I had forgotten there was a TAPAS blog. I was just looking back through the private TAPAS Facebook group to figure out when the anniversary was -- it's March 28, so, coming up on two years soon -- and happened to come upon a post in which I shared the blog, a blog which hasn't updated in seventeen months.
A lot has changed in seventeen months, based on the details I shared in September 2018. Since I'm here, might as well share an update on how all the projects stand now.
I moved away from Quincy in early 2019, finding myself psychologically unable to, well, do anything. I spent 2019 living with my aunt and working at her restaurant with the intent of returning to Quincy at the end of the season, but then my therapist said he wanted me to stick with him for another six months, so I'm doing that. It's working, I'm for sure getting better; so, I'll be returning to Quincy in June and I hope to get a job there and tackle a whole bunch of TAPAS projects.
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https://tapasandstuff.com/ We have a website now, courtesy of WordPress. The website has quite a bit of information on it, but I might as well elaborate on it here, especially since I'll be updating the website often, so let's see how everything stands as of right now, second of March 2020.
TAPAS and Stuff Productions Podcast
Ah, possibly the reason I stopped updating the blog -- I started working on the podcast. The podcast, in addition to having had a few months-long hiatuses caused by my depression, stopped being about TAPAS news a long time ago, as there came a point when I just plain stopped having news to share, as there were no project updates to speak of. I hope that's changed and I can start adding a TAPAS updates segment back into it starting in Season 2 -- Season 2 of the podcast will begin with Episode 53, I'm currently working on Episode 43 and trying real hard to release two episodes a week in order to catch up on all the delays. Season 2 will also debut an upgraded version of the TAPAS logo, so enjoy the one Naty designed while it lasts.
As noted on the website, Season 1 of the podcast consists of five distinct segments: Companions, in which I described every scene from Drizzt and the Companions of the Dance Hall, then gave a few updates, then... there stopped being any updates to talk about, so that segment only lasted for the first half of the season. Then there was the Team Salmon segment, in which I talked about the seven original ideas described in the September 2018 section of the blog. As with Companions, I ran out of things to talk about around the halfway point of the season... there just wasn't any progress going on.
Then there was the Droon segment, in which I read books from the 44-volume children's series The Secrets of Droon and dream about how I'd adapt the series to television. The conclusion of that segment is set to line up perfectly with the conclusion of Season 1, then I'll move on to talking about something else, perhaps Harry Potter, just to fill time and look back on it. The Keys & Kingdoms segment is all about watching Disney films, both purely for the sake of experiencing Disney's history and also for gathering inspiration for the Keys & Kingdoms game and universe. As far as I can tell, it's the only segment anybody actually listens to, and is set to last to at least the end of Season 2, maybe a bit beyond.
When two segments ran out of steam around the halfway point of the season, I introduced the Fanfiction segment, in which I read fics from my ten and counting years of fanfiction-writing to find gold nuggets I can use in later original works as well as see how I've grown as a writer, that'll get me through some Season 2 time as well.
Let's Play Infinity Engine
The first big TAPAS project was successfully kicked off; I had a great time getting actors together for the custom soundsets, and the "full cast" thing was fun for the first four episodes before I abandoned it for being a bit too much work, a bit beyond my talents, and after that, well, I'm currently only 13 episodes into the LP of Icewind Dale, I really gotta get back to playing it more, finish the game for the first time ever. The custom soundsets are up for download on the website; the characters came from Irregular Webcomic, whose author approves of the soundsets!
As the website alludes, once I'm done playing Icewind Dale with the cast of Irregular Webcomic, I intend to do a sequel, playing Icewind Dale II with the cast of The Order of the Stick. At some future point, I also want to play Torment -- really committing to the "Let's Play with a full cast" notion this time -- and do a full playthrough of the Baldur's Gate trilogy with the character my sister Ziya once created, with whom we did not end up finishing the game. Of course, calling Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, and the Baldur's Gate II expansion pack the Baldur's Gate "trilogy" isn't quite so accurate anymore now that Baldur's Gate III is in production, but I don't really care about that, sticking to the classics.
Let's Play Jackbox
When my mom and sisters came to visit me last June, I thought it would be fun to try playing The Jackbox Party Pack. We did a few videos of that, and then a few more when I visited them in December. Truly classic, and I hope to do a bunch more of those with a bunch more people once I get to Quincy.
Let's Play Dungeon Siege
I impulsively decided to start doing an LP of Dungeon Siege, a guilty pleasure game of mine. I'm currently on Part 7 of that LP; it'll be finished a lot sooner than Icewind Dale, that's for sure, much easier game to play, even with the self-imposed challenges I'm undertaking. In the future, I dream of playing the multiplayer campaign with some people! It'll be difficult, as the game is quite old by software standards, but there are ways.
Disney Retrospectives
Supplements to the Keys & Kingdoms segment of the TAPAS podcast, in which I look at Disney television series and video games. I'm two episodes into The Little Mermaid TV series and those are the most popular videos on the YouTube channel, for whatever that's worth; a lot of people click on them, don't seem to engage with them much. Over the course of Christmas vacation, Naty and I recorded our thoughts on every episode of Gargoyles, which I'll release after I'm done with The Little Mermaid, really excited to get those out there.
The Deities Project
I decided once that the gods of Keys & Kingdoms should be fantasy versions of the Egyptian, Greek, and Norse pantheons. As it turns out, there's a Third Edition D&D supplement, Deities & Demigods, with stats for those exact three pantheons, though nothing about the three of them coexisting in a single world... anyway, there are 53 of them in total and I thought for a cool project I'd design and commission some artwork of what they'll look like in the K&K universe. Casey drew their symbols, and Stacy is working on drawing the gods themselves; she last did the 11th of the 53 gods, Frigga, and... haven't heard from her in a bit, think I'll check in today.
Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices
Keys & Kingdoms is going... well, it's going. I've decided I no longer want to make the cartoon I spoke of earlier in the blog, the direct Kingdoms Hearts parody one, but we're working on something different now.
Early in the Keys & Kingdoms design process, I conducted some market research, asking people what kind of creature they'd choose in a game of K&K. Eventually, I took the combos that ten people chose and turned them into characters for a series, called The Choices because that's what I called the Word document where I logged everyone's decisions.
Eventually, I figured out the medium for this and all other stories. Motion comics! A combination of comics and animation, basically a very, very pretty story reel. It's hard to explain, but you'll see soon enough. Best of both worlds, I get comics without the pain of having to arrange the panels, and voice acting, the easy and fun part of animation, without most of the incredibly time-consuming and expensive parts of animation.
Storyboards for the pilot episode of The Choices are in production now; next week we'll do the rest of the first season, and if we can keep that up, the story will run for five seasons.
Luno Canyon
An audio drama conceived by Naty, which immediately captured my imagination -- the tale of some kids in the paranormal community of Luno Canyon, Arizona. I love audio drama, and hey, it's a lot cheaper than animation. Naty and I are working on writing it, hopefully we'll have something in the next three months and can cast and record it when she visits me in July.
Drizzt and the Companions of the Dance Hall
Well, haven't thought about you in quite some time... I met with a composer last year who started working on the music. I had him switch his focus to working on songs for the Choices pilot and he's been struggling to get that done, busy composer life, but soon I hope he'll be able to get me at least the first four songs, for promotional reasons... and then that we'll finish the score in time to put on the show sometime next year.
The script needs rewrites, to accomodate the three or four years that will have passed since it was first written, especially since Drizzt and the Companions will be starring in an upcoming video game that's sure to bring them back into the spotlight, so we'll have to keep up with that.
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And that's it for the projects that are in-progress enough to merit their own pages on the TAPAS website... here's everything else I'm planning and working on.
Whirlwind
Well, we finished playing the first volume of that story sometime after I posted about it. Right now I'm working on rewriting the story so it takes place in a 5th Edition universe instead of 4th, then releasing the newly-refurbished Volume 1 as a fanfic, and hopefully continue writing the story in some manner, probably won't be able to return to playing D&D the way we did before, but we'll continue the story in some fashion.
My current ambition for Whirlwind is to turn it into the best damn audiobook ever. The animated adaptation, maybe in the distant future, when we're older.
Kingdom Butts
The new version of the Kingdom Hearts parody I was planning. Like Whirlwind, a literary fanfic project, and like Whirlwind, on the back burner, just working on it whenever I can. A parody, a reimagining in an original Dungeons & Dragons setting, a motherfuckin' musical. Purely a fanfic, but perhaps someday we'll turn it to a visual medium, or at least make a soundtrack album of its many songs.
Better Yet?
This play, written and directed by my friend Mason, is still on the table. We'll get it made and filmed when I return to Quincy in June!
2021 Motion Comics
Next year, we'll produce three motion comic pilot episodes: one for Iris, one for Some Sweet Kind of Vampire, and one for a story of Naty's creation, Depression & Me. Whichever of those becomes the most popular, we'll greenlight for a six-season run! Assuming we can maintain the budget to greenlight such things. The other two, well, we'll continue them when we feel up for it.
Irregular Fantasy!
After a few years of The Choices and whatever takes off in 2021, I'll approach David Morgan-Mar, author of Irregular Webcomic!, about making a loose adaptation of the comic's Fantasy theme -- I've had so much fun playing with his characters in my Icewind Dale LP, I want to play with them in their own unique world, hopefully voiced by the same actors who played them before.
Perhaps Irregular Fantasy! can be the first TAPAS project to be actually animated, if we're big enough by then. If not, well, another animatic then!
Bass
My grandpa Larry passed away just a few months ago. A few years ago, he gave me a screenplay he wrote, about a Denver family of fishermen who are trying to catch a prize-winning giant bass in order to pay their medical bills. It's pretty good. The themes of liberalism and anti-religion, though I pretty much agree with them, are a bit heavy-handed, I'd probably cut those out of the script, but otherwise it's a fun story that'd make for a great indie movie filmed in Denver... so, after The Choices, Irregular Fantasy!, and the 2021 comic reach the end of their run, I hope to do that.
The Secrets of Droon
And then... my ultimate goal is to make an adaptation of my favorite childhood book series, The Secrets of Droon. After Bass, I hope to pitch it to Rooster Teeth and Scholastic, hopefully in time for the series' 30-year anniversary in 2029, the year after the 10th anniversary of TAPAS. If I achieve this, well, that won't be it for me, obviously. Still plenty of stories to tell, to finish.
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And, well, might as well talk about the projects mentioned earlier on the blog that I haven't already talked about in this post...
Comic Fandubs
Yeah, not gonna do those. It would be fun, but it's too much time and effort to put into non-original material. I'd rather be legitimately creative.
Our Pack, Charlie the Chrash Can, and Page Turners
These projects, well... might get to them, sometime in the future, after all three of the series we release in 2021 have had their day. Or, might not, might have outgrown them by then. Who's to say? Either way, I have my whole life to think about it.
Keys & Kingdoms
As far as the actual Keys & Kingdoms roleplaying game, well, I have no idea how I'm gonna pull that off. I can only hope that the universe will continue to have life beyond The Choices.
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So, yeah, those are my plans. Well, the more immediate ones are plans, the rest are... more like just dreams. The March 2020 record of my dreams. Let's see how those turn out, and I'll continue with the blog.
UPDATE
Posted this earlier today, and realized thanks to a video posted by Dominic Noble that I had forgotten to add a project to my ten-year plan:
The Eye of Argon
The worst fantasy novel ever written. With that distinction, it deserved to be adapted into a movie. A truly awesome movie. I'll slide it into the schedule after we wrap production on The Choices. I'm thinking rotoscoped animation, truly the only way to tell a barbarian-fantasy story. I wrote the screenplay last November, just a faithful adaptation of the book, now it needs expanding. So, yeah, that's one of my dreams, one I apparently forgot about for a little while: turning a terrible book into a good film. And with rotoscoping, we just might be able to do that on the kind of community theatre budget people will no doubt come to expect from TAPAS by then.
UPDATE
Another update, just so long as it's still the same day as the day I first published this post... Naty has informed me that she wants Depression & Me to just be a small-scale webcomic. So I guess that takes it out of the running to be one of the 2021 pilots, that makes things easier, and hey, a real webcomic under the TAPAS name, sounds good.
UPDATE
Okay, last one. Next update goes on next week's actual post, gonna post weekly from now on. I have two more upcoming projects I want to discuss now that I figured out how my video camera works:
100 Awesome Plans
I purchased a box at the Denver Museum of Art containing "100 Awesome Plans" you can do at home. And, well, I'm going to implement those plans in a 50-video series once I'm living on my own. Should be a fun thing.
The Trivia Box
As a Christmas gift, I got another box with 140 trivia questions. I'm going to use those cards in The Trivia Box, the official TAPAS game show. It won't just be questions and answers, there'll be crazy challenges as well. Just gotta cook those up as well...
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