In an effort to make Zombie Pirates more viral, I've set up a simple fan page for Zombie Pirates. It will help when we eventually get a Kickstarter campaign set up. A much easier way to reach out to fans! So if you'd like to join our new page, go here and press the Like button.

What I'd like to do is update this web site as well, considering it looks pretty much like a sinking ship. The technology that runs it already has barnacles and seaweed all over it from neglect. But that might take a while. Maybe the thing to do is move over to Blogger or Wordpress.....we'll just have to see.

After seeing so many of our friends with successful Kickstarter stop motion campaigns, I'm considering a campaign for Zombie Pirates. It would be an expensive undertaking to complete just the first short film. But with proper funds I would be able to devote my time to finish fabrication, pay a musician, foley artist, get the camera fixed (which the cat broke) and maybe get some extra help. So what do you think? Is it time for Zombie Pirates to be completed? If you're following this blog and like the idea send me an e-mail to marc at animateclay.com or click the topic for this post and leave a comment.

UPDATE: Well...so far just one person replied about our post. I have one piece of good news. My camera which had the rear broken after my cat knocked it off the table will be fixed soon. The entire LCD screen got smashed in, so I bought another broken camera on ebay for 16 dollars. It's the same Olympus C-5050 but doesn't turn on and has a scratch on the lens. Luckily all it takes is a small screw driver to swap the broken LCD with the good LCD. If I weren't so poor right now I would have bought a newer camera. But the good part is at least I can use now it to move forward. I'll also have a camera for more spare parts in case of any future accidents.

Aaargh! The almighty underworld PHP demons have attacked the ship! So unfortunately we've had to update our site into a more modern vessel. The bad part is that we've had to re-paint the wood and batton down the hatches. So things don't look exactly like before and some areas are off limits. But we are still sea worthy for the time being. There is still another plague of PHP underlings that will be attacking in another wave before the middle of April, so we may sink. If this happens we'll look for another ship to plunder within view of our horizons. After all, we are pirates and we plan to stick around!

Alright in plain terms we are being forced to update our site from an almost eight year old version of PHP to the latest version. Our host 1&1 will discontinue the old for the new. We are on a stair step of upgrades and this last update is an in-between stage. Our site is working on the Zikula CMS which served us well for years. The bad part is it's not really supported like it used to be. The themes are limited to choose from and the functionality is also very limited. So if things don't work we might be forced to go with Joomla or Wordpress as options for Zombie Pirates to live. It's up in the air and these are just ideas, but I and Andy (our tech guy) will do what we can to make sure the site stays up. Even if we're not updating it while I work on sculpting jobs. So one more PHP update and if it works we'll be off on another journey once again.

Alright fans of Zombie Pirates! We're about to go back into hybernation phase again as I just got a large sculpting job from the east coast. So don't exect updates for a while. I had to put all my equipment back in the garage to make space for some large Disney head sculpts. I'm going to be also working on some full scale heads of famous people, similar to what you'd see in wax museums. It's really a good oportunity, and I may need it during tax time to pay my taxes.

I did manage to get a nearly flawless shot of the barrel and cannon falling but never did make a video of the final shot. You'll see it in our next update.....which is most likely (sorry to say) months away.

Finally I'd like to point everyone to where you can download Adobe CS2 which is what I'm now using to remove the backgrounds in my still images. The version that Adobe released for free is actually newer than my old version I bought on ebay many years back. You can also get Adobe Premier which is good for editing video considering it's also free and many may get some use out of it also. Here's the link. Use the serial number next to the download link to activate the programs.

I learned through trial and error about a quirk to my Olympus camera. It turns out that you need to incorperate a video-out device to stop it from re-setting the focus. Watch the video about the whole issue and how the new shot turned out at this link over here.