We’re ready to launch our latest Kickstarter and I’m really excited to finally tell you about it. I know I hinted at it a while back, but now you can finally see what we’ve been up to. Or I guess what our friend Van has been up to.

It might seem like this came out of nowhere, but in reality it’s been kicking around for a couple years. The first strip really resonated with a lot of folks and we even heard from some Hollywood types. We worked with our friend Gary to “shop it around” and pretty much everyone who looked at it liked it, but they all agreed it was too risky to try and make. If it was JUST a period piece, or JUST a robot movie it would be a big risk but when you combine those things, movie people just shake their heads and walk away.

In the meantime we had Van in our offices filming us for the Penny Arcade web series. I remember him mentioning that he’d love to shoot an Automata show someday but I didn’t think much of it. He would bring it up occasionally over the years but then all of a sudden he had a video for us. Tycho and I watched the test footage he shot and we were blown away. First of all it looked fantastic and professional but more importantly for me, is that it felt like Automata. Van really got it. He got Sam and Carl, he got the world. We loved it.

Our first question after we saw the footage was “how can we make this a real show?”

After a lot of talk, and some math that I was not involved in, it was decided that Kickstarter was the only real option. So head over to the Kickstarter page and watch the video to learn about the project. You can see that we’ve gone ahead and posted Van’s budget for the series so you know exactly where the money is going. Robert also broke down the costs of running and fulfilling a successful Kickstarter. It’s some very candid and pretty interesting behind the scenes talk that I don’t think you see in may Kickstarters.

There’s a ton of info on the Kickstarter page so I won’t go into too many more details here. Basically we’re really excited and we hope you’ll help us make this show.

-Gabe out