Mighty Workload of BarfQuestion

The Final Delay

2012-01-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

Since 2008, I've had each of my series more or less planned out: how many more episodes I'll be making, how they'll end; which characters should return, which characters should die, which characters need to lose some organs/heads; amorphous genetic monstrosities made from human limbs, flying condom carpets, and nuclear warhead spiders- all planned. Except for Valentine's Day. This short was initially just a one-off gift, not really meant to go anywhere (as evidenced by the slightly awkward and directionless sequel, VD2008).

Since it began, I decided to make them for as long as was possible, or as long as both Danielle and myself enjoyed them. However, since 2007, each installment has more or less increased in complexity. This has become a problem for two reasons- A) the more time these gifts require, the less time I spend with the recipient. "Valentine's Day 2012" saw me working 50+ hour weeks throughout December, and we've both agreed this has become slightly unhealthy. Reason number B): The Valentine's Day series, being the only series with a deadline, has been nearly single-handedly responsible for every major production delay in history. "Empire of Sock" has now been put on hold twice to make way for this series.

And so, Valentine's Day 2012 is going to be 1) probably a little late because of it's complexity, and 2) the last regular update to the Valentine's Day series. In a few years, I'd like to make one final "send off" episode for the series to tie everything off properly (as VD2012 wasn't written with it being a finale in mind). So, see you in later-than-usual February/early March for the penultimate "Valentine's Day 2012."

Trendy SOPA/PIPA post + DIY Free Gift That You Had All Along

2012-01-26T10:43:00.000-08:00

As you might have heard, the government is getting all up in our cooking apparatus again in an attempt to pass SOPA/PIPA. In short, these are bills that will disembowel the internet and offer its organs as tribute to the Gods of the Entertainment Industry (who have become angered as they have chosen to think that online piracy is to blame for their lack of success, rather than the truth, which is that nearly everything they sell is uninspired trash).

The record labels that own the music that I've made officially commissioned music videos for are already kind of unmanageable. One, in particular, continuously flags my videos on YouTube, I theorize, in order to put ads on them (ungratefully failing to realize that my videos are already free advertising for them, and they should be thankful to even have them online). If these laws were to pass, my site could automatically be shut down without my consent in a similar act of kerdickery, and I would have to go through court to prove that I have the rights to upload my own work. (In reality, if these bills pass, I'll just rip the music out of the videos in question and replace them with a proper soundtrack. And considering some of the music's quality, that'd be beneficial to everyone.

Anyways, instead of blacking my site out or putting melodramatic censor strips over logos, I did something else. As I mentioned earlier, I spent a month or so in early 2011 remastering all my work in HD. I did this with intent to put out a DVD later on, but then I realized something. I art because I enjoy it. Not because of money. These multi-billion dollar enterprises and (to a slightly lesser extent) their artist-slaves are already rolling in lakes of cash and seas of supporters, but I've become content with my tiny shack of a career, out in the middle of some dense woods that not many venture out to because of all the ticks. And so I uploaded all the 1080p files of my work (originally intended for the DVD) to MegaUpload for free download.

But then the government realized they didn't need SOPA nor PIPA to be corrupt and took down MegaUpload on a bunch of overinflated charges and technicalities. Along with all the files I spent a few days uploading. As I don't have time to put them up on another site (only for the government to tear them down too), I've made some instructions (that many of you may have already known about) in order to download any of my work in HIGH DEFINITION.

STEP 1) Go to http://www.blip.tv/barfquestion
STEP 2) Scroll down and click on the animation you wish to download.
STEP 3) Copy the URL
STEP 4) Go to http://www.keepvid.com
STEP 5) Paste the URL of the selected video into the text field and hit DOWNLOAD in a dramatic fashion
STEP 6) Right click and select "Save File as" on your desired file type.
        Select >>Download MP4<< - 1080p if you want a HUGE FILE for GRAND PURPOSES such as burning a DIY compilation DVD.
        Select >>Download MP4<< - 240p if you want a TINY FILE for TINY PURPOSES such as putting the animation on a mobile/handheld device.
        Select >>Download M4V<< - 360p for some kind of iPod format thing. It is fairly tiny, and also suitable for tiny purposes, like putting on mobile devices.

You absolutely can:
• Feel free to make archives/torrent(s) of these files and upload it to various file sharing/torrent sites. File sharing sites are getting hit hard though, so be aware that your hard work might go to waste.
• Copy these files to your various fancy mobile devices.
• Copy these files to your various not fancy mobile devices.
• Burn DVDs to share with friends, fellow fans, or family.
• Use screen captures/footage for fan sites/media/tattoos, etc. (Use with discretion. Stumbling upon good fanstuff boosts self-esteem and productivity. Stumbling upon cancerous fanstuff makes me question if I should even be uploading my work to the internet in the first place).
• HURRY AND DOWNLOAD THEM ALL BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND THE FEDS TAKE DOWN KEEPVID TOO WAUGH.

You absolutely can not:
• Upload these files to other video hosting sites/film festivals.
• Charge money for these files.

Happy Holidays and remember to steal, share, and enjoy!

EYES! Cease your bleeding!

2011-11-19T22:17:00.001-08:00

Are you tired of watching animations in full screen and being treated to this heresy?

Wouldn't you rather be treated to this kind of heresy instead?

Remember earlier this year when I said I put off Empire of Sock for an entire, precious month just to reshoot and remaster my older projects? That's right. They're online now, and making a marginal difference to everyone, everywhere. You can head over to the films page or my new blip.tv page and start rewatching everything in shiny HD. The 'HD' doesn't stand for 'high definition' (as it's probably not technically HD), but rather 'Hot Dangity' (because it's a lot better than what we had before).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HD Remastering change log of petty changes:
• All animations have been reshot and remastered except for:
- ARGHHHTOR (because some of the original frames are missing due to being burned during filming)
- VoyageWaffle (because I was missing the live-action/photo components)
- You Don't Want to Leave (because I hate it)

• SuperVillain is now semi-colored due to a poor coloring job done several years ago for an On Demand-only TV special.

• Valentine's Day 2007 has new music.

• SuperVillain 3 has slight timing/editing fixes, as well as improved lighting effects.

• SuperVillain IV has additional sound effects for the Popezord's movement.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile on the update front: Valentine's Day 2012 is well underway and looking like it might be the largest and most complicated episode yet, which means I'm in for an insanely hectic couple of months (after which I get to enjoy another insanely hectic couple of months finally getting Empire of Sock completed). Hitting Stuff at a Building is, as always, cruising along. It is often cruising in a stationary fashion however, as I'm a jerk and keep holding it back in order to add more stuff in.

In case you missed it, I also released a preview consisting of the first two minutes of Empire of Sock on Halloween. Go check it out!

THE ANIMATIONS HAVE ACHIEVED CRITICAL MASS

2011-10-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

As you might have heard from the endless torrent of whining going on in the comic, Empire of Sock has reached maximum density and is actively collapsing into some kind of black hole that only obliterates time. I thought this would be a good time to go back and explain just how ridiculous things have become through demonstrating exactly how much these animations have mutated over the last five years. After all, excuses are the currency that fuels the.. printing presses, so let's.. end this sentence. I'm under the impression that this entry will be really, really boring, but everyone's always on my case to tell them about how I animate, SO YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELVES!

(click to enlarge)

Way back in 2007 when BarfQuestion Films began, animations were retarded little things that took maybe 10 - 15 hours max to pump out. Black and white, with little to no shading, and sketchy, ass style that I was able to whip out on the fly because I hadn't discovered quality standards or the existence of light tables (as I was tracing all my frames in midair over a hand powered flashlight that died every two to three minutes.

(click to enlarge)

After awhile of this I decided I'd be really hardcore and spend more than a week on these things. Thus production time bumped up to 30-40 hours and I started doing really fancy stuff, like shading! This black and white stuff got really old though, and I decided to finally start applying myself.

(click to enlarge)

Having finally acquired a light table, I began saving a lot of time because I wasn't stopping every three minutes to wind the flashlight back up and didn't have to break my wrists attempting to trace frames in midair. I could also work past 10 p.m. without pissing off my roommate by making hideous whirring sounds from the aforementioned flashlight winding. Having finally discovered the time-saving magic of self induced insomnia, BarfQuestion Films achieved a new level. And so I made the transition into low quality, extra scribbly, and low saturation color. At this point, things started to get more out of control, and I slowly moved into production time involving hours in the triple digits.

(click to enlarge)

The fourth stage revolved mostly around learning to not suck so much. As in, making the colors more vivid, and the animation more swooshy and fancy-like. Now animations were solidly out of the "took me dozens of hours to animate" region and fully into "took me hundreds of hours to animate" territory. And here is where I hit a wall. Having achieved critical mass, I could no longer effectively increase the amount of detail in these films without exponentially increasing production time. I knew I had to do something if the madness were to further escalate.

With 2010's "The Faster the Treadmill" music video, certain shots required that I 'composite' several frame elements on top of each other, instead of drawing every detail of every frame for every frame like I usually do. Suddenly it occurred to me that I could use this process for my normal animations too. A huge amount of time is wasted on shots where the background is simply three repeating frames, but the subject is moving all over. So why draw the background dozens of times? Why not just make the three background frames separately and then composite the action on top of it? I then researched this and learned that this is basically how all animation is done, since forever, and I was just being retarded this whole time. Just another 'self taught animator' moment.

For the "you wouldn't have these problems if you used computers 100% of the time" faction of fans, I ALREADY TRIED THAT. I'm not very good with computers but this program called KidPix sounded pretty legit, but not even that lived up to my expectations. And no one's going to convince me that there's a better computer drawing program than KidPix. It has an ice cream stamp.

I was under the impression that this new method would magically hurl me through animations at the speed of light, and became severely depressed after spending over half a year on "Empire of Sock." WHY WASN'T THE MAGIC WORKING? WHY IS IT STILL TAKING SO LONG?? I did a quick, rough estimate today and realized that "Empire" is going to be like 7-10 minutes of non-stop action sequences (and insanely detailed ones at that). Suddenly everything makes sense. The upside to this is that this episode should be the best yet, besides possibly breaking the record for my longest animation. The bad news is that it seems I will have to drop production on this at the beginning of November in order to get "Valentine's Day 2012" out on time. Production on "Empire" will then resume in February, hopefully seeing a release by April. Even worse, I realized recently that the "SuperVillain 6" trailer said it would be out in 2011, and I'll be lucky to get that thing out before 2013 at this rate as it is just as enormous and hectic as "Empire" will be (if not more). Fortunately, several of the series are nearing their ends, and the ever escalating production times will finally cease (hopefully).

Well after all that boring animation technique jargon/whining/excuse-making, I should probably drop some new info on the third episode. Talks have been underway, and the Hamster Alliance will be producing the score for this episode. And the music I've heard so far is some really incredible stuff that matches the tonal shift and atmosphere of the piece perfectly. Secondly, I did a ton of planning and writing for this project. Because of this, the visuals and narrative are both complex and at their most surreal in this one, although I guarantee there will be loads of retards writing it off as "totally random" or "you sure must do a lot of drugs" because I'm not dumbing it down to make sure the imagination-deficits will understand it. I've also been sure to include multiple scenes of nearly every creature and character in the series thus far (as well as several new ones), as to make sure everyone gets in on the action. The only people that will be disappointed will be fans of the propane tank from "Dawn of Sock," and big heart catfish thing from "Advent." But that's okay, because most people thought the propane tank was a jar of exploding mayonnaise.

Okay, my self-esteem meter is bottoming out as the voices telling me that this information is really inane and boring are getting really loud and exasperated. I'm trying to update the comic whenever possible, time's just in short supply lately. But there are like a million stupid easter eggs that I'm sure no one's found yet, so I'll just leave you all with that in an attempt to frustrate and keep you all entertained a little (actually a long) while longer.

Messy, Poorly Drawn Keyframes Sure Make Great Teasers

2011-05-20T09:37:00.000-07:00

Penciling on Empire of Sock is, as always, taking forever for a variety of reasons. While you wait, please enjoy the complementary peanuts (both invisible and intangible) and these teasers consisting of malfunctioning rough sketches/keyframes (that I've since turned into much prettier actual frames).

At one point I was having serious difficulties animating how Ceriazibus' heads split open and ended up drawing it like a tiny bird.
Final product guaranteed to be 500% less cute. Anyway, I'll get back to you in five years when all the animating is finished.

Valentine's Day Double Feature!

2011-02-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

Happy Extra Special Early Valentine's Day! As you should have watched by now, Valentine's Day 2011 has been completed and is online! As previously mentioned, this one is a bit shorter than normal because someone complained that it was really hard to match a gift that took several hundred hours to make, but someone doesn't realize that someone is so special that she totally deserves such a time consuming gift.

Speaking of Valentine's Day gifts, this year Danielle gave me a super awesome present in the form of an adorable flash game! I made some artwork for it and we added some extras and the result is a game by the title of Cardiac Snowdrift! (Click the link to play, or alternatively play it with medals on NewGrounds here)

There are a couple of neat features we're really proud of in this. Firstly, thirteen different characters from the Valentine's Day series periodically pop up and comment on your progress!

Next, in the past years I've gotten several commission requests to make Valentines for other people's significant others, which I absolutely refuse to do (paying other people to express affection for you is not expressing affection)! But this game contains a kind of compromise! By rapidly picking up hearts quickly enough, you'll unlock one of thirteen, downloadable Valentine's Day cards (although two are unlocked under special conditions)!

These were inspired by those stupid elementary school era, slip of cardboard style Valentines you glue candy to. You can download, print, email, send and/or creepily palm them to whoever you want!

There is also an easter egg for anyone who earns 99,999 points (we estimate this would require playing the game without dying for about 70-100 hours straight).

This is only a small beginning for BarfQuestion Games. As previous posts have shown, we're still in the middle of a much larger game called "Hitting Stuff at a Building." I can't give any estimates at all about when our other games will be coming out (they are really slow and unpredictable), but this is our tentative queue for game projects:

1. Hitting Stuff at a Building

Destroy a gargantuan skyscraper with a badminton racket, and of course, stuff.

2. The Adventures of Puddlenaut

The (hand drawn) 8-bit game featured in "The Faster the Treadmill" music video, including an open ended free will mode starring Fetusaur.

3. Orb of Sock

Burning victims and summoning giant monsters as Sock.. in a pinball machine.

4. SuperVillain Simulator (working title)

Could quite possibly be the most open ended game ever designed. Do everything you've always wanted to as our cardboard clad antagonist.

5. Barfnarök (working title)

A massively indulgent game. Not going to say anything else about this right now.

Anyways, that's more than enough of getting your hopes all up (just so I can dash them against the pavement later WAHAHAH). Next up is "Empire of Sock!" I'm going to be doing some animation experimentation on this one, so there is a good chance I'll be posting about it again well before it is released.

Inconsequential Swarm of the Tiniest News

2011-01-19T18:39:00.000-08:00

Suddenly, there are lots of trivial updates to be sharing with you! I've been doing my annual site tinkering and thought I'd first run over a list of little stupid things I added for you completionists.
* There are 17 new animated gifs on the animated gif page.
* I finally fixed some minor site bugs, including upgrading the films page so that it's not tediously infuriating to navigate.
* There's fourteen new entries (in two directories) on the poorly hidden database section for those who have found/care about it.

Next up, the comic! My new year resolution was to do more of this. I realized that on my YouTube page I've been advertising that I update the comic five times a week (see below image). I then realized I either needed to edit that image or start updating five times a week again. And for some reason updating more frequently seems less inconvenient than modifying an image but I don't know how that works. So be sure to start checking the comic out five days a week again starting Monday, January 24th!

In other news, Sulek is getting close to releasing their third album, "Birds in the Attic!" I'm not doing the artwork for this one, so I hope no one got their hopes up that I would. I actually was pretty involved in the creation process this time, but none of my material worked out. The album title was initially "There's No Bottom," and so I made this concept art/pitch for the band when they asked for artwork:

The idea was that the album artwork, as in "Believer's Lane," would convey a story. This time the band traveled to a city of giants and stole a giant's butt, leaving him with no bottom. They then ran away and fell off the city and fell forever because there was no bottom (again). However that idea wasn't serious enough, so it got dropped and then the title underwent lots of changes. The band decided they wanted to do a bird themed album and asked me for a title suggestion and so I pitched the title "Lookout, Windshield!" but that didn't take either. They finally decided on "Birds in the Attic," and I decided I didn't want to draw birds in an attic, and so I didn't.

In the next episode of "Grey's Excuses," I'll try to justify why I haven't released a new game in over a year!

Anyways, speaking of Sulek- for a limited time they've got a couple of new tracks up for download and some new show dates so check that out at their site!

Up next - Valentine's Day!

The Ol' End of the Year Post

2010-12-17T14:41:00.001-08:00

Every year I've been posting previews for the next year's worth of material, however I've noticed I never have time to finish them all. So starting this year, I'm doing previews for the next three projects on my queue (followed by three more when those are done, etc). Anyway, I've noticed every year has kind of been taking on a 'theme' of sorts. 2009 was almost entirely dark/horrory stuff and 2010 involved a lot of water. 2011 is going to be MORE EXPLODEY THAN AN OCULAR DYNAMITE ENEMA.

Valentine's Day 2011
As usual, I can't really talk about this here! The only thing I'll say about it is that I think this one is probably the strangest one I've done so far. It's also probably going to be a bit simpler/shorter than last years (by request).
As of right now I've finished the keyframes and have gotten maybe a fourth to a third of it penciled? Not really sure, HENCE THE QUESTION MARK.

Empire of Sock
I already previewed this last year, but it's really happening this time! "Dawn" was largely a standalone piece that introduced everything, "Advent" was Sock's plan being set into motion, but finally, "Empire" is going to be where the exploding colons really collide with the various blowing apparatuses. If you read "Genesis of Sock," you may have a fair idea of what's coming.
This one is going to contain some of the most entertaining action sequences that I've ever done. It's going to be difficult to animate, but I'm really looking forward to drawing loads of reality defying madness.

SuperVillain 6
Throughout his makeshift career, SuperVillain has encountered resistance from various, incompetent forces attempting to stamp out his calling in life. However the biggest threat to his livelihood is about to arrive in the form of one of his own kind, and a rather psychotic one too. To worsen matters, a returning enemy has been thoroughly upgraded and is back in town in response to recent events. In order to survive, SuperVillain will have to take on two powers that are far in excess of his own.
I've been sitting on this idea since I was making SuperVillain IV and I am extremely excited to get started on it, although it is going to be murderously difficult to produce.

"Hitting Stuff at a Building" might crop up at any time too. But there are no predictions being issued on account of my estimates always being horrifically wrong. A cat passing through on my keyboard had this to say: "p0---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------loooooooooooooooooooooooooooo vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv"

The Return of SuperVillain

2010-12-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

It's been over two years, but SuperVillain has finally returned! I apologize that this is coming out a month and a half later than expected. Some very unfortunate things happened during the time I was working on this which delayed production considerably.

I really enjoy animating big robots and explosions and all, but for this installment I wanted to get back to the series' roots of simply running around and generally ruining everything without some major threat to fight. I especially wanted to do this to break up the enormity of SuperVillain IV and the upcoming SuperVillain 6, which is going to be gargantuan (stick around after the credits for a teaser trailer).

I actually did my first ever pickup shots on this project (meaning I finished production and had to go back and animate new shots). The baby/shark fishing sequence wasn't initially planned, but as I neared completion I couldn't believe that I had forgotten to include a token infanticide scene. I MUST BE GOING SENILE IN MY OLD AGE OR SOMMFING.

I've really missed working on SuperVillain, and so I'm making a serious effort to do an episode in both 2011 and 2012. The large and tedious amounts of work that goes into every project gives me a lot of time to think about what to work on next, and so I have pretty solid ideas of what I'm doing with both the sixth and seventh installments.

Anyway since this year has been overflowing with delays, setbacks, and bitter disappointment, I'm going to get started on Valentine's Day 2011 now in order to get going on Empire of Sock early next year. I'll update this blog at least once more this year to give a preview of the next couple of projects I'll be undertaking.

This year is kind of a gravy train, but only in the sense that it's really slow and keeps clogging your arteries.

2010-10-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

This year has had this irritating release schedule pattern where I finish a project and then its release is delayed until I finish the next project (whose release is then delayed until the completion of the next project and so on). HENCE THE TRAIN MADE FROM GRAVY.

Remember at the start of the year when I said 'SuperVillain V' was going to be this fun, short, little project that I could speed through before starting on 'Empire of Sock?' Between the tears and frustration sometimes I can too. It's going to be (probably) of average length (3-4 minutes), but it has got an obscene frame count that dwarfs all other SuperVillain projects to date.
The project is about half way through inking after two weeks of delays due to lots of stuff going on in my life. I'm plowing through it again and hopefully will finish in November. "Well butts," you say, "doesn't that only leave a month for production on Empire of S-," to which I would reply "MOTHER OF BALLS I AM COMPLETELY AWARE OF THIS." But I've got a plan, which I will detail in a paragraph or so.

The other question you might have is why 'Hitting Stuff at a Building' has been at 95% completion for a couple months now. Basically, I've completely finished with all of my work on this game, so it isn't something I'm having to put time into any more. However I have no idea how to estimate the amount of work necessary for programming so I just stuck the progress bar at some arbitrary number.

"ENOUGH ABOUT THAT BUILDING GAME," you cry hysterically, "WHAT ABOUT EMPIRE OF SOCK?!" to which I reply with sedatives and deportation notice to the moon. And by that I mean either a notice to deport you to the moon or a notice to deport the moon which will flood you out of existence so I win either way.
With that all cleared up, basically all I can say is there is nowhere near enough time to undertake the monstrosity that is 'Empire of Sock' in a month and a half (or less). So I'm going to start 'Valentine's Day 2011' early once SuperVillain is done which will allow me to get an early start on 'Empire' in 2011. Valentine's Day will probably be a bit simpler this year as well because Danielle has complained that apparently it's really hard to match a gift that took several hundred hours to make.

The good news is that I hope to get a Sock project done this year. "HOW THE F-" you begin to scream, to which I ponder how you are communicating with me from either the moon or from under all this water. Unfortunately the only mystery I'm capable of solving today is what's going on with Sock this year.
The 600th Tales of BarfQuestion comic is coming up, for which I previously planned to make a second chapter of 'Syphilis Rice.' I wrote the script out for it, but I really don't feel like doing it at the moment. All was lost until awesomely, I remembered my long held ambition to make a prequel story to the Sock series. This was either going to be a movie or a game, but I realized it would work much better as a short graphic novel type thing. So there you go moon dwellers/drowning victims. There should hopefully be some new Sock material (laden with plenty of blatant hints about the plot of Empire) coming in the next month or whenever.

FIGHTAN' SOME DRAGONS

2010-07-13T12:14:00.001-07:00

The official music video for "The Faster the Treadmill" by I Fight Dragons is out! Watch it here!

I began work on this for the band shortly after completing Grumatorium and later finished it in April. I Fight Dragons utilizes a lot of game controllers and NES era material into their music and performances so I approached this video from a similar perspective; I started by designing and animating gameplay footage from a fictional 8-bit game that the video would take place in.

The result was "the Adventures of Puddlenaut," in which a shark-armed diver hero does battle with deep sea creatures in order to mine mystical power crystals that are abundant in the underwater kingdom. The main grunt enemies, one of which is the protagonist of the video, were modeled after drowned fetuses since I couldn't find any deep sea creatures to fit the image I was looking for. Thus I ended up calling the main character "Fetusaur" throughout production.

After designing and animating the fake game footage digitally using a set of hand drawn sprites, it was a long process of animating the rest of the video traditionally and then compositing the two types of animation together where they overlapped.

There is an awful lot going on during the video, leaving plenty of room for interpretation (and confusion). There is a message I was trying to convey, but I think everyone will find their own meaning whether or not it is the same as what I intended.

There were several games that I drew inspiration from/stuck homages in for, but people's guesses as to what these are have been all over the place. To clear things up, the following are the only ones I intentionally inserted homages to:

Super Mario Bros

Inspiration for the level design, plus considering its status as the best known 8bit platformer, it seemed wrong not to include it.

Megaman

The original series is a favorite of both myself and the band. I included homage to these games in the final boss scene, in

which the chamber has the same time pausing shutter style doors.

Final Fantasy

A favorite of the band, but a game I know hardly anything about (on account of my distaste for RPGs). Every game seems to

revolve around magic crystals according to my brief research, and so the story of "the Adventures of Puddlenaut" is centered

around glowy crystals.

the Katamari series

The first two games are some of my favorite, if not my favorite, games. In a group shot of enemies there is a vaguely Katamari

shaped, green plant in the back (unfortunately it got pretty cropped out in post production).

Portal

The sequel looks like Pixar-inspired garbage, but I adore the original. There is a certain cuboid cameo for all of two frames

during a camera movement early on that is virtually invisible without obsessive pausing.

This is the first and last time I'll ever incorporate video games in my work however, as the internet's over-saturation of crappy video game animations is frankly nauseating.

Stay tuned for BarfQuestion Games debut title "Hitting Stuff at a Building" and a new installment in the SuperVillain series during the next few months! Check out the previous entry for more information because I am all full of hectic and busy and it is difficult to write more things for you when I am moving around this much.

HOLDUP, WHAT IS THE

2010-07-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

People seem a little more panicky than usual about there not being any updates, and with reason, because there haven't been any updates. Contrary to assumptions however, I have been hard at work this entire time. What's the deal then? After Valentine's Day 2010 was released, I ended up working on two projects that (unbeknownst to me) wouldn't see release for a long time.

The first of these projects is the music video I was commissioned to do for I Fight Dragons. Production was finished in late April, but it's been stuck in Atlantic Record's "Marketing Hell Zone of Ultimate Apathy" ever since as the suits decide how best to 'utilize it.' The joys of professional work!

The second project is nearing completion on my end, and it is a game that goes by the title of "Hitting Stuff at a Building." I bumped the adventure game off my immediate list of projects in favor of this, and it will be BarfQuestion Games premiere project. I'll finish working on this in a few weeks and then it'll be sent off to programming. Have a teaser!

Within a sprawling urban landscape, an enormous complex is being constructed. Truly a pinnacle of both human engineering and lust for packing miserable people into constraining spaces, the tower (even while under construction) stands out as an unprecedented achievement upon the horizon. That is until a BarfQuestion with a badminton racket discovers the construction site.

The gameplay is the resulting chaos of this chance encounter. It's racquetball meets badminton meets breakout, all while dodging avalanches of potentially lethal debris, evading the cops, inflicting misery on the construction workers, and finding new and interesting things to hit at the building (and everything else in the vicinity). Features could potentially include unlimited randomly generated gameplay, thirty unique cutscenes, mini-games, and multiple endings.

In other (older) news, I also designed this poster for Sulek as they've got a few upcoming live shows. Check out their Myspace for more information on show times! Additionally, they now have an official website at http://www.sulekmusic.com which you should also visit!

I apologize to everyone for not knowing in advance that these would be slow moving projects, but I assure you that I've been working my crapping facilities off to get them completed. However, if you were understandably disappointed by the first half of 2010, holy-scalding-pants-zipper-fresh-out-of-the-dryer, the second half is going to be more exciting than jet skiing into a volcano filled with those little plastic ball-pit balls. Behold my new queue of projects that I'll be starting on in a couple weeks:

1) SuperVillain V

2) Empire of Sock

3) Short toon, TBA

In addition to this, the slow-butt projects from the first half of the year will be showing up sporadically as well. I hope it will be exciting and not in a "I'm so disappointed that I'm excited" kind of way.

INSUBSTANTIAL UPDATIN TIME

2010-04-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

The update hiatus is fortunately nearing an end, as things are beginning to bear some semblance of sanity again. I've been spending every waking minute on the new music video, but now that's it's completed I can start to relax and resume activities I enjoy like sleeping.

So you're probably wondering that, if the video is done, why it isn't online yet. Like with the last few music videos I've done, the band who commissioned it (I Fight Dragons) wants to delay the release for a week or two until we can do one big coordinated release.

However, I Fight Dragons is currently on tour and in about a week or so there's a good chance the video will be playing live during their performances. If it begins playing live, I'll post an update on the comic with details of when and where they will be showing it. If the internet was an old radio with a bunch of stations you'd probably rather be listening to I'd tell you to stay tuned! BUT I DON'T HAVE TO BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO ANYWAYS. THIS ISN'T A RADIO.

Oh yeah, and the comic will start updating again this Monday (May 3rd).

In older news, the Wisconsin Film Festival was really neat. Watching an enormous projection of something you made with a live theatre audience is intense. At one point I think one of the jokes went over the audiences' heads but about five seconds later one person abruptly went "HAH" very loudly. It was awesome.

So now I begin on the next group of projects! In the sidebar where I list my current projects, you'll notice that the two new game projects now have working titles! These are subject to change but I suck at coming up with titles so they'll probably just stay as they are. I'll talk about these more after the music video is released.

After the games page is populated a bit, there are going to be loads of series updates for the next 12 months. If you're only sticking around for SuperVillain or Sock episodes, they sure are on their way.

tl;dr- Music video is done and will be out sometime in the next few weeks with a possibility of live showings, the daily comic is coming back May 3rd, plus new games are now in production, followed by more series updates!

In the next post: ACTUAL INFORMATION

VALENTOON

2010-02-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is here and so is a new Valentine's Day cartoon (Also on Newgrounds here)! You should maybe be watching that RIGHT NOW if you haven't already. This one picks up immediately after the one I did in 2009 on the evening of the zombie invasion, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to have seen that one previously.

I need to find a way to write down all of the info on all these randomly appearing species in my work. I inadvertently come up with backgrounds on all the creatures while designing them, but there's no subtle way to include it (as they are probably better left untouched). Though if I were to clarify all of this lame continuity junk, people might stop assuming SuperVillain to be a child.

The cow was made by my mom for my birthday last month! (It doubles as a box)

Anyways! I will now be launching full speed into the long delayed I Fight Dragons music video, whilst occasionally in my incredibly limited spare time, be working on the 'secret project' you might have seen pop up in the progress meter section on this page. My fiancée discovered she was incredibly talented with Flash recently, so we are giving making games a try! The pilot game doesn't have a title yet, but I'll post more about it when I can.

Hopefully I'll be reporting back in a month or two with a super neat music video (and possibly a game)! Enjoy, and Happy Valentine's Day!

2010 is like a pair of conjoined twins but one of them is always doing twice as well.

2009-12-22T21:13:00.001-08:00

HOLY RECTAL MUCUS. 2009 is almost over and between delaying projects and not updating the comic, I finally realized how horrifically flaky I've gotten lately! That is terrible because I am disappointing myself for shirking on my dreams. And that's not going to fly anymore. I've decided that my New Year's resolution is going to be to pump out material without regards to my current limitations. Life is too short to worry about whatever it was that I was using as an excuse for delays earlier. Which was probably time or something dumb like that. Wait what?

So with that, I am going to be restarting the comic late this week/the start of next week. I have also prepared some previews for what you can expect in 2010! Enjoy with excitement and anticipation perhaps!

"Valentine's Day 2010"

As with previous years, I can't say too much about this one because the person I'm making it for reads this blog and I don't want to spoil anything for her. But the image kind of gives away what the general setting will be I suppose. Space is all glowy and pretty!

I Fight Dragons music video

This is the music video I've talked about in the last few posts that I'm currently working on for a really combustibly awesome band called I Fight Dragons! I'm still keeping the song title a secret because secrets are fun and you can stash them under things like some kind of hoarding rodent.

"Adventoast"

Also previously mentioned, this is a big adventure game I am planning to do in Flash! It'll be pretty open ended, feature a ton of fully animated cutscenes, but also have a few central story lines to give it a little bit of direction. I'm still working on coming up with the story/design elements for it, so I don't know what else to say about this.

"SuperVillain V"

This time around SuperVillain is hitting the beach for a well deserved working vacation. Things are not looking so great for a nearby luxury cruise liner. The perspective in this picture is kind of confusing. This installment will just be a quick fun runaround before I undertake the huge epic story of SuperVillain 6 in 2011.

"Empire of Sock"

This is now confirmed as part three of the now four part story line. There's just too much to be done still to fit into just this one episode. More on it later!

These are the base five projects I absolutely will force myself to get done. If I (somehow) have time left over, there are two standalone toons I will do to close off the year. Additionally there are a couple of other collaborative game projects that could potentially happen but I'm not announcing them because I have no idea if and/or when they'd be done. But no getting those hopes up.

As I've mentioned previously, I am a huge fan of the first four Silent Hill games, so I think I'll close off this entry with photos (click to enlarge!) of this indescribably awesome James & Pyramid Head amigurumi set my amazing, amazing finacée made for me this year for Christmas.

If you genuinely liked the new Shattered Memories game you should feel bad.

November is the time for Novembering. And really long posts.

2009-11-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

I finally wrangled together all the material I was talking about in my last post and as you may have noticed, the site is a bit revampy! And by that imaginary adjective I mean there are four new main pages, some new shirts, and a ton of new content on the Stuff page! So now I can chill out, plug some new stuff and share a surprising amount of preproduction material from Grumatorium (which is surprising because I rarely plan anything out ever which I guess is why I'm using the bathroom in the kitchen while no fewer than three objects in the house are melting somewhere in the house).

These are probably my first ever storyboards and I still can't remember what possessed me to do these because I hate storyboards. Anyways, click to enlarge as they are quite shrunkined. In these you can see that the monster was initially called a Grue after the text adventure monster of the same name before I was able to come up with a real name (which is Pluggith, for those of you without compulsion disorders who didn't go through the movie frame by frame during the activation sequence). However the Grue bit mutated into Grumatorium eventually during a late night stupor during which I convinced myself that a 'Morguatorium' was a real word/building in which people were being dead.

As I worked on this, for awhile I was intending to inject some bulky continuity into my work concerning the humans trying to genocide the BarfQuestions because they got in their way of being boring and monotonous. I scrapped most of those ideas due to them being boring and stupid but the laboratory they're running around in still has plenty of signs pointing towards that intention.

For those who missed it, NewGrounds was awesome and ran a huge banner ad for about a week featuring ten select Halloween movies, one of which was mine. I love NewGrounds. Except for all the people who didn't bother to watch until the end of the credits and then proceeded to ask me continuity questions.

Back to the new stuff for the site, my little hidden away animated gif archive on the Stuff page quadrupled in size, so if you're the kind of person that needs to put gifs on bloody everything you should go check that out!

Additionally I made two new shirts which are now available for purchase! A SpermRider shirt which was requested a lot after Seed of Destruction was released and also a new SuperVillain shirt because the design just had to be done.

So what's next? I've been commissioned to do a music video by a brand new band which I was going to keep secret, but they already leaked it. So the new video is for I Fight Dragons, and they are punchintheface awesome so you should check them out. Above is the only other thing I'll release about the video (the main character) and also the fact that it will involve a type of traditional animation that I don't think has ever been done before.

That's all for now. I'll be back hopefully within a couple months with the new music video completed! Thanks for reading this rambly post. Speaking of rambling ramble rambly rambleton. Oh and the comic is starting up again this Monday. I hope. Ramblepants.

Quick Halloweenery Posting

2009-10-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

The Halloween toon for 2009 is out and you can/should watch it here. I would write more now but I will be updating the blog again in a week or so, so I can just do it all then. I've got a bunch of storyboard things for Grumatorium to post but I am so tired I think I will just drool into the keyboard for awhile and then lose consciousness.

The Plan for the Fall/Fall Plan (Roll upon impact)

2009-08-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Well summer came and went and I was awfully busy moving and also being kind of lazy/basking in all the attention Seed of Destruction brought in and so I got very little done. However! Summer is ending and I'm blasting back into full gear on all the projects I want to finish by the end of the year! And here's a super longwinded explanation of all that stuff:

Grumatorium

This will be the first new addition to the 'toons' section of my films page in well over a year now. The story follows three BarfQuestions that unwittingly find themselves in a vast abandoned underground research facility, where they awaken a freakish experiment.

This took a long long time to animate, but it should go slightly faster now. I plan on submitting this one to a bunch of film festivals, as I've only ever attempted submitting to a film festival once with the Closing Hour back in 2008. It worked out really well then, and I think that it's always good to expand your horizons.

SuperVillain V

The last 2-3 SuperVillain installments have been all sort of wound up in some kind of conflict and have gotten progressively more and more meaty and complicated. I want to step back for a bit and get back to the series' roots this time. There is a 'plot' but it revolves less around conflict and more around SuperVillain doing what he loves in a way we have not yet seen. This will be a quick and fun run around before we get into the super long and complicated plots for episodes 6 and 7.

An adventure game which does not yet have a title

Komix Games and I are planning on doing a SuperVillain game still, however it is being delayed for at least three months, if not more. In the meantime, I sort of inspired myself to do an adventure game after I made this comic:

My programming skills are pretty meager, but I think they'll manage for this. This is one of those projects I don't like announcing because I have no idea if it'll work or not but whatever. I'll give it my best shot. Also games are neat.

Pyroguin

I'd like to end the year on a happy short little toon and this will be that toon. Not saying anything else about this for now! Nyarrh!

So there it is. I am also working on a few smaller projects:

• Short graphic novel for the 500th comic

• 4 more main pages, and 2 redesigns for existing main pages

• A ton of new shirts for the store, which is in desperate need of updating

MOTIVATION TRAIN VROOM VROOM I MEAN CHOO

Advent of Sock

2009-05-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

So I finally managed to finish Advent of Sock! This last week of super explosive updating is hopefully making up for the massive production delay that happened over the last half a year. Anyways, this one clocks in at almost five minutes, and features Sulek's new song "Nothing at All" off of their album Believer's Lane.

The next installment in the series will be entitled "Empire of Sock" and I'll begin production on it later this year. I had previously said that the Sock series would be a trilogy, but I'm starting to think it would be better if it were four parts, as there is just so much stuff that has to be fit into Empire already (Advent was necessary just to set up a fraction of the craziness that will be taking place in it).

Before I start the madness of production on that however, I'm going to be making two shorter animations. Everything on the site lately has been bulky and/or series installments, which has left the toons page without any updates for over a year now. My next project doesn't have a title yet but it'll be an upbeat noir-ish standalone story with lots of challenging character animation. Afterwards I'll start on SuperVillain V, which unlike the last two to three cartoons, will be story/drama light and return to the fun, carefree run around style of the first one. Anyways, enough forecasting, I've got more work to get to. See you in a month or two!

Rodeo of the Sperm

2009-05-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

The gaming event of the century is finally here. You need to go play SpermRider : Seed of Destruction right away. For those of you unfamiliar to the project I've been working on for the last half a year, see the trailer which you'll find a few entries back. (Go play it on NewGrounds if you have an account there so that you can take a shot at unlocking some achievements!)

Originally I had planned for the original SpermRider cartoon to end with a big city rampage and a fight with the military, but I was lazy and into cutting corners back then as it was only my second animation I had done for the site. So in a way this is SpermRider 1.5, and makes up for the scenes I never animated. Anyways, this is the last of SpermRider for awhile until 2010 or 2011. Around that time I'm planning to wrap up the series with the third installment, tentatively entitled Spermoboros for now.

As an added bonus for people who follow the production blog, I made some wallpapers out of the game's loading screen artwork (minus the ugly advertisements). I'll eventually add these to the "stuff" page of the site but I don't feel like updating that yet (as I'm working on some new main pages).

Click on the image/link you want for full size.

Except for the DS theme, click the link for that one.

Fullscreen

Widescreen

DS menu theme (R4 and apparently, M3 compatible)

PSP

Well, that was a long post, but this is exciting and exciting things deserve lots of word spewage in an unorganized and frantic manner. Next up, Advent of Sock is on the final leg of the production journey. Once I figure out this crazy HD business and edit it, we'll finally see the little orange guy induce havoc on the world once more and I can move on from this production back up that's been plaguing me for the last half a year.

Sulek Concert!

2009-04-19T17:02:00.001-07:00

As I had posted on the comic, Sulek performed at a local block party yesterday. Considering distance issues, etc. I don't think any fans were really able to make it and see them play, so I went and filmed their performances with my new camera (which works great so Advent of Sock being in high definition is now confirmed). They played three songs (Swamp Song, Fall, and Fishin) which you can view below.

Enable HQ for best results.

Anyways, this next week should see the release of SpermRider : Seed of Destruction (don't hold me to that) and some renovation to the site. I just got done putting together the new Games page and I am a little bit super proud of it, which is sad because it's only got one game on it. Hopefully it will fill up soonish once Komix Games and I get some more projects going.

Also this week, I am going all out on Advent of Sock and think I can reasonably finish coloring by the end of the week. After that it should be easily filmed, edited, and released within the following week before May hits. VroomOKhereIgo!

Hey look over there! It's AN UPDATE. Almost.

2009-04-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

First of all, there's a new full length Sulek album out (and I really should update the store with a link to it already)! For those of you looking to get it, you can buy a physical copy with a bunch of new artwork by me here or download it from iTunes by searching for Sulek. The album features a whole bunch of new and very awesome songs that you might have heard in SuperVillain 4 and Valentine's Day 2009 and some new ones that you'll be hearing over the course of the year in upcoming BarfQuestion projects. In short, check out Believer's Lane right now.

SpermRider : Seed of Destruction is a game. That is very awesome. Let me tell you about it in broken, fragmented sentences. About half a year ago Komix Games and I started development of an entirely hand drawn and physics heavy flash game based around the SpermRider series on this site. At this point it's practically done, and we're just working out the last few bugs and getting it sponsored.

Enable HQ for better results!

The game features a story mode with five levels, and in addition, four unlockable mini-games that range from challenges to letting you build your own custom scenarios. It also sports 2-3 minutes of brand new animated SpermRider action in the form of cutscenes that you'll find in the story mode and three tracks from Sulek including the classic Ski Bumps and two tracks from Believer's Lane (Midnight Train and Rhubarb).

It's hard to pin down, but I think this should be wrapped up and ready to go in the next week or two, but I can't promise anything. Also, if you haven't noticed, I am over my horrible writer's block and the comic is updating once more!

Well I'll see you guys once the game is out, and again when I finally finish Advent of Sock, which I will now proceed to furiously color as this movie just needs to be done already. Be done.

Game Takeover! Comic Postponalanche! RAUGHHHHHHHHH

2009-03-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

Some people might have noticed that there hasn't been any weekly comic action going for almost a month now! Sorry about that. The reasoning behind this temporary drought is L;KAJGLKAHSL;GKHALS;DHGLAH SO MANY GIGANTIC FREAKIN PROJECTS. They have, yet again, trainwrecked in a spectacular show of non-cooperation and ill timing.

Basically the SpermRider game is moving ahead a lot more quickly than I had expected. And suddenly I'm facing finishing the game sprites and in addition, doing a ton of soundwork and about eight animated cutscenes.

This means my schedule is pretty shot for Advent of Sock. I was aiming to blast through coloring during the last weeks of March and get it out before April hit, but since the rush has been put on the game this will have to wait. Again. Sorry. I hope to finish off the game as quickly as possible and finish this up in the weeks that follow. This seems to be the neverending project but I assure you it is coming. It's very close to being finished now.

The other issue this business causes is that I really do not have time for the comic, nor the energy. I have managed to draw a few comics but they are really pretty terrible. See example below. Trust me, the neverending comic break is for the best. It'll be back one day soon.

Oh man. Do you see why I'm not updating the comic??

Making of Evil!

2009-02-21T20:11:00.000-08:00

Well I am hard at work trying to get "Advent of Sock" out in a timely fashion. So I thought I'd throw together another time lapse video of a typical production day! Hopefully I'll be posting again in a couple weeks with the finished cartoon.

The tiny Socks were made by my fiancée who is an awesome crocheter. You will be hearing about these more in the future when they become available for purchase! (Enabling the high definition button in the lower right hand corner of the player is highly recommended.)

DAY OF THE VALENTINES

2009-02-14T05:42:00.000-08:00

It's Valentine's Day and there is a new Valentinesy cartoon up that I made for my fiancée! You can also watch it

here on NewGrounds and here on Youtube. The Youtube version is standing in for the usual embedded DailyMotion copy until they get their act together.

We are now ready to start production on new animated content again, starting with Advent of Sock! Actually 2009 is going to be THE YEAR OF SOCK as I am planning to release both the 2nd and 3rd installments this year which is going to be crazy amounts of work. In addition, you can expect lots of new standalone toons, as that section of the films page needs more content desperately. You'll also see SuperVillain 5 and possibly a few games (I know, I say this every year). The idea is to release nine shorts for 2009, but we'll see how that goes as time is tough to come by. I'll post more notes and synopsises after Advent of Sock is released.

In recent-ish news, my animated short "Monarch" from 2007 made it onto the Planet Kino DVD! For those of you unfamiliar with the Kino organization, it is a super cool world wide network of independent film makers who meet to share and screen their work. This is also awesomely ironic because it was an event at school where the Planet Kino DVD from a few years back was shown that made me want to get into independent filmmaking. Woo! Anyways, for those willing to pay the shipping cost you should check it out, it's full of a lot of excellent shorts from all over the globe.

In addition, Sulek has begun printing copies of their new full length album entitled "Believer's Lane" which will be released sometime late February/early March. This album is 12 awesome new tracks from the band including Marigold from this year's Valentine's Day short as well as Bazooka Tube Revisited and Clearly, Maybe, Crazy from SuperVillain IV plus Nothing at All which will be featured in the upcoming "Advent of Sock." Stay tuned!

Approaching 2009... I mean.. Ten days into 2009

2009-01-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

Just shooting a quick entry to let everyone know things are still on track! Sock got delayed which is crappy, but it's halfway done which just puts one more short into the 2009 lineup. The comic is coming back Monday and will continue to regularly update for at least quite awhile.

Basically what happened is that the three current projects all bunched up together and clogged the tube leading to Finished Product Land. I am making fast progress on Valentine's Day this year and as soon as it's done I'm finishing Advent of Sock. The SpermRider Game will hopefully be released around this time too. So basically I'm shooting for at least both toons to be released in February. If the game comes out then too that'd be great. I'll then post my plans for the rest of the year here. Until then not many production blog updates. This is just a slow start to an action packed year, in comparison to 2008 which was heavy on the work but fairly slow in terms of updates.

I'm also going to be starting artwork for Sulek's next full length album in a couple of days. It sounds awesome everyone. Really, really awesome. Yes. Also "Songs from the Doctor's Office" will be reprinted minus some of the artwork so it will be cheaper than the original version or so I hear.

Alright, enough chatter. See you all in February with loads and loads of happy twitchy things. Sorry for the delay.

Race to the Finish! Also Capitalism!

2008-12-11T18:17:00.000-08:00

Inking is now under way on "Advent of Sock," penciling having been completed a few days ago! It's a big one, and I want this done before 2009 so I am going to be going nuts trying to wrap this one up by year's end.

This one is, as I thought, more of a bridge between the first and third parts. However due to massive cliffhanger action at the end, I have also put together a short trailer for the third and concluding installment which will be released with the short.

Well it's that time of year again when everyone either becomes a rabid advertiser or a rabid shopper. The recent peak in sales reminded me that I have a store, so here is my obligatory holiday plug for the BarfQuestion.com online store! There are lots of things for the holidays from housewares to clothes to all sorts of things!

Sulek has 2 albums out, which are only going to be in stock for awhile. "Songs from the Doctor's Office" only has a few copies left as I understand, so if you want a hard copy and not a download from iTunes, you'd better jump on them as I don't think they plan to reprint.

If you missed my initial volley of frenzied plugs for it, the first volume of BarfQuestion webcomics is available! 200 pages of the first 260 single panel comics as well as all the online graphic novel-esque shorts, plus several brand new exclusive chapters of content! Go check out the Encyclopedia Retardium! OK, that enough of that. I feel dirty now. DIRTY.

Well, happy Decemberish season! Hopefully I'll be posting again this month with a completed Sock toon in tow!

News of Sock

2008-11-11T18:21:00.001-08:00

Last short of the year and boy am I ever dragging my feet (mostly unintentionally). There's been a long series of delays on production but it's well under way now (penciling is maybe possibly somewhere around 50%).

I don't know if I've actually talked about what the deal is with the Sock series yet. Basically, it's always been set to be a trilogy with an ongoing story arc, "Advent of Sock" being the second installment. Herein lies my anxiety for this project, because whereas "Dawn of Sock" and the final chapter are/will be mostly self contained stories, Advent is more of a bridge between the two. It has it's own story but seems to be mostly concerned with setting up for the finale. More Sock has been the most consistent request I've received since I started animating and I feel expectations are a bit high (something I haven't really had to deal with with other series). Hopefully it will meet all of these and surpass them. Here's hoping (and working really freaking hard to do so).

Less complaining! What I can concretely say about this: Whereas "Dawn" was more centered around Sock's owner, this chapter focuses a lot more on Sock and the underworld. Additionally, Sulek is returning to do the score for this one with a brand new song entitled "Nothing At All."

I'm really pushing to have this out sometime in December, as I need as much time as I can to get started on the next Valentine's Day video which I rather need to have done by that day.

Wooo business! Let's have a party! What's that smell? Oh, the stress cake is on fire!

PARADE TIME

2008-09-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

14 straight hours of editing and explosive food poisoning later:

IT'S DONE.

7 minutes and 50 seconds. Lots of frames. 20 layers of audio.

Multiple epic explosion filled battles. 3 rampages.

Late Night Editing Dinner - Cocoa Puffs WITH MARSHMALLOWS

WHAT

The pre-release for this site and YouTube is online, but it'll be a week or so until the site is back at 100% and the NewGrounds release is compiled. Then it's time to work on the game a little more, and finally to start Advent of Sock at last.

The homestretch! That sounds kinda creepy!

2008-09-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Time lapse video of coloring about fifty or so frames from the new SuperVillain.

SuperVillain IV has finally finished the animation stage. I am not half delusional from the last week's inconstant trickle of sleep. My computer is coated in lead and other coloring implement residue. Anyways.

Filming starts soon (Friday?) if my camera decides it has enough fight left in it for getting through these odd couple thousand of frames or so. I attempted to start filming today, but it insisted on zooming inwards constantly. I told it not to and it threw a fit and contracted narcolepsy (the trigger to which is being in any kind of physical contact with another object). If it insists on being retarded and generally senile throughout tomorrow, I'm probably going to have to shell out for a new one which could delay the release again. I wish there was, along with bold and italics, an agonized, blood dripping, horrifying angstmuffin emphasis that I could have put 'again' into. Graghhhhh. The only plus to the delay is that I can start working on the new Sock short in the meantime.

Speaking of delays, I worked myself to death this week and I have no comics for next week. I won't put up a hiatus thing quite yet, they may still show up at my door. With a warm pizza. And a hug.

Still chugging along!

2008-09-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

Right, I feel bad for unintentionally becoming one of those people who always saying they're working but never have anything to show. Rest assured, I'm pumping all my free time into these upcoming projects, however they are numerous and are all clogging up at the exit of the creationering machine... is that my brain? Maybe the lack of updates is because it sounds like I should be having a stroke. Huh.

'SuperVillain IV' is beyond massive. It's a solid 30% bigger than the previous larger projects and after I finished 'Perform' I've been working harder on coloring and making things look shiny, hence another delay as I'm no longer chicken scrawling with some Crayolas. I am a sixth of the way through coloring, but I haven't gotten to work for awhile on that because of the other projects.

Komix Games and I are teaming up to do a SpermRider game as previously rumored. I can't honestly give a release date for this, especially because I'm not the one doing all the programming so I have little idea of how far we've got to go. But I can say that Komix is a fantastic programmer and this is shaping up to be a very addictive little game.

Currently working on background art and explosion particles.

And finally, the week hiatus on the comic gave me time to whip up a short 6 page graphic novel type story called 'Glucosian Shank' which will go up on Friday in time for the 300th Tales of BarfQuestion webcomic. Wooooo.

In summation, there will be lots of stuff, round about soonish. Not updating sucks, but the suckage should soon be evaporating into a sunrise of happy awesome new content.

PHWWWOOAAARRRR

2008-07-16T16:01:00.001-07:00

Holy Bejezus this movie is long. See you in 18 years.

Comicky Business

2008-07-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

Tales of BarfQuestion now has an official comic book out! This is 200 pages of web content as well as completely unseen exclusive features for $19.99! Go check it out, click here!

THE COMIC

In the last few weeks my imagination threw a tantrum and I decided to stop the webcomic and stick up an alternate project I was working on. However it takes 10x the work to update that comic twice a week than it does to do Tales of BarfQuestion 5x a week. Right now the monster that is SuperVillain 4 is taking up all my time, but I intend to start doing the regular comic again as soon as possible, most probably on the 14th. So stay tuned dammit!

SUPERVILLAIN IV

Is bloody ginormous. The first of two fight scenes has a higher frame count than the whole of SuperVillain 3. On top of this, there is an actual multi-dimensionalish story with character development (!) that has to be conveyed which adds to it. This will probably be surpassing all other projects in terms of frames and work involved, so I will be insanely busy as I still want to get Advent of Sock and the winter holidays special out this year as well as two top secret projects (which are secret because I have no guarantee that they'll pan out).

I'll be posting tons of making of materials and stuff in the blog once it's released, and you can also expect two new SV shirt designs (actual detailed ones this time), a free downloadable SuperVillain stencil for making your own box/graffiti, and Sulek's SuperVillain EP which contains previously unreleased music from the SuperVillain shorts as well as new music made for the currently under production film.

TL;DR/Version for the ADD- I'm busy, there's SuperVillain stuff coming, and the comic's coming back Monday probably.

Back to BarfQuestion

2008-06-17T18:21:00.001-07:00

Perform

And after a couple months of hard labor, the new, and final commission piece for a long, long time is here! I'm very pleased with it; visually this was a series of experiments and ventures into new territory and it has all paid off quite well, in my opinion. Monarch, the band behind the music, was also extremely awesome to work with and you should check them out (click).

It's hit me now that it's over halfway into 2008 now and I've only done one piece of completely original work. Commission work is good for making new connections and broadening your horizons, but both of these new pieces (You Don't Wanna Leave, Perform) are kind of hybrids and I miss doing 100% my thing. This isn't bad, but I miss my little BarfQuestion universe.

Concept art for SuperVillain IV

The rest of the year is back to regular BarfQuestion programming, and am I ever excited. This next week or so is going towards getting the new BarfQuestion comics compilation book "the Encyclopedia Retardium" out to the printers, and you'll be getting another entry when that's out. From there the rest of the year will see, for sure, SuperVillain IV and Advent of Sock. The frame count on all of these new ones is rising so fast that the number of shorts I can put out has been decreased dramatically. However I also want a small project to accompany each of these, which I will utilize by getting some adventure games together to go on the games page I keep talking about but never doing.

More on that later, better get back to the book.

Next Up

2008-04-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival was awesome. Kind of surreal seeing something I had only previously seen on the internet exploded one million percent and projected on the big screen.

In other bragging related news, the new Mike Mangione video is doing very well; it's been on the front page of NewGrounds.com for about a week now and took the daily first and weekly third place awards.

Anyways!

Pre-production is almost finished for the next piece, which is another commissioned music video. This time it's for the very awesome Monarch, and I'll be doing a video for their song "Perform." It's a darker noir piece like "Monarch" and "the Closing Hour," but it's shaping up to be more uplifting and positive because for once it's not about some hopeless guy slowly dying because of a heartless corporation. Yay!

Below are a couple conceptual sketches.

2008 Relaunch!

2008-04-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

Barfquestion.com is now officially in flash with a bunch of snazzy features and content! Plus check out the store for a ton of new merch, including a line of Adventure Toast products just in time for the new Mike Mangione music video!

I upped the number of frames I drew for each sequence for this one, which is something I plan to continue to do because, you know, quality and all that. However updates will be a little more sparse just because I'm taking my time more. Anyways, the new video was fun but I'm looking forward to having more creative control. This one just seems a little bland in certain aspects, but hopefully that's just me. The next project is another music video, but I am super excited and have some really exciting plans for it. I'll be posting sketches and previews as I go.

Anyways, it's off to Madison for the Wisconsin Film Festival! If you're in town, swing by on Saturday and catch "the Closing Hour" on the big screen!

Midupdate Update

2008-03-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I kind of forgot to do that update thing in February. My computer died, and things have been generally hectic and stressful due to me undergoing the plot of VoyageWaffle in real life. If you missed the new Valentine's Day toon, it's been up for... awhile. It was actually completed during January, because all of February and March have so far gone into creating the huge monster of a music video that is "You Don't Wanna Leave."

The video, due to reasons of girth, has been split into six production blocks, each with about as many frames as SuperVillain II. Blocks one through five are finally complete, as of just a few minutes ago, leaving only the last one to be penciled, inked, and colored. I hope to have this done within two weeks, and the video plus the site relaunch before April hits. Hmm. I smell unfeasibility, but I never much cared about that anyways.

A sneak peek at just a fragment of the new main page! Anyways, in other oldish news, the Closing Hour is not only showing at the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival, but it also took home one of the eight jury awards for this year! Click here for screening info.

Also, SuperVillain IV has been pushed back once more as I've been commissioned to do a music video for Monarch. Right after that's done, it'll be time for SuperVillain once again though, with another Sock installment following close behind. I need to be done with this entry now, Blogger is being a crackwhore.

2008 Begins!

2008-01-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

I've finally gotten around to starting production on the 2008 range of stuff! I can't guarantee when the first toon will be out, but there will be one on February 14th for sure.
Now, since I'm wasting a lot of time today, here's an in depth look at the upcoming projects! Hopefully redundancy will not be coming to town!

"You Don't Wanna Leave"

Runtime ~ 5 min 30 seconds
This is the second music video I'm doing in conjunction with Mike Mangione's fine group of musicians. The tone's gonna be a little more somber than the previous one, but there will be lots of crazy detailed environments, magic, wonder, monsters, and more. The penciling is just starting on this one, and I'm currently starting off with a scene in which the main character wanders into a village of strange mutated werewolf folk. Anyways, I can guarantee it to be a rich fairy tale of fantasy and self discovery, smack in the middle of suburbia.

"Valentine's Day 2008"

Runtime ~ 2 minutes 15 seconds

I really can't give too much away about this one, especially because it is a gift for someone very special and she is probably reading this right now. I can say, however, that animation on this one has finished and I will be filming and editing it somewhat soon.

"SuperVillain IV"

Runtime ~ No idea, probably in excess of 5 min.
Boy, am I excited to do this one. I have been itching to do this one ever since I finished part three, which although almost entirely intentional, left the character in a very dark light. As previously mentioned, this will continue and conclude the rough story arc of SuperVillain's corruption as a result of exposure to unchecked power. This promises to be an epic exploration of power, the ferocity of religion, and the bouancy of outhouses. Giant religious robot battles ahoy!

"Advent of Sock"

Runtime ~ A kajillion bajillion hours.
Another one I'm dying to get started on. Sock proved to be far more popular than I was expecting, and I'm going all out on this one. All I'm really going to say is that Sock's setting his sights higher as the restless souls of the damned pine to take over the land of the living. You can expect to see a massive coup from the depths of hell, a gigantic demon army onslaught, and Sock engaging a war with the gods themselves. This is uh... going to take forever.

"Sezja"

Runtime~ Six episodes, roughly 5 to 10 minutes in length each.
"Sezja" and I go way back. This was an abandoned comic project from the early 2000's that I ditched because, well, it made no sense and had no plot whatsoever beyond the first few pages. With some heavy storyline retooling, I think I'm ready to try to tell this epic adventure once more. And yes, it's going to be in color, but all I've got right now is a bunch of black and white sketches and images from the original comic series. It'll be a rockin' 18th century British adventure full of necromancy, wanton cricket rampages, and llamas.

Well there you all go, massive post to start off the year. Hopefully that was interesting and not too redundant, but now you know exactly what's coming at chooo. Form of- Lava soup!

Year's end!

2007-12-23T18:22:00.001-08:00

So that's it for 2007! I've wrapped up the year on a positive note with my new short, "SpermRider - Quest for the Sky Egg," which is a christmasy tale of destiny, revenge, and wanton destruction.
I'd like to thank all my awesome fans who supported me through the year, and NewGrounds plus a few other sites for promoting me so much.
Next year promises to be full of new cartoons! What to expect:
-Various new original shorts
-A new Mike Mangione music video- A suburban knight abandons his family to battle with dinosaurs, werewolves, and an evil wizard who has stolen his car radio.
-SuperVillain IV- With SuperVillain's sanity in question, the Pope launches a crusade against him.
-Advent of Sock- Sock opens a portal to hell and begins flooding the real world with demons and otherworldly monsters.
-Sezja- (miniseries) An overwhelming evil has fallen over England, and humanities only hope lies in a psychotic cricket player who has just been exiled from the kingdom due to cricket related violence. Unwillingly our anti-hero and his newly discovered llama friend will uncover a massive conspiracy to overthrow humanity as we know it.
-And much more!
Well, see you all then! Happy Holidays!

Another one down

2007-10-27T08:00:00.002-07:00

Well, VoyageWaffle is done and online! Next up is the Closing Hour, which is proving to be huge and work intensive and stompy. The penciling is completely done for this, and I have just over a month for inking and coloring the beast, plus post production. After this, I will be spending my winter break leisurely animating the next and final SpermRider movie to end what has been an awesome year, and to usher in a new one with new and improved animations.
At the same time, I will be very excitedly chugging away on game sprites and some more merchandise for the store, as it's selection is sort of limited at the moment. In other news, Sulek has finally unanimously agreed on getting a CD together! Now begins the long and tricky process of getting everything together, which could take a long time, so don't get too excited just yet.
In other news, to those who have been following my stuff for awhile, you may or may not be wondering what is going on with ToastProphet. Well, to be frank, it is a gigantic and daunting project that I will undoubtedly undertake one day (as it will haunt me forever until I do). For now, there is another story I must tell first that I am very excited about. Sezja is it's working title, and it's based off of a very, very old project I once started but never finished. It's a grand adventure involving tea, psychotic Englishman, llama riding and a grand quest for power and destiny. Instead of individual stories each episode, each installment builds on the last, and hopefully one day I can string them together into a short movie of sorts.
Anyways, more on that in 2008.

If this week was a disease, it would be leprosy. Probably.

2007-10-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hooray for having a spare hour and a half in which to update this thing. This week has been declared a murder week because it has rendered me totally and completely swamped. Pretty much, I have to finish the principal animation/inking/coloring for 'VoyageWaffle' and finishing penciling 'The Closing Hour' by next Monday. For context, I just passed the halfway point on Closing Hour, in penciling terms. WoohoohooGAHRGh.
On the upside, if I can get this all accomplished and out of the way by the start of November, I will be able to concentrate soley on inking and coloring 'The Closing Hour,' with only game art for the SuperVillain game to contend with on the side.
In other news, Dawn of Sock took Daily Feature on Newgrounds.com and has been accepted into the Halloween 2007 collection/contest! 5's are always appreciated! Also, I sold my very first shirt yesterday, which makes me terribly excited. Whoever you are, you made my day!
Anyways, back to cranking out magic and dreams.

New site!

2007-10-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

Well, welcome one and all to the newly registered and redesigned BarfQuesiton.com! Run around and smash your face into things, having a good time all the while I hope.
I finally managed to squeeze out a new film, this time centered around a character I began drawing at the very beginning of my BarfQuestion conceptual drawings. Sock was a little manical devil hamster that followed our protagonist around, not really doing much save for being inexplicable evil somehow. I've been up for a solid 17 hours finishing everything up, so I have yet to be able to comprehend if this is going to even be a good film. It is very possible that I will wake up tommorrow realizing I have not even made a film, but in fact wallpapered my room with Tuna Spread.
The other exciting thing that is new is the BarfQuestion store! As of right now, I have four shirt designs to offer you, each on a wide variety of shirt styles and cuts at what are hopefully reasonable prices. You can rest assured your purchases will go towards making you look spiffy and the worthy cause of helping me through college and not starving, etc. Eventually I will post more shirt designs, some other household items, and more importantly graphic novels! Yay.
So what's next? In the next few weeks you can expect a short nonsensical toon of some sort just in time for the 100th comic. Late November, early December will see the long worked on "The Closing Hour" which is a depressing romp through WalMart employee abuse and brain tumors. Late December sees SpermRider return one last time for a grand quest to impregnate the Great Sky Egg.
Anyways, I am off to finish getting the site together. Citizens rejoice!