Mother of god. I actually wrapped up Read Only Memory Vol. 2. Seriously, there were times over the last two years where I wondered if it was even going to happen or not. After two years of work, here it is in its entirety.

Unlike Vol 1, I had planned this video sequence from the get go. I kind of cobbled together the compilation video of Vol 1 and tried to make it work as well as I could. While I managed to do a decent job at making the shorts interlock, I wanted to step my game up a bit for Vol 2. I knew from the start of this project that I was going to use live action video to link all the shorts together. The idea was to do a “day in the life” kind of thing from what it was like to grow up playing NES games.

I actually almost ran into a problem with the footage. I actually recorded all of the snow stuff two years ago. My nephew, who is the boy in the video, has obviously now aged two years since then. I recorded the second half of the footage, the drawing part and the going to bed part, only two weeks ago. I was able to make it work because I show as little of him as possible. The idea there being that I wanted him to represent the kid who grew up playing these games. The moment you give him a face is the moment he has an identity, so I stayed away from that. It worked in my benefit because he does look a lot different than he did two years ago.

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Happy New Year everyone! It’s been a pretty solid year for Shamoozal, especially in the final days of 2012. Before I continue, I whipped up the video above today to showcase the version of the Fairy’s Theme from Link’s Triumph that Joe had wrote. There were a fair amount of requests to hear the whole thing, so I decided to put this together. I’ve included some conceptual art and early animation to go along with the music.

Anyway, these last few days have been pretty crazy. I can’t really put into words how it feels to see Link’s Triumph featured on so many large media outlets. Seeing the short grace sites like Kotaku, ScrewAttack, Destructoid, MTV, and GameInformer is pretty surreal. I’ve had a touch of that when ‘How to Hook Up the NES’ first launched, but never at this scale.

What I really like about this short is the trickle down effect that is happening with some of my earlier shorts. I’ve explained before how I was extremely let down by the performance of ‘Take a Key for Coming In’ but it’s experiencing a slight come back thanks to ‘Link’s Triumph.’ It is still by far the lowest viewed episode of Read Only Memory, but at least it’s starting to catch up to the others. The Shamoozal YouTube channel has also seen it’s subscribers almost double since last Thursday. It’s been a heck of a week to say the least. Of course there is still plenty of room to grow, but this feels like a step in the right direction.

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Does anyone even read this anymore? I can’t believe I haven’t updated it since Candy Corns 2. I’ve actually had a couple of Where I Draw and Postmortem videos in between Candy Corns 2 and now. Sorry. I guess I’ve kind of let the Dot Com part of Shamoozal dry up a bit. I suppose people can’t even answer my question of whether or not they read this anymore since comments have been closed. Too many stinking spam bots just junking everything up and I don’t have time to moderate that sort of stuff like I used to.

So yeah, Link’s Triumph. Working my ass off to get this thing complete before the end of the year and I succeeded. I am glad it’s over because this short has done a number on my mentally and physically. Totally taking a few weeks break away from doing any animation and it’s time to get back into a regular exercise routine. I’m not kidding when I say I feel completely exhausted. Between this and the Holidays it has been insane to say the least.

Oh, so I guess I should talk about the cartoon huh? So this short is about the moment in The Legend of Zelda where Link fights the first boss in the first dungeon of the game. The goal was to show how an inexperienced and ill equipped Link would go about fumbling through this situation, and perhaps gaining a bit of confidence along the way. I got Joe on board for the first time in a ROM episode and I think it really shows through. The audio on this cartoon is great, and it doesn’t look too shabby either. I really tried to up my game a bit here and pull out all the stops. I even used After Effects on certain scenes.

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Could it be?

So this was kind of a weird thing that happened. I was working on the Zelda cartoon and took a minute to stop and do some doodles. I ended up drawing a few pictures of Grey. At some point I thought “What if I made a Candy Corns 2?” just for the sake of making a stupid sequel and bringing the characters out of retirement. That night I had actually wrote the episode and recorded the dialogue. I thought if I didn’t commit it just wouldn’t happen. The next thing you know I’m in full blown Candy Corns 2 mode. I was going to use the original theme song, but I talked to Joe about doing sound and he wanted to redo the theme. Next thing you know I’m over his place rerecording the audio, and we have a new theme song. As for the look, my first instinct was to use the models of Grey and Jacquo from GFG, though I even considered going back to the original designs. Instead, I wanted to do the entire short by hand, and so I did, hence the reason the characters look different. I wanted to get the short done by the start of this month, and I succeeded. I’ll tell you what, it’s ALWAYS more work than I anticipate. I worked my ass off this month to get this thing done.

This short isn’t going to light the world on fire. I made it because, one I wanted to, and two for the few fans that wanted to see that these two characters have been up to, which apparently isn’t much. This is the first time in four years that Grey has been in a short and the first time they’ve been in a short together. Fucking crazy.

I missed updating the Nerdlog last month, so here is an episode of This is the Part Where I Draw. I did the TMNT this time as I was getting pumped for the new show, and rightfully so, it’s quite good!

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So check it, I made a “new” video series. Well, I sort of did anyway. See the post about the Ghosts N Goblins art below? I decided to take that idea a step further and add a bit more to it so I could make a video series out of doing drawings. I decided to (ridiculously) call it “This is the Part Where I Draw.” The title is so stupid I call it the wrong thing every single time during my own video. At least the title logo is correct!

Anyway, the idea here, as explained in the video, is that I’m still doing a “live” drawing and still throwing it up onto eBay afterward. However I sped up the footage, recorded some audio over top of it, and added a little intro footage so that I could make it a legit “series.” The idea is to hopefully do one of these every other week. I’m going to try and aim for the Thursday nights in between episodes of Elder-Geek Game Club. I’ll be drawing whatever I damn well feel like it, though I may even take requests! I decided to choose “Nintendo Power” this time as I’ve been kinda sad to see it go.

Also, I don’t think I ever posted this on the Nerdlog, but I did another Postmortem video too, this time on Pizza Links. I’m thinking the Postmortem videos might get a bit of an intro added to them for the next time too. Now that I realized I can make custom video title cards I also want to make one for these so I can remove my big dumb face from the thumbnails.

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During the development of ‘Take a Key for Coming In’ I had the idea of doing a bit of artwork to tie in with the short. I’d record myself drawing the artwork and then put it up for auction on eBay. So last night, that’s what I did!

You can bid on it here if you wish!

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Can’t believe I haven’t updated the Nerdlog since the Contra Post Mortem video. Yikes! I had kept meaning to update it with lots of art and progress about the latest episode of Read Only Memory, but I just never ended up doing so. Well I waited so long that I can just update with the final video itself. Hooray for me.

So this short is obviously based off Ghosts ‘N Goblins. Shit, I love me some GnG, and working on this short really got me back into the series. During the time I was working on this I bought Ghouls ‘N Ghosts on Genesis, and have played the Arcade versions a few times too. I’ve also listened to tons of GnG series music, both in keeping with the spirit while working on it and to figure out what music I wanted to use.

I apologize if your knowledge of GnG is very minimal, watch this video, and have no idea what you just saw. With most episodes of ROM, I usually try and open them up a bit so that maybe someone not familiar with the games they are based on can enjoy them. With this episode, I just wanted to make a nice tribute to GnG and to tell the story I wanted to tell meant that I needed to exclude people unfamiliar with the series. It was a tough choice to make, especially with the amount of work that needed to go into it, but I’m glad I did so.

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Been a while since I updated! Of course I fell behind on the next short, which I address in the above video.

Since we don’t really do the podcast anymore, I decided to do a bit of a video postmortem about the last short. I thought this was going to be a 10 minute video and I ended up rambling for nearly 20! If you enjoyed this and would like to see more videos like this after I wrap up shorts, let me know.

Of course I thought this would be a quick video to put together. I actually put it together a few nights ago, but I had a bunch of encoding issues on the off screen footage I recorded. It turned out to be a big hassle, but at least I know what to do now.