The Pitch

It’s Barbarella meets Romy & Michele in this queer sci-fi cartoon set in a dystopian future. When Frank Bottom and his roommate Barb A. Fella accidentally steal a rare living spaceship, it sets off a fantastic chain of events that ripple throughout the cosmos, pushing Frank outside his comfort zone and forcing him to rethink his place in the world.

Synopsis

Season 1: "Frank Bottom Conquers Uranus!"

In a familiar sci-fi future, humanity is scattered across space stations and moon-bases, with the Earth itself now barely habitable. The gap between the rich and the poor is greater than ever, and no one is more wealthy than H.R. Sitzfleisch, the Supreme President of Earth Inc., which coincidentally is the only corporation in the solar system. He recently closed a secret deal to grow his fortunes a thousandfold, and not even MAXAGON, his robot VP and COO, knows the full details.

Frank Bottom and Barb A. Fella, among the poorest residents of Space Station Numero Uno, share a capsule-apartment in the station’s basement levels. By day they toil away as trash collectors, and by night they earn extra money performing in nightclubs and doing sex work.

When one day they’re abruptly evicted, with nothing but the kinky clothes on their backs, Frank and Barb decide to break into an empty spaceship and crash for the night. But once inside, the ship’s engines mysteriously fire up and launches them into deep space, triggering the station’s alarms.

Trapped and confused, things get even more bizarre as they discover the ship itself is alive. Introducing herself as ALEXIS, she announces they’re locked on a direct course to Uranus. Behind them the space navy are in now pursuit, declaring them under arrest for treason and stealing military property!

What can they do? Why is this ALEXIS blasting them out to Uranus? Can they stop the ship? Can they they ditch the military? And where would they go now that they’re wanted for treason? And… who is someone else lurking aboard the ship??

So begins Frank Bottom Conquers Uranus!, the first chapter of Hey Frank Bottom!

The Characters

Click the Characters tab to see the main characters for this season. Here's an early lineup that included a pair of BDSM chimps and their human pet. They may yet return! 

The Project: “Hey Frank Bottom!”

The entire project will consist of five seasons, the first of which is Frank Bottom Conquers Uranus!, with each season consisting of 8-10 short episodes, and each episode being between 3-5 minutes long. This fundraiser is for Season 1; if successful I’ll move forward with the rest of the project. 

I’ll be producing the whole thing by myself, but if I can raise enough funds I’ll be able to hire more folks to help. 

Once production is fully up to speed, I’m hoping to release new episodes every 4-6 weeks, which translates to about 10-12 episodes per year. When complete, I expect the entire project to clock in at around two hours long (essentially the duration of a feature-length movie), and take 3-4 years to finish. 

This is ambitious! But with my 35 years of experience in this field and how I'm structuring my pipeline, I’m quite optimistic this is achievable. Read below to know how I’ll do this. 

Themes

While Hey Frank Bottom! is structured as a campy road trip series, the aim is to satirically explore post-capitalism, imperialism, class warfare, heterosexism, and techno-feudalism through a queer lens. 

The series also focuses on the importance simple human dignity, and chooses to imagine a more positive future for humanity at a time when our world is accelerating towards fascism.

Both the show and its main character, Frank Bottom, are meant to be a celebration of queer joy, and to stress the importance of community and collaboration.

The Art Direction

As a 2D-animation production, Frank Bottom will be produced using techniques traditionally referred to as limited animation, something quite familiar to most cartoon audiences. 

The project's look and style are deeply influenced by the bold graphics of UPA cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s. More specifically I'm taking inspiration from Roger Ramjet, a show that ran from 1965 to 1969 with over 150 five-minute episodes, quite similar to what I’m attempting here. Fred Crippen, the creator and director, kept the animation downright minimalist which often made gags even funnier.

Production Schedule

This is subject to change, but I'm putting this here to keep myself accountable (I'll also soon provide this production schedule online to make it more accessible, stay tuned). The release dates for the first three teasers are all on the same date because they'll be released at a small Animation Shorts Festival put on by the Canadian Animation Guild (IATSE Local 938) of which I'm a member. The screening location and times will be announced as soon as possible. 

The Production

First off: absolutely no generative AI will be used in the production of this cartoon. NONE. NADA. ZERO. Throw that junk in the trash! I’m drawing all of this by hand.

My 2D-animation pipeline will consist of using three main applications: Blender, Audacity, and DaVinci Resolve.

• Blender for storyboards, animatics, layouts, and animation
• Audacity for sound design
• DaVinci Resolve for editing and compositing

To begin, I'll be doing all the work myself, including the voices. That's a lot! So the first few episodes may be a bit slow as I build momentum, refine my pipeline, and develop the show's asset library (i.e.: designs, backgrounds, character rigs, music, sound effects, etc…) and I'll share work-in-progress updates via email and on social media. 

How Your Funds Will Help

I’ll be maintaining and sharing an up-to-date breakdown of production costs, which will be shared publicly here and on frankbottom.com so everyone can see how funds are being utilized. Some funds will go towards the payment of extras like:

• Paid subscriptions to a music and sound effects library
• Cloud storage
• Paid software plugins

However as I am devoting myself full-time to this project, most funds will initially go towards paying me a small salary. As financial support for the project grows, I also want to hire more people to assist with production:

• More artists
• Voice actors
• Production assistant
• Musicians

Plus, the as funding increases, episodes can be produced more quickly, and released sooner as well. So perhaps instead of one episode every 4-6 weeks, I could release an episode every 2 weeks, and perhaps even make them longer.

More funds means I could also expand the story beyond its original scope, or experiment with other styles of animation, for example: a prequel to give more backstory on Frank and Barb; episodes that feature secondary characters, etc…

Rewards

To start, my main focus will be getting the series off the ground and establishing a smooth work schedule. Once that’s settled and I’ve hit my first goal of $25,000 I’d like to explore reward options:

• Stickers
• Art prints
• T-shirts
• Toys

I’d love to hear your suggestions for what sorts of rewards you’d like to see!

Support an original queer Canadian cartoon!

When you contribute to Frank Bottom, you’re supporting an original queer Canadian animation production! You’re also contributing via a Canadian crowdfunding platform based in North Vancouver.

Why is this important? Well, while Canada does produce lots of amazing movies and great TV right here, our entertainment industry is eclipsed by the mountains of shows that come out of the US, and as Canadians we mostly consume those American movies and TV shows.

Even if you can only kick in a few Toonies, it all adds up! You can also help by sharing this page out to your networks which can really help boost my campaign to folks who wouldn’t know about it otherwise.

Thank you!

Follow Frank Bottom online:

You can subscribe to the Frank Bottom newsletter for updates, and connect with the project online here: 

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