “revenge mission to kill God.”

The platform also has a number of other projects in different stages of completion. This includes stories about miners (Amythias), anime battles (Sideman vs. Beta Squad), a girl who tries to survive in a dangerous, dark cave (Nina), a student who has to face off against a robotic food service who tries to put local food trucks “out of business” (Soul Food), two sisters with magical powers (Hanh and Minh), a young Chupacabra taking chances in an annual band battle (Monstar), and an inter-dimensional wrestling championship (Battle Dimension). There are others about houseless people (Hobos), a mythical shapeshifting monster (Lagahoo Girl), supernatural high school sophomores (Revamped), supernatural gangs (Spirit Fist), a teen girl who accidentally time travels (Time Trip), or a series taking place inside of a video game (Digital Hijinks).

There are various projects consisting of creators sharing fan art, fan comics, webzines, short films, graphic novels, or trying out their storyboarding and drawing. Some projects focus on topics such as masked wrestling (Los Torneos), a gangster trying to leave his brothers (Old Dog), superhuman spies (Titan Effect), a space fighter pilot and his team (Ganymede), and friends who beat up angels (The Pact).

Others share ideas for magic, mystery, thriller, horror, neo-noir, sci-fi fantasy, adventure, humor, action, sports, supernatural, detective, and slice-of-life animated series. [3] The same site hosts various webcomics, including a sci-fi comic with nudity titled For Those Who Wonder, an adventure story titled Boundless!, and a comedic, fantasy action titled Taverns and Tentacles. [4] While there is a lot there, I wish the site was better organized with more subcategories.

Before looking into Project City, I was only familiar with The Figments, The Garden Age, and Indigo. The head writer and project manager of The Figments, Jennifer Rust, who I have mentioned in past articles, is the creator of The Journey for Our Lives, Planet Magi, and Little Wolf, all on Project City. The Figments is created by Kip, creator of the webtoon Welcome To Sleepy Hollow. In an interesting aside, before it became an animated series, Kipo was a webcomic which ran for 32 issues on a website run by Sechrist. Some of the webcomics on Project City may follow the same path.

On January 7, Sechrist said they were going to do a “very small test run of FIP shares to fund just one shot of Brave War to start,” and asked if there are some cool anime-style animators and background artists he should know about. This led artists and animators to promote themselves in the comments.

On January 28, Ethan Becker posted a video on his channel entitled “I quit my NETFLIX job for this.” In the video, Becker said that they are trying to produce shows that major studios are too afraid to touch, explained what F-IP is, and described a few projects they are working on.

This includes a show by Titmouse Chris Prynoski, who produced shows like The Legend of Vox Machina, The Midnight Gospel, Metalocalypse, and Megas XLR. He described his series in development, Leafland, which has no plot, no characters, just feelings, and experience getting high.

Becker talked about his show, Delinquents, with all the “good” characters killed off. Instead it focuses on the bad kids who live in an abusive household. He said that he would be incorporating many of his personal experiences into the show. He hoped that the show would be something that a lot of kids could relate to.

Gunter, who is working on The Brave War with Sechrist and Rojas, talked about how the film deals with a sense of abandonment. Sechrist described the film as going “against the grain.” Gunter also argued that with animation there is more of a range to make things “real,” with the film placing Black characters in “stressful situations.” He later noted that the show’s title comes from his name in German.

Conley, the creator of Robot Hunter: Rossum, said that none of the projects he had worked on for the last ten years truly represented him. He described how certain aspects of Saturday morning cartoons resonated with him, keeping him going, and giving him inspiration.

Stone, creator of Wonna the Wanderer, described how his characters exist as “emotional beings” in a world. Instead of being heroes or villains, they would be characters who exist. Wonna, the series protagonist, has to battle entities from an artificially created universe, all while she doesn’t realize she is in a simulated world.

Sechrist, Becker, Gunter, and Conley shared the names of actors or actresses they’d like to work with, if they could, and continued to pass around a mic literally attached to a butcher’s knife. It will be interesting to see all four of them (Becker, Gunter, Sechrist, and Conley) come together and talk about their projects every week.

Project City has the potential to expand the indie animation space beyond the scattered, often crowdfunded series on YouTube, some of which are in development and a few which are currently airing like Ollie & Scoops and Helluva Boss. Whether the platform is pioneering or not, it allows for more independence for creators in the series, movies, music, or shows they create. It is also really cool, with its fun and slick design. More significantly, it provides people with a platform to fund and create their own projects outside of using crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, and Patreon, meaning that it could be a game changer of sorts. [5] It is, as aspiring screenwriter Wade McGrath described it, “a kickstarter for animation…that also functions as a platform for people to hire other creatives.”

From the chatter on Twitter and responses on YouTube, it seems to be a place that creatives, allowing any possible intellectual property, including a Craig of the Creek storyboarder and it has the “potential to collaborate” with others, allowing “cool projects” to flourish. There are over 3,000 members on the Discord for the platform. Hopefully, Project City will be a boon for indie animation and push the animation industry in a direction that favors creators.

Notes

[1] There is also an extensive terms of service agreement, privacy policy, feed and search sections.

[2] In one of the comments, Sechrist revealed that “Netflix told me to never pitch them anything like that ever again” and that’s why they “went independent.” That is unfortunate to hear about Kipo, but not surprising. He also noted in September 2021 that he wrote a movie about Wolf, but Netflix “made them remove any stories from Benson Wolf or Jamack from seasons 2 and 3.” So, that sadly will probably not happen. He has been relatively active on the Kipo subreddit. Earlier, he confirmed Asher as a non-binary character and noted Asher was non-binary because some on the crew were non-binary. Sechrist also said they had 30 episodes from Netflix “from the very beginning” and wouldn’t let them do any after that saying that is “sort of the way Netflix wanted to operate.”

[3] See Sugarwaltz, Thomas Crane and the Mind Machine, Last Knight, Starbound, Biopunks, Laundry Monsters, Knightlights, Lumeon Lands, Magicless, Wandered Here, The Chippy and Loopus Show, Kix and Gigglz, Atlantica, Tall Tales of Magic and Mages, Mag-Tech Noire, Soggy Bills, Power Up!, Immortal Age, Galactic Homerun, The Great Run, Almost Hero, The Culling, Bhoodham, The Space Stragglers, Book of Worlds, Unresolved, Seer, Project N.e.w.m.o.o.m.e., The Ball, Cation Princess, Weirdogs, Seldom Manifest, Westwoods, Plot Armor Academy, Black Liquid, Deadboy, Epic Temple Quest, Ad Lunam, and Juvenile Delinquests. There’s also a train simulated web series named San Juan Branch Line, animated films Jupiter and Europa, Lyrics for the End of the World, and Dinonauts, collection of short films named Conquer, a game named Yasuke: A Lost Descendant, a streaming channel on YouTube named Blutoonztv, and a music video named Daylight.

[4] Of note is the webzine, Erika the Typewriter, the horror comic Be Right With You, the steampunkish webcomic World Post Evil, and a later-to-be graphic novel named The Enchanteds, along with the graphic novels Wildertale, Departure, Hearth in Space, and a manga series entitled Project Rogon Zero.

[5] This is different from the approach of Nico Colaleo who said in a February 2021 podcast that he hopes to make Ollie & Scoops bigger and bigger until the series can get studio funding, his ultimately goal, although he is content with keeping it independent, wanting to pitch it to studios in person.