I have moved the blog from it’s temporary home on Blogger to it’s new permanent home here. Setting up Wordpress was a little more confusing that I had anticipated, but thanks to a helpful tip from the support staff at Hostway, it’s finally up and running. I’ll try to spiff up the page soon, but for now it’s running on the default Wordpress theme.
About a month or so ago I purchased a tablet PC, specifically an Asus R1F. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a bit of a gearhead, so it’s kind of amazing that I never picked up a laptop before this. I could go on about how much I love this little thing, but not right now. Anyway, I got it mainly so that I could find some extra time, like on my daily commute, to get back to work on some of my neglected projects. Mainly, Rover, a property I developed back in 1997 for Monkeysuit. Originally a comic, I started working on a animated short film a few years later. I worked up quite a bit of stuff with the help of Phil Rynda, Rick Lacey and Chris George (to whom I will be eternally grateful for lending their awesome talents). Character designs, turnarounds, storyboard and an animatic were completed, some of which I’ll post shortly.
Well, my free time dried up shortly after that as work got busier, family life got busier, and I just never seemed to have the momentum to start rolling the ball up the hill again.
Revisiting the project after so much time has made me aware of some story problems, so my first task will be revising the boards/animatic. I threw out all the music and sound effects, most of which were under copyright and were only meant as placeholder anyway. Rover’s voice is also very important. The effects I used, which were mostly ripped out of old Amiga tracker mods, were only partially successful and I’ll need to find a more expressive method of creating Rover’s unique voice. I’ll also revisit the character design in order to address some ongoing problems getting the characters to emote properly. Which is to say, pretty much everything is going to get a once-over.
In the next day or so I will post some early work on the project, and the animatic as it was before I began reworking it. As the project moves on, look to this space for periodic updates. I hope you enjoy watching the process evolve.