Sorry, not much of a blog update today. There’s a tremendous amount to still do for the Fred update. Getting close, though!

The latest character to be getting the new-mouth-movement once over is……….. Cadberry!

Today while working on the new cartoons I decided I really hate how Cadberry’s “mouth” just kind of pops out from behind his face and moves up and down only. Blah! What kind of award winning animation is that? The answer is none! So I am spending some time to give him a real talk-cycle, like SC, Sceb, and Fred. At the very least an “O” and “Eee” symbol for mouth moving animation. So in five days when you see the new cartoon, let me know what you think, okay? (Ooo, spoilers, I guess Cadberry is in the Oct. 1st cartoon, huh?) Anyway, I-
… WAIT, FIVE DAYS?! I’M DOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!  *goes back to work*

It’s been nice. A whole month without that horrible dreading doom feeling that comes when a deadline is fast approaching and not everything is done. I’ve gotten a lot accomplished and I can honestly say I didn’t miss the doom.

But October 1st is now peaking around the corner just a few days away, and with it the ol’ Doomed time comes roaring back. I’ve finished a TON, including the October 10th and 17th updates, but I’m just stuck on this blasted October 1st cartoon! Oh it will get done, but I have a feeling Monday night and Tuesday morning are going to blend seemlessly together for me in a 12 hour chunk of “work not sleep”. Which, if I go back and read my letter posted on the website, is what I was trying to AVOID! Ah, no matter, the following few weeks will go much more smoothly and I’ll be able to fall into a nice routine of weekly updates. Sweet weekly updates! Finally you’ll be able to go to FredtheMonkey.com on Fridays and NOT BE DISAPPOINTED! Yay. I’m excited.

Now back to work I go! If you’re looking forward to the new cartoon, let me know in the comments okay? It will be one more thing to motivate me to keep pressing on during Doomed time.

We’ve been talking a lot about the new Forums 2.0 upgrade over on the Fred and Cubetoons boards, so I thought I’d mention that I’ve posted a sneak peak at the new logo for the “main” forum design when it relaunches. You can find it somewhere around here. If you haven’t joined us on the boards, feel free to! If you want to wait for the 2.0 launch, I’ll be sure to announce it here when it happens.

Basically aside from changing around a few things and making it generally better, the Forums 2.0 will be very “Big Three” focused right out of the box. Meaning it will depict things from Fred the Monkey, Cubetoons, and Kingdom Blue instead of JUST being Fred or JUST being Cubetoons. Then we’ll let people who liked the old format probably be able to select the old skins too, so long as they fit with all the nifty new upgrades.

But really, should it be? I’m not sure after watching the season premiere. Frankly, the show is completely broken because of how powerful a few characters are. So the audience has to play dumb and ignore gaping holes in the plot just to enjoy what’s going on. For some this works fine. For me, not so much.

The fact that Peter and Hiro both can travel through time at will with seemingly no reasonable consequences really puts a damper on the whole “Uh oh, Sylar has Claire’s powers now and that wasn’t ’supposed’ to happen!” storyline. Um, if it wasn’t supposed to happen, you just GO BACK and STOP IT. Hello? Why is this not an option? Even if they made up a stupid reason, it would be something. But they ignore it. Instead, Peter spends his time playing with colored string and maps. Sorry, Pete, but if you’re smart enough to lay out the space-time continuim with yarn, you should be bright enough to pop back in time and stop yourself from screwing up the FIRST time. That’s the real problem when you give humans God-like powers. They screw stuff up REAL BAD.

If they keep up a fast pace with the storytelling (unlike season 2) then the show could still be amusing to watch. But it is completely unbelievable now. Hiro is faster than the Super-Speed girl, but only SOMETIMES? Not when it’s important. No. That would make too much sense. Also, anyone who has seen the show now is aware that pretty much NO ONE DIES EVER. They can come back if the writers see fit. So… where is the tension? It doesn’t MATTER if Ando is killed, he’ll just be brought back. Claire gets her head cut off? Meh, she’s apparently immortal now. No big deal, just a minor setback. What is there to really be afraid of at this point in the show? If your favorite character dies, a single drop of blood or jaunt back to the past will have them up and kicking before you can say “The show should have been one season long and then moved on to something different.”

Sigh, the first season really was amazing. It makes me wish we had some of the philosophy here that they do in places like China and Korea: There they make one season long shows with a beginning and end. Period. They don’t drag them out for 10 years just because the characters are popular. They just move on and make more good shows instead.

Only 8 more days until October 1st!

8 DAYS?! OH CRAP! I NEED TO GET TO WORK!

Well, at least things are moving along smoothly so far. We’ve had some changes in the FAA (FredtheMonkey.com Animation Assistants) and a bunch of people have decided to call it quits, because there’s a lot in store for FtM and they didn’t want to do that much work for the most part. But some folks have hung in there, and I’m looking forward to working with them to bring better and more cartoons via FredtheMonkey.com starting in just 8 short days. Now excuse me, I have a LOT to do.

http://wii.ign.com/

You’re going to want to check out IGN’s “redesign” if you want to fully enjoy today’s Cubetoons comic. So check it out now.

Well thanks to a little (not little) hurricane named Ike, I spent the last few days without power. Which, as you can imagine, meant no internet for me to update the blog or, more importantly, DO ANY WORK! It was pretty miserable. I’ve certainly decided to add “those still without power” to my prayer list, now that I’ve experienced it. I couldn’t even cook food, since the stove and microwave are electric. Thankfully the water heater is natural gas, so at least that was working.

Today will be a pretty big catch up day now. I was supposed to record a lot of Fred lines yesterday (actually, two days ago) and now I have a ton to do. Wish me luck. And also luck to those who are still digging their way out of the hurricane. I was certainly one of the fortunate ones, because the only thing we lost was power for a bit.

Wooooooooooooooo!

They keep showing teaser trailers on NBC for The Office, set to return in just two weeks. I’m excited.

On a separate but still TV related note, I have begun watching the show “Fringe” on Fox. It’s like the X-Files, but instead of dealing with completely fake aliens, they deal with completely fake science. It’s pretty sweet, actually. I don’t usually like that type of show, but the acting is superb and Pacy from Dawson’s Creek is on it. I don’t know his real name. I call him Pacy.

Not that I watched more than a few episodes of Dawson’s Creek. Honestly after Joey started going out with Pacy, well, I just was too mad to tune in.

Wow, I was surprised at how well some people interpreted the mystery poems from Monday! In the comment section, several people got them right! But I don’t believe any ONE person got them ALL right, so you’re just going to have to wait and see who was right and who was wrong!
Also in store (which I believe I mentioned) is a redo of the Official forums. I have the new logo to appear at the top of the boards, and some people who post requested I give a sneak preview. So if you want to check that out, be sure to stop by the boards sometime this week as I give a hint as to the future of the forums! (It’s going to be a lot better, so if you’ve avoided the boards before, now may be the time to sign up in advance of the cool new features!)