K&K Pilot Storyboards

The TAPAS special feature this week (I say "this week" as if I successfully do a special feature every week... not even close...) is one that I was a bit worried about when I posted the last one. I simply couldn't find where on my computer I had put the storyboards for the Keys & Kingdoms pilot! I worried I may have gotten rid of them, but no, I have successfully located them, and today I'd like to walk you through that pilot and tell you all about it.

Scene 1: boarded by McKenzie Eby & Naty Jenfjord

We open in an interrogation room of some sort, where some unseen investigators are questioning Airi, a small gargoyle. She explains that she was recruited by her best friend Zaya to locate a mystical sun talisman...

In flashback, set to the song "Get It Done", Airi explains how Zaya had finally pinpointed the location of the talisman she'd been searching for her whole life, how she put together an adventuring party and they made their way through a dungeon, rifling through a storeroom...

Where Airi secretly finds the talisman. Worrying that her entire bond with Zaya might be over and done if she finds her objective, Airi impulsively snaps the object in two, which causes a fireball to ripple out from it and burn the dungeon down.

Scene 2: boarded by Casey Gosselin

Some time later, the slender fey being Zaya is in the interrogation room, and explains that the dungeon they were exploring belonged to her enemy, Jax, a servitor of the fiery god Apep.

She explains how she broke into the dungeon compound, broke open a clock in the storeroom hoping it contained the talisman. She didn't find the talisman and Jax got away, and with that going on, she resents being held in this interrogation room now.

Scene 3: boarded by Michelle Jenfjord

Next in the interrogation room is the ethereal Cristela, who says this all began... the day she was born.

She explains her life story: born in a jungle grove -- alone as an adult, as is the way with fairies --  which she protected for some time before deciding her true calling was to enter the civilized world and recruit others to her cause of defending the natural world.

When pressed, she admits she knows nothing of any actual relevance.

Scene 4: boarded by Michelle Jenfjord

Next in the chair is Stacky, the lone human in the party but far from the most normal one. Asked for information on the other members of the party, she whips out her guitar and launches into "Stacky's Ballad", singing the praises of her fellowship.

Her musical number abruptly comes to an end as Stacky gets booted out of the interrogation room.

Scene 5: boarded by Naty Jenfjord

The next occupant of the interrogation room is Natha Lee, the awkward elven sorceress looking absolutely terrified at the trouble she's in.

She recalls how Zaya urged her to break the clock and finish the quest. She wonders briefly if Zaya wasn't being completely honest about the quest's objectives, but decides to have faith and trust her leader about the good that could be done with the talisman, and the evils Jax is planning.

Scene 6: boarded by Sadie Allen

Now we interrogate Kinzie, a tiny pixie. As we flash back to a fight scene in the dungeon compound, Kinzie nitpicks the petty flaws of every member of the party.

Except for Natha Lee, who we see broke down with fear, but whom Kinzie insists is all right.

Scene 7: boarded by Casey Gosselin

Finally, we share the interrogation room with Maer, a roguish elf. She's a bit surprised to learn what the others have claimed, and clears up the issue, mostly with Zaya's portion of the story.

The dungeon compound they traversed was in fact an ordinary mansion, and their enemy Jax, a foot-tall, rat-like myshka. Though admittedly, Maer isn't certain how the mansion burned down.

Scene 8: boarded by Sadie Allen

The city guardsmen who detained the adventurers let them go, apparently just being too lazy to prosecute them for the destruction of a mansion no one uses anymore.

The adventurers gather together now that they're free to go. Zaya apologizes that the quest wasn't as epic as they may have hoped, but swears that the sun talisman is really out there if they can find Jax and take it from her.

Everyone agrees to stick around, except for Maer, who backs out.

The rest are ready to find that evil priestess and put the sun talisman in good hands... but Airi, knowing what really happened, can only look away guiltily.

Wedding and Special Features

Making a post to share some pictures. For starters, I've just gotten married! Here's some pics of me, my bride Naty, and our wedding party.

While I'm here in Sweden getting married, my buddy AJ is looking in on my cats. They always hide from him under the settee and they're so cuuuute.

Let's look at some special features, enough to make up for the few weeks I've neglected to post special features. Be sure to check our Linktree for other places I may have posted these special features. Let's look at some older stuff - storyboards!

Sadie Allen's storyboards for the Irregular Fantasy teaser, and the final result as seen in the video's thumbnail! See it here. Can we get the video to 1,000 views? Or at least 900. It's been lingering in the 890s for some time.

I wasn't able to find the entirety of the "Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices" pilot storyboards. Hopefully they're still on my other laptop. I don't think I'd have been so short-sighted as to delete them. If so, at least every frame of them still exists in the fully-edited storyboard video that features them; as it is, to make this segment of this post, I had to pick out storyboard pics from earlier blog posts. Hopefully I can find the rest another time.

dance scene by Naty Jenfjord

Airi nocking an arrow by Casey Gosselin

characters walking along by Naty Jenfjord

Stacky in a song number by Michelle Jenfjord

group shot by Sadie Allen

The only K&K storyboards I could find in my computer were from "teaser 2", which has been cancelled, there's only going to be one teaser. Still going to make the storyboards for it a special feature later on, as we went to the trouble of boarding them all and did some of the voice work. Something exclusive for the patrons, yeah?

Stacky preparing some exposition for the audience, by Naty Jenfjord

full group shot of the seven heroes by Naty Jenfjord

the seven heroes setting down for dinner by McKenzie Eby

And here's some concept art. From what I've seen, concept art is really detailed these days. But I'm going more by the original meaning, where it's the earliest conception of what a character might look like. Here's some concept art for characters of Irregular Fantasy!

King Dworin by Naty Jenfjord

Ted by Naty Jenfjord

Dwizella by McKenzie Eby

Cthulhu by me

Chief Dwangus by me

Big Bad Dwohn by me

I made concept art for lots of other characters in order to create the character blogs, which you can check in the archives of the blog, from August 2023 to July 2024, with Naty and McKenzie having digitized and colorized all the pics.

Here we have the height chart of the Irregular Fantasy model sheets by Stacy Lord - we're redoing the model sheets one final time to make the model-making process more accessible to newcomers, and after successfully getting redone Keys & Kingdoms models from YerayYL (seen here still not quite on a real height chart), I couldn't find anyone who could produce satisfactory Irregular Fantasy ones, so, I'm hoping Stacy herself can tackle that.

And finally, I wanted to take another look at one of the earliest phases of Keys & Kingdoms character design: the artwork of Matt Fair, who I commissioned after seeing an avatar he'd made for a fellow member of the Dominic Noble patron Discord. Find him here. Apparently he's "Rusty's Sketches" now. Got nervous when I couldn't find him for a second there! But then I found his new name by seeking out our old DMs. Yay.

Now, his results made me realize what I was really after -- I had forgotten, in the early stages of designing the characters, that I was going for a Disney-esque art style for the Keys & Kingdoms world, and Matt's style was certainly not that. But some of the details original to Matt's version made their way into the characters' true, final designs!

Special Features

I tried to resolve this month to release some sort of special feature every week, to put it on all the socials, everywhere you can find TAPAS, as seen on our Linktree. But, even though there's a decent backlog of concept art and storyboards and stuff, it's been hard figuring out what to post. I'm trying not to be afraid of spoiling anything, trying not to tell myself that matters, and trying not to be self-conscious of the relatively low quality of concept art and storyboards, as it compares to final character art and final results such as the Irregular Fantasy! teaser. They're still very interesting, they'll just be more interesting when accompanied by their final version.

So, let's see what we're looking at, special features wise. Well, it's now been four years since the release of Better Yet? - every year I keep intending to do an anniversary special, and every year something gets in the way. Usually depression, ironically enough, but I'm hoping to prepare enough that I can do a fifth anniversary special, which involves LEGO minifigures of all the characters, which I had made last year, and a full-feature commentary/watch party, ideally with myself, Mason... and Adrienne, who wasn't available to commentate on release day or the first anniversary for medical reasons.

Mason's working on a follow-up, by which we mean just the next project written and directed by Mason, called I'm Telling Mom!, which he intends to really make into a play this time, while I've always maintained, okay, you can do that if you wish, but I think it should also be an audio play in the exact same format as Better Yet?, for consistency, it's what the fans will want.

Better Yet? is hovering at 294 hits on YouTube, which is ten more than its trailer has. Mason was always bummed out that the trailer has more hits than the actual project, and I was always like, why would it be any other way? That's how trailers work. But, no, apparently we've reached that point that more people have, in fact, clicked on the play itself than the trailer, so... I'm shocked, but I guess Mason got what he wished.

I've started working with Bass, a screenplay I was given by my Grandpa Larry before he died... I've considered that someday if we get big, we might shoot the movie in Denver, where it's set. Having gone over the first scene, I'm thinking even that will be a bit beyond our capabilities, but if we could convert it into a big audio drama and form it into a thematic trilogy... hey.

Moving on, I definitely want to give a shout-out to all the voice casts of the projects we've done. It's been a very long time since we did the voice recording for Keys & Kingdoms and Irregular Fantasy, and, outside of the Irregular Fantasy teaser, nobody's gotten to hear the work they did in its full, glorious context.

We're working so hard on finally getting the pilots out, and all the teasers and shorts that come before them. We haven't recorded the voices for the Irregular Fantasy pilot yet, I certainly hope we get the whole cast together again and so many more. And after the pilots, well, we intend to lay low a couple of years and just write the series, and write like mad for a long time before starting to self-adapt the series into the animated-comic format, so... might be a few years before we need the Keys & Kingdoms voice actors again, though I have been considering making the "educational shorts" about their world a feature for during the "writing like mad" portion...

And, finally... I've got kitties. It's just been me and Butter and Marmalade in this apartment for a very long time. Sometimes I wonder if they get bored. But I try to take some cute pics to share as often as I can.

New Resolve

 I haven't been around here in a while. For a long time, I've been doing a whole lot of nothing. Just occasionally posting in my insiders groups on Facebook and Discord about how frustrated I am that I've been doing a whole lot of nothing.

Right now, I'd like to preserve the most recent of those posts, which is a resolution to really change that moving forward. So, for posterity, I'd like to also put today's post on the blog. It went as follows:

I was talking some time ago with the boys about my frustrations with moving on. It's an executive dysfunction issue, massively, but Mason also made a pretty good point: that I'm actually ruthlessly efficient when I'm writing and performing. But we finished that part a long time ago. I've been trying to continue the projects as the producer and director, but there's no reason to expect me to know how to produce and direct projects like these, so, one can see how that would give me trouble. I was reminded of the saying that if you judge a fish by the way it climbs a tree, that fish is going to think it's stupid. I have been feeling stupid for the past two years as I've failed to make any progress.

Also, you know... the country. I've been told it's okay not to be okay right now. I don't know what to do about it. I'm not the person who's bringing the art that gives people hope and joy at a time like this. I've tried to be and I beat myself up so hard over the fact I haven't been succeeding.

So, here's what I'm working on currently:

First of all, whatever else happens, I'm going to try to post stuff publicly more often. Previously, I haven't wanted to give too much stuff away, but there's not really any point to that. I'm going to try to publish a special feature on all TAPAS socials at least once a week. Also, more pictures of my cats. Those are good.

Enclosed are the new (hopefully final and ultimate) design sheets for the Keys & Kingdoms characters, going for an easier system. First thing I'm going to do is have Stacy put them in a height chart again (this image is a quick approximation), see how well that works from the new angle. And then we're going to go into doing the same thing for the Irregular Fantasy characters; I haven't been able to find a freelancer who can really get those right, so we're going to try to get Stacy back on it! Nice full-circle deal; I started the new system because Stacy was unavailable and I thought that no one other than her could adapt to our intricate character-design system, so I came up with a less-intricate version which I'm sure will be a relief to her upon returning. :P

Following that, I'm working on some guides to the general design schematics of K&K, like a species guide, and some follow-ups to those human, elf, and dwarf videos I made some time ago. Need to draw up detailed plans for those and then, commission!

And then there's storyboards. As the director, I've wanted to do those by myself, to teach myself how; at least for some pre-board boards to give direction to the real storyboarders. And in two years I've never started. I have to do that. And I think what I have to do is start big instead of starting small: teach myself how to do it by boarding the big and grand Irregular Fantasy pilot episode. So the smaller segments, all remaining teasers and such, those won't come out for a while, not until after I've done that.

The Draw #15: Randy Wolfmeyer

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Let's see... like a few others, I think the first time I met Randy Wolfmeyer was on Is He Dead?, having become acquainted with his wife Gretchen in the previous production I was in, She Loves Me.

From there, I think the time he properly joined TAPAS was in discussion of the construction of the TAPAS roleplaying game, thoughts catalogued in the many blog posts you can find in the latter half of 2020, trying to piece together the world and system. I wasn't interested at first in using his system, figuring at the time that it would use the 5th Edition Open Game License, but I eventually changed my mind and wanted to do something new.

Randy's system is derived from Mistrunner, a system he assisted in creating some time ago, and from there we've shared thoughts on its basic design intent, which led me to name the system, or at least the multiverse of fantasy stories I've been working on, AE:GIS - an "adaptive engine" for "gaming, interactivity, and simulation". One of the pillars was storytelling, not interactivity, but, you know, this way it spells something. There are other indie RPGs called Aegis, more than one, hence the stylization.

Somewhere amid the RPG talk, Randy played Uncle Gary in Better Yet? and afterward became the voice of Lambert in Irregular Fantasy! - he certainly knows the gaming material IRF is based on, and apparently he even read Irregular Webcomic! back in the day.

All the while, he's hard at work in the local theatre community, providing not only performances - like Lefou in Beauty and the Beast - but doing a lot of effects work, from the magical rose in that show, to Smaug in The Hobbit, building and operating an amazing massive puppet. Per my own request, I got to operate the mouth while I performed the dialogue; I figured that'd make for the best performance all around, if I was doing the voice and the mouth, and indeed Randy got a lot of compliments that whoever was operating the mouth in time to the dialogue knew what they were doing. It was me! And after the show, he kept the puppet intact a little while longer to use as a Halloween decoration.

In conclusion... I'm really unsure about TAPAS's future, but I do hope there's more Lambert and more gaming/world development.

The Draw #14: Jessie Crockett

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Jessie Crockett's entry into the group is a favorite story. It was early to mid 2020 when I opened up auditions for the main characters of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. That was a dark time, of course, and I didn't get many auditions. But at the last possible minute, Jessie submitted an audition for Cristela, the character whose vibe had been the hardest to nail down, and, well, completely nailed it!

And, oh, about two years later we finally assembled the whole cast to record the pilot. Got the job done! And Jessie did it while taking care of her kids and their school functions and dealing with her own health - very much has my respect and admiration.

I hate to cut to my own angst at the end of each of these, but I do regret not having really achieved these projects yet. I've pondered giving up a lot over the past year or so. But I'm going to make them happen.

The Draw #13: Aaron Joseph Schmitt

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Agh, okay, I'm really, really trying to make these more regular. It's another big one here, AJ Schmitt.

We met in 2018, in a production of Mark Twain's Is He Dead? - I auditioned for that show very last-minute, having found myself without anything else to do. We both had fun in the audition doing all the funny accents the show required; eventually he was cast as the German guy, and me as the Chicagoan guy.

It was fortuitous that we happened to be there and meet, because it was Aaron who enabled the creation of the first TAPAS project, recording sound sets of the Irregular Webcomic! characters. Not only did he have a little homemade sound booth in his place, but he had just the right personality to play Dwalin, one character I hadn't figured out how to cast.

We recorded those characters, got a few guests into his booth, and I had to leave Quincy before the project was entirely finished, but I worked to come back, eventually doing so in late 2020, having by this point been inspired to create an entire Irregular Webcomic! adaptation. After creating Better Yet?, we got Aaron into the studio to be Dwalin again.

And... I don't remember how it happened, but at some point me and Aaron and Mason became an inseparable trio, meeting up multiple times every week, usually to talk about TAPAS stuff but sometimes just to hang out and be supportive. Kind of all we've been doing for a few years now. Ahh... I'm determined to do a few more of these but I fear it may just depress me. I feel like TAPAS has died and I'm letting all these people down.