Sid Quack

"I'm a-workin' out here on Maggots Farm
I'm workin' out here on Maggots Farm
I wish that I had lots of dough
And a brand new suit of clothes
And the finest food that I could eat
And never have to eat Granny Reekie's soup
I'm a-livin' out here on Maggots Farm
Instead of a mansion on a hill
Oh Maggots Farm is makin' me ill!"

For once, I'd thought I'd have a crack at drawing one of Duckula's two doppelgängers, Sid Quack, from the series 2 episode "The Count and the Pauper." Man, if there could be a Wario in the Count Duckula universe, this guy would be that. Even if they did look exactly the same - I supposed that would be understandable because in real life, all male mallards look the same, what with either green heads and that, there's no way to tell them apart. Still, they could have done with different hairstyles.

Despite the episode being nothing more than a parody of the Prince and the Pauper, I thought it was a great one, because I think the songs the two ducks sing at various points just make it. Mr Jason did a great northern farmer accent for Sid too. What was also funny was that Nanny and Igor had doppelgängers too, really nasty ones on that.

I won't be posting much more Duckula fanart on my DeviantART, unless it's extremely epic and well done. Fanart of anything seems to either like sweets are to kids, or frowned upon by miserable bastards who get too upset that any fanart ends up on the front page there. I've also been in a slump these days, but things seem to be picking up again.

"I'm living out here on Maggots Farm
This country life has lost its charm
I want my castle on the hill
Maggots Farm is a-makin' me ill!
I miss old Nanny and old Igor
Stink and Reekie are becoming a bore
I want some decent food and some decent clothes
And not old Reekie's soup and bones
I'm workin' out here on Maggots Farm
I'm workin' out here on Maggots Farm
I'm workin' out here on Maggots Farm..."

This post is in memory of my little budgie, who died a few hours ago today.
RIP Percy, c.1995-2008.

Merry Quackmas

Here's wishing you a merry ducky Quackmas!

I also have to inform, and regret that blog comments are now moderated, for personal reasons. This means that I'll be notified when you post a comment on an entry and I'll have to approve it if I think it's appropriate.

All the best for the holidays, and thank you for your kind feedback!

Some plans

Just a quick post before I go to bed.

I've got plans in my mind for Duckyboos which involves moving the news and updates section from the main site into here not only to make it a pinch more active, but also to make the previous news posts more organised, and for future ones more easier to post. It'd save me having to knock one out of three posts, which I hand type into the index file, everytime I update, and from making new pages as the old news archive grows. Should I?

Season 2 release for Latin America

Good news for Duckula fans in South America, the second season has appeared to have been released!

Source: TruCinePortal.com

Apparently there will be 19 episodes on this DVD, but this source doesn't tell whether or not there is anything else on it like features and stuff. What I do find interesting though is that the picture of Duckula on this cover is derived from the cover of the 1991 Annual. It seems that whoever designed these seem to have done them better than whoever designed the UK DVD covers.

Count Duckula: The Complete Series 3

Got hold of my copy yesterday. Same price, same store, you get the drill.




Again, there are no extras on this DVD, and the menu is exactly the same as those in the previous DVD set but coloured blue, but there's a twist - despite the name of the DVD, which is "the Complete Third series", the last seven episodes of the series, known widely as 'season 4', are included as well! So now the whole series is available on DVD in the UK, result!

Also for some weird reason, the inlay displays the episode "A Christmas Quacker" as episode 62 [the 4th from last one on the second disc]. So now we have a new mystery - is this the real episode order, or has either Fremantle, CITV or even the Internet got it mixed up? Who knows...

Either way, I enjoyed the episodes I haven't seen [I really liked it when the Crow Brothers were being upside-down 'mushrooms' in "The Show Must Go On", and I remember parts of "Prince Duckula" being used in an old advert for the cartoon they used to show on Nickelodeon back in 1995/1996.], and the fact that it's all there is all that really matters.

Australian DVD release

I just discovered a new DVD release for Australia that is to be released on the 10th October 2007. Although the box contains 3 discs, only 18 episodes from the first season will appear on this release unfortunately, and the cover design isn't that great either. Still, good news for you Aussies that might have been unable to get hold of the first season from the US and UK.

Source.

Meanwhile in the UK, we're just days from our 3rd series set. I hope to get my copy cheaper this time, usually DVDs in ASDA are up to half the price of those sold in HMV and Virgin. The new choice would be whether to buy it before or during my holiday to Blackpool which will be on the 10th next month.

New screenshots added

Screenshots from the episode "One Stormy Night" have been added to the Gallery. I've also created galleries for up to the 9th episode as I'm going through the first disc of my series 1 boxset, these have yet to be filled with screenshots which I will work on tonight and in the next few days.

Just so we know...

We fellas in the UK are getting the third series of Count Duckula on DVD on September 3rd. No image yet [Play.com briefly used a photograph I took of the series 2 box from here!], but like the series 2 set, this will be a 2-disc DVD, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of special features... well, I don't know how they're going to divide this one up then if the third series only has 13 episodes...

A brand new update

Since I've barely done anything major for the site in about a month as I'm still waiting for the third series to come to DVD, I've decided to give a couple of my DVDs a review each [nothing too long at the moment, but they're there], and to make those accessable I've opened up a new page with info on VHS, audio and DVD releases of the cartoon.

I've also added a new Duckula blog called Crazy About Count Duckula to the Links section, be sure to check it out ;)

Why I moved the fansite to NTLWorld

Just a few secs ago, I moved the Duckyboos fansite to a new location which can be found here. It was initially a mirror of the original at Fateback.com I made soon after I discovered that I had some ad-free webspace on my own ISP, Virgin Media [formerly known as NTL]. It was only 55MB, 5MB less than the original host, but I decided to take it on anyway to see if it made the site work for someone who couldn't view the original.

Fateback was horrible - it disallowed the uploading of MP3 files or any files more than 200KB [which was why I decided to host related images onto my Livejournal account], and it had this ad at the top of each page that interfered with my CSS. Not even Firefox's Adblock could block it. So in the end, I created a redirection page and wiped everything else off, while keeping the new host open.

I feel really bad... like, I'm rushing things without telling anyone, and it comes to a point where I feel that I don't know what I'm doing, but I do. I dunno...the Duckyboos project is my pride and joy, but I just feel like a crappy admin.

One thing's for sure though, the fansite won't be coming back to Fateback at dawn, Transylvanian Standard Time.