Oh, and look for me at Nan Desu Kan in Colorado this weekend, where I'll be set up at a table, and I'll be offering a panel explaining how we use the various software involved in our animation!

Since the last post with this picture has scrolled off, here it is again! I've been working doggedly on the DVD collection of shorts, and it will be done in a couple of days. I went back to the original source frames to get the best possible quality, and the results are gorgeous -- this is better than our animation has ever looked before! I also took the opportunity to restore the opening credits at the beginning of Apprentice. If you thought the first two shots of scenery were overly long, now you know why. Originally, the opening scene had movie-style credits before and after the title popped up, but the equipment I was using at the time introduced nasty video artifacts that made the credits look terrible, so I decided to remove them altogether. This also reduces the oddness of the music kicking in when nothing's happening. This was my fault at the time, because I provided Louie (of Vanilla Almond Creme) with an animatic of the shot with the title appearing at a certain time, and he scored the music to that. Later, with neither of us knowing this, I moved the title a little later to allow for the credit placement, which ended up being scrapped anyway. Anyway, the DVD contains Apprentice, The Item, and The Evil At Tentacle High, as well as the trailers for Apprentice, The Item, and Pink Lemonade. (The trailers for The Item and Apprentice are of a bit lesser quality than the actual features, but that's not unusual judging from the DVDs I own ^^;). I'm putting the finishing touches on the menu system now, and I'll announce when it's ready to go. The inclusion of the Pink Lemonade trailer and The Evil At Tentacle High means the DVD's rated H for Hentai content, but it's all in good fun. ^^ I've gotten a couple of reports of people not being able to see the Flash animation of Jadie and the pumpkin. Please make sure you have the Flash 6 plugin, or it won't work. I've tried it out on a bunch of different computers now, and on the ones that didn't show it, I installed the latest Flash plugin and it worked fine. I've added a link to the plugin download site on the pumpkin page.

Here's the first real bit of Flash animation content -- a seasonal theme, in the left column. (or, click here for a bigger version on its own page.) Yes, it's the same pumpkin as last year, but this time it has something inside! Go on, click it, and see! This one requires Flash 5. More coming soon!