Werewolf links, news, and reviews
I saw this button by TobisMiniBoutique and I liked it. Let me tell you why: I like werewolves, and I like chunky, bold vector designs. I also like things that eliminate confusion, and if you’re sporting this button on your torn shirt, no one will wonder why you’re hunched over the mauled corpse of a mailman, covered in gore and gnawing on a femur. You can buy this button for $1.59 CDN, which seems like a pretty reasonable price for such an instructive communication tool.
Get it here. If the post title doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, here’s some text cribbed from the Touch Arcade review (which you should read in its entirety):
Wolf Boy is a single plane side-scrolling brawler similar to games like Zombieville USA and Twin Blades. The actual gameplay is rather simplistic, but it features a really appealing art style and best of all it allows you to change from a cute (albeit angry) little boy into a ferocious werewolf to dispatch the many enemies in the game.
The review (and some of the customer comments) make it sound like the game’s simple (and somewhat repetitive) mechanic is compensated for by the graphics, the upgrade system (improve your “boy” and “werewolf” stats independent of each other) and the pure fun of turning into a werewolf to destroy everything on the screen. Plus, it’s a dollar. A dollar. I just paid more than that for a can of Fresca. If it amuses you for five minutes it’s probably paid for itself. I know if I had an iPhone or an iPod Touch (or yes, an iPad) I wouldn’t be writing this post right now… I’d be upgrading my werewolf’s Transformation Time stat.
Hat tip: ArcLight
I saw this over at Dread Central: toy company Funko is creating a line of plush toys based on the classic Universal movie monsters, to be released in October of this year. You’ll have your pick of The Wolfman, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Creature from The Black Lagoon (I note with more than a little glee that Dracula is not on that list). Entertainment Earth is taking pre-orders for $12.99. Look at that Wolfman plush. He looks like an angry 5-year-old who just got told it’s time for bed, and that endears him to me. I don’t know why.
Gadget FX is a special effects company based in Spain, and buried deep within their dreadfully Flash-based web site is a page dedicated to the creation of a whole-head animatronic werewolf mask. There are some photos of the sculpt and build process, and an interesting video that shows the whole effort from start to finish. I like this design a lot, except for those ridiculously large ears. What is it with that? Anyway, nice work, Gadget FX!
Update: Werewolf News reader Foxdie found a direct link to the video on YouTube, so I’ve embedded it here.
Are you tired of hearing about The Wolfman yet? I’m not! Here’s a recent Hero Complex column from the Los Angeles Times somewhat dramatically entitled “Rick Baker’s ‘Wolfman’ regrets: ‘I hoped it would bring back monster movies’“. Geoff Boucher asks Rick Baker five (actually rather interesting) questions about his work on The Wolfman, and Rick brings the answers in his usual candid way.
I don’t read his tone as regret, though… it’s more of a palms-up shrug, like “well, what can you do?” I think he got screwed over by bad management and a directionless production team, and I commend him for being so relaxed about it. Read the interview and tell me if I’m crazy.
Bonus: here’s a short featurette starring Rick. When it’s not busy looking like a trailer there are some neat shots of Rick applying and touching-up his werewolf work. The spritz bottle shot makes me laugh every time.
Hat-tip: ArcLight
There’s a lot of great werewolf art out there, hiding in the Internet’s various nooks and crannies. I just stumbled across a great one this morning: art-jam web site DrawerGeeks, wherein “professional artists (mostly from the animation, comic book, illustration and design fields) all draw their version of a chosen fictional character” every other Friday. Over the past few years there have been some topics which may interest you as they interested me: Movie Monsters, Universal’s Monsters, Red Riding Hood, and of course, Werewolves. I would buy a print of Joe Koberstein’s Movie Monster entry in a second.
Brad Nelson’s making a video game, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. I’ll let him explain it:
Lone Wolf is an upcoming beat-em up RPG featuring a martial artist who stumbles across a secret in a post apocalyptic wasteland that allows him to change into a werewolf. The gameplay is an homage to the late 80’s and early 90’s beat-em up games and boasts high resolution comic book style hand drawn character animations set in a 3D environment.
This game looks like a labour of love, and sort of reminds me of a cross between Altered Beast and the drawings in the margins of my 11th grade math notes (in a good way). Lone Wolf has been under steady development since 2005, with much of that work apparently going into the elaborate combat and transformation animations of the player character. This is the Internet so people are going to bitch about the fact that all the enemies look the same, but when you’re building a Flash-based game engine from scratch, you’ve got to prioritize the development path. Presumably (hopefully!) there will be some more variety in the enemies and terrain by the time the game’s out.
If you’d like to encourage Brad’s efforts you can pre-order the game for $19.99 (or $7.99 for the next two days) and get access to betas and other material.
The recently announced Castlevania reboot “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow” for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 has got among its cast of enemies a kind of batty, kind of ratty werewolf. Would you like to see some grainy E3 2010 gameplay footage where Gabriel Belmont turns his foes (including a dramatically introduced werewolf) into clouds of blood? Here you go!
Would you like to see a giant render of the werewolf model, in all its leathery-textured glory? Well, my friends, we’re two for two! Click to embiggen.
Hat-tip: iloveitems
I was recently contacted by Dr. Hannah Priest, who would like to spread the word about a werewolf-related conference happening in the UK this September. I’ll get out of the way and let Dr. Priest explain:
The conference is entitled She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors in Art, Literature and Culture (but She-Wolf for short). It’s on Thursday 9th – Friday 10th September 2010, at the University of Manchester, UK.
The conference is being run by myself, Dr. Hannah Priest (University of Manchester), and a final year PhD student, Carys Crossen. I recently completed a PhD on monstrous characters in medieval romance, and Carys is working on her thesis on post-1800 werewolves. The idea for the conference came when I was working on gender and werewolves in medieval texts. I was struck by the fact that all the werewolves I was looking at were male. As a big fan of Buffy and Ginger Snaps, I knew that there were female werewolves out there… and I thought it was about time people started talking about them.
Since I started planning the conference, there’s been a bit of a female werewolf invasion. A number of new books, TV series and films have appeared. So obviously I wasn’t the only person who noted their absence. As a sister-event to the conference, we’re going to have a discussion panel with some writers who are currently working with female werewolves (and vampires) in their own work, and we’ll be discussing the challenges and attractions of such female monsters.
At the conference itself, we’ll have papers on Terry Pratchett, Angela Carter and contemporary fantasy fiction – of course. But we’ve also got speakers lined up to talk about 1940s cinema, Roman literature and Scottish witchcraft narratives. It’s going to be a fascinating few days.
For information on registration, or to find out more about the event, you can contact Hannah Priest at hannah.priest@manchester.ac.uk
You can also visit the conference’s web site, where you’ll find a registration form and a programme of talks and speakers. Registration for students is £40 and £70 for everyone else. The deadline for getting your form in is 5:00 P.M. Friday, August 6th. If you’re in the area you should go; I know I would! See a summary of the programme after the jump– there’s some pretty cool stuff up for discussion.
(more…)
ShockTillYouDrop.com has got an exclusive first look at “Growl”, a movie about brawlin’ werewolves that’s due out next year. “It’s Fight Club versus werewolves,” says director Sxv’Leithan Essex. “Two of my favorite things thrown in the ring to see what will come out alive.”
Here’s the premise:
A traveling underground fight club called ‘The Brawlers’ arrive at a derelict ghost town tucked away in the Colorado Rockies. They meet the town’s only residents, the Maxilla family who want to buy on to the fight card. But the Maxilla family’s true intentions for the Brawler crew is soon revealed in teeth and claws. Some will be hunted, some will be feed, and some will become part of the family…whether they like it or not.
The confirmed cast includes Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica), Josh Kelly (Circle of Eight), Paul Bean and Jennifer Lee Wiggins (Bled). Apparently Kiefer Sutherland might be on board, too, which would add a whole new dimension of awesome. Sxv’Leithan (pronounced “skuh-lee-than”) has plans to turn this concept into a franchise, with two more films to follow after the first, a prequel graphic novel and a video game that sets up the second film. No details yet on any of these extras, though.
Hit the STYD article for more, including a photo gallery (no werewolves yet) and a poster. Hey, I know where that photo came from because I’m a huge nerd! Hat tips to Viergacht and @MadNad for bringing Growl to my attention.
