Well it’s about that time where some people are wondering if I’m dead or not again, so I thought I should give an update. I’ve been busy with lots of different things, here’s what I’m involved with at the moment:

FREEMAN’S MIND:
The next episode is underway and will be a longer one. The one after that (45) will unfortunately be delayed more because what I have planned for it presents some unique challenges. To make up for the delays, I’ll have to see how busy I am and what my situation is, but I am considering making November “the month of Freeman” where ALL I work on is Freeman’s Mind and no other projects and see how many episodes get done during that time. Also I plan on getting the downloadable copy for #43 up soon.

MYSTERY VIDEO PROJECT #1:
While I was originally planning to have the movie project be the only animated thing I was going to work on for the foreseeable future, some interesting developments came up where I will be working on an original short that will be going up sometime early December (won’t be Christmas related). It’s still uncertain whether this will be filmed using the Unreal 3 engine or in Source. If you have mapping experience in either, feel free to contact me at [email protected]. Be sure to send me samples or screenshots of your previous work. Who gets picked will be determined by previous map visual quality + how much free time the person will have. Right now I may be leaning towards the Source engine for this particular project. It will involve a forested area and will be in a contemporary setting.

MYSTERY VIDEO PROJECT #2:
In another set of interesting circumstances, I’ve agreed to help with a video project that may become a series. I won’t be directing or animating it, but I am doing the writing for it and voice acting for one of the characters. More details will be revealed later.

MOVING:
My past has caught up with me and I am moving to a mysterious location once again. I’ll be leaving in about 2 weeks, I may not have internet or a place to record for a little while afterwards, but I’ll get on track ASAP. I’ll get the next FM video uploaded before I leave.

T-SHIRTS:
Work is slowly progressing to set up an online store so that people will be able to buy Freeman’s Mind and Civil Protection t-shirts (with more stuff later). I’m hoping this will become fully operational in a month or two with more shirt designs rolling out later on.

ADHD version: Ross is working on stuff! More videos coming!

The meetups are now over! My thanks to everyone who came and sorry to everyone else who was too scattered globally to come. This meetup ended up being a lot like the North one. I think everyone who didn’t collapse from heat exhaustion had a pretty good time. Here are the results of the revised poll!

The results were pretty close to what I was expecting after the first poll (including the would-be time travellers). What I didn’t expect were a few people to meet us completely by coincidence! The other thing I didn’t expect is that out of the fans that said “yes”, one of them was MacGyver!

He still remembered a lot from the show and taught me how to make a polygraph using tweezers, a battery, plastic wrap, and some string.

The next meetup is coming up soon, the details below are pretty similar to the North one: ITINERARY: Date: August 4th Location: Carowinds – Charlotte, NC / SC 9:00am - 10:45 Meet at Shoney’s restaurant, which is very close to Carowinds Link to Google Maps I’ll be inside having breakfast or outside in the parking lot. T-shirts and prints will be available for sale outside (though they’ll be for sale all day). We should have higher quality ones this time, including Civil Protection ones. If you don’t want to pay for the cost of the amusement park, you can stop by during this time for free. 11:00 - 11:30 Arrive at Carowinds, Meet outside the south gate (not the north one). Here’s a picture from google maps:

 

WARNING: There is a $15 parking fee inside Carowinds because they’re jackals. You might want to try to park somewhere else and carpool with people.

11:30 – 2:00 Enter Carowinds, go on rides. If you still need a ticket, here’s the info to get a discount on it if you buy one online: Price: $41 for August 4th if you use this link to purchase tickets. ($36 + $5 BS “processing” fee.)

2:00 - 2:30
Meet at the Carolina Skytower structure (should be the tallest structure in sight) in case more latercomers arrive or people get lost. We’ll probably eat after this.

5:00 - 5:30
Meet again at the Carolina Skytower structure.

~10:15pm (as park closes)
Meet outside south gate again.

- - -

Like the last meet, things will be pretty informal. I’ll answer questions, sign things, you can stick with me while I go on rides, split off and do your own thing, whatever you want. If you hang around, be prepared to have an answer for what you would do with an island if you were rich enough to buy your own. HOW TO FIND ME: I’ll be wearing a bright lime green t-shirt to remain as visible as I can. If you come late, you’re welcome to track me down “Where’s Waldo?” style.

Here’s a picture of me from the last meetup:

Once again, if you’re colorblind, you should probably arrive on time. If you don’t see me, look for a large man wearing a Freeman’s Mind t-shirt, he’ll know what to do. Hope to see more people at the meet!

*** ONE MORE MEETUP ON AUGUST 4TH! *** 

Well the first meetup is over and went well. I got to meet several fans and have some intense fun at the park. I learned some things about myself too, specifically that I can mostly stay in control when it appears that I’m falling to my death. The people that came were all great; I feel like if there was a zombie apocalypse, then the group we had would be very functional and survive. All in all it was a lot of fun and I’m glad I had the meet. Really my only complaint about the meetup is that the numbers were a little short of what was projected in the earlier poll:

Now the second meetup hasn’t happened yet, so the results of this are still inconclusive. It could be that 1300 of you are coming to the south meetup, that would be great. If that happens, then I won’t understand why the Confederate states lost the Civil War. If the second meetup turns out like the first however, we can make some interesting conclusions:

-If internet people say they are interested in attending something, over 99% of them will not actually attend.

-If an internet person says “maybe” they will attend something, there is a 100% chance they will not attend it.

I don’t want to pass judgment too quickly about internet people however, maybe some people got scared after seeing my picture, or some of you weren’t able to make parole afterall. In light of this, I’m launching a new poll to see what we can expect:
 

[poll id=”7”]

Hey everyone, this is just a quick post for the people attending the Accursed Farms North meetup. The nice way of saying this is things have gone less than optimal with the t-shirts and the final quality is what you would expect more of a rushed Chinese counterfeit copy.

There will only be the Freeman’s Mind logo of shirts for sale, I vetoed producing the Civil Protection logo after seeing how the FM ones came out. Anyway, I felt like I had to make a quick announcement about this, otherwise I would feel like a con man. My apologies ot

The good news is we’ll have nice high quality prints for sale that I can sign!