Thursday, October 29, 2009

What's Up?

I basically just reinstalled istrip and it works -now I just need to customize it etc
Tomorrows premiere of "episode 2" on www.CerebusTV" will be postponed for a week -give the tech guys time to get it running smoothly glitch free.
Erik Frederick is starting on another character for the Cerebus /Film.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

What Happened?

So I updated our site www.cerebus3d.com with another page of webcomics like i do every Wednesday (all three of them!:)). I thought i had the webcomics software istrip figured out but alas...I'm going to take another look at Comicpress and see if I have more luck with that.
Unfortunately there has been some internal conflict over the none-YouTube way of Cerebus TV that I've been witness to...on a more upbeat note: I just got the news that our "the-making-of-the Cerebus-Film" segment will air on www.CerebusTV.com this Friday 10 pm EST. The Wayne portion is even going to be shown twice within one episode -believe me it's that good! And more Cerebus TV logo animations are requested and underway.
Also, while going over the polished Cerebus script some feedback came in on the old rough draft one: Thuvanoor Kayi Ajiesh, who has in addition to doing explosions, textures, wind, fire etc for our film has also thought sceen writing and gives great praise. And Chris Wardell from the Cerebus yahoo fan group reiterated his high marks, despite some disagreements, for it anticipating a look at this newly polished one. And praise just came in on our old youtube Cerebus trailer as well: "I five starred this thing. What's here is crazy awesome".
This is only the beginning...


Monday, October 26, 2009

What's Your Story

Exciting news on the Cerebus Film front: just received a rewrite, or should i say an extreme polish of the rough draft version # 3(?) -by a multi award wining scriptwriter no-less, I might add:) I'm going to go over it the next couple of days and see if any changes are necessary before giving it the ultimate test of having various individuals ie the fans give their input...which up to now has been very kind (will also make sure everyone gets proper credit). So yeah: this might be it!
The story as is basically encapsulates Cerebus issues: 1, 4, 5 and 13 along with a little foreshadowing of other issues. And incorporates the important revelation from 196, which these two trusted sites sum up as:

Cerebus learns about how if he had his helmet, sword and medallions when he first met the Pigts, they would've become solid gold and he could've commanded the Pigt's idol.

...how Cerebus's sword, helmet and medallions were not only the conduits of his magic, they were linked to his destiny. Cerebus sold his helmet at one point to buy paint with which to make himself blend into Boralean society; if he had not, and kept all three of them to the point where he met the Pigts, he would have become the supreme conqueror of his dreams. Instead, the loss of any or combination of the three items caused a fracturing of his destiny and led to the series of adventures, oddities, freaks, and failures his life had been repleat with.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

What I did

So www.CerebusTV.com premiered and the world was never the same...:) Seriously, It could very well be what paves the new way for how the comic world does business -it featured some big announcements.
The launch went pretty well: even people who don't like comics find it mesmerizing -and Sim's interest is infectious...this despite the not always smooth going of the initial launch. Mac people seemed to by and large not see the show, and there were a few times one had to rebuffer etc.
Viewers though now see and get what webseries is about and in general grasp it's intentions...there were quite a few (including our own animators) who at first thought this was going to be an extension of the animated Cerebus.

Which it isn't -not directly anyhow: though we will have our animated clips for our Cerebus Film double as "Cerebus TV -will be right back" sorta TV spots appearing between the regular programming and commercials as they are made. And we will provide some live-segments as well -such as our "behind-the-scenes-making-of-the Cerebus-Film" segment that is done, but hasn't aired yet.
Also, I (along with my friend Jose Magana) provided the solution (by way of supplying links directing one to the "getting started" info) for the Sim's "controversial" 50's style TV streaming idea: many folks want this to be more like youtube or Hulu (I love Hulu btw). Also, my black background idea became part of the template for the website design. And I put up the bids -even the last, in the nick of time, winning one. Also, I don't mind telling you the amount of work it has been reading all the internal emails, forwarding Sim's faxes and all the testing I've had the privilege of participating in... of course this is nothing compared to the amount of tireless work the 2 big "M"s in the bunch put in to actually make CerebusTV happen.



Thursday, October 22, 2009

What TV?

www.cerebusTV.com is now testing. Will officially launch tomorrow!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

What Comics?

Today I uploaded for the first time an update to our ongoing webcomics offerings
www.cerebus3d.com
(every Wednesday!)
click on the "webcomics" button in the webcomics section in the lower half of the website.
So far continuing my take on the adventures of "Young Cerebus"!
Looking to have three ongoing title: Young Cerebus, Captain Zap and SciFi MumboJumbo. Might use this software
comicpress.
We are just about running out of "silent" scenes to animate for our Cerebus Film and I'm now sending out the latest version of the script to animators, fans etc so that hopefully we can record the voices next month.
On the Cerebus TV front I created a banner ad for the CGC site

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Whatcha say?

So our live-segment for CerebusTV.com is going over well: one of the main guys at CerebusTV said: "HOLY SHIT OLLIE! THAT'S F*** AWESOME!!!" And the comic book store Meltdown Comics (where we shot it) wants to post it, there might even be a contest in connection with it. Been watching the final testing of CerebusTV as it's set to launch on the 23rd. Pretty exciting.
Mike Quinn, who animated Yoda in Ep 2 and was also Nien Nunb in Ep 6, not to mention worked on Dark Crystal, among his many extensive credits, says: "Great to see the new site. Nice looking home page." Referring to our overhaul in progress of www.cerebus3d.com. He also has several pointers and suggestion: his guidance throughout our project has proven invaluable.
Another Quinn: the very talented Tim Quinn(no relation) continues our discussion regarding all things "credits" with the suggestion that we have the film credits (see our progress here) become part of the animation itself -which is actually in the script...while the main chunk of them will appear in the "title segment" there will be credits prior leading up to it. Tim finishes off by saying:
"Everything looks good, man. It makes me jealous. I hope you guys get a lot of attention for it."

Sunday, October 18, 2009


Antony has new typography (above) for our navigation bar for the our site www.cerebus3d.com
-looks really beautiful.
Today I'm uploading our first live segment for CerebusTV: a behind-the-scenes-look documentary featuring the not only amazingly talented, but incredibly funny Wayne Watrach and the flawlessly executed and professional Brian Buchmann, along with other's including, in a bit of fun, none other than the Oscar-worthy performance of Danielle Larson as Jaka herself (top)!
Speaking of Brian, his contribution to CerebusTV is unmeasurable and he's requested pics of Danielle to do a 3D model of her likeness, which she is honored to supply.






Saturday, October 17, 2009

Now What?

Did I mention the gimmick where I'm going to incorporate the word "what" into every heading? Yeah, that won't get annoying...Anyway onward with our "Production Zap":)

In addition to our own site www.cerebus3d.com we're creating our own permanent page on the www.CerebusTV.com site. As Dave Sim puts it "...a permanent roster of "Cerebus Animators" with credits for each clip that each animator worked on"
Much like the current horse animation that is up on the TV site: a lot of our animated Cerebus "Animated Feature Film" scenes will double as short "TV Spots" placed inbetween the regular programming and commercials on the CerebusTV site: they will have the Cerebus TV logo placed on them along with the line "Will Be Right Back"when shown in this capacity. Also, we've done some original logo animations for the site.

This discussion about a credit page brought forth some other discussions regarding fonts:

such as the font in the current W-I-P footage should, according to the incredibly talented Drew Costigan (who runs the site www.3dplants.com and also does much of the vegatation etc for the Cerebus Film) "...stay away from fonts that "serifs". Some common sans serif (no serif) fonts include Helvetica, Avant Garde, Arial, and Geneva." He includes much other great advice -all I can say is I hastily put those up...even the credits themselves aren't nearly complete as I neglected, among others, to give due to Ben Brigham www.brighamanimator.com who did lush b&w crosshatching "look", along with the Cerebus expression animation in that segment.

Emmy winning digital designer Antony Buonomo, who has worked as a producer and director for the BBC among other things http://www.vertigo.co.uk/ and who did our Cerebus Film Title segment, cough, the one in question above that I hastily put some of our credits over:), is also looking into typography for our website buttons, which are currently somewhat fighting against the overall mood and drama of the site.

Friday, October 16, 2009

What Limelight?

There's a lot of "blogs" and even "production blogs" out there -but how many "Production Zaps"? Hmm!?! See comments on my first post for a somewhat clarification on this matter:) I guess that would make me a Captain Zap. www.capzap.whatcomix.com I also never miss a chance to hawk my own comicbook creation:)
So yes there are a couple of comments on this blog now: as I went ahead and posted on my FaceBook wall that our "Production Blog" is up -I'm also letting everyone in our 50 + people animation crew know. So it's official and so far everyone likes the new overhaul of the website www.cerebus3d.com too -which is really nice. Romain Lapierre, one of our great animators, who I might add can be really harsh, says: "the new website looks good, great job!". Margaret Liss, who runs the incredible www.cerebusfangirl.com site gave it a "like/thumbs up" on my Facebook wall:) Where among other's said "Great new look for the site." and "Love it. Warm, appealing, lots of mind candy". So *whew" guess it's on the right track:)

Thursday, October 15, 2009

What's Underway...?

Ok, I haven't actually told anyone that I've started a blog, yet...but I will: still working on getting the new website together.
www.cerebus3d.com
Our group just got some mention in a Bleeding Cool article
another reason I figure time for an overhaul, besides been talking about switching to a production blog (versus our closed forum) for a while.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Day 1

I don't read blogs and not sure if I have any interest in doing a blog -yet I'm fairly certain I'll be writing here regularly just because our team used to have a closed forum where this is what I did anyway...this is merely a replacement, so to speak.
Today we're giving one of our websites an overhaul
www.cerebus3d.com
though part of me can't help but ask "why"? Who cares what our site looks like: we just need to keep working on our films. Besides the one we had was very good -but i guess we needed to make space for a link for this blog:)
Ok, that's it for today -back to work.