Nobody is listening

Hello again. Sad to say Duckula has had a fruitless year this year; no new merchandise since the knickers we showed last year [at least, not that we know of], no new DVDs or anything, and no sign of those movie rumours ever being true. Let's hope 2011 bears more tomatoes.

But the main thing I want to address, and this is probably the second time I've done, is that I DO NOT TOLERATE PEOPLE STEALING MY FANART! See my leniency is wearing thin. In the past month or so I've seen 5 bootleg items on eBay all using the same picture from the first ever post here, as well as about 4-5 people doing copies of it and claiming as their own, the oldest of such people being 31! Way to make a first impression you guys.

It's getting ridiculous. If people knew just how much this sort of thing actually puts me off drawing full stop, barring what I have to do at work, maybe they would think twice and just be original with the art. It just gets stale copying the same picture over and over, with each of them being less cop each time.

If you are directed to this blog via Google images, read this before you try to impress DeviantART with such plagiarism.

A decision

I'm still having serious trouble gaining full access to the FTP of the Duckyboos site. I've tried various ways of viewing the contents of the FTP, and adding and otherwise modifying the files, but I still had the same errors. This has gone too long enough, so we have no choice but to perhaps phone them, and really push it.

However, it hurts me to say, that once the server actually works for me again, I will have to shut down Duckyboos for a while. It was easy to use this at first, but now I think it's about time I broke free from NTLWorld/Virgin's webspace. We'll then have to find somewhere to host it, mostly likely at a [hopefully affordable] price, and then it'll be online again, hopefully without such problems. But then, we also have some financial problems as well [we being my family], in fact, from what I've overheard, my parents had to shut down their bank account. So we're quite fucked at that one.

The Guestbook, Forum and Gallery will still be online though, because they are hosted externally, but the main site will be dormant at that time. I'll be writing up new pages and sprucing up the existing ones as needed.

I'm really dissatisfied with NTL's webspace service as a whole. Never mind the fact that you only get 55MB space for a start, Virgin doesn't provide an online site builder which I pretty would much needed, but they only have that for BlueYonder customers, whereas Virgin customers have to settle with FTP, and we all know now how much they cocked that up. After all, it was originally a mirror for when the original Fateback host somehow started failing to be viewed in certain countries, not that is was any good anyway but still.

Be prepared.

Movie rumours

We all know full well that Wikipedia can be a pile of old shite when it comes to rumours about future things, but now there are rumours sprouting from there about Count Duckula becoming an animated feature film produced by Dreamworks, set to be released at least in the year 2009. A part of me wants to believe in it, but after the whole thing about the series being shown again on a kids' channel in the UK, another reckons it's completely false.

What if it were true... there would be so many possibilites.

The thought of Dreamworks making it quite bugs me. I honestly never found any of the Shrek movies as funny as claimed, though there are a number of other animated movies I've yet to see, the latest being Kung Fu Panda. One movie I did like by them was Chicken Run, which was co-produced with Aardman, who according to this rumour had been interested in co-producing this.

Then there is this problem. Several cartoon series had been made into poor films within the last few years, such as Garfield. I watched a small bit of the first one some time ago, and not only did Garfield look hideous, it also starred Jennifer Love Hewitt, who is one of many celebs that annoy me; and it tried too hard to be funny. Tee hee guinea pigs that talk like African-Americans, pull the other one.

Then you have Alvin and the Chipmunks, another example of how animated movies have sunk quite low these days. I saw the trailer on the net last year, and I don't think they were even trying to be funny there. Theodore practicing coprophagia - I know it's a natural thing some rodents do, especially rats, but did these writers honestly though it'd be funny to put that in a kids' movie? And don't get me started on Scooby-Doo, which was just fart jokes throughout.

Back to Duckula. If there really was going to be a theatrical movie based on the 80's cartoon series, I can predict fart jokes, overuse of pop culture, a range of sub par video games released a week before, and terrible songs sung by American pop stars for an OST. But most of all, I predict that it'd be in CGI.

Not all CGI films are as bad as traditional animation fans make them out to be, like Pixar's Cars. But with Duckula, I dread to think of what the model for him would look like - it'd be so detailed, with the indication of features, eye colour, fabrics of his clothes...I don't know, I'm so used to a 2D character with very limited detail, the thought of him being in 3D will scare me.

Now here's the one that would make my brain sizzle with anticipation - who would provide the voices? Would David Jason, Brian Truman and Jimmy Hibbert have the time, or would there be replacements? I know that there may well be some very talented voice actors that could imitate anything, but I would not like it if Duckula sounded more American than he did on the show despite his original actor being British. I know that the original show was a British, Spanish AND American co-production, but damn, this will be so American I'd crave some rain, tea and digestive biscuits in no time.

All of that said, I would go and see it.

But for the time being, we'll have to wait and see if this rumour is actually true.

Let me make it clear...

First off, apologies if this post offends anyone here, but I have to get this off my chest.

Just now, I found a piece of my Duckyboos website being used on a bootleg t-shirt for sale on eBay. eBay is full of people trying to make a quick buck from t-shirts using any old crap on Google, and when you are affected it becomes a very sticky situation.

Now, to anyone who is stupid enough to take any content from my website without permission, I want to make it clear - while I don't claim any copyright to the official images I've used for decoration on the site, just because it shows up on Google, it does NOT mean that you can take it and not let me know what you're going to do with it. Asking for my permission is a simple procedure which you can do so here, and depending on the use, most of the time I probably will give the thumbs up for you to use, because like the Count himself, I won't bite. That way you won't get an email asking to take whatever you took from my site off.

Equally, I don't like seeing my stuff on your Myspace pages or Youtube slideshows either, especially my fanart, so be warned if I have to PM you about it.

And for anyone who is even more stupid enough to try and sell any pictures you pinch from Google, DeviantART and the like, especially fanart you WILL be reported, because that shit is illegal to even try and sell. Website graphics aren't meant to be ironed on t-shirts, so they will end up looking like shit, and buyers, please don't buy them.

That should be it for now, but to the kinds of people I've mentioned, you are warned.