Help indie werewolf film “Betsy” raise a few bonus bucks for better blood and beasts

There are three days left to help nudge the Indiegogo campaign for Concept Media‘s indie werewolf movie “Betsy” across the finish line. Written by Shawn Burkett (who also directs) and Ayse Howard, the film boasts a great visual identity, a solid cast, and a… well, not a stunning plot, based on the synopsis, but you never know.

The story follows a young woman “Betsy/Kelci C. Magel” who survived a violent attack while leaving work [according to an older synopsis she’s an escort – AQ]. After a month Betsy has relocated to a new town with her friend “Kayte/Marylee Osborne”.

A new town. New friends. A fresh start. However, as the full moon gets closer something begins clawing it’s way into her new life.

The film’s core budget was covered by a prior crowdfunding effort; this campaign is looking to raise an extra $1,000 to help pay for better costumes, practical effects and cast/crew expenses. As of this post, they’ve raised $878. They’re not asking for a lot, and they plan to shoot in late February and get it into festivals by May, so they’re not wasting time, either. Check out the campaign and the Betsy Facebook page for more info.

Thanks to Michael P and Somnilux for the links!

Jan. 30th 2017

“Open Mic Night”, a werewolf musician animatic by Kaili Myers

Here’s Open Mic Night by SCAD student Kaili Myers. This is an animatic (so expect scratch audio and camera movement arrows) depicting a guitar-slinging lady who works up the courage to get on stage, then puts on a performance much different than anyone was expecting.

I’m absolutely in love with this werewolf design. Kaili’s done great work here, and I look forward to seeing (and sharing) the final animation! Thanks to friend of the site @Somnilux for the link.

Jan. 27th 2017

Third time’s the charm, hopefully! A new “Werewolf: The Apocalypse” video game is on the way

White Wolf rights-holders Paradox Interactive have just announced that they plan to release a game based on the World of Darkness roleplaying game Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Cyanide (Blood Bowl, Call of Cthulhu) will handle development, and Focus Home Interactive (Blood Bowl, Styx: Master of Shadows, Farming Simulator [!?]) will publish. The game will be available on PC and one or more as-of-yet unannounced consoles.

Things are still at the “corporate press release” stage, but a web site, Twitter account and Facebook page dedicated to the game have already popped up. Focus have said they will share more details at their “le What’s Next de Focus” event in Paris on February 1st and 2nd.

So far the reaction from the World of Darkness fan community has been a jittery mix of elation and scepticism. W:tA has a deep mythology and a lot of storylines and concepts from which to draw (as a certain film franchise is sort of proving). People have tried to mine this scene for video game gold twice before: a W:tA PC game was planned for a late 1999 / early 2000 release but the developer folded before it could be completed, and five years before that, Capcom was working on a PlayStation / Sega Saturn game that only ever surfaced as a prototype.

Can Cyanide and Focus succeed where others have failed, and deliver a Werewolf video game to satisfy fans who’ve been waiting all this time? One thing’s for sure: there’s no way for anyone to answer that question at all right now. You’ve waited over two decades; can you please be chill for, like, another twelve months? Eighteen, tops? Thank you.

From the Paradox Interactive press release:

White Wolf is pleased to announce its partnership with Paris-based video game publisher Focus Home Interactive for a licensed PC and console game set in the World of Darkness.

The partnership between Focus Home Interactive and White Wolf Publishing concerns the adaptation of a video game based on the acclaimed Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The game will be developed by the game development studio Cyanide (Styx: Master of Shadows, Blood Bowl, Call of Cthulhu…). In the game you will become a Garou, a rage-fuelled Werewolf warrior opposed to urban civilization and the destruction it brings. The Garou are born to fight the corruption of The Wyrm, a powerful supernatural force leading us towards an inevitable Apocalypse.

Thanks to @Somnilux for breaking the news to me, and to so many other folks on Twitter for providing additional details!

Jan. 20th 2017

Portland & Vancouver (BC) plans for HOWL CON orphans on Feb 4th & 5th

If you were attending the now-defunct Howl Con in Portland, OR on Saturday February 4th and Sunday the 5th and now find yourself without a way to hang out with werewolf people, may I humbly present you with two alternatives.

These are informal and rely on the good graces of private businesses, so please be prepared for details to change.

In the Portland area:

Friend of the site Nodnash is proposing a drop-in werewolf hangout at Portland’s Sizzle Pie West (926 W Burnside St) on the evenings of the 4th and 5th. The 5th is Super Bowl Sunday, so it might be a little crowded, but there’s lots to do in the area. Specifics are still coming together, so follow Nodnash for the latest.

In the Vancouver, BC area:

On Saturday the 4th, starting at around 1PM, Tandye and I (plus a few people who’ve already RSVP’d) will be at lelem’ Arts & Cultural Cafe in Fort Langley. That’s about 45 minutes west of Vancouver proper. We’ll be there for the afternoon, hanging out with any other werewolfy people who show up, and who knows what the evening will bring?

The plan is to make it an art jam, so bring your art stuff if you have any, but we may have games and other stuff going on, too. The cafe is rad, with great food and lots of space to sit and chat, and there’s lots to see and explore in Fort Langley – it’s right on the Fraser River, with a beautiful riverwalk trail, forests, and cool shops. Come on out if you’re in the area! As with the Portland plan, the details are subject to change, so follow me on Twitter for any updates (or @ me if you have questions, need directions, are crossing a border, etc).

See you around, werewolf people!

Jan. 19th 2017

Moody, gorgeous Batman: The Animated Series “Moon of the Wolf” poster by George Caltsoudas

George Caltsoudas is a graphic artist who spent nine months applying his bold and colourful vision to the creation of iconic posters for every episode of Batman: The Animated Series season 1. Not because he was commissioned by Warner Bros. Animation or DC, but because he just felt like it.

That’s sixty-five individual pieces of art, each one perfectly capturing the brooding, timeless Art Deco production design of the show.

A gallery of the whole collection flew by on my Twitter timeline and I dove in immediately, partly because B:TAS was one of my favourite shows growing up, and partly because I wanted to see what George put together for episode 43: “Moon of the Wolf”. I wasn’t disappointed! Check out the whole series (and a lot more great artwork) on George’s Tumblr.

Jan. 16th 2017

League of Legends’s werewolf Warwick becomes “The Wrath of Zaun” & “a steampunk hyena” in update

From the “writing about games I’ve never played” department: Last week the League of Legends YouTube channel posted a teaser to announce an update to Warwick, body-snatcher and wolfman. This nasty steampunk-werewolf-lookin’ Champion has a bunch of new abilities, artwork and skins, which is good news for people already playing him, and even better news for people who weren’t playing him because his previous abilities, artwork and skins were bad. Bad for the purposes of the game, League of Legends.

In case the previous sentence didn’t make it clear, I don’t know anything about League of Legends. I learned that Warwick was a thing at all from this tweet, and the research I did to put together this post was so laden with insider terms like “meta”, “gank” and “jungling” that I developed a lot more empathy for my non-programmer friends who have to hear me talk about “Node”, “Sass-compiling” and “shadow DOMs”. If you’re a seasoned LoL player and you want to know how Warwick’s “newfound power allows him to clean up the streets of Zaun through brutal violence”, I suggest you check out this rundown on The Rift Herald or the official update page.

As an outsider looking in, what interests me most about this update (aside from the sudden appearance of artwork depicting this brick shit-house of a werewolf dressed in nana-jammies) is the level of thought that went into the mechanical and in-game reasoning for his updates, and the extent to which Riot explains it all on their site.

So what are our goals with the Warwick update? Currently Warwick is very beginner friendly. We actually want to embrace that and push it even further than it is now. We want Warwick’s gameplay to actually teach new junglers how to be an effective jungler. Right now Warwick can’t gank until level 6, but what if Warwick’s kit actually encouraged players to gank often and early? We also have heard loud and clear that player think Warwick’s kit is kind of boring and outdated. While we don’t want to raise Warwick’s skill floor, we do want to increase his skill ceiling a bit and add more depth to his gameplay. We also want to bring Warwick’s art and thematics up to modern Riot standards by giving him a proper place in our world. We think violence is an important theme for Warwick and we want to see how far we can push that thematic.

What I get from this is “we all heard Warwick was the boring character that newbies played, so we made him good again by emphasizing his capacity for violence and commissioning a bunch of kick-ass new art assets to show him off.” Riot, I may never play League of Legends, but I appreciate your honesty, and the results are a lot of fun to look at.

Here’s a selection of Warwick splash screens showing some of his new skins, and a final one showing his origin.


Jan. 15th 2017

Full Moon Features: Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004)

It’s increasingly rare for a werewolf film to actually be out in theaters when the moon is full, but as the one that’s currently playing on 3070 screens across this great nation is Underworld: Blood Wars — and I gave myself permission to skip any further films in that dreary franchise after the last one — I have chosen to devote this month’s column to another, decidedly more worthy, werewolf movie sequel.

Released in 2004, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed came along four years after its Scream Factory-approved predecessor and found editor Brett Sullivan stepping into the director’s chair. It also sees surviving Fitzgerald sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) barely keeping her nascent lycanthropy at bay while staying two steps ahead of a persistent male werewolf (dubbed The Beast in the closing credits) that’s looking to answer the call of the wild. On top of that, she’s periodically visited by the ghost of her dead sister Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), who may in fact only be a figment of her imagination. Either way, Ginger’s appearance generally signals that things are going south for Brigitte in one way or another, as they do early on when she winds up in a rehab facility and is denied the monkshood extract she’s been using to keep the beast within her in check.

The primary setting for the first half of the film, the hospital is where Brigitte runs afoul of administrator Alice (Janet Kidder), who works overtime to convince her charges she’s been where they are, and orderly Tyler (Eric Johnson), who takes advantage of the more vulnerable patients. It’s also where she makes the acquaintance of Ghost (future Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany), a chirpy eight-year-old who seems to have the run of the place and arranges for the two of them to escape together. Their destination: Ghost’s grandmother’s off-the-grid cabin, where Brigitte finds out what it’s like to jump out of a frying pan and into the fire. Considering she’s gradually turning into a creature that’s covered in hair (a welcome design change from the first film), that’s obviously less than ideal.

Jan. 11th 2017

I’m done with HOWL CON

Update 2017-01-19: multiple reliable sources are indicating that the host hotel, Ramada Portland, is cancelling the convention’s reservation due to lack of communication with the organizer. I’m calling it: HOWL CON is off. I’m not going to edit the optimism out of this post, but if you booked flights or made other travel arrangements that you can’t cancel, maybe start looking at other things you want to do in the area.

I’ve been an enthusiastic proponent of Portland-area werewolf convention HOWL CON. I was a presenter in 2015 and had the time of my life. I wanted to go again in 2016, but through a combination of bad luck and disorganization, the event was cancelled three weeks before the big weekend.

Now HOWL CON 2017 is less than a month away, and once again the event has no announced guests, no programming schedule, and no buzz or recent organizer activity of any kind. It hasn’t been marketed anywhere other than two fan sites – my site, and PDXwerewolf.com. Its web site disappeared in May 2016. Contributors to its Indiegogo crowdfunding effort have not received any communications since the campaign ended in September.

It’s reasonable to assume that HOWL CON is still happening. In November, organizers were reassuring worried would-be attendees that the show would go on. Apparently the space has been paid for, or at least a deposit placed. If you dig through their Facebook page you can still find links to buy passes and submit applications to be a dealer or a presenter. You can even book a cheap hotel room. And if you do show up at the Ramada Portland Airport Hotel on February 4th or 5th, there might be other werewolf fans there.

I won’t be among them. Given the complete mystery surrounding “what the actual convention is, or will be, or will have for us to do”, I can’t justify the time off work, or the travel, food and lodging expenses. If you go, may my $150 “Attending Patron” pledge to the Indiegogo campaign help fund your enjoyment – especially if you’re going because you learned about the event from me. If we had plans to meet, please accept my apologies. Maybe we can catch up at West Coast Haunters.

I don’t know what’s happened with HOWL CON. The organizers have been running a steampunk convention with ostensible success for seven years now, so they’re not incompetent and they’re not crooks. Are they too busy to run two conventions per year? Are there extenuating circumstances? It doesn’t matter. It’s not okay to run an event this way, and I won’t give HOWL CON the benefit of the doubt any more.

Jan. 11th 2017

Captain America’s werewolf mode appears in new Marvel Legends Series Figure

When someone mentions Captain America, the first thought that occurs to me is not “he’s been a werewolf at least twice“, and that’s coming from a person whose brain is calibrated to play “six degrees of lycanthropic separation” with all input. And yet in its 2016 Legends “Red Skull Build-a-Figure” group of action figures, Marvel has chosen to package its most patriotic Avenger with an alternate head depicting his “Capwolf” mode.

I thought it was strange that they would acknowledge such an obscure edge-case for a prominent character’s appearance until I saw that this is the 16th time Captain America has appeared as a Marvel Legends figure. I guess there’s only so many variants of costumes and battle damage you can pitch before you have to start searching the supernatural corners of a character’s history.

In addition to the werewolf head, this figure comes with Cap’s shield, two alternate hands (one for pointing and one for… dabbing?) and the cape for the Build-a-Figure Red Skull / Red Onslaught figure.

This figure has only been out for a few months, so comic shops and even big-box retailers should still have it. As usual, you can snag it on Amazon, too. Thank you to Somnilux and wereshere for the heads up!

Jan. 10th 2017

“Dances With Werewolves” trailer sure is a trailer for a movie you could watch

Dances With Werewolves is a feature-length film made on a music video budget by a dedicated schlockmeister whose recent writing credits include titles like “Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood” and “The Mummy’s Kiss: 2nd Dynasty”. Its main selling point: it’s the last screen role of Angus Scrimm, the guy who played The Tall Man in Phantasm. I thought I kept my expectations sufficiently low going into the trailer, but they deployed that howl sound effect (you know the one) in the first three seconds, and things got worse from there. By the end I felt a lot like this promo photo of Scrimm.

If you want to watch this, cool, I guess: Bloody Disgusting says Santa Fe’s Jean Cocteau Cinema will screen it on January 27th 2017, or you can get it on Amazon. I’d rather watch this other film by the same name, though, if it ever gets out of development hell.

Jan. 9th 2017