Project Frixion - Full Q&A w/ Skijarama (Patreon)

For my upcoming deep dive into Spyro fanfilms, I got the chance to interview former Project Frixion director Skijarama about his experience leading this group which has since disbanded.

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Q: When did the project start and who was it started by?

A: I don't have an exact date for when the project was first 'started.' Considering the iterations it went through as people cycled in and out, I feel it is prudent to note that it basically became three different things over the course of its lifetime. I joined up in 2011, though, so it was originally conceived sometime before or during 2011.

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Q: How did you come to be the director?

A: The previous director had jumped ship for reasons I do not know / cannot recall. I was interested in participating, and in my naivete as an inexperienced and ignorant teenager, I thought that the big thing you needed for a movie were 3d models. So I went onto some Blender forums and posted up a listing for someone to be a 3d character modeler, and someone came back with a render of the titular Spyro in remarkable detail. I can only assume that, as I had actually shown results, the other scattered people on the team figured that I would be of most value in a leadership position. This was, frankly, a terrible idea, looking back on it in retrospect. It was 2011, and I am only 26 years old RIGHT NOW. That means I was in the first half of my teen years at the time. Oblivious, ignorant, inexperienced, and had no idea what I was doing. But in that same youthful stupidity, I took up the responsibility with gusto, and promptly sailed us by the seat of my pants into the ocean.

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Q: Who took over after you left, and were you still involved in any way?

A: I do not recall who took over after I left - it was a decade ago and life got difficult at around that point. so I didn't commit much mental energy to recalling names and faces. Once I made the decision to jump ship, I pretty much checked out entirely. I can only recall one moment of involvement where one of the members of the group that I had a friendly relationship with came to me to let me know that the new people on the team were getting a little, shall we say, 'liberal' with their changes to the concept of the project. Inserting new characters into the story, altering the chain of events, and in general steering things well off course. I briefly got back into things to scold the new directors and tell them that meddling with the source material like that is precisely why so many video game adaptations failed. But that scolding was about as involved as I got with that debacle. To my admittedly faulty memory, that was the last I heard from anyone about the project, and it just sort of slipped out of my mind after that. Real life had become the monster adults know it as, and I had to focus on that.

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Q: Just some follow-ups for clarification, how long did you stay on the project? And how much got done within that time?

A: I can't rightly recall how long exactly I was on the project, but I don't imagine it was much more than a year or two. I am fairly certain that I was no longer involved by the time I went to high school, so that doesn't leave a very big window. As for how much got done: A few pages of properly formatted script, some concept art we were, frankly, undeserving of, I think a couple of 3d models, and me staunchly refusing to let anyone but me be the voice of Malefor. Oh, and LOTS of group DM boxes and steam chats filled with brainstorming sessions.