Game Takeover! Comic Postponalanche! RAUGHHHHHHHHH

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!

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

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.