So I know it’s not quite Thanksgiving yet (we still have a few days) but since this is the only time I’m going to update the blog for a while, I figured I might as well say happy Thanksgiving… so… yeah, Happy Thanksgiving!

Since my latest post I’ve done a bit of work on the Zelda short. It’s not a crazy amount of work mind you, just some really loose roughs for two of the more complicated shots. Of course as I’m working on these shots I realize the flow of the storyboards isn’t quite right, so I have some rethinking to do on some of the scenes.

Speaking of rethinking, I also haven’t forgotten the Contra short. It still pops up in my mind from time to time and I think I’ve actually come up with a solution for it. The day I thought of the solution I almost considering jumping back onto it to wrap it up, but that would be too much bouncing around. My goal is to hopefully see this Zelda thing through. I’d LOVE to have it done by early January. I’d have to kick it into high gear (and with the holidays coming it’ll be busy!) but I might have some nights and days where I’ll really be able to give it my all. The week before Christmas I’ll have the place to myself for a few nights, so I totally plan on banging out a lot of work then. Assuming I have enough PTO at the 9 to 5, I also plan on taking off Christmas week. Sure I’ll spend some of those days with my girls, but I’ll ship them off to the baby sitter so I can really put a lot of effort into the Zelda short. I am *thinking* those few days will really make quite the difference. I’ll hopefully have most of my roughs done before those days, so it’ll be lots of clean up animation and all that good stuff.

In the meantime, the gang plans on getting together this Friday (this Black Friday) to record what could be a final episode of the Shamoozal Radio Podcast. We haven’t done one of these since the summer, and quite frankly SRP just really isn’t part of the big picture anymore. In my letting go of most things Shamoozal, SRP is pretty much part of that. I don’t want to say it’ll be gone for good, but I will say I don’t really have any intentions of doing more past this one. Things could change though.

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I won’t lie, I’m terrible at perspective drawing. While I can visually picture almost exactly how this next Zelda short will play out, when I actually think about putting it onto paper (well, digital paper) I get a little scared. I’ve been mulling over how exactly to go about doing the perspective work on this when it popped into my head while cleaning up the girls’ megablox a few days ago that it might be a good idea to actually build a model for it. Hence this hypothetical Link versus Barney thing you’re seeing.

What you’re really looking at is a quick mock up I did of the room where Link fights the Aquamentus in the original Zelda game (that’s the first dragon like boss mind you). This is a sort of to scale model, the Link figure is perfect and the Barney was the closest thing the girls had to a dragon, not to mention the fact he’s about as large as I’d like him to be. I thought the Megablox would work perfect since the area this fight takes place in is surrounded by similar blocks. So within a few minutes I built my stage pretty close to how I imagine it.

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The last few months here at Shamoozal have been… uhh depressing to say the least. It’s been ages since there has been a new short, I’ve cut content from the Nerdlog essentially killing it, and the only decent thing we did have I moved over to Elder-Geek.com.

Last time I did one of these updates I mentioned how I was calling a time out on my Contra short and switching over to a new Zelda one. I supplied some concept sketches I did for the short in that post and since then you guys haven’t heard a peep from me regarding shorts. I wish I could tell you that I have secretly worked on the short all along, but the fact is I haven’t. I haven’t worked on it since that night, which was at the end of July.

The fact is, over the summer I came pretty close to calling it quits on this whole Shamoozal thing. It’s been a very long road since we’re started this site, and not to sound like a baby, but I just haven’t met the “goals” I set up for myself when starting this site all those years ago. I know a lot of that is my fault, it truly is, but it is what it is.

But I’ve said it before in the past and I’ll say it again, Shamoozal will probably never truly ever die. I’ll always keep this site around because it’s just my creative outlet. Unfortunately this year I’ve been in a serious creative rut. Brutally bad creative rut. My desire to create just hasn’t been there and I can’t really tell you why, it just isn’t. Sometimes I’ll sit down to do work and before I know it I’ve spent an hour dicking around on the net with nothing accomplished.

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As you most likely already know, I’ve recently decided to switch gears here on the site. It also happened to be at a time where we had just started doing the Shamoozal Game Club podcast.

We’ve been partnering with Elder-Geek.com on this podcast for the last few episodes now and with the change in focus on this site we’ve decided to bring it over to Elder-Geek.com completely. So what does this mean? It means this podcast will not have any new episodes appearing on our feed here on the site. Hopefully it also means we’ll get more people participating and of course we can still discuss it on our own forum. Also, it’ll still be Steve, Randy and I taking part in the episodes.

I’m very hopeful that we’ll have a nice transition from here to Elder-Geek.com and I’m looking forward to having a new home for Game Club.

On this episode of Shamoozal’s Game Club we’re talking about Cybernator, a side-scroller from Konami for the Super Nintendo. We break it down in the way that we are now known to do. We also play three songs from the Cybernator original soundtrack: “We’ve gotta do it”, “Asteroid Run” and “Till the Crack of Doom”. There are going to be some changes to the show in the near future, but I will let Phil elaborate for you.

Next time we’re going to be playing Shatterhand or Shadow of the Ninja. Vote for your choice at the bottom of this post!

If you’re already subscribed to our Podcast feed then all you need to do is wait for the episode to show up in your Podcast aggregator. Or, you can go a head and listen to it right here (there might be a delay before the Podtrac player refreshes):

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On this episode of Shamoozal’s Game Club we dug into the retro-style RPG Cthulhu Saves the World from Zeboyd Games. We break it down in the way that we are now known to do. We also feature three fine tracks from the CStW original soundtrack by Gordon McNiel, if you like what you hear we suggest you head over to their site and download a copy (FREE) for yourself.

Next time we’re going to be playing one of two Konami classics Axelay or Cybernator. These are both available on the Wii’s Virtual Console. Vote for your choice at the bottom of this post!

If you’re already subscribed to our Podcast feed then all you need to do is wait for the episode to show up in your Podcast aggregator. Or, you can go a head and listen to it right here (there might be a delay before the Podtrac player refreshes):

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Because why not? I love Krang, and so should you.

I don’t have much to say this week other than the fact that today I’m in a lot of pain for whatever reason. My back/leg is killing me. So I tried to think of something easier to draw, and out came Krang.

Next time we’re going to be playing Cthulhu Saves the World from Zeboyd Games You can buy it as part of a 2-Pack for $2.99 on Steam, or you can get a 4-pack to share with your friends on Gamersgate. Its also available through the XBL Indie store for 240 msp. Grab the game, play it and send us your comments so we can read them during the next episode! We’re recording #4 on August 9th, so theres plenty of time to play along and get your feedback in! In the meantime, check out Game Club #3:

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