A Plan for SkyChasers

When the giant monsters who rule the stars chase mankind from our homeworld and into the reaches of space, our future rests in the hands of heroes small, quick, and brave enough to use their might against them. Explorers. Warriors. Kids... Skychasers.

What is SkyChasers? Several years ago, SkyChasers began as a tabletop role-playing game that I've fiddled with off and on. After years of mucking around, I'm finally closing in on playtesting it. With all the screenwriting and other work I've been doing, it hasn't been that much of a priority.

At the same time, the idea of kids battling ferocious dinosaurs and giant robots while the grown-ups cling to a rag-tag refugee existence in the stars has always stuck me as marketable. What kid doesn't want to be the hero?

First, I've got to get this game finished. There's a handful of artists I've met who I'd like to involve in the project, and once this draft is done I plan to see about luring them in. Together, we can use the game as a bible to nail down the look and feel of the game. Then, we start in on the web comics.

My uninformed hope is that within a year or two, we can build enough of an audience to make selling action figures a financially viable possibility. Again, I go back to kid space commandoes. While some of the action figures will obviously be specific characters from the comic, I'd like to sell toys that the kids can relate to - that they can literally see themselves in. By selling toys where a kid can literally go "this one is me", we let the world we're building become much more real for the kids. As the action figures take off, we can get into cool stuff like the giant robots and the vehicles.

By the time those things are humming along, 8 Sided Films should be in a good place to produce a television series - certainly a series of web cartoons. Web cartoons seems like an obvious route to go, now that I mention it... Eventually, I'd like to do a live-action movie. Clearly, that's decades into the future.

There are spec scripts I could be working on, but why should I? Right now, this seems like a better use of my time than another spec script. In terms of finding gigs in this day and age, it's just as valid and useful as another screenplay. What's more, nobody's buying! In terms of bringing money into my life and the life of my ensemble, my success is much more controllable. Lastly, it connects me with kids. That's keeps me on the cutting edge of social media, and it helps me keep connected to what's cool.

Lastly, SkyChasers is just heaps of fun.

If social media is the future, and if kids really do buy all the stuff, this might just be the perfect plan.

To keep an eye on SkyChasers, as well as get in on the playtesting (and if you're a geek parent, you'll want to), follow SkyChasers on the 8 Sided Forum: http://www.8sidedforum.com/group/skychasers