Nine Years!

The image attached to this post is our first company logo.  It looks so outdated to me now...  Last Sunday marked eight years since the first Hatman comic went online.  And this month marks nine years that 3twins.net has been a registered entity on the web.  It seems crazy when I think about it; how many milestones have happened in that time, how many pitfalls and obstacles we've ran into and overcome.

It took us a year to get our first comic finished!  Three years later we were approaching our 50th issue.  Then we went into a semi-hiatus for four years so I could get my bachelor's degree.  We've created two audio comic series: Hatman & Indigo and Ion Bunny, and two web cartoons: Midieville and Star Fetched.  Now we're working on a game for the Nintendo Wii U.

We've been to comic cons, had loads of meetings, written tons of scripts, and commissioned thousands of pieces of art.  Some of the other bloggers have recently pointed out how much we have done.  However, as the captain of this ship, I say, "we haven't even started yet!"

~Jason Kuder
3twins.net Incorporated
Co-Founder, Chairman, & CEO

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

Hatman & Indigo 48: Brawl

Pumpkin Man Sub-Saga Recap: Part 1

Yesterday I touched on the history of our Pumpkin Man Halloween Special sub-saga. Before the new issue posts tomorrow, I'd like to recap the previous installments in this saga.

The first appearance of the infamous Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man was in Issue 9 (the cover says 5, because it was the 5th story and we were numbering them by story, not issues back then). This is one of the first stories Steve Surine drew for us. He actually worked on this story the same time he drew Ion Bunny issue 1. In writing this story, Andy decided to try something a little different, start with a flash back, and giving the other characters a chance to play "narrator." I personally love doing the voices of Farmer Bill (my impression of late character actor, Pat Buttram) and The Pumpkin (a generic gravely cockney voice) and this gave me a good chance to use them both a lot. I actually had the idea to use these two voices because of the character of King Stanely I voiced in our "Ode To Mother's Day" video we had made several years prior.

The story took place soon after the formation of the Terrible Trio and featured them prominently. After fighting over who should lead their bad guy gang, Super Cold Frozen Man used his ray gun on a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch in hopes to create a new villain to help him prove he should be in charge. This pumpkin grew into a giant jack-o-lantern as it lodged itself on the head of Farmer Bill (a previously unseen character in the Hatman Universe). The Pumpkin Head was imbued with telepathic and telekinetic powers but was symbiotically linked to the farmer, if the farmer could get him off his head, he would reduce to a normal pumpkin and be innocuous. After reading Super Cold Frozen Man's mind, the Pumpkin Head flew off to kidnap Blonde by levitating a normal pumpkin and riding it. He also telepathically convinced the Narrator that he should go on vacation. By the end of the story, Hatman, Indigo and Blonde were all tied up and the Pumpkin revealed that Super Cold Frozen Man was his "father." As the Terrible Trio gloated at their success, Farmer Bill's son, Billy Boy, walked in the barn (where our heroes were being kept). Startled, Super Cold Frozen Man shot Billy with the ray gun. The power of the ray gun aged Billy to a full grown man, gave him a green costume and the power of "regular." As Regular Man, Billy could negate Hatman's powers as well as those of anything that had indirectly come about as a result of Hatman. Thus Regular Man saved the Day by powering down the villains and rescuing his father and the heroes.

After re-watching it in preparation for this recap, I noticed that we really have come a long way. There should be a lot more told by the narrator(s) and the art, while good for Steve's first Hatman book, doesn't always tell the story properly. More panels could have helped greatly. The sound effects and editing (my job) felt forced and "acty" and the ending was abrupt.

Jason

Voice Actor Profile: Steve Surine

Today, I'm taking a look at Steve Surine, affectionately refereed to sometimes as "The Third Twin".

Steve, like myself, began doing voices as a young child, with his adorable impressions of Gizmo, talking in silly voices, or doing various accents, mainly because his family thought it was hilarious. This naturally lead him to be involved in children s musicals at church, but due to his shyness, he was rarely given a speaking part.

But those musicals did help him break out of his "shyness shell" a bit and in High School he took a Drama Class, which helped to bust it fully.

Around the same time Steve started doing bigger parts in small drama's for the church youth group and he and I began writing a few plays together for our Creative Writing class.

Then after High School Steve, Andy and I did a few home videos where we basically just goofed off (you can see the fruits of those efforts in "Ode To Mother's Day" and the "Indiana Foster Trilogy"). Steve also had a few more prominant roles in adult Church Musicals while in college.

On 3twins.net, Steve voices: Glomo, Zapman, Regular Man, Gidju, and Bob Palindrome, just to name a few. One of my favorites to look out for in the coming months is the voice he does for a Japanese beetle named, Bishamon which will debut in Ion Bunny 5 early next year.

Well, that's all for now,
Remember to join me next time when I mirror my previous post, somewhat, with the voice actor profile of my twin, Andy.

Until then,
I'm Jason Kuder and you're reading my words!

Voice Actor Profile: Jason Kuder

First off to avoid any confusion, I am Jason Kuder, so for the rest of this blog post I will just be referring to myself as "I".

I have always loved doing voices and making silly noises with my mouth for as long as I can remember. I think this goes back to my father who would entertain us with his impressions of "Yosemite Sam", "Porky Pig" and other classic cartoon characters. Well, I quickly picked up on this and began doing impressions of "Krang" (the brain guy from the 1980's Ninja Turtles cartoon), "Kermit the Frog", "Baby Animal" (from Muppet Babies, and which is mostly the voice I do for Ian Bunay), Pat Buttram (Mr. Haney from Green Acres which is the voice I do for Farmer Bill), and the list goes on.

So, since this "Voice Actor Profile" is from the inside looking out, I thought I would give you all a bit of a different perspective.

Now, granted I wouldn't say I'm the caliber of say world renowned voice actor, Frank Welker (known for: Scooby-Doo, Freddie {from Scooby-Doo}, Megatron, Soundwave, Santa's lil helper, Abu, & Nibler just to name a tiny few) but I would say I do a good job at what I do for 3twins... Most of the time.

Most of the voices I've done so far for 3twins as I mentioned have been voices I've done on and off for ages, take Marvin the Blue Wizard for example, I do my impression of Sir Ector in Disney's The Sword in the Stone (who was voiced by Sebastian Cabot). When Andy first started designing Midieville, I begged him to let me voice the wizard because I thought that voice would be perfect.

However, what I had always done with that voice was grumble a bit and say a short line like "That's preposterous"! But, when it came time to voice Marvin, I very quickly lost "it" because I wasn't accustomed to speaking long sentences in that voice and it takes quite a lot of energy.

So, I had to work on developing it more. I could say almost anything in the voice, but keeping it for long drawn sentences as the script called for was a completely different matter. One little trick I found to jolt myself back into the voice, though, was to make those little grumbling "harrumph" noises, (which sometimes are edited out of the cartoon and other times are not).

In case you want to know my "acting" history, I don't have much, other than 2 years of Drama Class in High School and some of the church dinner theaters mentioned in my Tom Cox Profile and just plain goofing off my whole life.

I would say, however, that from my observation, the whole character voice acting thing is for the most part one of those, "you either can or you can't" skills and even then there are some voices that you just can't nail at all, even with a whole lot of work.

Also, if you train your ear you'll be able to tell when a certain person is doing a certain voice, like Dan Castellateta in The Simpsons, for example. So, we've tried to give our stories a richer voice sound by using a large selection of voice actors. When in reality I myself could probably do all of the voices, but then, we'd just sound like Homestarrunner (who has only one person do all the voices except the one female voice).

Anyhow, I could probably ramble on for pages and pages on my thoughts on voice acting, but I think I'll stop here, because, chances are, most of you find it boring.

Join me next time when I take a look at the Man behind the voices of Glomo, Zapman and Gidju, just to name a few, Steve Surine!

-Jason

More sneek peeks into Ion Bunny 4

I previously wrote about Ion Bunny 4 and how he will square off against the Mad Hatter once more, but what I failed to mention was that unlike our previous issues of Ion Bunny, which have all been penciled and inked by Steve Surine, this one will be penciled and inked by our new artist, Brittany Bankert. To the side is a concept sketch she did of Ion Bunny and his alter-ego, Ian Bunay. We're excited about this new style for Ion Bunny since it lends itself really well to the "cute, yet not cuddly" nature of the "hare raising" electro-phile.

Stay tuned for periodic updates on all things 3twins...

-Jason

Next for Ion Bunny

In my last post, I wrote about the upcoming Hatman stories but as of yet, we have not discussed Ion Bunny on our blog. What we have done in the past is try to have one issue a year that is either a stand alone or an offshoot of a specific Hatman story (such as Ion Bunny 2 following the Mad Hatter from Hatman into Ion Bunny's rabbit hole).

Well, for this year's story, we are changing things up a bit. It will be a 2 issue story (however the second issue may not come out until next year) where our furry friend squares off against the Mad Hatter among his search for a new place to live.

Ion Bunny 4: Revenge of the Mad Hatter should be released this fall.