So from what I've heard in my small circle of influence is that you all love the new Hatman issue! We actually streamlined the process quite a bit with this last one. And I'm glad to hear that many of you liked it especially the new Fairy Queen character. Hopefully we'll have part two out in a couple of weeks so you don't have to wait too long to get your Hatman fix. Also, Steve is working on a whole new set of Midieville teasers that will feature a couple of the main villains for the show. Hopefully those will be well received as well.
I really want you to use this blog to tell us what you think about our stuff, tell me what you love and what you hate. If you think we fell short on something, or if you just didn't get a joke, or thought a joke was lame, let me know. As long as you keep your comments in a constructive manner, I'll entertain them. I just don't want "you guys suck" and no reason. If you truly think we do "suck" than let me know why you think that and what you think we should do differently. We really value the opinions of our fans and want to keep you coming back again and again.
The only thing I must stress is that we will not ever stoop to vulgar language or adult humor. We all feel that those are the easiest laughs and they are also the ones that you wouldn't want your little children or your grandma hearing. So since we are running a "family friendly" site, we want it to be accessible content for everyone from the little babies up to the old grandparents and everyone in between. So, gladly give me your thoughts, comments, and suggestions. I'm ready for what you can throw at me.
-Jason
Friday, July 27, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
All's quiet at the JK corral
Today Michelle (my wife), and Alexis (my daughter) are both sick. So I stayed home from church to help take care of them. They are both back to sleep now so I thought I'd let you in on what I've been working on lately. To understand this fully you'll need to read my first blog posting.
Have you read it? Why not? I know its long, but its a quick read. Go on, scroll down and read it...
Are you done now? Okay, good.
So, on to what I've been working on lately:
I've been working in our animation program (SWiSHmax) and drawing the elements for the Star Fetched cartoon in that program. I do not consider myself an artist by any means, however I have come up with a unique art style for the characters. Here is a picture of the character I'm going to voice, Jonas.
So, now you see the style I'm talking about. Its not the best thing in the world but its unique and different and you can tell its a face. I made the heads then the bodies for all the main characters each in one pose, which is really just the very first step, because in order for it to be animated, I'll need to make several poses. I've also been working on some background elements too (again all drawn in the program). Don't hold your breath for Star Fetched episode one to be released anytime soon. I'm working solo on this project and I'm going to have to create everything in the program. Why do it in the program you ask? Well that is a good question (even if you didn't actually ask because you don't really care haha.) The SWiSHmax program uses vectors in the drawing tools. Which basically means that a line is a line and not a series of pixels. Because it does this, I can make these pretty complex drawings and the file size will remain very small. Which should be really helpful for those of you who think that the load time for a Hatman issue is too long (it should cut down the load time significantly). Anyhow, I've been working on the Star Fetched stuff in conjunction with helping color any new Midieville drawings (Steve hand draws those and we color them in the computer just like we do for Hatman). As well as coloring the pages and editing the audio for the new Hatman issue which should be on line July 25th 2007. Yup that's right after almost 5 moths we're going to squeeze in a new The Adventrues of Hatman & Indigo. The reason it has taken 5 months? Well, we've been working on Midieville and now that we've gotten a little ahead it has given Steve enough time to draw the first part of a comic.
Now that I've rambled for a while and let you in on some of my craziness, I need to get back to coloring the last few pages for the new Hatman issue. Feel free to comment. I'll post again in a day or so.
Have you read it? Why not? I know its long, but its a quick read. Go on, scroll down and read it...
Are you done now? Okay, good.
So, on to what I've been working on lately:
I've been working in our animation program (SWiSHmax) and drawing the elements for the Star Fetched cartoon in that program. I do not consider myself an artist by any means, however I have come up with a unique art style for the characters. Here is a picture of the character I'm going to voice, Jonas.
So, now you see the style I'm talking about. Its not the best thing in the world but its unique and different and you can tell its a face. I made the heads then the bodies for all the main characters each in one pose, which is really just the very first step, because in order for it to be animated, I'll need to make several poses. I've also been working on some background elements too (again all drawn in the program). Don't hold your breath for Star Fetched episode one to be released anytime soon. I'm working solo on this project and I'm going to have to create everything in the program. Why do it in the program you ask? Well that is a good question (even if you didn't actually ask because you don't really care haha.) The SWiSHmax program uses vectors in the drawing tools. Which basically means that a line is a line and not a series of pixels. Because it does this, I can make these pretty complex drawings and the file size will remain very small. Which should be really helpful for those of you who think that the load time for a Hatman issue is too long (it should cut down the load time significantly). Anyhow, I've been working on the Star Fetched stuff in conjunction with helping color any new Midieville drawings (Steve hand draws those and we color them in the computer just like we do for Hatman). As well as coloring the pages and editing the audio for the new Hatman issue which should be on line July 25th 2007. Yup that's right after almost 5 moths we're going to squeeze in a new The Adventrues of Hatman & Indigo. The reason it has taken 5 months? Well, we've been working on Midieville and now that we've gotten a little ahead it has given Steve enough time to draw the first part of a comic.
Now that I've rambled for a while and let you in on some of my craziness, I need to get back to coloring the last few pages for the new Hatman issue. Feel free to comment. I'll post again in a day or so.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Me, this blog, and a little history of how I got here.
Since this is my first post on this blog I think I'll bring you up to speed on what I've been doing, so you can have a little appreciation for the head honcho/behind the scenes guy who is largely responsible for making 3twins.net happen.
Well, maybe first first I should thank my wonderful partners: Steve Surine (best friend and the honorary 3rd twin) and Andy Kuder (twin brother and the real twin to me) whom without there work 3Twins wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. So thank you Andy and Steve.
That said, I'll get into what I do and mostly what I've been doing lately. My main "job" for the website is to make sure it happens. I make the phone calls and type the emails to the people that get the whole ball of wax start to get waxy. Then I'm the one who makes sure their making the wax (and by wax I mean the various shows/comics on www.3twins.net) and if there is a lack of said wax, I pick up the slack and fill in the gaps (which is most of what I do all the time). I'm also the guy who pushes and promotes and excites the workers (mostly just Andy, Steve and myself, with the exception of a few guest artists from time to time). You get the picture I think.
Up until about a month ago 3twins.net was only home to Hatman & Indigo and some random video clips from our friend Chris Secondi who drew the first Hatman issue. But that isn't how I've envisioned the site for longer than I knew it would take the form of a website. It actually started with Star Flick: The Motion Sickness, a movie script I wrote way back in 1999. It was a parody of various sci-fi movies more so Star Trek than anything else. Well, the movie turned out to be a lot more difficult to pull off than I had originally thought. So, one day my friend Chuck Bedard (you may know him as the voice of the Narrator in Hatman & Indigo) suggested that we pare down the script so it didn't have so many characters or special effects. Which I did in the form of making a pilot episode for Star Fetched a show based on the movie script (which would take place before the movie). And that begot several other scripts for more episodes that would lead us ultimately to the story for the movie. Well that also spun out of control with as many characters as the movie and then some. So, Andy and I sat down and decided to make a prequel show to the prequel show for the movie (I hope I haven't lost you yet). This actually seemed like it was going to work. We had pared down the cast to a mere 5 characters and after writing about 8 scripts we wondered how we were going to pull this off. It was still too much sci-fi for live action on a zero budget so we thought about trying our hand at a cartoon. Well, animation was something we knew nothing about. So we came up with the idea for shelving Star Fetched until we had access for the technology we would need to do it. And I remembered pretending with Andy when we were in early elementary about this guy who had a hat he could pull anything out of called Hatman and his sidekick named Indigo who was a weird jumble of animals. I asked Andy if he thought it would make a good cartoon and he said he thought it could be really funny and a lot of fun to revisit those characters we invented in our childhood. So, Andy and I sat down and hashed out the premise of the show and then I wrote the origin story for Hatman and Andy wrote the origin story for Indigo (which together became issue 1 of The Adventures of Hatman & Indigo). Not long after finishing the first couple of scripts, Andy came to me with the idea for Midieville and he mostly had the show planned out which I thought was really cool. And that gave way to a few more shows that we dreamed up. At the beginning we wanted to launch our website with one of every show (which we had 5 in the works) but after starting work on the first Hatman concepts and seeing how long it would actually take we decided to stagger them as we got better with the process and more efficient with our time. We also realized that traditional animation is a lot of drawing and way too much for any volunteers to pull off in a reasonable time. So we redeveloped Hatman into a comic book, which seemed fitting for the superhero story that it was; but in the spirit of a cartoon we would not have the text in bubbles on the page but rather act out the story in audio form. And in the process we invented a crossbreed of a comic and a cartoon.
All the previous ramblings took almost seven years before we finally put Hatman issue 1 on www.3twins.net. The ball was finally rolling, albiet ever so slowly. So around January we began work on Midieville and discovering shortcuts to make our characters move with the least amount of drawing. When we finally put out the first teaser (which is just a very short snip it to show our characters and still not exactly what the show will become) it seemed like it had taken a long time. But, right now that I think about how long it took us to get Hatman online I think we're doing alright.
As for what I've been doing this last month, I think I'll post a blog on that tomorrow because, man, this one is huge. Thank you for indulging me and taking the time to read it.
Well, maybe first first I should thank my wonderful partners: Steve Surine (best friend and the honorary 3rd twin) and Andy Kuder (twin brother and the real twin to me) whom without there work 3Twins wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. So thank you Andy and Steve.
That said, I'll get into what I do and mostly what I've been doing lately. My main "job" for the website is to make sure it happens. I make the phone calls and type the emails to the people that get the whole ball of wax start to get waxy. Then I'm the one who makes sure their making the wax (and by wax I mean the various shows/comics on www.3twins.net) and if there is a lack of said wax, I pick up the slack and fill in the gaps (which is most of what I do all the time). I'm also the guy who pushes and promotes and excites the workers (mostly just Andy, Steve and myself, with the exception of a few guest artists from time to time). You get the picture I think.
Up until about a month ago 3twins.net was only home to Hatman & Indigo and some random video clips from our friend Chris Secondi who drew the first Hatman issue. But that isn't how I've envisioned the site for longer than I knew it would take the form of a website. It actually started with Star Flick: The Motion Sickness, a movie script I wrote way back in 1999. It was a parody of various sci-fi movies more so Star Trek than anything else. Well, the movie turned out to be a lot more difficult to pull off than I had originally thought. So, one day my friend Chuck Bedard (you may know him as the voice of the Narrator in Hatman & Indigo) suggested that we pare down the script so it didn't have so many characters or special effects. Which I did in the form of making a pilot episode for Star Fetched a show based on the movie script (which would take place before the movie). And that begot several other scripts for more episodes that would lead us ultimately to the story for the movie. Well that also spun out of control with as many characters as the movie and then some. So, Andy and I sat down and decided to make a prequel show to the prequel show for the movie (I hope I haven't lost you yet). This actually seemed like it was going to work. We had pared down the cast to a mere 5 characters and after writing about 8 scripts we wondered how we were going to pull this off. It was still too much sci-fi for live action on a zero budget so we thought about trying our hand at a cartoon. Well, animation was something we knew nothing about. So we came up with the idea for shelving Star Fetched until we had access for the technology we would need to do it. And I remembered pretending with Andy when we were in early elementary about this guy who had a hat he could pull anything out of called Hatman and his sidekick named Indigo who was a weird jumble of animals. I asked Andy if he thought it would make a good cartoon and he said he thought it could be really funny and a lot of fun to revisit those characters we invented in our childhood. So, Andy and I sat down and hashed out the premise of the show and then I wrote the origin story for Hatman and Andy wrote the origin story for Indigo (which together became issue 1 of The Adventures of Hatman & Indigo). Not long after finishing the first couple of scripts, Andy came to me with the idea for Midieville and he mostly had the show planned out which I thought was really cool. And that gave way to a few more shows that we dreamed up. At the beginning we wanted to launch our website with one of every show (which we had 5 in the works) but after starting work on the first Hatman concepts and seeing how long it would actually take we decided to stagger them as we got better with the process and more efficient with our time. We also realized that traditional animation is a lot of drawing and way too much for any volunteers to pull off in a reasonable time. So we redeveloped Hatman into a comic book, which seemed fitting for the superhero story that it was; but in the spirit of a cartoon we would not have the text in bubbles on the page but rather act out the story in audio form. And in the process we invented a crossbreed of a comic and a cartoon.
All the previous ramblings took almost seven years before we finally put Hatman issue 1 on www.3twins.net. The ball was finally rolling, albiet ever so slowly. So around January we began work on Midieville and discovering shortcuts to make our characters move with the least amount of drawing. When we finally put out the first teaser (which is just a very short snip it to show our characters and still not exactly what the show will become) it seemed like it had taken a long time. But, right now that I think about how long it took us to get Hatman online I think we're doing alright.
As for what I've been doing this last month, I think I'll post a blog on that tomorrow because, man, this one is huge. Thank you for indulging me and taking the time to read it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)