The Project

  Yohance is an African Space Opera that I created back in 2016 as a comic series. Later that year, it went on to successfully fund a Kickstarter for $16,000 in the hopes of printing physical issues. After it’s success, I decided that it was finally time for us to move forward with phase 2 and cross over into film.  Our goal is to produce a fully animated feature film that will stay true to the impressionistic detail of the book’s art.

  Our original goal was $60k but since then, we’ve had several investors express interest in the film. They’ve proposed that, if we can raise just $10k on our own -they’ll cover the difference. Simple as that! So all we need to do is cross that minimum threshold and this film becomes reality!

The Funds:

As I mentioned, meeting our $10k goal will unlock an additional $50k in total funding. Why that amount? Well, the Money will be distributed into four categories: 

• Talent: Making a film requires hiring a minimum of talented professionals including actors, animators, artists, sound engineers, editors, musicians, and much more. 
• Facilities: We need a work space to ensure a smooth and efficient production
• Technology: This film will be animated in photorealistic CGI. This requires some pretty expensive software, computers and state of the art Motion Capture Technology.
• Perks: Fulfilling the perks isn’t cheap! This portion of the funds covers all the exclusive goodies that you the backers will receive.

If we don’t reach our goal, we won’t unlock the $60k. However, we will still use whatever funds are raised to produce a short film and all digital perks. 

The Perks:

Speaking of perks, here are all the awesome items that you can get from this campaign. Some items are exclusive to the campaign and will no longer be available once it ends. Everything else is discounted to a fraction of the price from the Midas Monkee Website. 

The Impact:

  The importance of getting this film done, especially at this time, is because we need black-owned studios out there who are dedicated to telling quality stories based on our heritage in a fantasy setting.

  These worlds deserve to be brought to life. Studios such as Marvel have shown that comic creators are usually the most qualified people to adapt their own work to the big screen. They understand the source material. That said, it can be very hard to get an indie project funded -especially something like this. However, Yohance has a vibrant fanbase. We can get this film funded and in production easily. All we need is everyone to give what they can.

There’s a large demographic out there that is completely unserviced and deserve to have continual stories and franchises that represent them in all their complexity. Yohance would be the flagship that launches our studio. Thus, allowing us to produce ALL of our titles in Film, TV, and literature.

Logistics

The goal is to make a full 2-hour feature film. The film will subsequently be available on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play. I will be directing the short film myself after I wrap production on my Afro Caribbean Space Opera, Byala sometime this month. We already have the infrastructure with a small team of professional creatives. In fact, we already started pre-production a few months ago and are ready to jump on this as soon as possible.

The film will be completely animated in photorealistic CGI using a combination of software and techniques to achieve the lifelike authenticity that we’re going for. The music will be a fusion of authentic West African Bambara music, Electronic music as well as the epic Orchestral themes associated with Cinematic Space Opera. We expect to have a working trailer by September. Any additional funds will go towards future projects.

Stretch Goals

• $20k: We get to make a full 2-hour feature film as well as upgrade certain perks to physical Blu-rays complete with an additional 2 hours of Bonus material.

• $30k: We can produce an animated TV pilot for my other series The Pack. 

Risks and Challenges

Our greatest challenge is simply getting funding. Everything else is already in place. However, if we don’t cross $10k, the full feature film will be in jeopardy. We would have to make a short film instead.

In fact, everything for Midas Monkee has been building up to this moment. The comics are a mere blueprint for the ultimate form of Storytelling.