Hi everyone- Milo here, happy 2026!! Hope you had a lovely holiday season :D New year, new production update!
First off- to those of you who backed The Flimpo Collection, thank you so much!! (I know that's not everyone here, but there's a lot of overlap!) Because of your support, we successfully on-boarded our new clean-up animation team, they started last week ^^
Brief social media hiatus: Now that we have our team, we're going to shoot for some film festival deadlines between now and mid-February. It'll be a lot of work, so we are not planning on uploading that much to our social media at this time. Don't worry, we'll be back afterwards with lots to show!
Production updates: The episode is really taking shape now. The three of us are finishing up the rough animation, and everything we finish is being handed off to our cleanup team. We've given them a pretty solid head start, but the three of us will be doing pretty much nothing but rough animation. It's only been a week but it's so cool to see how much faster 9 people work as opposed to 3 people who are already doing all the other jobs at the same time. Who knew!!!
We also have a stop-motion segment of the episode being cooked up by Apartment D, which is looking insane already. I'm genuinely so excited to show you all footage of it once it's ready. It involves real life gummy worms and a model of a skeleton. Not elaborating any further.
And as of just a few days ago, the musical score is now complete! Patty and Zee have done a phenomenal job scoring this episode. The soundtrack has become such a cool and unique part of this project and I've genuinely started humming/listening to it on it's own. We hope you eventually do the same!
And just for fun...we'll share the track list: (Or, what we're willing to share now...that is!)
Inland Empire
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Macaroni Gate
Terrarium
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Coronation
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We're still on track for an early 2026 completion date, mid-2026 festival run, and hopefully....a Halloween 2026 public release!
Backer Updates:
We've shipped ~95% of the packages so far! The last ~5% are not shipped out due to at least one of four reasons:
They are international orders (usually to the EU) with specific customs requirements we want to get right to avoid paying for shipping twice
They have been returned to sender after already being shipped out once, and need to be reassessed on a case by case basis.
They are big, personalized packages that take time to sign and pack
They are orders that would have been included with earlier batches but the backer turned in a late survey
Ensuring these last packages get to their destination will take additional time which we unfortunately do not have during this Jan-Feb stretch of production. Once we're done with that crunch, we'll get to the rest of the packages- we thank you all for being incredibly patient with us! And again, you don't need to pay for shipping a second time.
An addendum on backer updates for The Flimpo Collection:ChimeraBunny will be handling all shipping and fulfillment for that campaign! They've already posted an update + FAQ here, and surveys have just been sent out. They've also opened a pre-order shop, so if you'd like to add to your order last minute- you can!
Thank you all so much for your support again, we can't wait for you all to finally see the episode later this year :D
Good news - our penultimate batch of orders have just been sent out! Keep your eyes peeled for a shipping notification, but don’t worry if you didn’t receive one yet- you may be part of the final shipping group, whose packages should be sent out in the next couple weeks.
Our next packing stream will be this Friday at 3 PM EST on Twitch, sorry we missed the last few streams! It was a combination of Milo being away at LightBox Expo that week followed by getting sick immediately after. But they're all better nowe!
We still have around a dozen packages returned to sender, if we reached out to you inquiring about an address change, please confirm so we can re-send it as soon as we can!
In other news, we are less than one week away from launching the FLIMPO COLLECTION- our newest line of merch!
We’re teaming up with ChimeraBunny to make a line of awesome items, including stylish jackets, colorful jellyfish keychains, plushies, and more!
And that’s not all! We have some special rewards for earlybirds (those who pledge within the first 48 hours) and returning backers. Earlybirds get a free sticker, and returning backers get a Flimpo enamel pin with their order!
The funds we raise will go directly towards hiring help to finish the pilot episode of Mandelbrot Hall. If everything goes well, the public release of the episode will be Halloween 2026. Thank you so much for your continued support and patience!
Good news everyone- the first batch of orders has been shipped!
In our last update- we said we would wait until all of our orders were packed until we sent them out- but as it turns out storing that many packages in your garage can get tricky! So, we decided to ship out the first batch of roughly ~500 orders.
If your package was in the group that was shipped, you should have received an email with your USPS tracking number! If you haven't, it most likely means we're still packing your order, and it will be shipped in the coming weeks. Otherwise, it means your order in a country that does not offer USPS package tracking. For orders within the US, packages should arrive within 2-5 business days. For international packages, it's 6-20 business days depending on distance and time withheld at customs.
From now on, we'll ship out a new batch of orders and tracking numbers every Monday until there are no more packages left to ship. If for any reason your package is returned to sender- we will contact you directly and figure out an alternative address. And if you didn't already know, we live stream the packing process every Friday at 3 PM EST on Twitch! (Except for this coming stream tomorrow, we'll start at Noon- I have a plane to catch!) We chat with those watching and do bits while we pack your orders, it's a fun time!
Whether you're in the first batch or the next ones, we can't wait for your orders to finally arrive! (When they do, feel free to tag us on social media with your new swag, we can't wait to see!)
On a separate note- let's do a production update while we're here!
Overall, production is going well- but progress is slower than expected. We're getting lots of layouts, rough animation, and background designs done, but we're behind on background paint, and animation cleanup. This is by design, as animation cleanup and background paint are things we would be comfortable hiring folks to help with should we need to.
The main hurdle is that while our campaign did earn enough to make the episode ourselves (50K+), it did not reach the 100K needed to hire a larger crew than the one we already have. (We already have a producer, two composers, a sound designer, and our voice cast.) We did receive some extra funds through additional orders via your BackerKit surveys (thank you!) but they have ultimately been eaten by the recent rise in international shipping costs- leaving us back where we started (aw!!)
It's worth noting that many people have offered to work for free, or have told us to bring on interns without pay. While we are honored to have many folks offer to help out, our studio was founded in an effort to make indie animation more sustainable, and making others work for free goes against that mission.We pay all of our staff, and if we hire more we are paying them too- full stop.
That being said, we do have some exciting plans to help bridge that funding gap which you will all hear about in the very near future. (Keep an eye out on videos we make from now on...) Either way, we will continue working on this episode full time full time until it is complete. We've actually added a work day to our work week to help move things along with what we have. Not to mention 3 new videos on our socials every week for looks behind the scenes, and highlights from our packing streams!
Thank you all so much again for your patience, and we can't wait for your merch to arrive! (Feel free to tag us with your swag @StudioFlimpo if you feel so inclined)
Our first package-fulfillment live stream is this Friday, (link to our twitch channel here!) meaning you need to have your address locked by this Thursday (ideally before that)! If you have moved to a different address since you locked your order, please email us at [email protected] with your new address and we will revise it manually! (If you're not sure if your address is up to date and want to check, you should be able to do so through your BackerKit account- or you can send us an email and we'll check it for you!)
For 95% of you, this should already be taken care of and you don't need to do anything further. We've sent out the final notice to the last ~30 stragglers to lock forms/addresses, thankfully around half of those have since locked their orders. We will not wait on the remaining few orders to start packing orders, we will simply contact them individually in the coming days.
We will ship everyone's packages at the same time, that way we can send out your tracking numbers all at the same time (and everyone should receive their rewards around the same time). Truthfully, I can't get an exact estimate on how long packing all ~1800 packages will take, as we have never taken on an order that large before- and we still have to work on the pilot episode itself every day. My best estimate would be 1-2 months, but we will likely bring on some extra hands to get through the packages faster. Once shipped, packages within the US will take 3-5 days, international shipping times vary. Once you receive it, please check your tracking number for most accurate estimates.
Thank you so much again for your patience as we thank you for supporting our project, we can't wait to see you on stream this Friday!
Unfortunately we spoke too soon! We had a few hiccups in fulfillment- we were short on T-Shirts, campus maps, and ID cards (especially those, y'all liked them way more than anticipated!) The good news is that all of those orders will be arriving throughout this and next week. We sincerely apologize for the further delay in shipments, but it's all in the name of making sure we can start packing everyone's orders at the same time, and no one gets left behind. That being said, we completely understand if you want something extra for waiting this long- plus further proof that we are indeed working on fulfillment. So...
We will be packing your orders live on YouTube/Twitch!
While we've been waiting for the extra orders to come in, we've used our spare time outside of episode production to revamp our live stream setup. While live, we'll be packing your orders, hanging out with everyone in the chat- and maybe some fun bonus stuff while we're at it! (Don't worry, we won't be showing or mentioning your personal order info on stream- just packing the packages themselves!) Sort of like the live streams we did during the campaign, but less fundraise-y and more hang-out-y! If you've ever chatted with us at a convention while we were tabling, it'll be a lot like that. We hope these will be fun, and a nice way to see the progress of our fulfillment with your own eyes! We haven't announced this anywhere else yet, but expect some more details on our socials in the coming days.
While we're here- some of you still need to confirm your address/card info!
Around 30 of you to be exact. We're sending out another round of notices in the meantime, so keep an eye out in your inbox!
To be transparent, making a 22 minute animated pilot is already a massive workload for our small team- not to mention our social media and admin upkeep on top of that. Regardless, we're working full time, and we can't wait to pack your orders on stream soon- we hope to see you there! If anyone has additional questions regarding your order or in general, drop a comment below or send an email our way to [email protected].
Thank you all so much again for your support and patience, flimp on! -Milo
