3twins.net Update!

Andy and I are both taking classes now, which has it's ups and downs. Some of the ups are that soon we will be officially learning how to do what we've been trying to do all along with 3twins.net. That is designing a good website! As some of you know, what we have online so far is entirely self-taught and created with less expensive products. Well, Andy and I are both planning on purchasing Adobe CS 5.5 Design Premium which should help give us the added tools to bring you a new and better 3twins.net. How long with this take before we have these programs and know how to use them? I'm honestly not sure. We both have been talking about it for a while now, and for the time being we are planning on it as soon as we get the funds.

This brings us to the downs of both of us taking classes, it eats up a great deal of our time. I've explained this briefly in blog posts before, but it is just one of those sacrifices we need to make, so that in the long run, 3twins.net can be better off. This means that the roll out of content is more than likely going to remain at the slower pace we've experienced for the past couple of years. We hope to bring at least two full stories this year, which will equate to six issues of Hatman & Indigo. This year, the plan is to bring you Remastered versions of the origin stories of Zapman, and Super Cold Frozen Man. We will also be reformatting old comics from their current .swf format to blip.tv files in an added hope to gain some revenue.

Andy and I are also still working on ideas for possibly releasing new Midieville shorts as well as reformatting all of our old Midieville cartoons to the blip.tv format. Production on Star Fetched episode 2 has been on hold for a while as we decided to possibly change that show to an all-audio format, and we are now considering possibly keeping it as a cartoon, but the work necessary for pulling off Star Fetched is incredibly time consuming. We have some really great stories written for Star Fetched and can't wait to bring them to you, but we ask that you remain patient. Maybe in the meantime I can release a few pages from our earliest Star Fetched scripts to increase your interest! I'll save that for another blog post, though.

As for the immediate future, I have a two week break from school starting this coming Tuesday (12-20-2011) and as I previously mentioned, I plan on working hard on finishing up Zapman Remastered Part 1. I will tease you with more updated images as they are finished.

Until then,
Enjoy the Holiday, Hatmaniacs!
-Jason

Zapman Preview Page!

Greetings Hatmaniacs!

With the Holiday Season in full swing things have been moving at a snails pace here at 3twins. I thought that since it has been over a month since we released Hatman: The Short Haloween, I would tickle your fancy with a preview of Zapman Remastered Part 1. Which I will be working on over my Christmas break from school!

As you can see by the page to the right, it is still uncolored at this point. We have most of the audio recorded and all of the art is finished for part 1, so the only real hold up is my coloring. As you can see, S. LaDon Ware really pulled out all the stops with his art this time around, drawing this comic in a more wacky/Tex Avery style.

I really love the art on this and I really think this retcon of one of our earliest stories will stand the test of time. If you are familiar with the first Zapman story, you will notice that all of the panels to the right seem to depict events that were previously untold in Hatman lore.

That is one of the things we were so excited about when taking on these earlier stories, the opportunity to add elements we felt were missing. This page, for instance comes right after an early interaction with Hatman and Blonde that we never explored early on. I don't want to give anything away about Zapman Remastered, but those of you familiar with the original will definitely have new material to enjoy in addition to the story following the same vein as its original counterpart.

Zapman Remastered Part 1 boasts some amazingly detailed art, and because of that, coloring will probably take me a while. I am going to be diligent in coloring as soon as my school lets out December 20th. I would like to guarantee a New Years release of this comic, but I can't make that promise. However, I do promise that Andy and I will be working hard to get this done and online as soon as we can. S. LaDon Ware has already begun work on part 2 and that will roll out in the following months.

Until then,
Stay Crazy Hatmaniacs!

-Jason

Let The Short Halloween Begin!

Our latest Hatman audio comic, Hatman #49: The Short Halloween is on our Blip page and will soon be added to 3twins.net! Though The Short Halloween is one of our shortest comics ever, though, it is still a fun little ride. With a runtime of 1:49 who can't take almost 2 minutes to find out what's scaring Hatman this Halloween? Hint, the panel to the right has something to do with it!

This comic has been the absolute fastest production we have pulled off to date! With only a little more than 3 weeks from initial concept to published product I really have to applaud the 3twins team who worked on this! While this issue only featured a couple of our characters there was a total of 5 people included in its production! S. LaDon Ware had the hardest task of taking the simple premise I came up with and creating a comic with no script or layouts!

Originally my idea was to have the comic only be one page, but S. LaDon couldn't help but add to the tension of Hatman's short adventure. It is amazing that we were able to get the very busy Tom Cox in to record Narrator lines off the cuff. I had barely received the uncolored pages when Tom arrived. So, even though Andy credited me as the writer, S. LaDon Ware and Tom Cox also had a large part in making the final product what it is!

The coloring this time was very challenging for most of the panels. Figuring out how to show Hatman in the dark was a stroke of brilliance by S. LaDon Ware who helped guide me as I colored the pages to fit his vision. All in all I think this quick concept turned out to be an amazing little addition to the Hatman Universe.

The light hearted core of what makes up Hatman & Indigo Comics was truly captured and I think it is a fitting tone for the end of this volume of the over arching story. As I've mentioned before, issue #50 will bring about some lasting changes to the Hatman Universe, without giving anything away, that will include adding greater depth and expanding the world as a whole. In light of that, this tiny Halloween special will be a nice contrast to what follows!

Keep it real Hatmaniacs!

-Jason

The Short Halloween cover

Here is the finished cover for Hatman: The Short Halloween! This coloring is based off of the Trade Paperback version of Batman: The Long Halloween. There is also a full color version of the original cover and I will be making a full color version of this cover as well, but due to the short amount of time I have to color the whole comic, this one will be the official cover and the full color one will most likely appear later on as a variant cover. We have a lot of work to get done in the week and a half before Halloween, but I'm confident it will be completed by then!

-Jason

Moving unearths old things

I am in the process of moving to a new home, and as I was packing up the things in my office, I came across an old journal of mine.  Unlike some people, I don't use my journals like a diary, noting the events of the day, rather I use it to capture my creative thoughts.  Whenever I have an idea for a story or start mulling characters over in my head, I pull out one of my journals and write away.

Today the journal I found was several years old.  I flipped the first few pages and found a short story I had started, that eventually led to the ideas of Midieville.

Although this story looks nothing like Midieville as we know it, the characters of elves, dragons and an evil king, eventually led me to the plot of our loveable medieval characters of Marvin, Gidju and Anell.

Perhaps I will put the pages of this old story on 3twins Raw! or as BluRay extras for Midieville, one day.

~Andy

Happy Mad Hatter Day!

Today, 10/6 is Mad Hatter Day! It is kind of like April Fools Day 2. The reason today is Mad Hatter Day is because the Mad Hatter's Hat in Alice in Wonderland reads 10/6 (as pictured right). As you may know, we have our own Mad Hatter in Hatman and Ion Bunny Comics. Our version of the Mad Hatter tells riddles that alter reality. He mistook Ion Bunny for the March Hare in Ion Bunny issue 2 after his first appearance in a Hatman story.

You can also have fun trying to solve our Mad Hatter riddles on our riddles page.

Make it a crazy day, Hatmaniacs!

-Jason

NEW Halloween Hatman Coming Soon!

So, when I told you about the next Hatman story being the revamped Zapman origin story; I didn't think we were doing a Halloween story this year. But, things have worked out that we will be able to squeeze in a one part Hatman Halloween story to hit blip.tv and 3twins.net by October 31st this year! I don't want to give anything away, but I have been reading Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale recently and let's just say they proved a bit of inspiration for our next Hatman Spooktacular! The parody cover for this story will be an homage to Batman:The Long Halloween (image right). As usual with our parody stories, the story will only be loosely based on the concept behind the original and this time the word loosely may even be too severe a word for how loose!

This issue will also mark our 49th Hatman comic and that last brand new story for a while as we backtrack and tighten up the Zapman and Super Cold Frozen Man origin stories, finally finish the Beakman/Superheroes story, and re-record the audio for all of our old issues and convert all back issues to our blip account.

As I've blogged about in the past, issue 50 is going to bring about some changes to the world of Hatman and we want to hit the ground running with the huge story arc we have planned for after that. In order to keep the high paced production that story arc will require, we need our blip account to make enough money so we can hire more help! So, you can do your part by simply watching our stuff on our blip.tv page!

Later, Hatmaniacs!
-Jason

Zapman Reborn!

Greetings Hatmaniacs!

The next Hatman story will be a retelling of the origin of The Evil Zapman! We've blogged about this project in the past and it is finally coming to fruition thanks to everyones favorite Hatman artist, S. LaDon Ware! The new story explores more of the early Hatman and Blonde relationship, pits Hatman and Indigo against Glomo and a band of thieves, and explores the super hero recruitment process in a grander venue!

To the right is one of the parody covers we just finished. It is a parody of Ultimate Spider-Man #12 which featured Ultimate Electro.

S. LaDon Ware has outdone himself with the art in this story and I can't wait to show it to all of you! If you thought the Hatman Clause parts 1 and 2 were amazing, just wait until you see The Evil Zapman!

-Jason

Changes and Updates to 3twins.net

As some of you may have noticed, we are making changes to 3twins.net. The most noticeable change is the first page you see is now Hatman & Indigo comics. This allows for easy access to all the exciting adventures of Hatman and Indigo. Our familiar home page is still located under the Home link at the top of every page.

The most recent change to the website is our new and improved Midieville cartoon menu. Although the old one was fun and interactive, it was difficult to navigate. This improved menu is organized in easy to follow volumes of the current 30 Midieville episodes. We are working on streamlining all our menus to have the same feel, so look for similar changes to Hatman & Indigo comics menu in the coming months.

Please post your comments on our changes, we always strive to make our fans happy!

Thanks for the feedback,

Andy

Blonde Damsel, Character Study

Girlfriend to Hatman, Blonde is often the Damsel in distress of Hatman & Indigo comics. She is the oldest of the four Damsel children, who were all named after their hair color by the eccentric Grey Damsel, Blonde's father. Her mother, Auburn, favors Blonde over the other Damsel children, though she wouldn't admit it if asked. Blonde's sister, Brunette is the most normal of the bunch. Her other sister, Bald is crazy and currently spending time at the Twin City insane asylum. Blonde's youngest sibling and brother, Red, has special fluid powers, due to a wish that Blonde made when the Princess of the fairies was assigned to her.

In her many encounters with Hatman, Blonde hasn't always been the one in trouble. There have been a few times she saves the day and keeps our heroes safe. If not for Blonde The Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man may have taken over Twin City the second time he reared his titanic head.

Even though Blonde and Indigo rarely get along, they both share the common goal of loyalty to Hatman. Blonde and Indigo have saved each other from villainy enough times to show they do genuinely care for one another, but it's doubtful they will ever express that verbally. Their tense situation stems from a jealousy over the other one taking Hatman's attention.

Created by Andy and Jason Kuder
Voiced by Michelle Kuder
Employment: Student
Catch phrase: Oh Hattie, save me quick!
Hobbies: Throwing parties, shopping, spending time with Hatman
Personality: Blonde is always upbeat and optimistic. Whenever she is captured by a villain she knows Hatman is around the corner to "save her quick".
Strengths: Blonde is great at making friends and sees herself as somewhat of a match maker; she set her sister, Brunette, up with Bruno
Weakness: An uncanny ability to get captured by villains
See Blonde in Hatman & Indigo Comics

Next character study: King Anell

Hatman & Indigo 48: Brawl

Midieville "spy" part 7: Debriefing

Lieutenant Robert Palindrome, Character Study

Pilot of the Space Shuttle Pascal, Lieutenant Robert "Bob" Palindrome is a unique character. From the young age of four, he learned the meaning of Palindrome as a word or phrase that is spelled the same forwards and backwards. Ever after this he insisted on being called “Bob”, even when his parents (who didn’t want to draw attention to their odd last name) wanted to call him Robbie. Bob even re-named his pet hamster Racecar.

As one of the two man crew of the Pascal, Bob has several duties other than piloting the shuttle, including, cleaning, preparing lunch, helping Jonas maintain his bionic implants, and trying to keep Jonas from accidentally killing anyone.

Bob once held the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Galactic Space Fleet, however several juvenile incidents with Jonas English ended with his rank reduction and the ultimate assignment as pilot of a small ship shuttling passengers, who are mostly high ranking officials or dignitaries to symposiums and seminars.

Created by Jason Kuder
Voiced by Steve Surine
Rank Lieutenant
Hobbies: Playing practical jokes on Jonas
Nicknames: Bob, Bub, Robbie
Personality: Bob does as little as he can to just barely skimp by, he sees himself as somewhat of a ladies man.
Strengths: Charisma - Bob can talk himself out of any trouble, this trait is possibly how he obtained such a high rank being such a slacker.
Weaknesses: “WORK!!!”
See Bob in Star Fetched

Just for fun: Come up with some palindromes (or cheat and find one one the internet) and post them as comments.

Next Weekend: Blonde Damsel

Marvin, the blue wizard Character Study

Marvin is the Wizard of Weather for Midieville. Along with the charge of protecting the White castle and the Human Kingdom, Marvin is in charge of making the weather. Sometimes Marvin uses his weather-working powers as weapons to fight Anell and The Black Knight, other times he uses them to teach Gidju a lesson.

Marvin lives in his stone hut in the middle of the enchanted forest. The location is so secret and the only way someone can get there is by magic (or wandering aimlessly for hours sometimes works too).

As one of the original 13 Wizards, Marvin is very respected in the Magical community. His knowledge of spells almost surpasses that of the Master Magician, who is leader of the Wizards. As the Wizard charged with the safety of the White Castle, King Mathos often seeks the aid of Marvin for special tasks.

Created by Andy Kuder
Voiced by Jason Kuder
Special Attributes: Weather-working
Hobbies: Picking on Gidju, Building rock structures, Weather-working, Telling tales of old
Nicknames: Marv, Blue, Marvin, Weather Guy, Hey you with the hat
Personality: Marvin comes across a gruff, but he is truly tenderhearted
Quirks: Often needs to clear his throat, which some mistake as magical incantations
Strengths: The Blue Wizard of Weather can conjure up storms of any kind and direct them where he wills
Weaknesses: The Blue Wizard of Weather's only known weakness is The Brown Wizard of Time's ability to pause, slow down, or speed up weather

Concept Art

Trivia: Marvin is one of the oldest wizards in Midieville
Defining Episodes:
Marvin's Magic Tricks (First appearance)
What's up with the Weather (Marvin's first weather working)
The Tale of the Spellbook (Marvin recounts historical events)

Check back next weekend, when I post my character study for Bob Palindrome of Star Feched

Indigo Sculpture Finished!

Today I received finished images from Ben Howard of Fizz Man Industries of the Indigo sculpture! These show him fully painted. I absolutely love it! I'm adding 2 images to this post so you can get a good look at him! Be sure to comment with your thoughts. The next thing we're commissioning from the Fizz Man is a Hatman sculpture!

Zelda 25th Anniversary

As a Legend of Zelda fan for most of my life, I have been following the anticipated release of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  Nintendo is being very coy about keeping the release date unknown, by simply saying "Holiday 2011".  Today I received an email from Nintendo (yeah, I'm on their mailing list) about the launch of their new Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary website.  I decided to check it out and was not too impressed.  Yes it is a nice looking website, and it does give a simple description and release date for all of the Legend of Zelda games (with the Holiday 2011 date still attached to Skyward Sword), but I didn't see anything new.  To me, it looks like they simply compiled some images and videos and put them onto one site.  If you haven't been following any of the publicity around Ocarina of Time 3DS or Skyward Sword, or are curious about the multiple Zelda games released over the past 25 years, it is worth taking a look, but if you regularly visit sites like zeldadungeon.net and follow the publicity, there's nothing new.

Andy

3twins Character Studies

As we slowly begin to move our content into the realm of blip.tv and make our entertainment more accessible across the web, we here at 3twins.net, plan on blogging more often. Our blog posts will range from interesting things we find other places on the web to the intricate details of the goings on at 3twins.net.

A few years back, 3twins had started a fan site over on wetpaint.  This site fell by the way side, but one project I was working on that showed some interest was character studies. I really enjoyed providing the character studies, and they also gave our fans a different perspective on some of our less known 3twins characters. So, in order to bolster regular bogger content, I will be providing a character study on one 3twins character each weekend.

Next weekend we will begin with one of my favorite Midieville characters, Marvin, the Blue Wizard!

I hope you all look forward to it as much as I do,

Andy

Hand Sculpted Indigo!

I recently commissioned an Indigo sculpture from Ben Howard, the genius behind Fizz Man Industries. It will be a birthday present for Andy (the voice of Indigo) and also a test to see if there would be any interest among fans to purchase statues of our characters. I have received a few progress photo's and I am very impressed! To the right is the head which is amazing! Andy and I have already decided that we will be ordering more characters from Fizz Man Industries, for sale or for our own personal collections. I'll be sure to post about this again when I have images of him painted!

Tell me what you think of this idea. Would you be interested in having your very own Hatman Comics character in eye popping 3D for your display? Or what about a Midieville or Star Fetched character?

Blog

Hello 3twins.net Fans,

You may have noticed we have been posting videos from our blip.tv account.  We are hard at work converting our Flash comics and cartoons into video files for better viewing ease.  One nice thing to the videos on blip.tv is they can now be viewed with out having a flash player installed on your computer or mobile device!

To keep up to date on our new videos check back here often for the latest 3twins.net entertainment.

Enjoy,

Andy

Midieville "spy" part 6: The Plan

Click to Play

Marvin and Gidju devise a plan to get the "White" Knight to stop spying on them.

Hatman & Indigo #1: Origin

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Find out how Hatman got his powers!

KudeeCast 3 - Birfday Special

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Steve sits down to talk with Jason and Andy on their 30th birthday.

Midieville "Spy" part 5: Silly Question

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The "White" Knight asks Marvin silly questions.

KudeeCast 3 - Birfday Special

Click to Play

The third audio podcast featured on 3twins.net. On their 30th birthday 3twins creators Andy Kuder and Jason Kuder sat down with co-creator Steve Surine to record this podcast.

Midieville "Spy" part 3: Conversations

Click to Play

The "White Knight" asks Marvin and Gidju for secrets about the Kingdom of Midieville

KudeeCast 2

Click to Play

The second installment of the 3twins audio podcast. Featuring 3twins creator Jason Kuder and Hatman "Narrator" Tom Cox

KudeeCast 1

Click to Play

Jason and Steve set down for the first KudeeCast Podcast

Blip,tv

3twins fans and followers,

You may have noticed we have been posting old Midieville shorts to our Blip.tv account.  We are slowly upgrading our flash videos to the streaming format that blip.tv uses.  The wide distribution that blip.tv affords us, helps spread our 3twins.net cartoons/comics to many more new viewers.  If you like a particular cartoon/comic, take the time to comment on it or even "like" it on our Facebook fan page.

Thanks for the support,

3twins.net

Midieville "Spy" part 3: White Knight

Click to Play

The Black Knight, disguised as a White Knight, meets Marvin and Gidju.

Midieville "Spy" part 2: Lost

Click to Play

The Black Knight sets out to search for Marvin's hut.

Midieville "Spy" part 1

Click to Play

The Evil King Anell enlists The Black Knight for a mission: Spy on The Wizard Marvin!

Hatman & Indigo 47: Many Happy Returns

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It's the Birthday of Hatman, but the Terrible Trio have plans to foil his party.

Midieville Teaser 3

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King Anell advises a plan to rid Midieville of Marvin.

Midieville "Spy" part 1

Click to Play

King Anell sends The Black Knight to spy on Marvin and Gidju

I've never been so excited about 3 cents in my life!!!

As some of you may have noticed, we here at 3twins.net set up an account with blip.tv. Jason and I loaded just a few of our videos to this service and began streaming them Thursday, April 14th (just two days ago). This great new service not only hosts our videos, but we can get paid for people viewing our videos (with a short ad preceding)! $0.03 (what we've earned in the last two days) is essentially nothing, but for the first time, in a long time, we have real potential for turning a profit on our creative media.

Now I know, we don't usually talk about money, but in over five years of making cartoons and comics for our website, we have striven to simply break even on our large investment into our passion. It looks like there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel! Will we get rich off blip.tv? I doubt it, but with your help (simply watching our content) we can earn enough capitol to increase our ability to produce the quality and quantity of content you regularly ask us for.

Believe me, we aren't in it for the money. If we were 3twins.net wouldn't have lasted this long. Jason, Steve and I have a passion for telling our stories, and we sacrifice a lot to bring them to life. How much more can we do, if they become self sustaining? The sky is the limit!

Thank you to all our true believers!

Andy

Star Fetched Episode 1

Click to Play

Join the crew of the Pascal as they pick up their latest passengers.

Midieville Teaser 1

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Our first attempt at an animated cartoon. My how far we've come!!!

Midieville Teaser 2

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The first appearance of King Anell and The Black Knight.
A very early animation attempt.

KudeeCast 1

Click to Play

The first audio podcast featured on www.3twins.net. Featuring 3twins creators Jason Kuder and Steve Surine

KudeeCast 2

Click to Play

The second installment of the 3twins audio podcast. Featuring 3twins creator Jason Kuder and Hatman "Narrator" Tom Cox

KudeeCast 3 - Birfday Special

Click to Play

The third audio podcast featured on 3twins.net. On their 30th birthday 3twins creators Andy Kuder and Jason Kuder sat down with co-creator Steve Surine to record this podcast.

New developements at 3twins.net

I know we have had a large slow down in the release of new content on 3twins.net, but that doesn't mean we have stopped working on everything. First, we are hard at work on the 5th anniversary issue of Hatman & Indigo, which will be a two issue story centered around Hatman's birthday. Most of the comic is completed; Jason and I are editing the audio track with the comic pages, and Steve is working on a variant cover for the first part. It's a suprise, so you'll have to wait and see what it is, I'll just say, I'm very excited to see it!

In other 3twins.net related news, we are still working hard on our audio version of Star Fetched. It's a lot of work to take a story that was written with visual characters, locations and gags, and bring it to life with only sound, but we are confident the end product will be something you will enjoy. Our goal is to have a new podcast of Star Fetched on a regular basis, that you can listen to on your computer, phone, or other mp3 players.

Lastly we are working through ideas to change the menus for our stories. I know the Midieville menu was often confusing, and our Hatman comic rack is full and only going to have more content as the months go by. So look for our new formats as they arise.

As always we are open for suggestions and feedback.

Andy