Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs) is currently on his U.K Tour to promote Gone, and his newest series The Magnificent 12. For those in the area, the full schedule of his U.K Tour has now been updated on his new website: www.themichaelgrant.com. Click here for the Tour page.
His new website also features a new blog for himself. So be sure to keep an eye on that for regular updates. (His previous blog, The Stupid Blog Name, is now closed, and I have changed the links on the right side accordingly).
Also, there is a trailer up for The Magnificent 12 series (posted below), and a new U.K one for Lies (Gone #3). Both are available on Michael Grant’s site.
About 2 days ago Michael Grant updated his Facebook with a new status regarding a promotional Animorphs video that he was making for the Scholastic sales people:
And not too long after, he sent a direct message to fans via Richard (owner of RAF). It seems that they are going the same route as they did for the Gone video submissions from a little while back. Here is the full letter from Michael and K.A to the fans:
Katherine and I have some information we’d like to share, and a favor we’d like to ask.
Not sure if you’ve heard this yet but ANIMORPHS will be re-issued in spring/summer 2011. That is definite and official.
An editor at Scholastic is combing the first two books for outdated references, sending suggested fixes, and asking us to approve. Which we’ve now done.
Scholastic will re-cover the books using something called a lenticular cover. So far as we know it’s just the first 2 books, then I guess they’ll wait and see how sales go before issuing more.
Scholastic has asked us to prepare a small video to show at the sales meeting in early August. We realized that the sales people probably don’t really know what ANIMORPHS has meant to so many people. So we wondered whether RAF participants might be interested in sending us some brief video clips just saying what ANIMORPHS has meant to them. They could be extemporaneous, or they could read from some of the lovely letters they’ve sent over the years. The only real guidance we have to offer is to make sure the audio is audible. Use as high definition as you have available, but don’t sweat it if it doesn’t quite look like Avatar. Sincerity is more important than technique.
If you’d post this letter that would be very helpful.
Please ask any who wish to participate to forward their video to jake-at-jakemates.com.
Thanks,
Michael and Katherine
So to sum up, here are the new things we now know:
Regarding the Re-Release:
The first spring/summer 2011 re-release is now said to be covering only the first 2 books: #1 The Invasion, and #2 The Visitor. Not as volumes for multiple books, but as an individual release of those two books only, with the new covers.
The books are now going to be updated with outdated references. An editor has gone through the first 2 books, and Michael & K.A have just recently approved the changes to them.
Regarding the Animorphs Video Submissions:
The video is being submitted to sales people who apparently have no previous knowledge on the kind of impact the series had in its original run. According to Michael & K.A’s letter, the meeting is sometime early August, so time is crucial if fans want to get their videos in. The sooner fans can get their videos submitted, the more time Jake (their son) will have to edit and piece it together for Scholastic.
Submissions should be sent to jake@jakemates.com. (Anything on Youtube might not be taken, so send the files directly to him!)
RAF has already begun a discussion thread on how they should go about with their videos. To participate, please go here.
Please remember that this is for all Animorphs fans. Michael & K.A sent this letter to RAF because they are, without a doubt, the largest Animorphs community online at the moment. However the message is openly directed to every Animorphs fan online as well. There are plenty of smaller Animorphs communities out there. Youtube, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, Facebook, etc, wherever they may be, please pass this message onto them (or individually onto your friends) if you’re in touch! It would be a great help to make sure that K.A & Michael have enough material to work with, and that they have a lasting impact on the sales force that is in charge of reviving the series for next year.
UPDATE: Thanks to a poster named Kalamu at the Animorphs LiveJournal Community, I was reminded of how many Animorph fans we have in different countries. Kalamu said that she couldn’t make a video because she was not very fluent in English. This is not a problem at all! In fact, it’s a bit of a plus!
If we have fans in foriegn countries telling Scholastic how much they love Animorphs (in their first language), then it’ll be the most direct way of letting Scholastic know of how much of a worldwide appeal the series still has! And who knows? It may even give your country a better chance at having the Animorphs be re-released in your own language! (The original run of Animorphs was published in over 20 different languages. So yes, it’s very possible to have that again!).
However, please just remember to add in English subtitles to your video before submitting it in, so that the Scholastic staff can fully understand what you’re saying. (It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Any basic program like Windows Movie Maker can easily do this. OR, if you’re really not that good with computers, then simply film the entire thing using Flash Cards, as another LJ poster suggested!)
That about covers it for now. I will keep you guys updated as I hear more. NOW GO SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO!
Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator) of Animorphs contacted me yesterday with a quick update regarding the Animorphs Classic re-release:
It’s official: Animorphs books will be re-released with the first 2 coming in summer of 2011. They will have lenticular covers. (Look it up: we had to.)
Lenticular covers basically means that they will be 3D and/or animated. You may have seen examples of this already on various products or DVD releases throughout the years. I’m guessing that Scholastic will most likely use the current covers we have and add a morphing animation to them (much similar to the morphing cards that we got with the Invasion Board Game). But this is entirely speculation on my part, so we’ll have to see where they go from here.
Anyways, that’s it for now! I’ll post more details regarding those 2 summer book releases as they come.
You can now support Hirac Delest through the Amazon Associate’s Program! Following up from our previous post, if you haven’t purchased any of the upcoming books, but plan to, then please use the following links! Each time you purchase from these specific links, Amazon gives us a small percentage of your sale back towards this site. This money then goes entirely towards the hosting & domain payments of Hirac Delest.
We hardly make enough to profit from this (approx 4-6% per sale), but every little bit helps in making sure that this archive stays online and ad-free. It’s a great way to support us if you’re already going to be ordering the books anyway. Thank you for your continued support to Hirac Delest for the last two years that we’ve been online. It’s greatly appreciated!
Just a heads up, the deadline for Michael Grant’s Fan Promo Video is tomorrow (April 16th). If you plan on participating, be sure to submit it by then! For those that don’t follow Michael Grant’s Twitter, this promo video is for the GONE series, which will hold compilations of fans talking about why they love the series. In order to participate, here are a few things that Michael Grant has listed you must do:
Follow @TFSubmissions, and send an @reply to this account saying that you want to participate.
Record yourself saying what you like (or don’t like) about the GONE series. High quality video is better, but anything is accepted.
At the start of the video, have a parent say that they are OK with you being in the video.
After they step out of the video, pause for a second, and say what you like/don’t like.
Email the video to jake@jakemates.com. Don’t upload it to YouTube or any other video site, just email the file.
To keep up with any future updates for the video promo project, just follow @TFSubmissions. Best of luck to everyone!
The same rules apply on AFF as they do on RAF. Members have to send their questions to the staff before they are approved to be submitted to K.A & Michael. This is done to avoid any repeated questions from previous Q&As. Here are the updated links and details for both forums:
There’s also still the Facebook Group set up specially for Michael Grant’s Gone series, for those who are fans of that. Michael Grant is still regularly answering questions there.
Lastly, as a way to keep all of these Q&As organized and documented (this is still an archive site, remember?), I updated the Articles section with the original RAF Classic Q&A that was held back in 2008 (It’s the one that holds that infamous response to that Animorphs movie we’ll never ever see, sadly).
As for the current Q&As, I won’t document or archive them until they are fully finished. In the mean while though, do check them out if you haven’t already. There are some great answers posted on both forums. In RAF, K.A. & Michael are even asking fans on their thoughts of a possible re-release for Animorphs in a monthly ebook form. So definitely share your opinions on this. You can bet that both K.A & Michael are reading, and that they are very interested in their fans responses.
Richard, site owner of RAF, recently posted an update to let fans know that K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant are coming back to answer questions from fans on the forums! The Q&A is going to be working a little differently this time though. Instead of everyone rushing in and overwhelming the duo, Richard is asking posters to send in questions directly to him instead. This will get rid of any well known FAQs, or duplicates that the fans asked last time.
Lastly, you can now also follow us on Twitter! Our Twitter account is @hiracdelestnews. Follow us to get the latest updates, like this one, tweeted directly to you! You can also join our Facebook Fan Page to get the same benefit. Everything has been updated on the right side of the blog!
Two Articles have been posted up on eHow by A.M. Trent, “How to Detect a Human Controller” and “How to Detect an Andalite“. I believe these two are going to be part of a series of articles that will be posted on there by her. They’re both amusing and educational, so check ‘em out.
Looks like after we posted our previous bit of news, fans from both the Animorphs LiveJournal and RAF communities asked Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs) if the rumor of the re-release was true.
The answer, is YES. The re-release is definitely happening! Michael Grant confirmed this via his Twitter account. I’ve compiled all of his responses so far in the image below:
So to sum up and update upon our previous post:
1. Yes, the re-release is happening. It is no longer a rumor.
2. There WILL be new covers. Our Scholastic source told us that they are going to be “lenticular”. We’re assuming this means that they will be 3D covers that morph from one image to another when they are tilted.
You may have already seen examples of this in a variety of products, everything from trading cards to dvd covers. (Those that have the Animorphs Invasion Board Game will have a better example, as they came with a deck of morphing holographic lenticular cards for all the Animorphs. We’re guessing that the new covers could be similar to that).
3. The release date is now no longer 2012, but is estimated to be 1 year from now, so somewhere around late 2010 to 2011.
4. The re-release is still being used by Scholastic as a way to test out the market, and see if a brand new ‘Animorphs 2.0′ series will be profitable enough to invest into. They will be looking at both the sales and fan reception once the books are re-released.
5. Editorial changes to KASUs and continuity errors are still unconfirmed, and so are the packaging details (whether the books will be sold in volumes, or individually as they originally were).
More updates to come as we hear them here at Hirac Delest.
Edit: Thanks to wildweathel for correcting us on the proper term for the covers. I’ve made the appropriate changes to that above.
I’m sure a lot of you older fans remember Vegemorphs. It was a one time book parody that was released when Animorphs was at the height of its popularity. It even ended up being part of an Arthur episode ‘D.W. Tale Spins’. (Thanks to Sarita Wolf from The Animorphs Fan Forum for finding this episode).
There was also a live-action fan film that was based on the book, and then posted on Youtube a few years back. I’ve posted both parts of the Arthur episode, and the live action fan film, in the Vegemorphs book page. You can find the Vegemorphs book in Articles & Interviews, under the Database section (since it is not officially linked with the series). Both this and the Cracked magazine parodies have been listed under the Published Parodies category.
Katherine and I have some information we’d like to share, and a favor we’d like to ask.
