Inside ‘MechWest’: How Blue Sky Vet And AnimSchool Founder David Gallagher Is Building An Indie Pipeline

David and Noah Gallagher aren’t chasing blockbuster budgets or studio backing with MechWest, an indie “steampunk western” series distributed by the duo on YouTube. Instead, the father-son team is looking to produce an ambitious independent project built out of their family’s love for animation, storytelling, and collaboration with artists from around the world.

“It’s all driven by our passion. We want to make fun things, cool things,” David tells Cartoon Brew. “The corporate approach is, you know, that’s just a means to make money. We inverted the whole process because it’s just about following our passion.”

From Blue Sky to the Wild West

David Gallagher isn’t just talking out of pocket, either. His animation pedigree is steeped in mainstream animation. “I worked at Blue Sky Studios for 11 years. I was a character development supervisor. I modeled, I rigged, I animated, and guided rigs into the animation department,” he explains. His credits span Ice Age, Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, and Rio.

Before Blue Sky was shut down for good by Disney following its purchase of Fox Entertainment, Gallagher decided to head west, relocating to Utah. But rather than chase another studio job, he turned his energy to teaching, founding AnimSchool, one of the world’s largest online animation programs.

“When we were just starting, we didn’t realize that the length of clip that an animator usually works on just happens to fit in with the TikTok generation of micro content… some of [the AnimSchool videos] have gone ultra viral,” Gallagher recalls. “Now, we have an AnimSchool short on YouTube that has 67 million views.”

That audience interest became the spark for MechWest.

The Birth of MechWest

What if robots existed in the 1800s? That’s the simple, Flintstones-style question that launched the show. “It just has this real sense of childlike wonder… What would a phone be like in the Stone Age? What kind of robots would they have back then?” David muses.

The father-son duo wanted to push into unexplored territory. “Your typical steampunk thing is very Victorian. This one, I guess there’s a term for it, which is ‘Cattle Punk,’ but it’s not explored nearly as much,” Noah explains.

And while the premise feels experimental, the show itself is built to be accessible. “We bonded over watching shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender,” the younger Gallagher said of their shared inspiration. “That show is something that kids and adults could enjoy. When it came time to make our own indie project, we thought: let’s do something like that,” Noah says.

AnimSchool as a Talent Pipeline

Much of MechWest’s strength comes from the school David built. “We have the super big benefit of up-and-coming, very strong artists who are just cresting at their skill level, right around the time they’re graduating… That’s really made all the difference,” he argues.

AnimSchool graduates don’t just leave with reels; some got their first paid job working on MechWest, although David does admit the pay is lower than what an artist would make at a studio job. That said, “It has always been part of the hope that our collaborators would have a stepping stone working on our project before going on to the next studio,” he adds.

Noah agrees, stressing that although the workforce may not be the most experienced in the industry, standards remain high: “It’s definitely not a charity hire, because these artists have proved that they deserve to be on board and we have rigorous standards… They have to demonstrate they can keep up and match the quality we’re achieving with the show,” he explains.

Character Designs from Madrid

Among the key collaborators is Spanish artist Isaac Jadraque, who has been working with the Gallaghers for years, designing all of MechWest’s human characters.

“David wrote to me on LinkedIn… we started working very slowly with the main characters. And we’ve been working this way for five years now,” Jadraque recalls.

He praises the clarity of the Gallaghers’ vision and clear directions. “They had the personality of each character very clear from the beginning… I had never had so much information about a character before I started designing. Their instructions were very detailed, both physically and psychologically,” he adds.

Remote, Global, Independent

The Gallaghers produce MechWest from Utah, but the show is a truly global effort. “We’re basically a wholly remote studio… able to do it without having to hire dozens of people to move to some place. They can just work from home,” Noah explains.

For Jadraque in Madrid, that model has been life-changing. “It coincided with the fact that I became a father in 2018, so it made things much easier for me, teleworking… and I’ve been lucky because I did not expect to find such long and steady projects,” he says.

Looking Ahead

Right now, MechWest is three episodes into its planned eight-episode first season. “We’re able to get an episode out maybe every four to five or six months right now,” Noah says, explaining that the process has sped up significantly with each new episode.

For the time being, each entry is released online on free streaming platforms, but the Gallaghers are actively seeking wider distribution: “We are actually speaking with some distributors and partners now,” David confirms.

In the meantime, the MechWest team continues to build momentum on YouTube, where indie animation can sometimes find a dedicated fanbase.

As MechWest steams forward, it’s carving out its own niche as a small but inventive indie project with family, quite literally, at its core.