#WhatPumpkin Studios

[davekat-sucks]

About the current state of Hiveswap Act 3.

[cyphochiluscreations]

this was super sloppy cause i was doing it in between commissions as a break this last month but i finally got it done Dx this is a new sort of animation set up that im testing out a bit. let me know what yall think owo

i havent done a proper animation meme i think maybe ever so hopefully look forward to more of those in the future :3c

♥ (ɔ◔‿◔)ɔ ♥

Support me on ptrn for more!

More information, socials, sh0p, & c0mmissi0ns located you know where :3

HQ version on ytb!

♥ (ɔ˘ ³(ˆ‿ˆc) Credits ♥

🎵 Again & Again - The Bird and the Bee

💕Characters (c) Andrew Hussie, Whatpumpkin (MSPA: Homestuck)

✏ Clip Studio Paint

🎬 CapCut

[homestuck-archive]

BREAKING NEWS (i think): WhatPumpkin, is dead.

WhatPumpkin.com led users to the WhatPumpkin website where you could buy Steam keys for Hiveswap. Now, it redirects you to Hiveswap.com. And so, WhatPumpkin.com finally comes to an end after like...14 years? I think?

From a music publisher...

...to a merch store (man, those prices)...

...to a game studio.

Welp, they had an admittedly, sort of just ok run. Goodbye, WP. For now I hope.

[riceeatingjerk]

I guess he’s still really into this shit (photo was taken I believe a while ago in whatpumpkin nyc)

[swapjuggulators]

“Balancing Act”

I love the new subjuggulators so much, I am super hyped to see them in-game!

Barzum Soleil, Baizli Soleil, and Chahut Maenad all belong to Andrew Hussie and @whatpumpkin studios’ “Hiveswap”.

[splatterdasher]

I alreADY LOVE THEM! I can't wait to see what other amazing trolls will be revealed in the Troll Call in the upcoming weeks!

I also took this chance to practice a relatively new lighting technique. Tell me what you think!

Hiveswap was created by Andrew Hussie and @whatpumpkin.

[wakraya]

Could you please abridge that statement if it wouldn't be too much trouble? I'm curious but that's...a lot also i don't have context of the video

Oh- TL;DR on the Hiveswap Update- This statement was released because of the misinformation from an article that got featured in a YouTube video, that stated Hussie and WP were actually malicious and mishandling the money and TOG actually wasn’t to blame:

1) The money they got from the Kickstarter, due to fees and taxes, is actually way less than the official 2.5M amount.

2) Hussie enters partnership with Game Studios (Name undisclosed for legal reasons, but we know it’s The Odd Gentlemen by association), and sends them 700K~ to start working on a prototype.

3) Hussie has a friendly and close relationship with TOG- Since they have a 2D Animation Studio, they, behind the scenes, agree to work a bit on future Act 7 stuff. TOG states since the 3D and 2D things are separate, this is not affecting the development. The people working on this initial Act 7 draft legally request not disclosing they are involved with it at some point.

4) TOG doesn’t deliver on the prototypes, doesn’t work together with Hussie even as he moves to be closer to them, and eventually Hussie closes their deal. Hussie partners with someone to make an indie studio, and since they live in New York, WhatPumpkin NY is made.

5) Development proceeds, however, lack of funds make it impossible to keep going. TOG didn’t return nearly as much as they thought they would, leading to them working with a severely reduced budget. Hussie freezes WhatPumpkin to salvage Hiveswap, hoping to thaw it in due time.

6) Unnamed Asshole Employee is aggressive and threatening, and makes reopening of WhatPumpkin New York difficult and detrimental. The studio is dissolved instead. Game shifts from 3D to 2D, refining assets and concept art trying to shift gears. WhatPumpkin is born.

7) WhatPumpkin proceeds to make the game. To WP’s knowledge, their used assets are all credited and by people who’re working on it. With two studio changes, some credits actually slip by. These are added once they’re brought to their attention, in the Credit Controversy that happened a while back.

8) Development of Hiveswap continues in these conditions. Unnamed Old Employee, potentially the Unnamed Asshole Employee? Uses an old design sheet from WP NY to leak behind the scenes information to Gio. Information is spun into a heavily anti-Hussie, anti-WP, pro-TOG document. WhatPumpkin has confirmed the employee wasn’t even part of WP when many of the events sourced happened, and are basically extrapolated from that sheet and Backer Updates. Document feeds the flames of the Anti-WP, Anti-Hussie sentiment of some Fandom Circles, and it keeps circulating through them.

9) Sarah Z posts a video on Homestuck, researched in 10 days, and uses bad sources for a lot of the Post-Canon and Hiveswap information. Sarah uses Gio’s article on Hiveswap with wrong information, blaming Hussie and WP. WhatPumpkin is forced to release this document detailing everything due to the backlash.

10) I make this post.

[girl-in-the-hitops]

OK I'm so out of the loop. Who is Sarah Z and why are we talking about her video?

she’s a youtubers who does video essays, and on 4/13, she released a 2.5 hour “history of homestuck” video. maybe 30 minutes of this was dedicated to talking about the troubled hiveswap development, using information gathered by a blogger named Gio. it mentioned that The Odd Gentlemen may have failed in making a prototype game because hussie wasn’t delivering a script, and that it seems hussie closed the WhatPumpkin NYC studio (the one that worked on the 3D version of the game) “on a whim.”

so WP, being the way they are, sent sarah z’s boss a legally threatening and rather demeaning email, insisting the video contained lies (though not saying what they were). so then andrew fucking hussie themself emails sarah to say they’ll tell her the whole story with all the context, so long as sarah is empathetic to them and maybe twists the truth a bit when it comes time to publish in order to protect his staff. more importantly, they haven’t actually watched the video themself and even after weeks of correspondence they are never able to point to a single lie that was in sarah z’s video or gio’s article, and actually corroborates a few terrible things. this is all detailed in sarah’s new 1.5 hour video, and gio’s reaction is also available.

honestly it’s a lot and my brain is melting out of my ears and there’s even more shit about the harassment sarah z and gio both faced as a result of WP writers, specifically aysha, trying to dogpile them.

it’s basically never a good time to like homestuck anymore.

[homestuckexamination]

Homestrife was the fg that was being made during HS's hayday that WP CnDed

I looked the project up, and found a farewell message. The site is gone, but I went through the trouble of checking if there was a recorded version on the Wayback Machine, and there, indeed, was. Here’s what it reads:

Greetings everyone. I’ll get right to the point here: we have decided to put the Homestrife project on indefinite hold.

When we started this project, we were aware it would largely be a hobby with no material gain. At least, at first. We always had the dream that, once we had a really solid prototype, we might be able to approach What Pumpkin and strike up some kind of deal, such as approval to begin our own crowd funding campaign. This might seem rather pie-in-the-sky, but there it is.

Well, we recently did approach WP. As you might imagine, they kindly declined the arrangement. So, we had to move on as normal. At first, we figured we’d just keep working on the project, since it had basically been a hobby up to that point anyway. However, it gradually became apparent that continued development would be considerably unviable for our current team and time restraints. Without the money required to at LEAST be able to work on the game full time with our current team, finishing Homestrife would simply take an unacceptably long time.

After realizing this, we had to ask ourselves a serious question: what is more worth our time? Continuing slow work on Homestrife with no immediate chance of going full-time on it? Or moving on to a new game with a new IP of our own that we would have full control over? Certainly the latter would be a tougher sell since we wouldn’t be working with an established popular IP, but we’d at least have the option to move to crowd funding whenever we wished. Furthermore, while working on Homestrife we have gained a lot of confidence in our own abilities, and as such we feel like we stand at least a decent chance of making a new game with a new IP that people would find fun and interesting on its own merits.

So, we’re moving on to a new game development project. What this means for Homestrife is that we will essentially be sitting on it indefinitely. Should some kind of funding for it become available in the future, we would consider getting back to work on it. For now though, we are going to release one last update with all of our applicable current work included. However, we’d also like to throw in the added bonus of releasing our in-house editing tools. This would allow others to create characters and stages, if they so desire. However, they are as limited as the engine itself, and won’t allow anyone to make new features. Finally, we’d also like to release a Linux build, if possible.

This might seem like a big final message, but we’re not dropping off the face of the Earth or anything. We’ll still watch the dev threads and respond, and our social media sites aren’t going anywhere. So feel free to ask any questions.

A couple last-second thoughts: first, do not ask if you can pick up the development of this project. If you’re passionate about making a game, I suggest you start your own project from scratch. We’re willing to give advice though. Such as “just use an already complete game engine.” There’s a freebie. Second, this might be a bit presumptuous of us to say, but please do not harass What Pumpkin about this. That would likely generate ill will and actually decrease the chance of a future arrangement.

Thanks should go out to everyone. Thanks to those in the development threads who gave their input. Thanks to those of you who followed this project and hoped for the best of it. Thanks to What Pumpkin for being so supportive of fan works. (your decision was understandable and there are no hard feelings) Thanks to the voice actors who still stuck with us after we blunderingly had auditions so early in development, and thanks even to those who didn’t. And, of course, thanks to the team. It’s been a fun and educational ride.

Based on this official message, there was no Cease and Desist? WhatPumpkin simply wasn’t interested, or had the resources, to take the devs in. They couldn’t directly support the project, but them shutting it down was due to a lack of time and resources.

Please do also note the message from the devs asking for people to not harass WP for not taking the Studio in, and thanking WP of being supportive of fan works in general.

[looney-mooney-studio]

Homestuck 2 gave me one (1) Johnkat (Junekat?) interaction and my inner fan girl artist went completely fucking wild.

I also have no idea what Candy Karkat’s gonna look like but I think I did a pretty okay job designing him. Maybe I should apply for whatpumpkin studios after I graduate

[davekat-sucks]

SERIOUSLY who owns/leads What Pumpkin right now? Hussie has been out of picture, so who??? Even in LinkedIn, it only has 3 employees with anonymous profile (including Animation Director, Project Coordinator, and another one with... blank position). You can't expect anyone (other than diehard fans, that is) willing to work for you if your company profile is nebulous at best. If you're so desperate to finish Hiveswap, be clear, be transparent, own your mistakes! Else, just move on already.

Exactly. Just admit it was a Kickstarter Scam and cancel the project. It's been over 10 years now since then. I wouldn't even be mad if they admitted that stuff like the Karkat Plushie funds will actually go towards Homestuck Beyond Canon. Because they ain't making much on their Patreon as of late. Their priority may as well be towards a shitty sequel than a project that has been funded a decade ago.

People who believe in that they are getting the full Hiveswap game and Hauntswitch are as crazy as the people who have faith in YANDERE SIMULATOR being complete.

[cyphochiluscreations]

animation process video for the dave animation meme i made recently! stick around and animate with me? i want to make more homestuck content ahahaha

♥ (ɔ◔‿◔)ɔ ♥

Support me on ptrn for more!

More information, socials, sh0p, & c0mmissi0ns located you know where :3

HQ version on ytb!

♥ (ɔ˘ ³(ˆ‿ˆc) Credits ♥

🎵 Again & Again - The Bird and the Bee

💕Characters (c) Andrew Hussie, Whatpumpkin (MSPA: Homestuck)

✏ Clip Studio Paint

🎬 CapCut

[sometipsygnostalgic]

wait, “whatpumpkin 3d”?

Hiveswap has gone through multiple stages with different companies. 

The first case was The Odd Gentlemen. It went terribly.

Then hussie formed Whatpumpkin Studios, which was working on a 3d version of the game. They’d opened a studio in Wall Street (???????) and were working on it full time.  

….Then Whatpumpkin Studios collapsed and reformed into Whatpumpkin Games, the 2d studio that FINALLY brought us Hiveswap Act 1. 

Whatpumpkin Games collapsed March 2018 and a couple of artists from this team remained to work on Friendsim, along with a new programmer, and long term musician James Roach who is the longest lasting team member.   

Right now, Hiveswap is being developed by Fellow Traveller, using assets created by Whatpumpkin Games before they were shelved. The only constants are Adrienne Garcia and James Roach, and Hussie and V as writers (but the head writer Cohen Edenfield has been replaced with Farah). Everybody else working on the game is different from Act 1, as far as I’m aware. 

[oct2pus]

some thoughts since i’m seeing anger:

Why Patreon?

I’m pretty sure this is a venture largely being funded and driven by Aysha more than Hussie. Considering this is a “in partnership” arrangement between her company Snake Solution Studios and What Pumpkin. I get that he provided a general guideline for the story but from the FAQ it sounds pretty “go nuts”. She appears to be doing most of the actual work of selecting artists and writers, so she has a lot of creative control over the project as well. Homestuck 2 also provided a short teaser of what I could expect if I throw money their way (something the Homestuck Kickstarter never did so i never donated), I liked Friendsim and Aysha seems like a decent writer and project lead so I’m pledging as I see this project develop, I’ll probably drop if it doesn’t seem worthwhile to me. Isn’t “official fanon” just canon? I don’t particularly have a defense for this line of thought. I’m going to go with “yes” since this is now an official, licensed work. The fans (literally anyone who actively wants to work with a licensed property is probably a fan of the property) who create Homestuck II are hand selected and its not really an ‘open’ project you can directly contribute to. You only really have suggestions if you’re a large influencer who is positive towards the work and also active primarily on Twitter, they may react to criticisms to varying levels of self-reflection (e.g. the work may reject ideas (perceived) ‘bad takes’). Is it bad in of itself for a work to be like this? No, thats literally how Comic Books work. Do I think they should advertise it in this way? No I really rather they didn’t. The only way to have ‘offical fanon’ is for the work to be in the public domain, or failing that; allowing outside people to use the license to sell works based on the property, similar to the now defunct kindle worlds.

Doesn’t VIZ own Homestuck, why can’t they finance it?

Viz does own Homestuck but it does not own What Pumpkin. We do not have legal details on how the Homestuck brand arrangement works, but it appears Hussie has the right to allow people to publish work based upon Homestuck.

Why isn’t Roach being paid?

As far as I can tell Homestuck in of itself (and not Hiveswap doesn’t seem to turn much money, being a free web comic and all. We again do not have knowledge on the relationship between VIZ and WhatPumpkin, but the Hiveswap hiatus implied to me that work stopped because they ran out of money, because the game didn’t particularly sell well. I do find Roach working without pay concerning; although as far as i know he makes money from album sales of the friendsim soundtrack so he will get paid eventually. I don’t think this is ideal and I personally would not have taken that sort of work even if it was for my friends. However, he’s an adult and his own person and he can make whatever choices he wants, he clearly thinks he has a good reason to do this and we should trust him to know more about the details than us.

Do you (me) think this will make me (you) happy?

No not really. This is me just working through information I’m presented with and exploring my own feelings on the matter. You’re just along for the ride. For example, I had to rewrite the ‘viz’ question because it turns out I was incorrect that Viz merely had publish rights, they have the full rights to Homestuck the work which frankly, really weakens my arguments! As with most things I am just cautiously optimistic. My big problems with the Epilogues was the finality and seeming inability for things to progress further despite them being teased, bad things happening *as an ending* is not the same as bad things happening in the middle of a story that is not complete, an actual continuation changes the discussion. Although I will say I find it offputting to think about how many people argued of those being “possible” timelines for us to explore further, only for the epilogues to be the ‘canon’ timeline.

[splatterdasher]

I doodled Charun while I took a short break from drawing today’s comic page. I love this worm-eating artist so much!

Charun belongs to @whatpumpkin Studios’ “Hiveswap” and was designed by @poinko .

[olmluvr]

i hate seeing that post about kc green comics bc i just have to know that he also worked on the fucking sbahj book. theyre the same kc green. the “this is fine” dog artist has whatpumpkin studios listed on his website under companies hes done work for. and i just sit here with that knowledge every single fucking day