Advent of Sock

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

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 gumdrop 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.

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

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

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.