Frederator Studios raises over $850,000 through Kickstarter to fund the production of additional episodes of its hit animated short, Bee & PuppyCat.
Frederator Studios announced that it has secured $872,133 in funding from a Kickstarter.com campaign to fund the production of additional episodes of its hit animated short, Bee & PuppyCat, created by Adventure Time animator Natasha Allegri. The campaign exceeded its goal of $600,000 and now ranks as Kickstarters’s fourth most funded Video and Film campaigns to date─a list that also includes the Veronica Mars movie, projects from Spike Lee and Zach Braff, and ahead of the digital sensation Video Game High School 2. Loved by fans all across the globe, Bee & PuppyCat, originally debuted on Cartoon Hangover in July as a two-part 10-minute short and became an immediate hit, amassing more than four million views and driving both male and female viewership.
The Kickstarter campaign was launched in October with the goal to garner enough funding to create six new episodes of the breakout hit. The success of the crowdsourcing campaign, which has amassed more than 18,000 backers, has now enabled Frederator to up its production to eight episodes. The new content is expected to be premiere in Summer 2014.
Fred Seibert, head of Frederator Studios, said, “Bee & PuppyCat struck a note with fans all over the globe and we have them to thank for making this project happen. The support we have received from our Kickstarter campaign has been astounding and now we can give fans exactly what they want – more amazing Bee & PuppyCat.”
Bee & PuppyCat, follows Bee, an out-of-work twenty-something, who has a life-changing collision with a mysterious creature that she refers to as PuppyCat, because she is not sure if it is a dog, cat, or both. Between space and time, Bee and PuppyCat take intergalactic babysitting gigs to pay another month’s rent, and embark on adventures that include betrayal, intrigue, and magical transformations. As a “traditionally animated” series, all elements of Bee and PuppyCat are drawn by hand.
Natasha Allegri, “I'm super excited to be working on Bee & PuppyCat and it's only made possible because all these people have pulled together and donated to fund this cartoon. It's really humbling and it makes me want to do the best I can so that everyone who has been so generous to us feels good about donating. I don't want them to be disappointed.”
The newly funded Bee & PuppyCat series will join Frederator Studios’ burgeoning Cartoon Hangover YouTube Channel, which already features the breakout hit series Bravest Warriors. Conceived and developed by Fred Seibert—the animation luminary whose executive producing credits include such animation blockbusters as Adventure Time, The Fairly OddParents, The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory─Cartoon Hangover ranks as one of the fastest growing channels from YouTube’s 2012 funded channel initiative. Since its launch in November 2012, the channel has generated more than 13 million unique viewers (source: YouTube Analytics), over 66 million views of its programming, more than 193 million minutes watched of its shows, and almost 900 thousand subscribers.
The Bee & PuppyCat Kickstarter campaign will reward its backers with more than nine new episodes of the series. It will provide them with an intimate inside look at the creation of the episodes as well. Digital downloads of storyboards, exclusive DVD’s, exclusive Squishable brand PuppyCat plush, a comic book series from BOOM! Studios, an exclusive t-shirt from Welovefine.com, and first looks at new episodes are a handful of creative ways that Frederator Studios and Allegri will give back to the community who helped to make production of the new episodes a reality.
Source: Frederator Studios
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
