What Xmas?

Yes, we'll take a break for the holidays, too:) Here's a look at the spectacular progress of Necross' Lair by Kerem.

What A Meet And Greet!

Make sure to watch www.CerebusTV.com tonight, Friday, 10PM Eastern for the premiere of a new episode!

Also, the animators on the Cerebus3D team want to thank Cerebus Fan Girl, Margaret Liss, for linking their credits up on the CerebusTV site and making it look so cool.

What Unfaithfulness?!?

This Friday 10pm Eastern on www.cerebusTV.com see more fun animation showcased and "A behind the scenes look at the making of glamourpuss #12 and Dave's tribute to Hal Foster". Woot! There will also be a "animation credit list" linked on the CerebusTV website. (the above is justabout all done by Romain Lapierre.)

Now we are not doing Cerebus as the Terminator:) The script is for the most part faithful and lifted directly from the comic, but there is a setup, a "glue", as I like to call it, to put the various early Cerebus barbarian issues together into a whole: otherwise we have a disjointed set of 15 minute episodes. There might be purists out there who will say they want this -but, the truth is, they don't.
Below is one of the characters of this glue: I figure it's better to add new ones rather than add scenes to existing ones. Tough call, but the more I think about it the more purer this approach seems. Also, issue #1 has to have characterization added to it -just has to.
So we've done a few of these voices now -the one below, and a couple others, by Scott Reyns.
Also, we added new webcomics yesterday like we do every Wednesday!:)

Heard What?

Below is a sampling of Necross' voice -and Despuess' as well. Dialog taken directly from the page -how faithful is that!:) Michael Antony Petranech is doing Bran Mak Muffin next. The rigging is now underway for the 3D model of Necross. For those who have read all issue Cerebus #13 (from which the below is excerpted): Jason Munt is doing the voice of the priest in that issue.

Scott Reyns is doing Lord Julius.

Stephen Mendel is doing the Wizard.

Samples coming up!:)

What A Show!

Friday 10PM Eastern will see the premiere of "Episode 4" on CerebusTV, which I co-produced. It features Cerebus animation from our Cerebus Film, some music by Kevin Macleod accompanying a look back on the 80s Dave Sim, Cerebus creator, as well as a peek at the movie "The Independents" from my friend Chris Brandt available through Netflix.
A mention to those whose work on the Cerebus Film will also appear in Friday nights Episode 4: animators Mike Marquez and Ian Minshull, 3D modellers Brian Buchmann, Romain Lapierre, Christophe Brebion, Fabio Basile, Jason Spikes, Wicksell Metellus, Sandy Tietyen
and 3D dynamics and effects by Ajiesh Thuvanoor. Not to mention title designer Antony Buonomo.

Joining us is John A. David (see above).

What Darkness!

Our latest progress by Ludo on the the interior of Necross' Lair (see above).

Voice-over recordings are going splendidly -Scott Reyns is amazingly giving 4(!) different versions of several characters: makes it hard to choose which one as they are all so great! (one of which is featured above 3D modelled by Brian Buchmann)

What A Recording!

We are doing our first voice recordings today! Michael Anthony Petranech is doing the voice of "Necross the ha ha ha Mad" and "Despuess", both from Cerebus issue #13 for our Cerebus Film.

Kerem Gogus has begun work on Necross' Lair (see above), while Ludovic Leleu is about to begin on the interior.

What An Entrance!

We are populating our ambitious "Cerebus Tavern Entrance Scene" -above is fantastic modeling and animation of tavern patrons by Steven Stahlberg that's going to give the scene that touch that'll really make it pop.

Also, joining our voice-over team is Daniel Geduld who in a cosmic coinky dink had once upon a time proposed a radio reading of Cerebus to Dave Sim, Cerebus creator.

What An Impression!

Robin in the UK sent Dave Sim, Cerebus creator, a fax (see excerpt above) where he states the 2 highlights of everything on CerebusTV.com thus far -first of which is our "behind-the-scenes-making-of-theCerebus-Film" contribution (which we daringly, if i say so myself, did as a film in it's own right:)).

"With Episode2 what has firmly stuck in my mind is that captivating black and white advert with "Jaka" [that's us:)] not least for the haunting piano piece played throughout (by Kevin McCleod) but also of course for the genuine emotion and acting ability of Danielle Larson which was truly something else!"
As for CerebusTV in general he concludes: "I honestly think to coin an Americanism you have hit a "home run" with CerebusTV."

We'll see if we won't be dismantled this Friday 10PM Eastern Time when a NEW episode airs on Cerebus TV! Featuring among other things previews of our animation for the Cerebus Film in the form of "bumpers/transition" logo spots.

For our Cerebus Film award-winning artist Kerem Gogus has created a sword: this being a "sword and sorcery" film we need lots of swords!:)

What Wizardry!

The Wizard in our Cerebus Feature is something of a victim. In issue #1 of the comic book series Cerebus is afterall hired to pull off a heist: to steal the Wizard's gem (and kills him in the process, no less.).

Above we see the stunning progress by the hypnotically talented Kerem Gogus and Ludo Leleu respectively.

And like every Wednesday we uploaded 3 (!) new webcomics to our site.

What Voice?

We have some incredibly talented and professional voices among our cast for the Cerebus Film -joining us is: Quinn Ljoka, Michael Antony Petranech, Stephen Mendel and Scott Reyns -who is also a Cerebus fan:).

CerebusTv in the end was not shown this last Friday due to the holidays.

I was up in Desert Hot Spings for the holiday were these pics of mountains and clouds were taken with the Cerebus Animated movie in mind. If we use any of them, digitally altering and enhancing them, of course, instead of digitally creating them from scratch -well then there's a romantic story to go along with them for the DVD extras:)

The incredibly gifted Ludovic Leleu has started on a matte painting for an additional Wizard Chamber Room.

What Gives?!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've uploaded 4 more animated TV logo spots (taken from our work on the Cerebus Animated Film) that will premiere on

www.cerebusTV.com

this Friday Nov 27 10PM Eastern Time.Also, new webcomics as always were uploaded this last Wednesday.

What Composition!

Another Episode of Cerebus TV premiered last night -it went without a hitch and I loved it: Sim and Steranko talking about Kirby...doesn't get any better than that.

Also, forgot to mention that I uploaded new webcomics to our site last Wednesday.

And now that we are contributing animation Cerebus TV spots: we are compositing and outputting some of our Cerebus Film scenes -used as new TV spots that will premiere this Friday 10PM Eastern Time on CerebusTV.

Some of these scenes are more less done -and now we are compositing them to really see how they will look.

What's Done?

The Script is done!
Now for the final test I'll send it out again for people to read! Finger's crossed.
(Previously we sent out rough drafts -but this based on previous feedback IS IT!)

Again, the script 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:

(From http://www.cereb.us/wiki/index.php?title=Issue_196)

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.

(taken from http://www.geocities.com/cerebuscomic/minds.html)

...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.

Stats are in for number of hits on Cerebus TV:
Friday premiere night: 1,961 tuned into the low resolution stream and 1,235 to the high resolution stream. In the period of several days surrounding the Friday episode, accesses reached 20,000+ hits.
Wow.
Just way waaay beyond the point where I thought we were at.

What fire?

We might not have set the world on fire, but the feedback has been nothing but positive on our contribution to CerebusTV.com -and this on a piece which was pretty "out there" and ambitious in it's own way. Dave Sim entrusts us with any content we feel is appropriate based on all the positive feedback. And the site is getting thousands of hits a day. So hopefully we can keep the steam up because this seems somewhat viable.

Also, over the weekend there was a big splashy front page article on the
newspaper USA TODAY:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2009-11-13-1Awebtv13_CV_N.htm

"Could this finally be the season for Web TV?"
where it stated:
"Big TV manufacturers including Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Vizio say that they're poised to revolutionize television this Christmas shopping season:
They're about to launch the first major marketing push for a new generation of sets that can easily integrate Web content with traditional TV news and entertainment — without the fuss of connecting the TV to a set-top box."

What Premiere?

Tonight is the premiere of our short "Jaka @ Meltdown Comics" a "behind-the-scenes-look at the making of the animated Cerebus Film" 10PM Eastern Time on CerebusTV
Starring Danielle Larson!! (see above)
I've also added more to the Gallery portion of our website:)

What Store?

Sure a Zazzle Store:) Buy Now! Inventory almost out! Rare Limited Editions!!

:)

KADE What?

Here's a animated KADE teaser we completed today -it's one of our ongoing projects, this one a co-production with Arcana Comics:

http://www.youtube.com/sneakinertpeak9000

Also, it's Wednesday so I've uploaded all-new webcomics to our site like we do each and every Wednesday:

http://www.say.whatcomix.com/

which among other thing features the above exciting "Young Cerebus" cliffhanger:)

What Staff?

As "Necross the (ha ha ha) Mad" has a lair decorated with skulls it's only fitting he'd have a Skull Staff. Created by Brian Buchmann.

Say Captain Say What

The webcomics site has now officially launched http://www.say.whatcomix.com/

For those who worry that this will take away from the Cerebus Film -these are comics that are already finished so it's just a matter of uploading them...ok, some I can't help it and give a little edit:) but this should hopefully not be too much of a workload.

The Cerebus Film script is getting very tight -not done yet, but very close. Don't want to cut any corners on this.

What's Up...pt2

To answer the question posed in the comments of the last post: Erik Frederick has now begun creating the character: "Necross the (ha ha ha) Mad"

I figure he'd be perfect as he did a character previously, which to me embodied many of the elements to make this really character pop.

And for more about Necross:

http://www.cereb.us/wiki/index.php?title=Necross

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.

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...

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:

(From http://www.cereb.us/wiki/index.php?title=Issue_196)

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.

(taken from http://www.geocities.com/cerebuscomic/minds.html)

...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.

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.

What TV?

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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:)

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

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2009/10/11/cerebus-tv/

another reason I figure time for an overhaul, besides been talking about switching to a production blog (versus our closed forum) for a while.

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.