Oh yeah!

A lot of people contact me about wanting to be in the show.

Here's the deal:

I already have more story and character ideas than I know what to do with. I also, for legal and personal reasons, want to control the characters used.

Episode 6 had a lot of cameos in it from people who wrote to me. If you are interested in just having your character in the background, send me a demorecording of your toon and the name of the toon, at the contact email on this blog.

For those who don't know how to demorecord:
1. Log into the character you want to record
2. Type /demorecord nameofdemo
3. Sit for a second
4. Type /demostop
5. Go into your City of Heroes folder on your pc.
6. Find the client_demo folder
7. Your demo will be nameofdemo.cohdemo
8. Send that file to me.

Done!

Episode 7 update

Hey guys.

The momentum is strong this time around, so I have the first draft script of Episode 7 finished. I'll give it a little more polishing, then see about corralling my voice crew. Maybe the next episode will be out a little faster than the last. :)

I figured that the point of a blog is to update people on stuff, so I'll try and post here a bit more often from here on out.

Much love,
Liz

Episode 6 - Favorite Possessions

FINALLY!!!

The gang takes a day off from hero-ing, and an intervention is held for Anne.

AAARGH!!!

It was up for about 5 minutes last night. Then, as I peeked through it, two things came to light. One, the color was washed out and it looked really shitty. Two, I hadn't noticed in my half-a-million viewings that a costume bug was plaguing Anne and made her look crappy. So, I'm redoing her costume and re-re-re-regenerating the video file. *beats head on desk*

*insert nervous breakdown here*

Ok. YouTube is being surly, which is making me surly. I just did a few repairs, and will regenerate the video file. If I haven't fallen asleep on my keyboard, I'll start it uploading tonight. If not, it should be up sometime tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

Uploading right now. Will have the link up as soon as YouTube processes it. I'd like to thank everyone who reads this and watches the show for being so patient with me. It's been a rough few months, but it feels good to have another show out.

Good news: The script for Ep. 7 is underway...I have it outlined and just have to write the dialogue.

Bad news: You remember that LASIK process I had to go through earlier this year. On August 6, I go through Round 2 of it. They under-corrected me, which isn't surprising since they took me from 7 diopters to about 1ish (0 being 20/20). They'll be doing my right eye first, then my left a short time later. I could live without it, I see worlds better than I could before, but I've come this far, so I might as well be able to see clearly. Y'know, be able to read street signs and busses and my wall calendar. :) So, there will be time to mend, and time to deal with all the medical mayhem and appointments that go with this process. Blargh.

With luck, I'll get the script done and gather people for audio recording considerably faster this time. A couple people involved with the show are working at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in Oswego, so they'll be busy through the end of summer. But, we'll see. At any rate, this show will continue, and hopefully will get closer to the 2 month schedule and farther from the 9+ oh-my-god-I-suck month schedule.

Much love,
--Liz

WOOOO!!!

For those of you special people who actually follow this blog:

Episode 6 should finally be up on YouTube tomorrow!!! I just finished the editing, now I just have to cut it together and ship it out.

*passes out*

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Ahem. Scene from Hell is done done done done DONE!!!!! Much rejoicing. 1 more scene and this baby's ready to patch together and send out to you guys.

Happy dance!!!!

PROGRESS!!!!

Programming is 80% complete. I finally figured out how to use the tools I was working with, and my husband (the voice behind Raid E. Ation and the reason I stay even remotely sane through this frustration) designed a couple more tools to help me out. So, it's smooth sailing here on out. *knocks on wood, goes outside and finds more to knock on*

This weekend is my kid sister's birthday. She's the voice behind Ellen Carter, and is an awesome awesome person. Give her love in the comments! I'll make sure she gets it.

Update: The Saga of The Cursed Episode!

OK, who hexed this episode? :)

Was set to program the weekend away, so, of course, all of my notes vanished into the ether. All of them. The numbers I need to code all of the animation? Eaten by some strange note-eating monster in my house. !@#$^%(*&^%$#@ I spent the 90+ degree weekend scouring the house, to no avail.

So, I just recreated the notes. Will work on coding over the next few days. Will get this episode done if it kills me.

Accounting

Hi there.

No, it's not finished yet. I'm sorry.

This episode has been rather challenging. I had LASIK surgery in January with mixed results, limiting my ability to stare at a computer screen for the required time. A cast member had a death in the family. Seasonal depression was extended by several weeks because I live in the Grey Hell of Upstate NY. I'm learning a new tool that, in theory, will make editing easier but there's a steep learning curve and I'm slow. I'm about halfway through the worst of the programming right now, after which there will be a week of editing. I'm hoping to get the programming done in the next couple days, but expect it to be closer to another week as I've hit a really thorny snag and have to decide how to work around it.

On the plus side, I've managed to sketch out the remainder of the first story arc, and will be able to write scripts and record audio much faster. So, hopefully, this will be back on a more frequent schedule very soon.

Blargh.

Queens of King's Blooper Reel #1: The F Word

While I gather content for Episode 6 (recording vocals this week), I've decided to do some very quick blooper reels. The video is cobbled together from previous work so I won't have to spend time animating it when I should be working on the episode, but the soundtrack is the gang and I screwing up. Hope you enjoy, and I'll program as fast as I can, I swear! :)

Episode 5 fixed

I've gotten some complaints about the audio in Episode 5, so I posted a fix. Here it is.

FINALLY! Episode 5 - Waking the Dead

The thrilling conclusion to Episode 4. Sorry it took so long to get this episode out... busy summer, uncooperative editing tools, and general mayhem has prevailed for a while now. The next episode may take a while to get out. I have a very busy couple months ahead of me, then there's the whole holiday mess. I'm hoping to have it out before the new year.

Thanks for waiting!

One. Single. Scene.

Not even a full scene. One small set of shots. Editing combat blows, especially when the !@#^!#&!^%!$#*%!#$!^ FINAL CUT WON'T DO WHAT IT'S TOLD!!!!!!! I have a concussion from beating my head on my desk, my monitor, the walls, etc.

Ahem. This episode is finished tonight, or I eat my Mac. Seriously. I'll do it. I've got the fork ready.

AAAAAAAUGH!

Sincerely,
Liz Reay
Very Angry Animator

WOOT!

Ok, for those of you following the play-by-play: I found a serviceable audio program (FREE Hi-Q Recorder) that has allowed me to get the combat audio I needed. Tomorrow will be spent doing final tweaks/sound effects and finally cutting this bad boy together into actual movie form.

Thanks for your patience. This summer's been insane, I've been slammed at every turn, running around every weekend, playing catch-up during the week, and generally out of my head for the past couple of months. With luck, I'll be back to my crappy roughly-2-month update schedule (or, hopefully, somewhat better than that) after I release this one.

Huzzah!

OK, all video has been captured. There's still some quirkiness with the audio, but it seems that demolition in my neighborhood has stopped, so it'll be fixed hopefully by tomorrow night. Give me a day or two for assembly, and cross every appendage, and I should have it up by the weekend. That is, if I can find a way to capture audio from a demo playback that DOESN'T sound like its been filtered through pure unadulterated white noise.

Anyone know any good audio capture programs? MCIRecorder is sucking my will to live.

Urge to kill rising...

OK, here's the status:

I am one filming scene (to be finished today) and some audio editing away from getting this thing put together and out to you guys.

Challenge: Someone, I kid you not, is RIPPING UP PAVEMENT two houses away. Even with my noise-cancelling headset I can't hear for crap. As soon as I think they're done, BWAAAM!!!!!

Gaaaah. I'm hoping I'll be able to concentrate enough to even get the filming finished.

Grrrrrrr....

A blast from the past!

Not a Queens of King's, but an animation nonetheless. This was my very first City of Heroes film, a project with my husband and our friend Jesse for a Cryptic Studios fan video contest. It's very rough compared to my current work, but amusing nonetheless.

New blog!

Hey there!

I've started a new linked blog for Crazy Raven Productions updates, news, and associated stuff. Now you too can hear my lameass excuses for not getting the next episode up RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY!!! *ahem*

So, if you're interested, you can find it at http://crazyravenproductions.blogspot.com/ There'll be a link in the sidebar as well.

Much love,
--Liz Reay