Episode 3 Concept Art

A few of the designs, such as the house remains, won't be appearing until Rictus. There's quite a bit more concept art of new characters that will debut in the finale (not included for obvious reasons). It's frustrating having a bunch of designs that I'm extremely excited about but won't be able to do anything with for years and years and years. Such are the perils of running a one person animation studio and taking on several series at once.

Oh, and if you weren't already aware, the comic is back on track!

THE EMPIRE HAS RISEN

Coming off of a sixty+ hour work week, my four year marathon comes to an end as I break through the finish line tape (somehow tearing all my skin off in the process) and collapse face first onto the sprawling salt beaches of Uvenirtaly. I am too exhausted to scream, so instead I elect to remain still and become one with the burning. 

It's a satisfying kind of burning.

There's a lot I could post about right now. But I think that between the above "Making of" video and the last four years of collective whining, everything I have to say has already been said. What's more important right now is what is yet to come. The next few 'recovery' months will be occupied with relatively small tasks such as getting the comic going again (stay tuned for an announcement on when and how this will happen), finishing Hitting Stuff at a Building, designing the new website, and more perhaps. I've got a lot of ambitious and dangerously impractical ideas about the website redesign, but I don't want to say anything until Danielle and I can sit down and figure out what's feasible and what isn't. I'm worried my concepts won't work out because I've never seen a website like it before, but I hope that's because people are too afraid of losing traffic and not because it's impossible.

Come 2015, I'm going to have a whole new batch of exciting and terrifyingly complex projects to embark upon, including actually creating the website, The Adventures of Puddlenaut game, and the first of three gigantic projects intended for film festival distribution (and later, free internet distribution as always).

Like the artwork in this post so far? Do you perhaps like it enough to… wear it? Well, I've got something a little different to offer this time. I'm sick to death of wasting money on defective and poorly made Cafepress test prints, so instead I'm hosting these free mediapacks of graphics I've designed for clothing and merchandise. Download this zip and take it to any printing service of your choice to create your own merchandise! Shoddily printed work done by a third party is no longer my problem, but it can be yours for fifteen easy payments of zero cents! Alternatively, skip the headache and just use them as website/desktop decorations, whatever.

Interest in the junk frame giveaway was either depressingly low, or people these days just don't trust someone who makes animations about killing children with their physical mailing address, so every entrant should be receiving two to three frames instead of just one, if you didn't already get my form letter.

Stay in your seats, the ride's not over yet. In fact, I'm not even sure they built an ending to this ride let me check with my supervisor… ccchhkk- mmhmm…. mhmm… yeah, that's what I … mmm… cchkk. Right, as I said, they haven't built one. I can understand why some of you might object to the prospect of living out the rest of your life in a roller coaster seat, but you have to admit that you certainly got your money's worth when you bought the ticket. Value like that is hard to come by these days. Well then, now that that's settled I guess we should start breaking out the emergency provisions.

Halloween Hype Post

It's done. I can't believe it's actually, finally complete. Empire of Sock: Episode 3 and the complete omnibus cut will be released on Halloween 2014. I've got about two weeks yet, so I'm hard at work preparing more content to accompany the release:

THE MAKING OF EMPIRE (OF SOCK)

• Time-line of production and delays

• Footage of every stage in production

• Original versions of scenes/deleted scenes

EMPIRE OF SOCK CLOTHINGSTUFFS

• Six new shirts and maybe more Cafepress junk based on characters from the film!

EMPIRE OF SOCK TRASH FRAMES MAIL-AWAY SWEEPSTAKES

I don't compose my shots terribly carefully. Because of this, I end up tracing a shot multiple times, moving around individual shot elements each time until everything's positioned to my liking. This generates penciled-only junk frames that closely resemble part of the final shot, but cannot be used due to small defects or too many erased pencil lines that would show up during coloring.

I feel egotistical for thinking anyone would want these scraps, but it's this or the trash can. If you'd like one of these production mementos, send a (physical) mailing address to grey@barfquestion.com and I'll mail them out a few days before Halloween. I've got 12 regular sized frames and 5 large frames, and I'll try to evenly divide them between however many requests I get before Tuesday, October 21st. 

I can only guarantee prizes for the first 17 entrants!

reliable leak

keep meaning to update but time i spend updating is time that sock needs so no time for this what i'm doing right now it's halloween though i am told i am not supposed to give out release dates but seriously halloween good sources been working 12 hour days the last two days to make this future a reality planning things for around release like making of video deleted scenes sweepstakes what have you no one told me typing while brushing teeth would be this hard

I-It'll b-b-be worth it... right?

Just finished compiling my shot list for the last "half" of episode three. I hope you've all invested in cryogenics.

The Final Phase of The Final Phase Begins

I've just completed the first half of Episode 3, editing and all. I've discovered that doing some post-production work early on and getting some (relatively) instant gratification at seeing some of the finished product has a pleasant, sanity restoring effect.

I was also animating some rope physics for this. Rope physics are fun! My animation tutorial for rope physics:

1) Waste loads of paper trying in vain to comprehend basic movements.

2) Under no circumstances are you to use reference material.

3) Get frustrated after many hours of this and begin taking your anger out on the individual index card frames that aren't working, pretending that they have little paper feelings and that ripping them up will convince them to let you draw on them better next time (there will be no next time, you have just ruined them forever).

4) Walk away, smolder, general sulking.

5) Stay up until two in the morning.

6) If the ritual is a success, the rope physics visualization centers of your brain will now be active.

7) Continue refraining from all reference materials, YOU ARE NO MERE MORTAL

8) Gaze in awe as your digits spew forth vaguely passable representations of the material world on autopilot.

I later discovered the the top and bottom of the object I was animating got switched around during all the swooshy flippery, but it's unnoticeable in the final product.

The last half was already penciled and inked (a couple of years ago now), but upon unearthing these frames, I discovered them to be rather cromagnon when compared to the level of work I'm doing now. Also the ending has changed a bit since the project's conception. So it looks like I'm remaking the entire last half of this episode from scratch. I will likely be releasing a 'making of' video after release, which will include the (incomplete) cut content. I probably should include the original versions of several modified scenes as well, since I've been heavily reworking a ton of it to keep the quality consistent with the newer stuff I'm making.

In addition to the making of video, I'd like to get some new shirts out in case anyone cares about clothes still. I've got plans for a new Sock design, as well as three designs for the other gods, and maybe one for Ceriazibus.

Once again, when Empire is completed, I will be completely rehauling the website, getting the Tales of BarfQuestion comic back on track with regular updates, and embarking on tons of new projects, as always. I'll be reworking a couple of old music videos that either have copyright conflicts (or that I'm just unhappy with) into Toons, getting Hitting Stuff at a Building out, and announcing a trio of huge projects to be aimed at film festival distribution.

I had a speedrun of Dark Souls playing in the corner of my screen while I was touching up my frames in Photoshop this week, and started to wonder what speedruns of real life would be like before realizing that they actually exist and are called miscarriages.

"Mighty Workload ... • Post" is what it says to the left of this box.

The second leg of this unwieldily tripod monstrosity is finally complete. There isn't much to say about it that wasn't covered in the last post. Although that may be because I'm just coming off of a fourteen hour work day and my brains don't feel so good.

The Making of Corporal Meatfountain

Your ears may have noticed that this episode has really awesome music, especially in the last half. This new track, "Exitium Aeternus", was made by the Hamster Alliance for this episode. Unfortunately I didn't get to use much of it, but the rest will be in the third and final episode.

If anyone commissions me to build a waterpark this is what I'll... I can't build waterparks.  But this could be one.

I won't make any promises about the final episode- it's definitely going to take awhile. About half of it is penciled and inked. I'm going to be reanimating the other half from scratch. ...Reanimating. That's what they're going to have to do to me if I don't stop working and get some sleep soon. Goopnigt