[Holiday Special] Journey to the Questmas

Happy Holidays, wonderful patrons of TOTU! (it u)

We're bringing you early access to our very special Holiday Episode!

Oh THAT'S what I've been up to.

We're real proud of this one. It's obviously our longest episode to date, and I'm extremely proud of our attempt at wide screen. The final publicly available version might have some audio fixes (and will include our sponsor), but we wanted to give you guys first peek at this episode in its entirety!

This one was also such a blast to make because it was a challenge so many D&D tables face: how do you do a D&D-themed Christmas episode? While more noble heroes would fight Krampus and save Santa, we realized the soul of JttQ is the mundane aspects of D&D life and the bond between these characters. Family, forged in blood or fire, is what the holidays tend to be about no matter what one celebrates. Plus, coming up with what the heck Questmas is was really fun.

Once again, special thanks to our resident Jack-of-all-Trades in the booth, Brendan, for lending his voice as the Giftlock! If you don't know who that is, you may know him as Jeremy the Minotaur, the Lich, the Judge, the Guard, Gary - he plays a LOT of characters on the show. We lost our minds when he pulled up to the booth with the Giftlock voice. Dez collapsed upon hearing his takes. Absolute treasure of a guy.

Not only is this a special holiday special of special quality, it's also a bit of a test-run of how we want to approach our future seasons. We'd like to move away from episodes just being Shorts and start making them widescreen episodes between 3-5 minutes we post monthly. Obviously, still featuring our usual puppet animation style (as opposed to the Pilot, which is exclusively studio-quality frame-by-frame animation with much more dynamic camera and animation, requiring way more resources than me and my Moho 14 license). That also gives us room to flesh out some of the story arcs a bit more effectively and utilize framing and camera techniques that simply aren't feasible in a 9:16 aspect ratio.

While we want the show to grow, we also want to make sure it maintains its spirit. As such, we welcome your feedback on this gameplan! Let us know how you feel about this idea so we can ensure we carry what makes JttQ what it is even as its form changes.

Happy Holidays, everyone! May your season be filled with love, hope and Questmas tidings!