DAY OF THE VALENTINES

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

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!

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.

News of Sock

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

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!

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. If it insists on being 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!

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.