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An editor at Scholastic is combing the first two books for outdated references, sending suggested fixes, and asking us to approve.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The books are now going to be updated with outdated references.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!
Thanks to PlayR.org, the Animorphs Game Boy Color game is now available to play for free online as a Flash Game.
As an alternative, we also still have both the Game Boy Color and PC game available to download at our forum. (However, it’s exclusive to members only, so you must register first).
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!
Here’s a great fan made summary of the Animorphs series by Expression. It includes original artwork, explaining every single Animorphs book in all of 10 minutes. The video is broken into two parts. Here is Part 1:
Some fans are just really excited for the upcoming re-release of Animorphs. So excited, in fact, that they’ve created their own religion and have gone out to preach door-to-door for their new ‘Society of Animorphs’.
This one gave me a really good laugh. Kudos to the ‘preacher’ for keeping a straight face throughout the entire thing. Check it out:
Thanks to capnnerefir for passing this along to me on our forum, here is a new fan made Animorphs Parody by Box of Danger. I just watched it, and I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s very very funny. Even if you hate the TV show (and I suppose, especially if you hate the TV show), give it a watch. It’s worth it, in my opinion.
Though, before I do unleash the video, I also want to give out a slight language warning to the younger viewers out there. It’s nothing overly offensive, but I know that some parents also frequently visit this site as well, so I thought I’d pass along a fair warning before hand.
Also, in relation to this, I have noticed that there has been a lot of discussion about the Gone series in general here on the blog (see right side under recent comments), so I’ve decided to create a separate section and category on the Hirac Delest Community Forums to talk specifically about the Gone series. Simply click on ‘Community’ in the header above and sign up at the forum. (Registration is free and only takes a few minutes).
Registered members of Hirac Delest also get special privileges to the Downloads Section at the forum (some of the content which is unavailable at the site, and invisible to those who are only guests).
That about covers it for now. More updates coming soon.
So I stumbled across this awesome fan-made trailer for an Animorphs movie on Youtube today, and I just had to share it with you guys. I could’ve done without 1 or 2 of the obvious clips, but otherwise it was very well done. Check it out in the video above!
(Shameless Plug: And while you’re at it, if you haven’t seen myAnimorphs 300 Trailer video yet, then watch that too! I posted about it a little while back on this blog as well. )
Also, while we’re still on fan videos, there’s another fan who has made a few videos using the Spore game, where they’ve recreated the battle on the Hork-Bajir Homeworld using their Hork-Bajir, Andalite, and Taxxon models. See it here (unfortunately the embedding is disabled for it, so I’m not able to post the actual video here).
Katherine and I have some information we’d like to share, and a favor we’d like to ask.
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