Newsletter -- May 25, 2003
Greetings, Dreamers!
This is your irregular report on the state of our animated feature "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", where today's motto is "What -- did you expect Final Fantasy?"
The final animation proceeds at the expected crawl, but it's quite a frantic crawl. We're right about at 73 minutes into the production. A tad behind. Hint, hint... 8)
I thought I was sick of snow after the scenes out on the plateau of Leng. Now that we've moved nearly through the battle on the Great Rock, I'm really getting sick of flying spears. Don't get me wrong -- they look cool -- but I can live happily the rest of my life without animating another flying spear!
We're still nutty for helpers! If you know Photoshop and have an evening or two, let us know! Really. Right now!
If you know After Effects and want to help out with the more detailed animation, definitely drop us a line, too!
All volunteers receive screen credit, a copy of the finished movie, and whatever else kind of goodies I can think of to pass around.
Speaking of goodies, we're still targeting an October premiere. All volunteers on the project (cast and crew) will be invited to a private reception, to thank them even more effusively than I do in these newsletters, on the website, and in my heart each and every time I see stuff coming in over e-mail. So, if you weren't sure about helping, think about it more! Get your friends involved, too. At the very least, send 'em to the website.
This week, two very odd things happened:
On one of my discussion boards, my signature was "Like Lovecraft? Know Photoshop? Wanna be a part of something unspeakable? Visit http://www.petting-zoo.org/Movies_Dreamquest.html" After a couple of weeks, my account was suspended! Turns out a few people had complained about my signature to the board owner. "Hm, is it too much like soliciting?" I asked, once we were connected via phone. "It's a volunteer project and it seemed like most people were putting their URLs in their signature." "No," he tells me. I can almost hear him squirm. "It's a bit... dicey." "Dicey?" Finally, it turns out that some people think associating "love", "dream", "unspeakable", and "petting zoo" are sufficiently naughty to judge without further ado. One fella was more helpful, showing the board owner that if you click here and there and then just so, you'll eventually get to naughty stick figures (a different part of the domain site). So, basically, the only people who were offended were either people who elected to judge without observing, or who got there and tried really hard to find something unrelated. (it takes fewer clicks to find real porn via that darn "Google" -- I wonder if THEY catch crap.
The same night, I received a letter from a completely different guy who informed me that I was in way over my head, that we weren't going to finish the movie, and that if I needed a project manager, I should consider him. I dropped him a note, thanking him for his input, informing him that, despite his expert opinion, the movie was, in fact, rolling rapidly towards completion, that "over my head" wasn't really a working phrase for me, and that if he could think of any way to speed up production, he was certainly welcome to volunteer his efforts -- which is what everyone else was doing with remarkable competence. Haven't heard back from him, yet, we're "managing" just fine.
Maybe something's rising in Scorpio or something?
So, come to the site, visit when you can, drop us a note and let us know if there's anything else you want to see.
Have fun! Dream! Live!
Cheers,
Edward
