Wordart: Lying Gargoyle

Please don't buy this shirt!

ZOE asked if they could offer this design to fans via their Fantasy Network platform and I said of course! Thanks to Ben and Norita Dobyns for setting this up! Pick up your own $20 t-shirt at: https://watch.thefantasy.network/lying-gargoyle-t-shirt/

Good Ol' Carrow

Carrow can never catch a break.

Epique #RenewJQ

SILVER TOM!!
#RenewJQ #JourneyQuest #JQ4 #fancraft #fakemagazinecovers
Photo Credit: ZOE flickr archives
Hat-tip: Jacob Isaacs, Dee Connell and Patrick Boden

Orc & Mindy

No matter how many times you tell the network execs it is O-R-C they just gotta stick their finger in the soup. LOL #journeyquest #Orctober

#RenewJQ - The Hunt for Red Orctober

Fancrafted parody poster featuring Grellnock Skullsplitter for #RenewJQ

Support the JQ3.5 Kickstater!!

 * * *

P.S. What do you mean there isn't a 'c' in Grellnok -- *stabs your eyes*

#RenewJQ - Grell & Yart's Bogus Journey

Fancrafted parody poster featuring Grellnok, Yart and Death for #RenewJQ

Support the JQ3.5 Kickstater!!

Ha! #JQ3 #Carrow #Vieris #JourneyQuest #LateToTheMemeParty #FishcartsAreNotMermaids #ShutterstockStandardLicense

Deep Thoughts. #MartinTheDruid #StandardAction #TunaIsNotASeaVegetableEdda

We may have uncovered a #JQ4 preview of Glorion and Roderick stumbling upon a polymorph trap.

JourneyQuest: Dark Sword Awakens

The last 24 hours have been interesting. With facebook introducing the lightsaber meme for everyone's profile picture, I thought it would be fun to have Perf holding Kylo Ren's...

"Gods, I've missed violence!" - Sword of Fighting

When I posted this to my facebook page it brought up an un-anticipated dialog...

So, I pulled the JourneyQuest episode Douggie mentioned (JQ1 ep.5) and enlisting the power of fiverr to hire grizzlyharris to do the f/x. BOY HOWDY! did he do an amazing job, with a super quick turnaround. It was less than seven hours between when he accepted it at 9pm and when he sent the final version (at 4:10am)

To flesh it out I used:

• Camtasia2 for all my video/audio editing,
• The Crawl Creator at StarWars.com (using Camtasia2 to screen capture the video, the sound was dreadful but I was cutting that out anyway),
• Photoshop CS6 for the title, intro, and credit boards, and
• The JQ1 soundtrack performed by Steve Wolbrecht.

I hope you enjoy it and May the Farce be with You! --LMG

P.S. Thanks to Douggie Sharpe (The Potato Pope) for putting the idea into the universe, and Christian Doyle for wishing it to be a thing. grizzlyharris for the quick turn-around, and not least -- Jeremy Spray and Kathy Digby who jumped in for moral support.

Two Months!

The Kickstarter to fund JourneyQuest season 3 launches January 18!
www.renewjourneyquest.com

Shut up and take my money!

As ZOE Phase II backers are aware, ZOE has closed its Phase II campaign in favor of Patreon. They are currently "soft-launching" it to Phase II supporters, but will be announcing the move to one and all on Thursday, March 26th (and you can help!).

The familiar catchphrase "Shut up and take my money!" often shows up with news like this as fans express enthusiastic approval. With that in mind, for today's #Fancraft I decided to have a little fun mashing Fry with Chibichan from The Gamers: Hands of Fate, and again with a JourneyQuest orc. Enjoy!

Please consider backing their Patreon campaign and/or helping promote it with the #FanSupported hashtag. Even the dollar-a-month level goes a long way to supporting their productions.

-LMG



Reference
1. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-up-and-take-my-money

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Fancraft posts will be released every Wednesday (subject to content). Do you have a fancraft story that you'd like to share as a guest writer? Send your proposal to LMG@zoefan.net.

The world's first, best, and only o-pop song

This week's fancraft is an article submitted by Rival Guy.

There's an escalation to joking that happens between friends. It's not enough for each joke to be met with a witty response, the response has to escalate the back and forth. Most people perceive a limit to this escalation, but sometimes people over-commit. Sometimes when they over-commit, they wind up writing Orcish pop music.

I had been joking with Matt Vancil about the portrayal of the Orcs in Journey Quest season 2. Soon, I began berating him for how regressive the show was in its treatment of the poor Orcs, showing them only at feudal level of cultural development, and in so doing, reinforcing negative stereotypes of green-skinned barbarians. Why not show Orcs how they are today? Why not play the music that modern Orcish youth listen to? Surely this would be a more positive, more conciliatory portrayal than even Jesse Lee Keeter's brilliant performance.

It's at this point that I over-committed.

I've composed as a hobby since middle school, and I'd recently acquired some better composing software than the program that I'd been using...well, since middle school. Feeling inspired, I went home, wrote the lyrics (in English) and started thinking about the sort of arrangement I wanted to do for the song that was just starting to take shape. I sent my English lyrics to Matt. He was a sport, and translated them to Orcish for me. With the proper lyrics in hand, I was able to really work out a melody, and build a song around that. I decided to open with a brief vocal segment, as a nod to Steve Wolbrecht's great “Warrag! Orkulz Aggax" (We Are the Orcs, hear it over the credits of JQ2e09), and to go for a pop-rock arrangement for the bulk of the song. With all the pieces in place, I sat down and scored the song.

Thus was born “Kit no Morfiart” (Winter with Me), the world's first, best, and only o-pop song. As of the writing of this story, it still has yet to be performed by a live band, but hopefully that will change soon. With the score now available (click the link to go to a downloads folder) as a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license, maybe you reading this will be the first musician to over-commit yourself and record it!

-Rival Guy


Fancraft posts will be released every Wednesday (subject to content). Do you have a fancraft story that you'd like to share as a guest writer? Send your proposal to LMG@zoefan.net.

On Music

One of the joys I get from ZOE and other indie films occurs when they bring musical numbers into their creations. We've seen this most recently with Standard Action's ambitious musical episode: Performance Check. But vocal numbers crop up in other places too, such as Gary's brief memorial to Ninja Dragon Riders (and Firefly) from The Gamers: Hands of Fate, and this Dorkness Rising filk song:



If you've caught any of the Dead.FM podcast episodes, then you've enjoyed an eclectic range of musical talent mixed between sketch comedy and Don's soap boxing. There's also &@, who regularly include songs in their episodes -- like this opening from Have a Wet Christmas.  And finally, those in attendance at ZOECon2014 were lucky enough to hear Emilie Rommel Shimkus, as Wren Birdsong, belt out a song a cappella during a table read of JQ Season 3. A-mazing (remember to #RenewJQ).

Did I miss one of your favorites? Let me know in the comments.

Lindart, Lindart, Pigraeshae

This week's Fancraft goes along with today's music theme. This time it is another one for JourneyQuest (Did I already mention #RenewJQ? :) ). The inspiration came while I was singing my daughter to sleep and noticed the melody could be sung with several different lyrics. You've probably noticed them already: Twinkle Twinkle; A B C D; Baa Baa Black Sheep; and Do Do So So [ok that last one isn't a real song and came from my days of sight singing/ear training]. When I discovered  the core words needed for Twinkle Twinkle existed in Matt Vancil's Orcish-English Dictionary, I had to make it a thing.



Cheers!
-LMG

P.S. Working on this reminded me that, as of yet, no one has performed Rival Guy's 6-part orcish ballad "Kit No Morfiart". I hope that gets rectified before GenCon.

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Fancraft posts will be released every Wednesday (subject to content). Do you have a fancraft story that you'd like to share as a guest writer? Send your proposal to LMG@zoefan.net.

JourneyQuest Virtues

Today I revisited the Renew JourneyQuest page and saw that there are currently 2,262 fans (of a needed 4,200) willing to #renewJQ for a third season with a pledge of $100 or more. Seeking support to fund JQ3 flashed me back (over three years now) to the tail end of the Kickstarter for JourneyQuest Season 2, At the time, ZOE and DG released a series of five 'Virtues' clips to both reward fans who had backed already, and to help promote the end stage of the campaign.

The first (Honor) was the fan favorite, still having more than twice the viewership of the others.


The other four released that week were (click the image to go to the video)

At one point, Dead Gentlemen asked fans to submit their own ideas to this series. Unfortunately, video editing isn't in my basic bardic repertoire (yet), but I did have plenty of creative fun laying out the beats for two additional ones using clips from season one: Courtesy (focusing on the Sword of Fighting), and Purity (focusing on the orcs). Over the years, I revisited these and came up with a third, Refinement, using a few similar beats, and a clip from Season 2. I didn't mind the repetition because I thought it finished stronger. Those three follow.

COURTESY 

SWORD: Figured I’d be drawn by something with testicles, not a runty twinkler in a pus-colored robe. Why does he smell like crying?

[Camera snap] / [Motivational layout]

COURTESY

Showing politeness in attitude and behavior.

SWORD: Wow, that just keeps getting higher, doesn’t it? Come on, ribbons, let’s go get you killed.

SWORD: Bye bye, he-squealer! Try not to get your fail-blood on me.

SWORD: Is lady-bits all worked up?

SWORD: Yes! Fall! Fall, you limp-wristed sack of estrogen! FALL!

[Fade to end card]

COURTESY

Suck it up, wuss. 

PURITY 

KURN: Hey, beautiful. Ever wanted to rut with an Orc?
NARA: Rot, you stink. I’m guessing you wipe with that hand.

[Camera snap] / [Motivational layout]

PURITY

Freedom from adulteration or contamination.

KURN exploding into sauce.

WREN: ugh, that’s terrible!

SWORD: Blech! Orc!

CARROW: Blech! Orc!

GLORION: It's like sulphur and asparagus.

WREN: Hey I... didn't get your name.
RILK: Well, that's because I didn't give it to you.

YART and GRELLNOCK gasping

GLORION: Mmm, pungent.

[Fade to end card]

PURITY 

Sorry, Shaun.

REFINEMENT 

WREN: Hey I... didn't get your name.
RILK: Well, that's because I didn't give it to you.

[Camera snap] / [Motivational layout]

REFINEMENT 

Elegance of feeling, taste, language and manner.

WHARRGARBL: Hey, Humie! You can go @#&% yourself!

KURN: Did you ever want to rut with an orc?

GRELLNOCK: And then the elfmaid was all like, take me now you green-skinned love stallion!

RILK: I like cheese... and religion.

YART: I have always yearned to be female.

[Fade to end card]

REFINEMENT 

Don't judge me.

At some point, I may try to fancraft these, but if you want to fancraft them yourself or, better yet, design your own virtues video, please do. I'd love to see and share the end result!

-LMG

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Fancraft posts will be released every Wednesday (subject to content). Do you have a fancraft story that you'd like to share as a guest writer? Send your proposal to LMG@zoefan.net.

Spoon of Positive Reinforcement

Everything's Great!!!

Do you remember the Spoon of Positive Reinforcement? If you are not in the know, it is an intelligent magical spoon voiced by Brian Lewis and made its first appearance in Standard Action Season 2 Episode 0 (Trailer).  You can watch that appearance at the 6m56s mark.

I realize the show mocks what Martin calls 'hippie jargon', but a multitude of the self-help books I've read profess the merits of positive self-talk. With that in mind, I decided to have a fun little experiment.

Thanks to the generosity of Joanna Gaskell (the show's writer/actor/producer), I was able to acquire the Spoon's audio track from the episode. I then cut Spoon's encouraging gems with Audacity and set them into .mp3 files. Finally, using iTunes, I took it a step further and polished them into .m4r files -- iPhone ringtones.

Then the fun began. After uploading them to my iPhone, I changed my Sent Mail sound to Spoon's "It's all going according to plan!". And to help me revisit my objectives for the day, I set a daily noon-time alarm with "You can do anything you set your mind to." Yes, I can feel you judge me from here -- it's cutting through the space time continuum right now and bombarding me as I write this. But I tell you what -- it's working. I've been using both of them for four weeks now and it's been brilliant.

Give it a go. I bet you'll like being reminded every time you receive a text message that your hands smell very nice ;)

--LMG

Ringtone Downloads

Standard Action posted these publicly on Valentine's Day.
[ MP3 | M4R ] "Everything's great!!!"
[ MP3 | M4R ] "It's all going according to plan!!"
[ MP3 | M4R ] "You can do anything you set your mind to!"
[ MP3 | M4R ] "Your body temperature is squarely within normal human range!"
[ MP3 | M4R ] "Your hands smell very nice."

[April 2021 update -- I discovered these links had been dead for a few years, so posted a new set over on the zoefannet's google drive. --LMG]

Open Call for Fan Interviews

One of the things I've learned from over three years of interacting with fans, cast and crew is just how amazing everyone is. There is such a vast array of talented and passionate individuals all excited about this little niche of the multiverse.


Clip of Zoe Adastra from e04 Rude Mechanical
For several of the cast and crew, we can hear about their back stories and experiences through various podcasts, social media,  interviews, and commentary tracks. I'm not saying I'm sick of those (because I'm not!), but I have met and interacted with many talented and interesting fans being amazing fans. I hope I'm not alone in wanting to read about all of you, because I'd like to add a regular feature here on ZOEfan.net where we interview you, the fans.

Now I'm not a Charlie Rose nor a Terry Gross, but a way we can make these work are through text interviews. If you are interested in being featured here, please download, complete, and return our Text Interview for Fans (.doc).

I look forward to hearing from you, reading your stories, and presenting them here for other fans to enjoy.

Zseskag!

Link Master General

P.S. If your email to interviews@zoefan.net is bouncing, please try this alternate email: zoefannet@gmail.com.

Dead.FM Ep.09 - What's Love Got To Do With It?

Dead Gentlemen dropped their latest podcast last night feature several Valentine's Day sketches. Don Early put out a call for a square cover image for the podcast and I responded with two quickly photoshopped bits of fancraft.

Fart, melt and char were intentional ;)

"Hey, ladies!"

Standard Action Thumbnails Ep 3.6

The story picks up immediately from last episode's cliffhanger, and then more secrets are revealed....



Preparing these thumbnails (starting with episode 3.1) has been a blast. The kickstarter was only committed to six episodes but it looks like they've got at least another one or two in the works (UPDATE: They've got another six planned!). I can't wait to see where the story goes. Here are my other entries for this episode:

Standard Action Thumbnails Ep 3.5

A new Standard Action is up and the plot thickens -- no spoilers but... CLIFFHANGER!



The chosen thumbnail image this week broke from the others (starting with episode 3.1) by zooming in on Edda's expression rather just a straight-up screen grab. The original entry and the others are below: