Rover

Pages 11 and 12

These two pages pretty much complete the story told in the film. In the comics it keeps going as they move into a swamp and meet Fub. But the film doesn’t go that far.

As an ending, it’s a little too mellow, and I am considering how to rework it into something a little more conclusive. Not sure where to go with it just yet.

Pages 9 and 10

I had jury duty this week and hoped to catch up on some Rover stuff while I was waiting around, but it was not to be. I got shuffled around, asked a bunch of vague hypotheticals, then shuffled around some more. It’s hard to get any kind of workflow going with 10 minute breaks. After two days they told me I didn’t need to come back. Overall I am impressed at the Westchester county court’s efficiency. They really didn’t waste too much of our time and were courteous throughout.

Anyway, here are two more pages from the comic.

Pages 7 and 8

More Rover comics pages. Enjoy!

Pages 5 and 6

More yummy pages from my Rover comic. Scroll down to read from the beginning if you are coming in late.

Pages 3 and 4

In our ongoing coverage or the original Rover comic book, here are the next two pages.

Rover comics posts

I am getting close to finishing a new version of the Rover animatic. I have been making extensive changes throughout to fix and improve upon the original animatic I completed several years ago. I will post this animatic once it is finished in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I am going to start posting pages from the original comic book. These were completed back in 1997 and published in 1998 in the first volume of the Monkeysuit anthologies. It was later reprinted as a stand alone Rover comic book. Both are out of print, but I’ll be posting pages from the story over the next couple weeks. Here are the first two pages. Enjoy!

Less blog, more film

I’m spending more time designing the Rover blog than I am spending working on the film. It’s looking better now though, and I am not ashamed to start spreading the word.

I might as well post something interesting.

This is a test run for a Tree Rhino. I did this a while ago and I’m not entirely sure this is how I want them to run. But I enjoy watching it, so perhaps.

Set up with Wordpress

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.

Rover!

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.