Okay, now I have a single unified store full of Pink Lemonade goodies, with more stuff on the way! Go to http://store.pinklemonadeanime.com!

Cafe Press has finally restored the missing products. There is now one more item in the "Kiss" shop and 3 items in the "Coffee Break" shop. [Edit: oops, fixed the link] So, I'm guessing I was right about them not doing anything over the weekend. I say it is rude and inconsiderate at the very least for a service provider to shut something down at the beginning of a weekend if they give no opportunity for redress during that time. I've experienced the same thing with Internet service providers. Why never on a Monday, or Wednesday, I wonder?

As predicted yesterday, I am indeed displeased, as they have still not responded to my e-mail, nor restored my designs. Here are the designs that are currently still available: Jadie & Misty Embrace, Jadie & Misty Kiss, and Pepper. You can mix and match from any of the designs in your order, even though they're not linked together except from here (they're all under one account, even though they're in multiple "shops". Just come back here to go to the other designs, until I can get something better worked out.

I'm currently in the process of creating a line of Pink Lemonade-related merchandise (but not t-shirts or mugs). However, Cafe Press is currently giving me a hard time over the designs that I've uploaded, i.e., they don't believe the art is mine. They were very quick about taking down the items that I designed, and they are now being very slow about addressing the issue. My major problem with this is that their e-mail stated that they took them down because they "may be copyright/trademark protected and require a license prior to the use for merchandise sales." Well, that's true. They are protected. Under my name. I'm the one that controls the copyright, but they're acting in my stead in enforcing it. That, I did not authorise. Actually, I've had this problem before, several times. Kinko's, for instance, has made me sign extra documents when I've made copies of my art books or companions, or in one bizarre case, I had to make an official White Radish permission slip, signed by me, giving myself permission to copy my own work! Similarly, when I sent off the DVD to the replication house, it was delayed by them sending me an additional form to sign to attest that it was mine to duplicate. I'm all for copyright protection, but I had already signed their initial forms that said the same thing! That's the same case with Cafe Press. In signing up, I agreed to their terms and conditions, and with every single image I upload, I have to check a little box that attests that I own the artwork and that it's not infringing on anything. If they're going to require additional proof after the fact, and disable my shops in the meantime, why do I have to check that stupid little box in the first place? What's more, they did this on Saturday, so I can't call them and get some immediate answers, because they're not open on the weekends. I wonder if it's going to be down all weekend. I will be very displeased.

The Pink Lemonade site (www.pinklemonadeanime.com), is now redesigned as a primarily Flash site. Also added is the production diary I mentioned before. As the Flash is a bit experimental, please let me know via the e-mail link here if anything seems wrong or non-functional (i.e. not seeing the content).

New release and a minor site improvement

I was recently perusing the site of another independent filmmaker, and he had something I've seen on occasion before: a production diary. I've often contemplated having such a thing on my own site, primarily to keep interested people informed, but I suppose it would also be useful to track my own progress. I believe I will add one to the Pink Lemonade section, even though I'm usually more comfortable working in silence and surprising everyone -- I don't like stringing people along. Case in point: Circumstances forced me to push back the release of the Pink Lemonade short (my apologies to the roomful of people to whom I announced an end-of-summer release), in favour of completing production of a new, professionally pressed and distributed DVD of three of the previous shorts. The new DVD (titled "White Radish Collection of Shorts: Magic & Monsters") contains The Item, Apprentice, and Cutethulhu, making Cutethulhu available on DVD for the first time. Also included is a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of our animation over the years, as well as multiple commentary tracks for the shorts. The Evil At Tentacle High is not on this DVD, for reasons of grouping together all the 13-up animations. It will be re-released later in a new pressing bundled with the Pink Lemonade short. In the meantime, it can still be obtained on the DVD-R Perfect Collection, which will be retired when everything has been released on pressed DVDs. Magic & Monsters is being manufactured as of this Monday, and will be available here in 2 weeks. It's currently available on preorder at The Right Stuf. Since Google obtained Blogger, they've made some improvements. One of the improvements was a clarification on some of the coding tags, the result of which is that archives of previous news postings are now available from a link near the bottom of the page.