SECRET [Unfinished] Star Fetched Episode 2!!!!!

So, our most popular show is the one with the least published episodes.  Star Fetched is actually our oldest property with an early screenplay dating back to 1999.  We have tons of scripts for that show, but just haven't had the time to make more episodes.

BUT!!!! I stumbled upon an unfinished Episode 2 recently. Since we are working so hard on the game, we cannot realistically release any new comics or cartoons for the rest of the year.  In light of that, I thought I would be super duper nice and just let you all take a taste of the second episode of Star Fetched!

This only has rough blocking for the first couple scenes, then nothing but scene numbers. However, the audio was fully edited with sound effects and all.  So, enjoy, and don't say, I never gave you anything!

~Jason

Zombies in Hatman?

So, now that all 3 parts of "Revenge" have gone online, I can freely discuss some of my thoughts about this story. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I wrote "Revenge" in more than one setting. I had the idea for the Venom parody story and Man-Hat creation from the start but didn't know what to do after that, so it sat incomplete for a while. Then I thought about what if we could do something akin to zombies, but in the "family friendly" 3twins way. And I came up with the idea of the Man-Hat shooting mind control candy out into the city on Halloween night that would turn the trick-or-treating kids into zombies.

I'm actually not 100% happy with my final version of the script for this because I think the zombie aspect kind of didn't reach its full potential. Part of it might be that I'm not the biggest fan of zombie movies, so I didn't want to dwell on it much in the writing and the other part, may have just been lazy writing. Ultimately, I think that I wanted to present the Cider-Man character so much that I shoved the story into that box and didn't let it breathe.

I think maybe what would have been the best for this story as a whole, in retrospect, would have been to prolong the dark Hatman stuff and explore that in a more Hatman centric way, more truly like the Black Spider-Man story was. But I think originally my fear was that we would be called to the floor too much for copying that story. One of the things I strive for is to attain originality in our parodies, to pay more homage than just hash out the same thing. That said, I would like to have explored a darker Hatman or Hatman as the villain more and maybe concluded the whole story with the creation of the Man-Hat and left him as a character looming in the night until next year Halloween.

I know I'm being kind of hard on myself about this as the writer, but we don't have many viewers, so we don't get any criticism, and therefore, we should examine our stuff more critically, I guess. All in all, I am happy with the finished product. I feel fortunate that we were able to get in on the ground floor of Tillian Wagner as a comic book artist. Her stuff definitely has a different feel and it has really grown into it's own style, especially with the upcoming comic she's working on for us currently. It's neat to be able to see her art grow, and I hope those of you out there that do follow our stuff will enjoy it as well.

Jason

The Spectacular Cider-Man?

So, if you've watched part 2 of "Revenge of the Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man" you know that a new superhero was introduced, The Spectacular Cider-Man. This is the character I spoke of as the idea that Steve and Andy didn't think would work. He is only briefly in part 2 but part 3 will feature him much more prominently. I think Tom Cox did an excellent job with the Russian accent as well as the characterization. In case you're concerned that we're creating far too many superheroes, I ask you to save that critique until after viewing the final part of this story next week.

As you may be able to guess, the image to the right is the cover for part 3 of this story. It is a parody of Web of Spider-Man #1 and the character of Cider-Man is obviously a loose parody of Spider-Man. However, the vaguely similar costume and similar sounding name is where the correlation between the two characters ends. I assure you we are not ripping off Spider-Man in any way.

I really can't wait until next week when part 3 goes online. I hope you all enjoy Cider-Man and I really look forward to any comments on him after it goes online!

On another note, I'm currently working on an outline for the next installment of the Pumpkin Head/Hatman Halloween saga that will be titled "Son of the Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man." It is still in the early stages, but what I can tell you is that it will have something to do with the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and of course, the Big Giant Pumpkin Headed Man character. How much, I can't say. Besides, this story had "something" to do with the Pumpkin Head character, even though it was brief!

Until then... Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!

Jason

Mad Hatter

Today, October 6th, is official Mad Hatter day! Andy asked me to blog something about the Mad Hatter today, but I can't really think of anything to talk about. I guess I could tease that the still upcoming Ion Bunny #4 features our version of the Mad Hatter. If you recall Ion Bunny #2 directly followed the events of Hatman #19 and The Mad Hatter fell into Ion Bunny's rabbit hole, mistaking him for March Hare.

Our version of the Mad Hatter has the power to bring his riddles to life. The person who is to solve the riddle is stuck in it until it is solved. The last encounter with the Mad Hatter caused Ion Bunny to leave his home in an attempt to escape the madness that surrounds the Hatter.

In Ion Bunny #3 we took a little detour in the saga of our fluffy yellow pal, and explored Christmas shopping in the mall! Ion Bunny got in a fight with the mall Santa and ended up having to fill in for him.

In Ion Bunny #4 we will get a sneak peek into the day to day life of our favorite grump, when he tries to find a new place to live. But, the Mad Hatter is angry because Ion wouldn't be his friend. I can't give you a date when we will see Ion Bunny #4 online, but it is close to completion, so I hope it will be before the end of the year. What will the Hatter do to get back at the bunny? Will the Hatter find a friend or will he dive deeper into his insanity?

Jason

What's Your Favorite Back to the Beginning Art?

The Back to the Beginning series consists of over 270 panels of art and over eleven covers. I have decided with each completed series of Hatman and Indigo Issues I will pick one panel and one cover that is my absolute favorite art within the running series. From these issues I pick Super Cold Frozen Man and Glomo seen in Back to the Beginning Part 2 page two panel one for its conveying two of our favorite super villains menacing acts and mischievous demeanor, And The cover from part 3 Hatman & Indigo's Excellent Adventure because it 's just Awesome!

To the Writers & their Fans

Nothing like a good ParodyI've Seen the brilliance of the writer's behind the Hatman and Indigo issues, and their ingenious way of incorporating stories and ideas that stretch back beyond our own childhood to paying a tribute to some of our favorite moves like Back to the Future or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. From homages to parodies nothing seems beyond the writers of 3twins.net so I invite you to a chat session here to share your thought or ideas of your own. What do you think would make a great parody and why?

Sincerely, MJL

!!!CONTEST!!!

Our next full issue of Hatman & Indigo has a parody cover that parodies something somewhat obscure. Next week, the first few pages of Hatman & Indigo: Shocking Science Fiction Stories will go live online featuring the new cover (Drawn by S. LaDon Ware, and colored by Andy Kuder and Michael Lude), but I thought I'd give you a glimpse of it here.

This issue was originally titled Hatman & Indigo: Back to the Beginning Part 4, but we decided to use the parody cover as inspiration for the title of this individual issue (like we did with Back to the Beginning Part 3 being titled Hatman & Indigo's Excellent Adventure).

If you can figure out what this cover is parodying, post your answers here. The first correct answer will get a special prize. It's something cool we've been working on for the next Indy Comic-con, August 30th.

So, who will be the first fan with this new "prize"?

It could be you!

Andy

A sneak peek at Christmas

I am currently in the process of writing "A Hattington Christmas Story" which is going to be a parody/tribute of the beloved holiday classic, "A Christmas Story". I've had the idea for this rattling around in my brain for a couple of years and now I'm finally writing it out. I've blogged before a bit of how we try to make our parodies fresh as well as really portray the original material in a good light. This is no easy task and we really do put quite a lot of thought as well as some research into these types of stories, maybe more so than the mainstream "parody" movies do (i.e. Superhero Movie). I'll share with you a little bit of my process so far.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had several long discussions with Steve, Michael, Andy and my wife, Michelle (she does the voice for Blonde) about exactly how I should tackle this particular project. As you will remember with "Hatman Clause" I took more of the base concept from the source material and wrote something entirely new and different. Well, with this I want it to be more close to the source material, and yet still tell an original story. Which as you might guess is going to be like a tightrope act in order for it to work.

So, in these various discussions I picked the brains of my fellow 3twins-ians and asked, "what scenes from the movie should we portray?" and "what should we try to shy away from or more or less alter in a way?". I'm not going to give you a whole lot of spoilers for the answers we came up with, because, where's the fun in that. However, I will give a few teasers as to what I've come up with:

A Christmas Story was set in the 1940's and was about a man recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. Well, the approach I'm taking with my 3twins tribute version is: Setting it in the 1980's and it will be Hatman recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. So, the story will have the same "feel" and we can still reference '80's things like the movie referenced '40's things.

The next question was, "Do we have our regular cast of characters play parts in this?" Or "Should we try to extrapilate a past for Henry Hattington out of what we already know and therefore, certain characters (i.e. Leppy, Indigo, Blonde...) who appear in nearly every single issue will be absent from this story?" And the answer we agreed on is the latter, many of our regular cast will not be in "A Hattington Christmas Story". However, I am working in new characters that will somewhat "fill the shoes" of the absent cast members as well as a surprise here and there for a few cameo's from people we have met in the Hatman universe.

As you can guess, this will be a bit of a departure from our normal adventurous style, however, I really hope that when it goes online, it will feel like a warm tribute to the classic Christmas movie that is number one for many people.

-Jason

What's Your Thoughts?

The last several pages of "Hatman & Indigo: Back to the Beginning" went on line today. This issue ends with a cliffhanger. I don't want to spoil it for you, but I thought it may be nice to see what you, our viewers, think is going to happen next. Go ahead and watch the entire issue (it doesn't take that long), and then post your ideas on where you think the story is going.
We already have the rest of the story finished, so don't think your going to sway the issue. It would be nice to see how predictable (or not) our stories are.

Thanks for your feedback,

~Andy

Story Creations

A lot of thought goes into writing a story for 3twins.net. Whether it’s an issue of Hatman & Indigo or an episode of one of our cartoons, it all has to start with an idea. Often times, we will come up with the silliest ideas, and try to form a story around that. Sometimes, the end result has little or nothing to do with the initial idea.

Take “Meet the Damsels” for example. We had discussed Blonde having a family, and we thought it would be funny if all the members of her family were named for their hair color. This concept led us to create Brunette, and Bruno as a funny paring, as well as the other family members.

This was back when we were using classic story concepts as a jumping point for our creativity (like "Freaky Friday" influenced "Heroic and Incredible"). I wanted to loosely parody Sherlock Holmes and write a mystery where Hatman & Indigo finally meet Blonde’s family, and then the dad (Grey) comes up missing. This was going to lead to the discovery of Bald, the black sheep of the family. We dropped the mystery idea and went with a more zany approach, that the family just didn’t like Bald. You can see how the story unfolded in last year’s issues of “Meet the Damsels”, or read more about the concept to story process in Jason’s earlier blog. ~Andy

My first script

As soon as Andy, Jason and I decided to produce Hatman & Indigo on 3Twins.net we started to crank out scripts. Actually, I should say that Andy and Jason started to crank out scripts. For some reason I hesitated to write any because I didn't feel like I had a good feel for the characters. Eventually, though, things began to click.

At the time I was working in a small art gallery and we were never very busy so I had lots of time to sit and think. I was going through some of the Hatman & Indigo scripts that Jason and Andy had already written and was thinking about possible story ideas.

If you watch our first few stories you'll notice that we often played off the idea that Hatman would accidentally wish for something by saying "I wish" as a figure of speech, only to have to beg Leppy to give him his second wish back. With this in mind I wondered what would happen if Hatman were to flippantly say, "I wish I'd never been born?"

And so this became the basis for my first Hatman & Indigo script, issues 15-17, It's NOT Such a Wonderful Life. The plot was obviously a loose parody of the Jimmy Stewart film It's a Wonderful Life - in fact, we parodied the movie's box-cover for the second part of the comic.

In my first draft of the issue, Hatman wished himself out of existence and then the rest of the story followed Indigo's adventure to find a way to get him back. Indigo quickly realized his only chance was to find another leprechaun so he could make a wish and restore his friend. Fortunately at the ideal moment, a wadded up flyer for a leprechaun convention flew by, letting Indigo know where he could find a leprechaun. He kidnapped an elderly leprechaun, forced him to grant him a wish, and soon brought our hero Hatman back safe and sound.

The story was too short, though, so I beefed it up a bit by adding the scenes about Hatman's adventure as a phantom, witnessing what life was like without him ever having been born. This provided a chance to flesh out Leppy's character a bit since he was assigned to keep an eye on Hatman. What I think is interesting about this story is that it was our first, and so far only, Hatman & Indigo story with a purely situational villain.

It also gave us the character Scotty. Originally Scotty was supposed to be an elderly, Irish Leprechaun. But Andy and Jason were doing a read-through of the script and when Andy read these lines, he ended up using a Scottish accent. The voice sounded so hilarious that we decided to make the the character a Scottish Leprechaun. From there we couldn't resist the urge to bring him back as a recurring character.

The story also was the first appearance of the Fairy Queen, Hatman's mom and dad, and one more character that we haven't seen again just yet, but I promise, we will soon!

-Steve

PART 2: Parody Covers

Previously, I briefly wrote about the process of choosing a cover to parody for a specific Hatman issue. I will go into more detail on that now.

Many times we have to really work on what covers would fit best with what stories. Granted, we could just arbitrarily pick something recognizable and go with that. However, I have tried to implement a few rules into our parody covers.

My first rule is that only characters that appear in that story can appear on the cover. For instance if its not a story featuring the Terrible Trio, you won't see Zapman on the cover. Now I say in the "story" meaning that if for instance the cover is for part 3 of a story and Leppy appeared in part 2 but isn't in part 3 its okay to have him on that cover. Because we look at each story as a whole and the parts just help break them up into manageable pieces.

My second rule is that it has to make sense somehow in relation to the source material we are parodying. Take "The Terrible Trio part 2" for example, we wanted to parody "The Avengers issue #4". It was an obvious choice to put Super Cold Frozen Man in the place of Captain America, because he has a shield (which was originally designed to feel some what like an icy version of Cap's shield). And then, because Indigo and Glomo can both fly we put them in the spots for Wasp and Iron Man, Indigo in the Wasp position because he has wings. Then looking at what was left, we decided since Hatman has a cape, he should be where Thor is and why not have him swinging a hammer as well. Finally, Zapman was put in the place of Giant Man.

My third rule is that any text that appears on the source material should be closely parodied if at all possible. Again, if we look at the above covers, you'll see "Captain America Lives Again!" and in the story previous to this, we had led our audience to believe that Hatman & Indigo had killed Super Cold Frozen Man, so we put "Super Cold Frozen Man Lives Again!" Also, a good reason this cover worked so well with this particular story was that the part 3 was the very first Ion Bunny so putting Ion Bunny in the box where Sub-Mariner is on the original was also a no brainer. Then we looked at the text for "Avengers" and decided to make ours say "Adventures" and we squeezed our Hatman & Indigo logo in after that.

I still have a lot to say about parody covers, so we'll continue this another time.

-Jason

Parody Covers

Many of our comics have parody covers (to understand what this is, just compare the images to the left and right). In fact, we actually have more parody covers than original covers. The pattern usually is that issue one of a multi-issue story is an original cover and the subsequent issues have parody covers. We have broken this pattern a couple of times, (technically only once on the one part Christmas Carol issue, but the following issues "Omniscient" weren't parody covers, however, the part 2 cover could arguably be a parody of the part 1 cover, and at this point your probably saying "who cares") but we try to have that be the pattern.

Anyhow, a lot of thought is put into the parody covers that we do. I spend a lot of time searching cover databases (coverbrowser is a great one) looking for covers to possibly parody. We are usually working about six months to a year ahead, so I am constantly jumping around the different stories and issues thinking of what would best portray the comic issue at the time. Some comics lend themselves to a specific cover naturally. Like "Back to the Beginning", as I mentioned in a previous post, the part 2 cover is going to be a parody of the "Back To The Future part 1" box cover (refer to that post for the reference image). However, some comics don't so easily lend themselves to a parody cover, so we have to put a little thought into it.

Our first few parody covers were specifically parodying "first" issues. Like Action Comics #1 (shown on the above left), which is the first appearance of Superman, Incredible Hulk #1 (you can guess who that featured) and so on. We still have a few "first" issues in mind for future covers, but we have expanded to include other interesting covers as well as ones you might recognize right off the bat and some that may be a little more obscure.

I will continue more on this topic later.

-Jason

Hatman & Indigo's Excellent Adventure!?

The first few pages of Hatman & Indigo: Back to the Beginning (part 1) went live on our site today. But, as Jason mentioned in an earlier blog it went through quite a large change from concept to final script.

As you can probably tell by the title, this story parodies Back to the Future. But originally I wrote it to be more of a parody of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

It opened with The Narrator giving us a tour of Hatman’s house, as Indigo wakes up. Indigo then sees Hatman & Indigo (from the immediate future) has a conversation with them, and they leave. The story unfolds similarly to what happens in part 1 of Back to the Beginning, so I won’t reveal much more. However it ended with the same scene it opened with only from the future Hatman & Indigo’s perspective of seeing Indigo that same morning (just like Bill and Ted). You can read more about how the script evolved into what it is today, by reading Jason’s earlier posts.

Enjoy!

~Andy

50 for the 50th - Some Tips

Back in 2005 when we first began the process of creating The Adventures of Hatman & Indigo as a comic, I don't think I would have guessed that four years later we'd have 35 issues on-line. But here we are with our 36th issue well on the way.

In a few months we should be ready to publish our 50th Hatman & Indigo comic, and to commemorate this milestone we're going to feature 50 covers for the issue - that's more than all of the covers and variant covers we have on the site right now combined! So understandably, we're looking for a little help from our fans. As mentioned in the last post, we would like people to submit covers to us, and if we like them, we'll use them as part of the 50 covers (read the last post for more details). But for anyone who's never drawn a comic cover before, I'm sure there are a lot of questions about where to start and what it takes to make a good cover.

From the fall of 2006 through the end of 2008, I was the primary Hatman & Indigo artist. If you include Ion Bunny, I've actually drawn 24 comics for 3Twins.net, plus 11 original covers, 9 parody covers, and one variant cover. I'll be the first to admit that the work being done by our new artists is leaps and bounds beyond what I did for 3Twins, but if you look at my earlier work and compare it to my later stuff I think you'll agree that I've come a long away. So I think I can offer some tips for our would-be cover artists.

1) Make it dramatic: Covers are intended to be eye-catching and draw the reader in, so you don't want to put your characters in hum-drum poses. Spice it up a bit with a nice action shot.

2) Fill the frame: In some of my earlier covers I made the mistake of drawing the characters too small and filling a lot of the space with background images. Again, you want the cover to be catchy, so let your characters dominate the page, but...

3) Keep it simple: You don't want there to be too much going on or the drawing will become too cluttered. Pick a focal point and make sure everything else in the drawing is used to enhance that point. If it doesn't add to the piece, take it away!

4) Experiment: If you don't know where to start, just draw the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how weird it seems. My favorite original cover was the cover I did for issue #29 Origin: Remastered. The image is of Hatman wearing a Superman-esque costume, flying over the city. The idea came to me and initially I didn't want to draw it because Hatman can't fly! But I went with it and it worked. The lesson - just draw. It might end up great, it might be terrible, but you'll never really know until you try.

-Steve

Midieville & Star Fetched Update

Even though Star Fetched and Midieville have taken a hiatus, that doesn't mean they're gone for good...

Midieville is getting completely revamped. We will have fresh new landscapes, and a new look to the characters. As you may have guessed this is a long process. We want to bring Midieville up to the level of Star Fetched, graphically. Because of these changes, we will also be retelling the recent story, from a slightly different perspective.

As for Star Fetched: episode 2 is under production. We ran into some snags with the production of episode 1, and are trying to avoid those with the second installment. Things to look forward to: More information about the green alien and the space battle from the first scene of episode 1. Also now that our "heroes" are stuck on an asteroid, what's life on the Pascal going to be like for our five crewmen?

I will post production updates on a regular basis.

~Andy