Blog Train

Okay, we're back on the blog train. Got my computer back from the repair shop. The fan was dirty, it was cleaned, so it shouldn't overheat anymore. Absolutely nothing has changed about the way the computer runs. I called the repair guy and he was bewildered, he really thought cleaning the fan would fix up all the visual glitching. I guess I'll take it back to him, well, shortly after sending out this blog post.

For now we're starting this week. Today, the aforementioned trip into the recording studio to pick up those lines of Gretchen that were missed and, with Isaac back from his trip, it's back to editing the show, scene by scene.

Things happening during the time of the previous blog that I decided to save for this one. Well, Brian had to bow out. Brian LaGuardia is a composer who was recommended by a friend of mine a couple years ago. He signed on to write the music for my Drizzt Do'Urden musical. He produced like one-quarter of one song and it was very exciting, but didn't get any further. A year later, I asked him to write some songs for the Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices pilot episode. That, he did, so that was nice, with the songs I was able to continue writing and producing that pilot, and so I have been. So, I got two-and-a-quarter songs out of him in as many years before he officially bowed out a few weeks ago, just has too much to do for the rest of the year.

Why I stuck with a composer who had so little time for me, well, he was the fourth composer who signed on to TAPAS and the first who actually did anything. The first three met with me, talked about the projects, had a good time talking about it, were delivered the material to work with, never worked with it. One had the courtesy to officially bow out due to being busy like Brian did, the other two just ghosted me. It's very painful. I love music so much and want lots of it in my stories. I've gotten two and a quarter pieces of music in all the years I've been doing this. And the quarter might not count anymore, I'm confident enough now to admit it when I'm dissatisfied with a take, and I think the melody Brian composed wasn't up-tempo enough for my tastes. So I'll talk about that with... someone, whenever we get back to that Drizzt musical.

I'll have to rewrite that Drizzt musical; apart from the script being over four years old anyway, Drizzt is becoming mainstream soon, he's starring in the upcoming video game Dark Alliance and, rumor has it, a TV series. Or at least some stories narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, something like that. All the jokes about what an obscure story it is to write a parody musical about will have to be adjusted. Heck, some of those weren't even jokes, there was a villainous breaking speech on the subject.

A few months ago, Brian brought in his friend Robert to help carry the load, and, after those months Robert is almost finished with one song, a halfling-themed background song for Irregular Fantasy! I'm very happy with it. I'm just a little nervous now about what I'm gonna do about music going forward, I have Robert but I don't think he can tackle the whole thing alone. Need some more composers. I just don't understand why I've had such ill luck with musicians, why it's so often been such a complete non-starter.

Another person who's backed out of a project recently was Emily Dozier. One of my best friends from the theatre, I was in Spamalot and She Loves Me with her and her husband, and they throw excellent cast parties. She was to play Natha Lee in The Choices, but when I was re-confirming that cast, she backed out following the tragic death of her cat. That's hard. Totally understandable. Replacing her would be a hard journey, or so I thought, but my very first idea, for Hannah, one of our fellow ensemble members from She Loves Me, worked out right away, she was all for it. And the entire cast of Irregular Fantasy! is also signed on! Still a few Choices parts needing to be confirmed. Just as I hope Brian maybe makes some room for me next year, I hope Emily rejoins TAPAS for, well, whatever the next thing is!

Anyway... I assume you wanted to hear about kitties. A litter of feral kittens were born in my grandpa's neck of the woods. Comfortable enough to get on people's porches to eat the food laid out there, but feral enough to flee at the very sight of a human. When my mom and sisters were visiting, they trapped two of the five, and... I had to save them. I took them in. They're my kitties now.

My two boys, as I learned when I took them to the vet. The yellow one is Butter, the orange one is Marmalade. Because they're yellow and orange! Butter adapted amazingly well, he likes to cuddle and play. Marmalade is still pretty afraid of me, but he's adjusting little by little. I knew from the start that I wanted two, so they'd have someone around they'd be comfortable with, not be ripped away from their entire life, and that was absolutely the best call, the tasty-on-toast brothers are definitely good for each other's health and comfort.

So, like I said, we're back to working on Better Yet? today. Based on how the editing went of the first three scenes - apart from noticing that we simply didn't have some of Gretchen's dialogue in Scene 2 we got a good rhythm going and it went very smoothly! - the whole thing should come together soon, I can't imagine anything going so wrong that we'd fail to reach our ill-defined release date of July. Just July.

Hoping to put together a Quiplash 3 game with the cast of Better Yet? for this weekend too. That'll be tons of fun. Nice little promotion.

And by the time this blog comes out, I hope to have engaged TAPAS Phase Two. You'll know it when you see it. Well, maybe not here on the blog. Not entirely sure how to redesign the blog for Phase Two. But every other place you can find TAPAS, that, that'll be all decked out for Phase Two.

So, another thing going on: final redesigns of the cast of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices! Funny thing: most of the art for TAPAS projects thus far has been done by either Stacy Lord or Casey Gosselin, and I had the realization a few months ago that all the projects we were actually launching - Better Yet?, The Choices, and Irregular Fantasy! - were coincidentally all of those that were visually developed by Casey. But while Better Yet? will indeed feature Casey's portraits, some scheduling problems meant Stacy had to take over for first Irregular Fantasy!, then The Choices.

Anyway, the objective for the final version of The Choices characters, was to remember the massive Disney inspiration that the Keys & Kingdoms universe was supposed to have. I'm working on world-building with all the ideas I've had from watching Disney films, inject more of that atmosphere into the universe, and I also want a ton more Disney in the art style.

For example, here's the picture of Zaya and Airi which Casey did for the TAPAS Banner! I assume the TAPAS Banner will have gone public by the end of this week. If not, well, here's a preview of one-tenth of it, ya lucky blog-readin' bastards.

And here are Stacy's preliminary sketches! Experiments with adjusting her art style so we get the look we're going for. This sketch is all we have so far, but I'd say we're off to a good start. I saw this the other day, and I says to her, I says, "Those are some Disney-ass eyes. Well done."

The Irregular Fantasy redesigns were finished some time ago, not only character models but also some slick promotional renders. Those have been shown off to insiders, not going public with them until we're closer to having something to release. I have teasers for both projects boarded, hoping to unveil those teasers by September-ish? We'll see what we can do.

As for Casey, no longer having codified the art style of these two projects, well, something occurs to me. That being the launch of Whirlwind, my crew's old Dungeons & Dragons adventure, and Kingdom Butts, my long-in-the-making super-awesome Kingdom Hearts parody. I moved them up to earlier in the agenda because I think the way to tell these stories... is as books. Not real books, but books to post onto a fanfiction site, I'm thinking Archive of Our Own? Books that need maybe two illustrations per chapter, and I think Casey's style will fit a legit D&D story, as well as a Kingdom Hearts story which, unlike Keys & Kingdoms, we're trying to make look like D&D instead of Disney. Actually, I haven't mentioned this to Casey yet. I'll do that now.

As for Whirlwind, you know, we played the first story arc I had planned, we documented it, we released a pinpoint-accurate book adaptation of it onto fanfiction.net. But a D&D adventure doesn't make for a very good book, it's all ad-libbed and unstructured. So we're rewriting that first story arc, as a book, and then we'll be continuing the adventure in that way, as books. I've already told the players, now my co-writers, the broad strokes of how I intended the rest of the adventure to go, so they will no longer be surprised at every turn and will now have control of other aspects beyond what their characters do. So, you know... it's not a legit D&D adventure anymore, but it's still an honest collaboration set in a D&D universe.

Okay, it's another day. I cancelled the Quiplash plan. Maybe another week. I'm just feeling too overwhelmed for it right now. Part of it was the stress of trying to make sure there would be exactly six players, as Quiplash 3 has a pretty lackluster ending if you don't have an even number of players, and it's pretty dull all around if you have only four. Maybe I should buy Drawful 2 instead. It's a standalone, not in any of the Party Packs, and it's a classic. And it'll work just fine with five people. Most of the games do, I just really wanted to break into Party Pack 7 for the first time; Quiplash 3 looks really good, but again, only if you have an even number of players.

But we've done the thing, we got into the studio to get Gretchen's lines and we made some plans! Mason, Isaac, and myself will gather in the last few two days of June to continue editing the show now that we definitely probably have all the dialogue. Isaac hopes to refine everything by July 17, as he's going on another trip after that. And right now, several of my cast members, Mason included, are entangled in QCT's production of Chicago, which was in the middle of production when the pandemic hit. So that'll take a lot of effort! But it ends its run on August 1, and... I think Isaac will be back from his trip around then? Not sure. But anyway... surely all the storyboards will be done by August 1! Then we can jump right into recording for the Choices pilot and the Irregular Fantasy teaser. Hmm, my aim to release the teasers by late September (for my birthday!), that's probably too soon to hope for with this plan, but that's totally okay! We have forward momentum and it's awesome.

But what this means right now is that Better Yet? will almost certainly make its "just July" release date, so that's cool. Sadly, the trailer doesn't seem to have spread as far as the simple promo image did, but again... that's okay. We'll do the real promotion when the actual show is released. Oh, and also hopefully in there we can edit all of Aramie's dialogue in the first Choices teaser; she hosts that alone, we have it all storyboarded, so it'll be cool to have a complete story reel of dat.

It is now Sunday morning and I have just discussed all these upcoming plans with the insiders. Gotta admit, the notion of Better Yet? almost being finished is kind of making me depressed. That's natural when a project is ending, you know, and that's never really happened with a TAPAS project before. Finishing an art project, as they say, is like getting fired and having to find another job, and so being a freelancer is like that happening every week or so. The depression I've gone into after the end of every stage play I've been in, that was hard... didn't have anything else going on in my life at the time. Fortunately, I do know what's coming up next for me, as you've gathered from all of the Keys & Kingdoms and Irregular Fantasy stuff I've been discussing. As difficult as that will be, more so than Better Yet? was, it'll be something to strive for that's going... rather well. And, you know, I should savor the existence of Better Yet? before rushing into the next thing. We want to get people talking about that for as long as possible.

Still Sunday morning! Finished recording Podcast #52 yesterday, so it'll be released this evening for sure, this blog will be released after I've switched everything over to Phase Two. Very exciting. Here, let me show you what the blog looks like right now:

Just a default Blogspot look-and-feel. It'll probably still look like this after this post is published, but I for sure want to try and customize it in some way in the future. I'll work on that.

So, okay, Monday morning, posting the blog momentarily. Everything does indeed now have the Phase Two veneer on it, the new logos, the banner. Everything except the blog, anyway. I wonder if I can put the banner up as a header image for the blog? I'll try later. If not, I'm referring to this baby:

The Phase Two TAPAS banner, headlining all our social media presence from now on. The stars of nine of our original IPs, here to tantalize the audience about what their stories might be about when we unveil them in the future! Directly to the left of the logo you'll see Trent, drawn by Casey Gosselin for Mason Ellison's Better Yet? - you'll meet him very soon. Front and center are Airi and Zaya, they should be making their debut not too long after. Everyone else? We'll see.

Heard back from David Morgan-Mar this morning, he's looked over my material, he's looking forward to seeing what comes next for Irregular Fantasy. If all goes well that'll start popping up at about the same time as the Keys & Kingdoms stuff, I'm thinking of them as sister series even though there's no formal connection beyond, I suppose, both using the same RPG rules system which I... still haven't formulated. Might behoove me to figure out exactly what magic is capable of in the multiverse of the still-nameless Tapas RPG before getting too far into stories set there.

Last night, I found my computer could no longer read any USB device I inserted into it. So... couldn't have a videoconference or record my voice or even back up what files were changed since my last trip to the computer repair shop. That was kind of infuriating... but I just counted my blessings that I got the podcast recorded before that, got it done. Added it to the list, my full-page list of computer problems to resolve. Might end up being cheaper to just get a new laptop, in which case... I don't know what I'll do.

But I don't want to end this on a sad note! It's Phase Two. There's a whole world of possibilities ahead of us.

Coming Back Swinging

We started editing Better Yet? this week. Doing it sequentially, got three scenes in. Discovered that we never recorded some of Gretchen's dialogue in Scene 2, so... that'll be something to do later. As far as the release date for Better Yet?, we had one in mind, but the one we'll be officially announcing is "July". Just July. So if it's late July, you can't get mad. That'll be announced by the trailer, which if all goes well you'll have seen by the time this blog comes out.

My mom and sisters should be in town right about now. Eager to spend some time with them, but today, first things first - we've got one shot to get my sisters into the recording studio to do their part, all of Airi's and Zaya's dialogue in the pilot for The Choices and the two teasers which precede it. I guess if the series continues we'll have to find a recording studio where they are, and work with them remotely from there. Happens all the time in indie animation, especially these very indie (and very covid) days we're living in. Surely can't be too difficult. Regardless, not a matter to think about until the very far future.

And after this week, well, no studio stuff for a while. Isaac, our audio guy, he's going on a trip for a couple of weeks. So we'll be back to editing Better Yet?, including getting Gretchen in to fill in her missing dialogue, the week of the 20th. I haven't talked about Isaac yet, I don't think; he put together a little music studio in Quincy not long ago, I found him through a friend who directed me to the music shop, who directed me to Isaac, and he has been very receptive to helping TAPAS out with our not-necessarily-musical schemes, he just appreciates art of all sorts.

A picture Isaac took of the last recording session.

Left to right: Randy Wolfmeyer as Gary, Gretchen Wolfmeyer as Jodie,

Sage Mann (me!) as Trent, Adrienne Fisk as Corrine, and Mason Ellison as Ryan.

The big family dinner scene gone horribly wrong is the show's very complex dramatic climax, and as such it's been a sticking point for Mason, our writer/director. It was the last scene to get out of rewrites, the last scene to get out of rehearsals, and the last scene we recorded, which even went on a little bit longer as Mason decided that, to get the good performances we needed, all five actors should be present for the actual dinner part. For every other scene with more than two characters in it, we recorded only one or two actors at a time, and this was the only scene with five characters in it. So we brought together the whole cast except Jerilyn, who is sort of a featured player, being my character's therapist, appearing only in two brief scenes.

Only, it's not the last scene recorded anymore, 'cause yeah, when Gretchen and Randy were recording the first scene they're in, it seems we completely forgot to get Gretchen's lines from after Randy's character exits the scene. Makes sense to me! That'll happen. We'll get it next time.

Been showing off a lot of stuff in private, insiders-only locations. Suffice to say we're definitely ready, after Better Yet? is done, to move on to The Choices and Irregular Fantasy! - hopefully not leaving Better Yet? in the dust as we do so, I'm sure it'll have time to experience some glory - and Mason expressed to me how overwhelmingly exciting it is to be moving forward and almost having stuff to share with people. I agreed, especially since I'd been planning to have all this stuff happen around this time last year. It's better this way, you know, not only do we have last year's disappointments to make this year's successes even more exciting, mistakes we've learned from to make things easier going forward... and it really wouldn't have worked as well last year; no vaccines, not many safe ways to get this stuff done. I think things are going just as they were meant to. Now we can have a wrap party!

So, back to work on the 20th, and we know what we're doing from there, having edited the first three scenes, figured out what it's like to edit scenes, so once we're back to work on it... July. Just July.

Good to have a little more time! More time to get Phase One finished, more time to get my laptop repaired, very much nice to have a deadline that's not freaking me out. I mean, we'll see how things end up when I find out how much time and money it'll take to get my hardware fixed, that might freak me out, but for now I'm good, time is on our side.

Another day now. My sisters have done their parts, that was really amazing. They're not experienced performers, and they were very nervous. Getting true intensity out of them was hard, but they still had some great standout moments. I'm hoping the story progresses and we get to see them grow and gain experience.

Apart from taking advantage of that little window of time with my sisters, we'll then be finishing up Better Yet? before we move on to anything else. That being said, a pretty major lull in the action is coming up for TAPAS; Isaac's going on vacation, so the editing of Better Yet? will be on hold for a couple of weeks, and I'm taking in my computer for repairs, so that'll slow things down until it's repaired. Which might take just a day, or might be several weeks, don't know. I just know a few bits of hardware need replacin'. I'll find out on Tuesday. Me without my laptop represents a massive lifestyle change, so I'm bracing myself for it being a long-term deal just in case.

So for now, taking a break. I think we'll have one big Zoom meeting about the future of Irregular Fantasy! before going on that lull. And hopefully I'll get the latest podcast done by then.

And... just did that, the meeting about Irregular Fantasy! I brought Mason into my usual Sunday meeting with Naty and Kenzie, and the four of us together read all the scripts, took some notes. Not a lot of notes, but at least we all know the big picture now for when it's time to properly write and design that stuff.

Funny thing, in reassembling the casts, everyone who didn't get back to me pretty much instantly, still hasn't gotten back to me. Heh, all or nothing, for some reason. I'll have to figure out some non-naggy ways to establish contact with everyone I still need. Well, I don't "need" them, if they tell me no I'll figure something out. But, you know, still gonna do all I can to get as much of last year's cast as possible.

Also kitties. I have tiny kitties now. More on that later, I put a few things on hold to discuss in the next blog. If my computer repair doesn't take very long, you'll see that at the usual time next week, if not... you'll see it when you see it. Cheers, all.