Pond Wood studios are now for rent. Own one you’re not using? Lease it by the week. Paid on signing, tax covered. Never built one? Rent a fully geared studio and keep 100% of the box office. Opening weekend counts as week 1. The lot is open.

Day two of Pond Wood and someone already built a Soundstage. JURGENS. Three pieces of gear rented, supporting cast on payroll, and a shack sized town around him still reading the rules. He hasn't released a single film yet. First box office is Sunday the 25th. Lots are still for sale. The town isn't built. This is the part you'll wish you'd seen. studio.nonconformistducks.co…

Every trait you equipped was an audition. You just didn’t know it. Published Duck 2.0s are getting new stats, read from the full look: background, clothes, eyes, all of it. Together. A Silk Kimono in a jewelry boutique? Comedy 72. What’s yours made for?

Pond Wood is open. The movie capital of the Pond, where your ducks stop being pictures and start working for a living. Here’s the shape of it. There are forty lots and no more. You buy one, you build a studio, and from then on you release one film a week. Monday the billboard tells you which genres the public wants. Monday to Thursday you build your film in secret. Friday every poster in town goes public and you finally see what you’re up against, too late to change anything. Sunday night the box office comes out, film by film, last place to first and the best films are paid in ETH. Your duck’s affinity isn’t a number someone assigned it. When a duck is published, an AI screen test reads its final look as a whole and scores it for all six genres. Not trait by trait: a mummy wrap reads horror against a dark background and comedy next to a party hat. Those scores are public, on OpenSea, on every duck, go look at yours right now. Some of you are sitting on a 92-Horror lead and don’t know it. Then there’s the part nobody can see. Every genre has eight roles; four are on the call sheet each week, the same four for everyone. You name your character and pick the part. Each role secretly looks for certain answers in your duck’s profile and runs from others, and it judges the look too. Born for the part: +20. Absurd in it: −20. A 90-Horror duck in the wrong role plays like a 70, and you don’t find out until Sunday in front of everyone. Every drop now has its week on screen. Hall of Fame is this week’s Action edition, Stardust is Sci-Fi. Two traits from a collection make a duck ✦ for it, one pack is usually enough. Declare the edition on your call sheet and the poster carries the name: Sci-Fi · Stardust Edition. Each ✦ lead adds +6. Two traits, not ten: dressing a duck head to toe in one collection wins you nothing extra. It’s a casting call, not an arms race. Editions rotate with the drops. You don’t need a lot to play. List a duck on the job board for 5 $NONCO a week and set your cut, a percentage of the prize of any film that hires it. Producers pay that out of their own winnings. Set your ducks’ profiles, publish a look that reads like something, and let other people’s studios pay you. ✦ ducks get picked first when someone is casting that edition. Legacy ducks act too. They can’t equip traits, so they perform with their sealed art, exactly as it was forged. Their affinities never change. Veterans, typecast for life, and all 122 are already on the call sheets. Where the money goes: 60% of everything spent in Pond Wood comes back as prizes. Weekly box office pays the top 12, the Golden Duck takes a quarter of the pot. Indie Darling goes to the best Backlot of the week, so a shack can beat a tower. After six weeks the season champion takes the season pot and a star on the Walk of Fame. All in ETH. How to be in the first box office, in four steps: Open the Studio and fill your duck’s profile: nine questions, two minutes. No profile, no casting. Publish its look. The screen test runs on its own a minute later and gives you your six genre scores. Buy a lot: 5,000 $NONCO, yours to resell with your studio’s level, trophies and history attached. Pick a genre, name your characters, lock the film by Thursday 23:59. No lot? Stop at step two and list the duck instead. We’re opening on a Friday, so the whole weekend counts as Monday of week one, buy, cast and build with no clock on you. First box office: Sunday the 25th, 21:00 BA. Forty lots. When they’re gone, the only way in is buying one from a holder.