Angela Quinton is a writer, designer and web developer from Canada. She's also a colossal werewolf nerd who wrote her first werewolf story on her mom's typewriter at age 11. When not writing code or geeking out over werewolf stuff, Angela runs trails, spots trains, and throws rocks at the Pacific Ocean. She lives near Vancouver, Canada, with their lovely and tolerant wife, three feline malcontents and an increasingly terrible dachshund.
The Kickstarter for Joey Vigour’s “turn everyone into a werewolf” card game has been funded 16 times over, and there’s still almost a week left! You can check out the post I wrote about GROWL a few months ago for details about how the game works, and here’s a recap from the campaign page:
There are werewolves among us! We’ll stab each other and try to avoid getting bitten, but when a human receives their third bite, they secretly become a wolf and turn against us!
GROWL is like Werewolf (aka Mafia), but as a quick 10-15 minute card game for 4-10 players of all ages
The cards in your hand reveal whether you are a human or a werewolf
Humans turn into werewolves if they get bitten 3 times!
Everyone gets to bite, stab, heal, and give gold, so we all have power, not just the loud people
Doesn’t require a moderator or phone app
There’s a lot going on with this campaign. There were 2o stretch goals, all of which have been obliterated, a bunch of add-ons, and a social engagement aspect called “The Wolf Hunt” that seems way too complicated for me, but which obviously works, given how well things are going. If you just want the game, you can sidestep the shenanigans and go directly to the $16 or $24 dollar tiers.
Congrats to Joey and his team for what looks like a super successful project! If you want to get a copy for yourself, head this way.
There’s a great new animation making the rounds that explores the age-old battle between vampires and werewolves from some novel new angles.
To quote @EvilViergacht, who sent me the link, VvWW contains “Werewolves, hairy female werewolves, vampires in rubber pants, and butts.” That list has a near-perfect overlap with the terms people are searching for when they arrive here at Werewolf News, but this video presents a more cogent analysis of those subjects than I ever could. See for yourself:
safetyhammer (who goes by No-One Suspected the Cat on Facebook) did the animation, writing and voice work, and the incomparable Trudy Cooper (who also makes the comic Oglaf – maybe the most NSFW site I’ve ever linked to, but very good also) did the artwork.
By the way, I agree with every assertion made in this video, and you can quote me.
While updating the Laguna College of Art + Design Animation YouTube channel late last year, Chair of Animation Dave Kuhn noticed that two group projects from their 2015 Summer Master Class happened to be werewolf-themed. He writes:
The first is “The Big Dad Wolf” which is traditionally animated and was created under the mentorship of Disney supervising animator James Lopez. The second is a stop-motion project “Un Garçon et sa Bête (A Boy and his Beast)” which was made with the guidance of stop-motion director Stephen Chiodo of Chiodo Bros. Productions.
You can watch both projects below!
“The Big Dad Wolf” took me back to the slapstick delights of the Disney and Warner Bros. shorts I remember from the 1990s (when the gurney rolled into the nursery I honestly felt like I was watching Tiny Toons or Animaniacs).
“Un Garçon et sa Bête” has a creature that isn’t strictly a werewolf, but which is close enough for the purposes of all concerned, and the production features some sincerely lovely animation and character / set designs.
S.L. Mewse has long been a friend of Werewolf News. She’s an artist, she’s got a long-running interview series featuring people from the werewolf community (including yours truly), and she’s a prolific author whose work focusses predominantly on werewolf horror. I’m so delighted to thank her for sponsoring the site for the month of May with her Primal Progeny series of books.
Hunter Dalton had a harder start to life than most. At less than five years old a terrible creature stalked into his home and took the lives of his parents, departing only once it had eaten its fill; leaving him for dead. Miraculously he survived, and for decades lived a peaceful life troubled only by carefully managed monthly transformations… But it was not to last.
The return of the beast threw his life into turmoil, opening up a world he never knew existed. Suddenly he was no longer a lone werewolf adrift in the stormy sea of humanity. Werewolves and other shapeshifters were everywhere, and he was plunged headfirst into their society with the kidnapping of the only true friend he had ever had. With time running out he was forced to make a choice, go it alone or step in with the pack. He had no choice, and so his world was changed forever.
Appropriately savage cover art and samples of the three books are available in Mewse’s bookstore, as are links to purchase each from Amazon or Smashwords. The series (and her other books) have stellar ratings on Goodreads, so if you’re looking for some new werewolf horror to sink your fangs into, here’s your next couple of weeks covered.
Thanks again to S.L. Mewse for sponsoring Werewolf News!
This book contains 16 unique werewolf colouring pictures, alternating with some fun werewolf facts, making it possible to cut out the image pages without losing out on an image on the back. It is printed on high quality paper suitable to most media, including markers (just put a sheet of paper behind your page to prevent bleed through). It is not ideal for very wet media like watercolour, but handles small amounts of watercolour/aquarelle pencil fine. Two of the pictures are double page spreads.
Size: A4 (21cm x 29.7cm)
For about $10 USD + shipping from South Africa, you can get a copy for yourself. Ben’s werewolves are actual big monstrous werewolves (“proper” werewolves, I might say if I wanted to get yelled at), and I was responsible for two of the (somewhat spurious) werewolf facts contained within. Take a look at some previews below, and head over to Etsy to get your copy!
After a few months off to recalibrate their goal and bury the corpses, Mac Beauvais and Ben Paddon are back with a new and improved IndieGoGo campaign for their “monsters are real and they hate shitty Hollywood gigs” web series Typecast.
They cancelled their initial campaign last year when they realized that November is a bad time to ask people for a bit of their disposable income. They’ve also moved from Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing system to a platform that will allow them to keep whatever funds they’re able to raise, even if they don’t make it all the way to their $50,000 USD goal. I think that’s a good approach: I’d take fewer episodes of a good show over no show at all!
I’ve never met Mac (Hit Girl, The Gloaming, tons of amazing cosplays) or Ben (PortsCenter, Boomer’s Day Off) but I’ve known about them since the early days of Werewolf News. If anyone’s capable of making this series and doing it right, it’s them. Please check out the campaign, the press release (below) and the campaign video (also below). If you can pitch in, you’ll be helping make a good and funny show with practically-created monsters, and if you can’t, please consider sharing the campaign with your pals on Facebook, Twitter and whatever Discord and Telegram groups you’re a part of.
Typecast: A Monstrous Movie Tale
Hollywood may be the land of dreams and opportunity, but it’s not all red carpets and martini lunches when you’re an actual monster.
LOS ANGELES, CA, USA – From writer/comedian, Ben Paddon (PortsCenter, Boomer’s Day Off), writer/actress, Mac Beauvais (Hit Girl, The Gloaming), and featuring director Justin Zagri (Severus Snape and the Marauders) comes TYPECAST, a comedy of horrors about just how truly monstrous Hollywood can be.
TYPECAST is an original eight part web series about actual flesh and blood monsters stuck in an endless parade of sci-fi shlock and horror films. Most actors dread being trapped in the same kinds of roles project after project, but as bad as that may be for humans, it’s an absolute nightmare when you’re a real monster.
The show, described as one half ‘Being Human’ and one half ‘Extras’, follows the trials and tribulations of Tony, a bog monster, who dreams of playing the lead in a drama instead of generic beasts in lame sci-fi horror films; Abby, a werewolf, who wants to ditch her regular gig as a breakfast cereal mascot; and Leeroy, a zombie, who just wants people to take the living-impaired seriously, which would be easier if he didn’t have to keep gluing his ear back on.
But TYPECAST is not just about snappy dialogue and Hollywood commentary, it will also highlight a staple of classic filmmaking: practical makeup effects. The makeup department, headed by two-time Emmy-nominated entertainment veteran, Michael Spatola (Tales from the Crypt, Return of the Living Dead, Iron Man 2), will bring these characters to life using traditional techniques and application. A sample of his work on TYPECAST can be seen in the trailer on their IndieGoGo page, which features a live-action kids’ breakfast cereal commercial and subsequent epic meltdown from the werewolf, Abby: “Who are you? Who put you in charge?”
TYPECAST is currently seeking $50,000 in funding for its first season via the crowdfunding platform, IndieGoGo. This will cover costs of makeup, crew, and locations, as well as donor rewards that include downloads of the ‘Full Moon Flakes’ cereal box, a cereal perfume (yes, really!), and even an opportunity to be put in full monster makeup and appear in a scene during filming.
With the deadline for funding this truly original take on Hollywood closing on May 11th, the time to donate is now. Unless, of course, you’re okay with annoying a werewolf.
From writer Michael Kogge (Star Wars), artists Dan Parsons (Star Wars, Game of Thrones) and David Rabbitte (Star Wars Insider) and colourists Rabbitte and Chris Summers (Spartacus: Blood & Sand) comes Empire of the Wolf, a graphic novel about an alternate history in which the banana bread that was the Roman Empire got garnished with the chocolate chips of lycanthropy.
During a vicious battle with the wolf-king Caradog, two Roman centurions fall victim to the werewolf’s bite. Now, as werewolves, Lucius and Canisius are cursed to relive the legendary feud between the wolf-brothers Romulus and Remus. As their hostility grows, a war erupts that will not only decide the fate of the Roman Empire, but also threatens to claim the life of the woman they both love.
Empire of the Wolf is published by Alterna Comics, who have a landing page on their site with a 5-page preview, but curiously, no link to purchase the graphic novel in any format, and no way to find more information. This title is from 2014, so the page might have been orphaned through subsequent updates.
Don’t worry, though, I got you some links: you can buy it in physical or Kindle formats from Amazon, or digitally through comiXology. You can also follow the project on its Facebook page, which has artwork and relatively current signing event info.
I’m time-constrained these days with some cool projects you’ll get to see this year, but I had to take a coffee break from work to post about a new anime series hitting Japanese TV this July: Sirius the Jaeger.
The creatures of the night stalk the streets of 1930’s Tokyo in Sirius the Jaeger, an upcoming original TV anime about a young werewolf seeking to avenge the slaughter of his clan by hunting the vampires responsible.
A strange group of people carrying musical instrument cases landed on Tokyo station. They are called the “Jaegers”, who came to hunt vampires. Amongst them, there stood a young man with striking serenity and unusual aura. His name is Yuliy, a werewolf whose home village was destroyed by vampires. Yuliy and the Jaegers engage in deadly battle over a mysterious holy arc only known as “The Arc of Sirius”. What truth awaits them at the end…?
With eternal affinity and spiral of conspiracy entwine, the highly anticipated action-thriller anime begins!
From @Sausage_Spirit on Twitter, who shared the news with me and knows way more about the anime world than I do:
it’s being directed by the guy who did wolf’s rain and the cowboy bebop movie with character designs by the girl who does the designs for street fighter and some other capcom games
I’m not sure when or how this will become available to audiences outside of Japan, but I hope it’s soon!
Friend of the site John Dillard sent me this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it video ad for Google Cloud, featuring an animated werewolf transformation and a pertinent bit of college basketball trivia. It’s onscreen for less than two seconds but I think it’s a perfect transformation scene. The only way it could be improved is if the lycanthropic basketball player’s jersey number was “42” instead of “4”.
Growl is an upcoming board game where the point is to be a werewolf who infect as many villagers as possible. That’s the only win condition. At the end of the game you and every other player you’ve sufficiently bitten all literally growl to declare victory. Okay, yeah, you can also play as a human and try to rid your village of lycanthropy (and you can win by keeping at least one human alive until the end), but if you’re reading a site called Werewolf News, I think we all know which side you’re rooting for.
This card-based game was designed by Joey Vigour, features artwork by Rob Joseph, and comes out later this month. To get instant access to a printable version of the basic game system, you can sign up for a game release notification here. According to that page the first 500 copies of the game will be free, which seems too good to be true, but maybe get your email address in there just in case. I was never really a fan of the original Werewolf social game, so it’s nice to read positive reviews of this potential successor and see Joey playtesting it to a fine polish. I look forward to getting a copy of this whether it’s free or not!
4-7 players (up to 10 with more cards) all claim to be innocent villagers, but one of you is Wolf Zero, the original werewolf that intends on turning the whole town wolfy….
The deck of cards sits face-up in the middle of the table. One by one you take turns picking up the top card and giving it to whichever player you want. The cards can be a Bite (which brings you closer to becoming a wolf) or a Wound (which brings you closer to dead), or cards that cancel other cards. When a NIGHT card is revealed, the full moon comes out and werewolves and villagers get to pass cards anonymously, which is how the infection spreads and turns villagers into wolves. 3 Wounds kills either a human or a werewolf. 3 Bites turns a human into a werewolf, and only wolves can pass Bites at night.
When the deck is exhausted at the end of the third night, Wolf Zero begins to GROWL and slowly other wolves (even dead wolves) join the growl! If any humans are left alive, all humans (even dead ones!) win. If all the players who are still alive are growling, all wolves win!
