It has been a few months since our last project update, but we are back with more information for everyone! We have some good news and some bad news, starting with the good news first and ending with the bad news.

The good news is that progress is moving along well on storyboards. We just brought another artist on board who enjoys traditional story-boarding, so hopefully that will help move the development of the musical forward smoother. (If anyone would like to audition for art or composition, please check out the "Audition Forms" tab on this Website). Our Character designs have been finalized and they are currently being cleaned up to be posted to our social media platforms, as well as our Website. 

Now for the bad news that may come as a shock to everyone: Hurricanes in the Southeastern part of the United States. We have had several of our team members that have been affected by the Hurricanes and sadly this has drastically impacted the  progress of the musical, so we will have to cut back our first release to only the first sequence of the first part; which we will be calling: The Overture. We will be working on the other two sequences once the Overture is released, which we hope to release next year at some point, but the Overture will be before the end of 2024. We greatly apologize about giving everyone a release date and not delivering yet again, but I do hope everyone understands we care about the safety of our Production team above all else. 

It is official everyone: Our final character designs are being finalized as we speak! Now many of you may be confused, since we already had character designs, but we as a team believed that our previous designs (Created by the pervious development team); while good in their own right, were far too simple for what we wanted to accomplish. The designs we have now really set us apart from other iterations of the characters, but also try to stick to the roots of the characters. We are hoping everyone agrees with us that this was a good move for the project as a whole and we hope you will all come see them this Wednesday (July 24th, 2024) @ 5:30 PM (CST) Live on our Youtube Channel! We will also be hosting a voice call in the Community discord at the same time, so feel free to come by and watch us show them off! Feel free to join our community discord and Subscribe to our youtube channel to join in the fun this Wednesday @ 5:30 PM (CST)!

Aside from our Final Character Designs, we have also been working hard on our Composition and songwriting department. We are hoping to be able to show off some of them relatively soon! We have also just brought on a 1 new Composer and 1 new songwriter, so we are hoping that helps these two departments move along smoother with the newly added help. 

That is all we have for this months update, but rest assured we are moving faster now then we ever have before on this project! We hope to see you all there this Wednesday and remember #2024NNQOURYEAR! and KEEP ON SPINNING! - 🐍 

Hey everyone, I would like to formally apologize about the radio static regarding the musicals progression. Finals hit our development team like a truck and I just started a brand new job earlier last month, so progression was at a stand-still for quite some time, but we have finally gotten back into production!

Firstly, Character designs have received a massive overhaul since when they were last shown off! Currently we have full character designs created for: Jay, Kai, Nya, Wu, Samukai, and a few of the skeletons. We will be showing off the final character designs once all of them are completed, which you could expect to (hopefully) see sometime next month!

Secondly, Songwriting has completed 85% of the songs, but composition is moving slower than anticipated; if anyone knows anyone who has experience or interest in composition, please feel free to send a message in the Community Discord! Additionally, last month one of our songwriters released a bit of one of our songs; Fetch Quest, on their TikTok account (https://www.tiktok.com/@vento.hanto) so if you would be interested in hearing that, go check it out! (The full version should hopefully be available on our Youtube Channel soon!)

Finally, we reach the most important detail: Yes we are still pushing to release the first part of the musical by the end of the year. We are not going to let schedule setbacks from releasing this project to you guys, I believe you defiantly have waited long enough for this! #2024NNQOURYEAR!

And there you have it! Since my schedule will be bouncing around more then my last job, updates will be happening a bit more sporadically, but hopefully more often then now.  I believe that is all I have for this month, but till next time everyone: KEEP ON SPINNING! - 🐍 

Yesterday, we hosted a watch party for Dragon's Rising Part 2, but additionally we also showed off something MASSIVE for the musical that you have all been waiting for for over 5 years. If you missed though watch party though, feel free to check it out on youtube channel; here is a link to the video: https://youtu.be/MSIFYDTLybY

I am going to leave this update relatively short, since this month has been mostly focused on finishing up voice recordings (which is ~85% finished) and art is still plugging away at backgrounds & concept art. Finally, songwriting has been moving slower then usually; due to school & work, so if you guys know anyone who may be interested in assisting we would love for you to send them our way! We have finalized the lyrics for 8 of our songs and composition (which only has 2 members) is working hard at giving us the tracks for the actors; hopefully by summer of next year we should have the very first part of the musical! 

Spread the hashtag everyone: #2024NNQOURYEAR

At the end of this week, officially over 50% of the musical will be finished recording! Pretty soon, you guys will be able to get a sneak peak of what their interpretations of the characters sound like, but you are going to have to wait a little bit longer. Maybe sooner then you think though 😜

In other news (after a few extensions), the songwriters will officially have the first draft of the lyrics for the songs at the end of this month. As a songwriter, I have written a couple songs myself, and hopefully you get to hear them soon! The art department has gained another department head: Hinitori! They were a artist before hand, but they have gotten a promotion to co-head of Art due to their increasing dedication to the project! As their first action as co-head of Art, they set up a meeting for the art department to meet up sometime this month; we are looking forward to see how Boots and Hinitori work together and form the art for the musical!

Finally, we have been doing trivia for the department heads and actors and so far we have asked: The director, the head of art, co-head of video editing & voice acting, and the voice actor for Kai. We are going to be exclusively sending those out on Twitter  X, just because it is the best one of our sites for the format we are going for; don't worry though, because we are still going to be using our other socials! 

That is about all of the updates I've got for this time around! A small thing is we asked a question to the discord in the announcement channel, if you guys would be interested in starting up Travelers Teaparties again, once a month this time, but we need your feedback! Join us in the discord and give us your opinions by reacting to the post, but for now Keep on spinning! - 🐍

On July 22, 2023, we officially started recording the voice lines for the musical and boy has it has been quite a journey for not only me but the whole crew. We have also casted every single character now, but ensemble is always still open; the more voices the better! We are still waiting on our finally character designs so storyboarding has not started yet, but we are hoping to start as soon as we possible can (Possibly the end of this month, but we have already made too many promises, so don't want to cause more disappointment). 

On another note, we did a Cast and Crew QNA's and we will be posting those randomly over the next couple of months on tuesday which we will be calling: TRIVIA TUESDAYS with the NNQ Crew. We hope you enjoy getting to know a bit more about our little team, but for now... KEEP ON SPINNING! - 🐍

Last month, on June 16th, our script was finally completed for the musical... again! As previously explained last December, we reset development of the musical from Season 1-2 to the pilots, and finally the day has come where the script has been completed. Not only is the script complete, but our song list is finalized as well! In our 21 sequences, we will be having 11 songs: Tale of Ninjago, Fire, Take Them Now, The Ninja Way, Dark-Filled Night, The Fetch Quest (Name pending), My Own Reason, Your Previous Little Sister, Race Against Time, My Own Image, and This is Home. Each of these songs will be completed over the course of this summer, with over half of these songs having lyrics already completed; Composition is moving slowly, due to only have two composers, so if anyone happens to know someone who maybe interested, please message TheFinestZygarde on Discord and I will send it to our Head of Composition to review and hopefully, you will join our team!

On non-project related updates, we have started a new "event" in the community discord called Mental Wellness Mondays where we message our Onlookers/Supporters to just check in to make sure everyone is doing okay emotionally, physically, and most important (as the name implies) Mentally. Our project would never be around if it wasn't for our never ending support from the community, so we want to take one day out of our week to check in up on all of you.  I believe that is all I have for this month, but till next time everyone: KEEP ON SPINNING! - 🐍

At the beginning of this month, we opened up both Vocal auditions for Wu and ensemble and Art auditions. The Vocal Auditions end on May 31st at midnight and the Art auditions end when all the positions are filled. Artists will be working on character design, background design, storyboards and much more! The only thing you really need is some experience with design and to be able to imitate a style. If you wish to audition for art or vocal, feel free to fill out the documents under the "Audition Form" tab and the directors of those departments will get back to you, if they liked your audition. The musical team is also hosting a watch party for Dragon's Rising in the community discord and at the end we're going to show off some environments since Art has begun development!  We appreciate your support in the project and hope to see you at our Dragon's Rising Watch Party on June 1st at 6:30 pm CST and remember to keep on spinning! - 🐍

Updates on the musical:

- 7 scenes left in the script to be completed, hoping to have a final draft by June/July

- No song list available yet, but hoping to get one out by June/July as well

- Song Composition is in early development

- Art is on hold until script is in final draft

- We currently only have 1 scriptwriter as the rest of the scriptwriters are taking a leave of absence for personal reasons

- We have 3 songwriters, but finals have slowed development

- We have 7 artists who are very talented and will have progress as soon as script is finished

- Additionally, we apologize that this project has been going on for so long, but rest assured that this project is in active development. This project means the world to all the staff and it will not take another five years. That is a promise; Keep on spinning!  - 🐍

Earlier this year, the Script was changed from Season 1 to the Pilots, so the script had to be reworked; it is roughly 1/3 of the way done. Visual Development will hopefully begin before the end of the year, if everything goes right.

Vocal auditions have been opened for Kai, Jay, Cole, Zane, Wu, and Nya and will end on January 15th at Midnight. In order to audition, one must be in the Community Discord Server (https://discord.gg/WGj3q8EsEC) with auditionees being required to read through the rules and react to the message to not only get the Auditioning role, but also to confirm that the rules are read. If they are not followed properly, the audition will not be accepted, so please keep that in mind. 

Not only was the script changed earlier this year, but directors have also shifted hands from Zena to TheFinestZygarde (Head of the Editing Department). She was the last Founder that was officially on the team: Thank you Zena for everything you have done over the last four years and just know the project is in good hands. 

We are very sorry about the wait of this project, but know that the end result will be amazing once it finally gets finished. We decided that instead of doing two acts, we are going to be doing 7 waves; 3 sequences per wave. We don't have a release date yet for the first wave, but with enough time and dedication from the team we should have the first wave of the project out sooner then later. We appreciate your continued support in the project and hope to see you at our Travelers Teaparty this month on December 12th at 6:30 pm CST. - 🐍

​The initial team members have been selected, but the applications are still open. 

Hey everyone, thank you for your patience. We have been working on the script for nearly 2 months and our first sequence is locked!

We have come to make an announcement: we’re now opening art team applications! Here is the link for the form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe4-QBvDZdt60VgQwJR8YUe4MQzeZG7jxIAoztYq51kneJXqA/viewform

Hey all, quick logistics update. A couple weeks ago, the project staff met to take a step back and get on the same page about what we want to create and how we could go about it in a way that is effective, realistic, and sustainable. At our biweekly meeting on January 29th, we made an additional final decision in regards to how people will contribute to the project.

Long story short, we have decided to scale back the number of individuals on the production team. In the past, we basically allowed anyone with interest join one of our production teams/departments. We feel that this was premature, and often this lead to the question "what can I work on?" when we didn't actually have anything for them to do (and in some cases, it may have even been unfeasable to have multiple contributors). For now we want to scale back and start with a smaller group of individuals (namely, the department leaders plus some team members who they want to continue to assist them). This will allow us to get our feet under us and work out a basic flow for production that we feel will work, without needing to worry about managing a large group of contributors, and without leading people on.

Moving forward individuals with the onlooker role will act as a "test audience", which will have read-only access to production channels, and an additional channel that can be used for providing feedback to the production team as we have material we want opinions about. Those who currently have contributor roles but will not be on this initial stripped-down production team  will have their roles removed, but will be given the test audience role so that they can continue to monitor the progress of the project and provide feedback. The support team roles will similarly be removed and members will be reassigned to the test audience role. Additionally, at least for the immediate future, we will not be adding additional individuals to this role.

Note that for some roles, we may be removing everyone for now, but re-opening applications once we're ready for that area of production order to make sure that we have active folks and that department leaders can gain a better idea of the capabilities of their teams. As we get more comfortable with our workflow and have an expanded need for more help in production, we will be opening applications for new contributors to join the production team (on an as-needed basis for each specific role). At some point we may also re-open things a bit, but for now we feel this is the best approach.

Thank you everyone for your support and investment into this project. We extend our apologies to those who we had previously agreed to bring on the team, and hope that you understand why we're taking this approach. We hope that this will allow us to kickstart our ability to move forward creating content and provide a better experience to those who will be joining our production. 

On January 8, we had a staff meeting to take a fresh look at how this project operates, and we decided to make some changes to the way that the server and project are run.

First of all, we have clarified the objectives of the project, which are the following:

• To develop a musical adaptation of Ninjago, presented as a colored and fully-rendered animatic. By doing so, we would…

• Bring more people into the Ninjago fandom

• Creating a diverse community of creatives

• Provide an opportunity to develop experience in animation production

• Explore Ninjago characters (their feelings, internal struggles, development, etc) in more depth

• Be a tribute and a love letter to Ninjago and its impact on us

• Develop a quality product that we’re proud of

• Have fun while we’re at it!

We have also begun developing a new roadmap for our production goals. We’ve agreed that we’ll be starting with the pilots due to both their importance to the story and significantly smaller scope. Additionally, we’ll be mapping out content milestones which will be smaller chunks of the production that can be developed to completion independently. This will allow teams to work in parallel, iterate faster, and encourage forward momentum due to having a more regular influx of fully produced content. Additionally, if for some reason we can’t complete a season, this means that the completed milestones are still able to be released in their fully realized state. We’ll be starting out with a very short portion of animation so that we can get a feel for how the entire process will work and to resolve any issues - and more quickly have our first piece of fully produced content!

We’ve also formalized a production pipeline based on the pipelines used by traditional 2D animation studios. This allows us to more easily track where different content milestones are, what specifically needs to be done, and where handoffs happen between different departments. A diagram that shows the steps of this pipeline is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XlnSAeXfIFWUzF-9bacGaFDck0JsQjvc/view

We’ve also adjusted the structure of our teams and more clearly defined the various roles, again based on how typical animation projects work. This streamlines the structure and more clearly defines who does what and what their responsibilities are. We have also adjusted our procedure for handling how new contributors are brought on to the project. Instead of auditions typically being always open as they have been in the past, department leaders will request to open applications as they need specific people. This way we can avoid bringing people without having any work for them to actually do. That said, due to the amount of inactive individuals and changes in both role responsibilities and the overall pipeline, some individuals who have previously auditioned may have roles removed. Department leaders will share more specific information on these changes as they occur. Note that you should still have the onlooker role so you’ll be able to keep tabs on the progress of the musical. We have also decided to limit the project channels to just current onlookers, support crews and main team members. As of right now, that is still being discussed.

As the year comes to a close, we would like to give an update of where we are in the production.

The draft of the script is finished after 4 years!

As we're wrapping that up, we're also holding casting calls for remaining supporting cast and ensemble roles, and main character understudies.

The set design progress has been put on hold due to some technical difficulties on the department leader's end, as we're constructing them in Minecraft.

Some ideas have been tossed around for promotional material and concept art.

A majority of songs have lyric drafts completed, some have demos completed, and "Goodbye For Now" has begun orchestration.

Some of us are nearing the end of the school year so hopefully, production will speed up over the winter break.