A new chapter of Space Pirates in Space will premiere this Thursday. It’s a good one!

Can you believe it’s almost been ten posts since my last blog update? BAD SOCIAL MEDIA GURU. BAD. The good news is we’ve had plenty of time to review all the spam comments that have appeared on the blog since then. For a long time it was just hiking boot companies and feminine hygiene product manufacturers saying generic stuff like “I agree with what your blog post has to say!” But now the spam has taken a turn for the bizarre. It’s like, snippets of long discussions about OTHER shows, like Master Grade Gundam and Game of Thrones and stuff. Weird, weird, weird. These people don’t even seem to have an agenda. Who are you people? And what have you done with our many fans who write things like “Hooray! Space Pirates in Space is the best web/comic/animated/series/thing I’ve ever seen!”?

A couple of exciting milestones are worth announcing. @SpacePiratesX passed its 1,000th follower on Twitter, although after cleaning out some of the spambots we dropped a little below that. But we’ll get it back! Because you’re going to retweet Space Pirates in Space to all your friends. Right? Right!?

We are also excited because a new permanent cast member will be joining the show in the next episode. Spoiler alert! Who could it be? It’s a mystery. Find out this Friday!

Finally, several cast members will be convening this evening to record dialogue for future episodes of Space Pirates in Space. So stay tuned! The fun is just getting started.

Watch: Episode 01.22 – Let’s Get Naked and Relax

Greetings, brand new pirate fans! You may be wondering, what exactly the heck is going on with today’s episode. You are correct, at six seconds, the episode it is shorter than the intro graphic to the episode. But you have to look at the context. Once it is between 01.12 and 01.14 in a long sequence of scenes, you are going to love it. In the meantime, I love Manchego here. If there is any doubt as to his total badassery, let that be put to rest. The sudden start, the sudden stop, The Man Manchego’s mission. Kleeb’s pounding score.

I love this man.

Watch: Episode 01.13 – My Favorite Scene

We are in the midst of a Twitter push, following fabulous folks far and wide. We’ve chosen some comic and animation people we love and asked them to come check out the site. It’s worked! We’ve doubled our Twitter followers in just 24 hours. So, new people who are not robots, we thank you for coming with us on our adventure.

If you like what we’re doing, tell us! Better yet, tell your friends! The more the merrier. And if you have a question about what we’re doing, drop us a line in the comments. We’d love to answer viewer questions.

Watch: Episode 01.12 – Very Sneaky, Lieutenant

One of the great things about working on Space Pirates in Space is the ensemble. We are a collective creative organization, rather than the brainchild of a single creative mind. The best part for me is working with the many talented actors who voice characters on the show. On most animated series, like The Simpsons or Venture Bros, the same five or six actors voice almost every character on the show. We take the opposite approach, and try to bring in as much talent as possible. You’ll see this more as the show progresses, but for now I wanted to introduce you to one surprising actor.

My ITP classmate Ryan Viglizzo was nice enough to do a cameo as Dave, the groovy partygoer who haplessly answers Arth’s phone call to the Merry Tassel. Ryan is not an actor by trade, merely a smart and freakishly athletic displaced Californian studying here in snowy New York City. His smooth and natural easy-going voice gives Dave the authenticity that role requires.

1,000,000 thumbs up!

Watch: Episode 01.06 – Very Odiferous

You’ll notice that I have changed our method of notation for individual episode chapters. There is kind of a science to coming up with something that works. It’s harder than it looks. For one thing, there is the question of how to break down and define the individual cartoons that make up the SPiS story. Our team has a lot of story to tell, enough at least for several seasons worth of traditional broadcast television. (You heard it here first, folks. We know exactly where we are going, and we know how we are going to get there (at least I do.))

For the most part, these stories will be broken down into episodes that are about thirty minutes long (also like broadcast television). Each episode is then broken down into smaller videos, which are the semi-weekly updates that you have been watching and enjoying. Internally, we have been calling these videos “chapters.” (Actually, for the most part we’ve been calling them “Ep-cha-uh…what were we calling these things again?”) This is the breakdown. 30-50 chapters make up an episode. Several episodes make up a season, and several seasons would make us really happy. That said, we reserve the right to play with form as we go forward. I am really interested in playing with our web comic roots, and having a collection of one-off cartoons, rather than thirty-second increments of a longer story (not all the time, just when we write stuff that we think is funny).

So now the old notation probably makes sense. 10103 means (Season)1(Episode)01(Chapter)03. Oy. But now we’ve simplified it! Episode 01.04 means Chapter 04 of Episode 01. Done and done.

Another consideration is cramming all the text we need into Youtube video titles and tweets. When the title of your video is “Space Pirates in Space: Episode 01.03 – The Sinister Voice of Artholomew Marvelas,” those 140 characters go pretty darn fast.

We are learning as we go here, people.

Watch: Episode 01.04 – Captain Dave