unspeakable madness

Unspeakable Madness or Post-Valentine's Update?

Greetings, Dreamers!

Welcome to the irregular announcement list for Guerrilla Production's
feature animated adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown
Kadath".

As you roll the ragged end off February and head into the flower-laden
pre-spring growth orgy that is March, just remember that deep in the bowels
of a distant and bizarre land called Tigard, I'm slavin' away at animating
this movie.

The latest news is good as always (and acompanied by way too much coffee).
The more-or-less final animation sequencing is at the 1/3 mark and chugging
right along. I've had a bit of a lag on the work what with being employed
and all, but I try to get as much done every evening as I can. For those of
you more familiar with the story than the timeline, Carter is about to be
dropped into the Vale of Pnath, where crawl and burrow the enormous dholes.

All that from memory!

I went to San Francisco a few weeks ago. Finally met Jason Thompson, who is
one right nice fella, and our most awesome artist on this project. Do
follow the links at the end of this note and check out his work. I also had
a chance to meet up with Cyoakha O'Manion, our composer, and hear a couple
of new tracks for the movie including the beautiful music accompanying
Carter's dreams of the Sunset City. The three of us had a fabulous time
gradually taking over an entire corner of a restaurant, along with other
friends who joined us out of some misguided sense of adventure. Got lots of
pictures and I hope to have them up on the website soon!

For those of you who ply the convention circuit, we're planning on having a
bit of a showing at Norwescon. Don't know if we'll have much to give away,
probably just a buinch of postcards. We might have some posters soon, but
that's far from guaranteed. If we do, we'll hand a few out. It's also
possible that our lovely Producer will create another batch of the
very-well-received Zoog cookies. Fact is, we'll be pretty busy with our
annual Let's Make a Movie workshop, which is the most amount of fun you can
have and still talk about with your spouse the next day!

It also seems pretty likely that our wonderful composer Cyoakha O'Manion
will be performing a variety of tracks from the Dream-Quest soundtrack at
ProgFest in 2003, accompanied by a director's cut montage of scenes from the
movie to be projected, probably on a screen behind them. This should be
very cool! I'll keep you posted on that and I'll betcha dollars to donuts
that there'll be a buttload of copies of the soundtrack for sale there, as
well as copies of the movie. Not to mention that the music at the whole
thing will probably be remarkably cool!

Those of you closer to the project might be pleased to hear that I've
finally managed to beat some sense into my system and burn my first
quasi-functional DVD. I don't EVEN want to go over the torturous path that
required. It seems as if no one component of my system works sufficiently
well enough to just do what I want. Yet somehow, we now have exactly one
shiny happy DVD-R with the past couple of Lovecraftian shorts from Guerrilla
Productions ("The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Testamant of Tom Jacoby") and
the latest teaser for Dream-Quest, which includes actual music from the
movie, instead of my hokey multitrack nonsense. It looks like we'll still
have to eventually buy a dedicated production box when we start building the
main timeline (a $2000 expenditure we're not looking forward to!), but at
least we now know that the technology will work.

I want to take a minute and thank the people who have been helping with the
animation. It's really the most tedious and unforgiving task I've ever done
and all the people who help have been just tremendous. They are: Saif
Ansari, Mike Biel, Sven Bonnichsen, Dave Candage, Alan Claytor, Stephanie
Dunlap, Lyndsey Fink, Andrew Haley, Paul Henry, Christine Holmes, Daniel R.
Johnson, Luciano de Maria, Katrina Martin, Kathleen Mattson, Stacey Moore,
William Morris, Craig Mullins, Pieter Paulsen, Julietteanne Petrusek, Jason
Rogers, Jacob Skaaning, Christopher Alan Slater, Jed Sullivan, Julie
Tillinghast, Tony "Ng" Wamsley, Van Wanless, and Joshua Wentz. These people
are awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you! (and when will you be ready
for more assignments?!) And if I've forgotten anyone, please write back!

Here's the "public broadcasting" portion of the announcement: We still need
SCADS of help, especially anyone who is familar with any or all of the
following: Photoshop, Premiere, or After Effects. They would have my
eternal gratitude and the gratitude of countless Lovecraft fans if they
could help out. The pay is, as expected, no money, but helpers receive a
copy of the movie when it's all done (this is in addition to my gratitude
and the adoration of Lovecraft fans worldwide). Also, if helpers have a
website or online business, I'll be a happy fella to put a link from the
Dream-Quest site to their site.

If you still want to help, but aren't sure how, well, take a peek at
http://www.petting-zoo.org/Dreamquest_Help.html
and see if anything looks do-able.

Even if none of that looks like your style, the least you can do is pass the
news around. Let's get more people aware of this project and keeping tabs
on it. Feel free to pass this note around if you wish, or to pass around
the URLs below. The more, the merrier!

Well, the most common phrase in my life these days applies perfectly here:
"Back on my head!"

Cheers,

Edward

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath movie website
http://www.petting-zoo.org/Movies_Dreamquest.html

Jason Thompson's site
http://www.sonic.net/~jason/

Land of the Blind
http://www.landoftheblind.com/

(Thanks to Edward Martin)

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