“Dust” introduces werewolves, vampires, cashews & terrifying dolls to The Adventure Zone canon

Do you know what The Adventure Zone is?

If you answered “no” but you like great audio storytelling, may I suggest jumping in at the setup episode for this current arc? It’s a long-running actual play roleplaying podcast by a family of funny, thoughtful and inclusive writers/actors. If you start at the link above, no prior knowledge of the show is required.

After the conclusion of their years-long main arc, “Balance”, the McElroy boys (Justin, Travis and Griffin of MBMBaM fame) and their dad (Clint) are taking turns running short 5- or 6-episode campaigns as a way to narrow down their next long-form story. This is the second-to-last mini-arc, and as much as I’m looking forward to a longer adventure, each of these has been superb (Clint even made me like “tights and fights” superheroes with “Commitment“).

If you are familiar with The Adventure Zone, then you probably already know that Travis’s new arc “Dust” just started, and it’s high in lycanthrope content. The western / supernatural crime procedural continues TAZ’s trend of storytelling excellence. Griffin plays Errol Ryehouse, a permanently-half-transformed werewolf. He’s an excitable politician who leans into his semi-lycanthrope status with enthusiasm as he strives to protect his neighbourhood from crime, vampires, and bad zoning laws. There’s also Gandy Dancer (an orphaned magic user played by Clint) and Augustus Parsons (an asshole and cashew magnate ghost played by Justin). The story so far involves a murder investigation that starts at midnight and which must be concluded by 8 a.m. the next morning, lest the werewolves and vampires of the territory take matters into their own hands.

The first episode of gameplay came out March 1st and it’s really, really good. Future episodes will arrive every Thursday around 11am Pacific. You can subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or in the podcast app of your choice using the direct feed.

Trying to enumerate why The Adventure Zone deserves your attention – especially if you’re not usually into roleplaying podcasts, roleplaying, or podcasts – is too big a job for me to tackle in a single blog post. The show packs a ton of story into each episode, making it hard to provide an overview that remains both comprehensive and interesting to people who aren’t already listening. All I can do is recommend it as ardently and sincerely as any other thing I’ve posted about on this web site in the past 10 years: please listen to The Adventure Zone.

To close out this post, here’s a tiny sample of Twitter fan art depicting Errol, Gandy and Augustus. #TheZoneCast fans are prolific (there were over 40 pieces of art of these characters posted in the eight days since the arc started) and I love popping into that hashtag every now and then to see how characters are being portrayed.


https://twitter.com/sweetloveofpan/status/969695041798262785

Mar. 3rd 2018

Full Moon Features: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

I’m hopping a bit off the beaten path with this month’s Full Moon Feature, but with Early Man now in theaters, I can’t think of a better time to watch a cheese-loving inventor and his long-suffering pooch grapple with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Made in 2005, it was the second feature for Aardman Animations after 2000’s Chicken Run and the first big-screen adventure for their signature characters, Wallace and Gromit. Directed by their creator Nick Park and Steve Box, the film amply illustrates the dangers of hooking yourself up to a Mind Manipulator-omatic and then plugging it into a BunVac filled with pesky rabbits and trying to brainwash them into not liking vegetables under the light of the full moon. There’s just so many ways something like that can go so, so wrong, as man and his best friend alike soon learn.

How it comes to that is simple: In the lead-up to their town’s annual Giant Vegetable Competition, everyone has signed up with Anti-Pesto, Wallace (voiced as always by Peter Sallis) and Gromit’s high-tech “Humane Pest Control” service. Their non-lethal methods especially impress animal lover Lady Campanula Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), who has to fend off aggressive blueblood Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), who resents the competition. However, after Wallace’s attempt at bunny brainwashing backfires, he literally creates a monster that is identified by Reverend Hedges (Nicholas Smith, Mr. Rumbold from Are You Being Served?) as the titular beast, carrotus apetitus giganticus. No points for guessing who it turns out to be.

Park and Box and their co-writers Mark Burton and Bob Baker pack as many vegetable puns as they can into the proceedings (under the headline “Night of Vegetable Carnage!” there’s the delicious subhead “Anti-Pesto Fail to Turnip in Time”), and they also managed to smuggle a few naughty jokes past the MPAA. (“Beware the moon,” indeed.) Even better, they work in numerous allusions to classic horror films, with my favorite being when the beast is vanquished and it returns to human form with the aid of a series of lap dissolves, just like in the old Lon Chaney, Jr. movies. I know that’s hardly extraordinary considering the entire film is stop-motion animated, but the gesture is appreciated.

Mar. 1st 2018

Pure of Heart – werewolves, royal intrigue, & paranormal romance gone wrong

I only read a handful of comics anymore, and Pure of Heart is at the top of that list.

Human-werewolf relationships are always tricky, especially when the werewolf is heir to the throne. After years married to the prince, Penelope falls for another human – shame he’s a bit of a loser. Things get messy when they find themselves embroiled in the midst of royal intrigue, and dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. Can they overcome danger and their own issues to give the baby a chance? Pure of Heart is a comic about aristocratic werewolves, human weakness and scheming siblings.

Pure of Heart is free to read, but $1+ Patrons get the full experience; with color pages several weeks before everyone else, high-res PDFs, plus a shedload of other perks, there’s no better way to support the comic. I’m halfway to my first goal, at which point Pure of Heart will become twice weekly, so every dollar helps!

The comic’s creator, HamsterToybox, has been drawing great werewolves (and other things) for years. Just look at this big jerk! It’s wonderful to see her idiosyncratic lycanthropes coupled with captivating serialized storytelling.

She’s not kidding about the shedload of Patreon perks, either. I jumped in at the “get a cameo in the strip” level and was very pleased with the result (here I am getting my coffee knocked out of my hands) and the behind-the-scenes art and coloured pages are such a pleasure to see. Patreon support, though recommended, is not a requirement to enjoy Pure of Heart – just visit pureofheartcomic.com.

My thanks to Pure of Heart for sponsoring Werewolf News for the month of March!

Feb. 28th 2018

Roald Dahl’s “Revolting Rhymes” animated shorts features very stylish wolves

Roald Dahl’s collection of delightfully messed-up fairy tales has been adapted from a book into two half-hour animated short films directed by Jakob Schuh Jan Lachauer and narrated by Dominic West. The meta-story surrounding the two short films stars a wolf (potentially Big and/or Bad), which is werewolf-adjacent enough to be posted here.

The characters designs are fantastic – a kind of mashup of Quentin Blake’s illustrations and Aardman-style 3D figurines. Lupine bias aside, I love the variety of depictions the wolf (or wolves) have.

Revolting Rhymes was produced by Magic Light Pictures (London), animated by Magic Light Pictures (Berlin) and Triggerfish Animation (Cape Town), and aired on PBS in the United States. The first episode, featuring a radical reinterpretation of Red Riding Hood and Snow White’s stories, is currently in the running for an Academy Award.

It’s available to stream on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, and you can obtain it on DVD or iTunes if you’d prefer something you can actually own.

Feb. 23rd 2018

Weekly Werewolf Art: Frank Cho “Werewolf Feasting” Sculptures by Rodion Vlasov & Maria Panfilova

Earlier this week, digital sculptors Maria Panfilova and Rodion Vlasov fired up ZBrush to stage a “friendly sculpt battle”. The goal: to see who could better interpret an illustration of a feasting werewolf by Frank Cho. The results posted on their Instagram feeds seem to clear to me: everyone wins. Literally everyone on the planet, except for the owner of that gnawed-upon arm, who has lost a different, more fundamental battle.

Maria Panfilova

Maria is a 3D character artist from Moscow. You can see more of her work, which ranges from fantasy creatures to lifelike realizations of scenes from Disney films, at ArtStation. Her interpretation of werewolf dinnertime is very animal, with an emphasis on the musculature and hunched posture. This is a creature that’s eating quickly, protecting its meal from potential attackers. The tension and the way it’s framed in the renders below makes me think of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Maria Panfilova (@panfilova.art)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Maria Panfilova (@panfilova.art)

 

Rodion Vlasov

Rodion is a CG artist and musician from Yaroslavl. He’s also on ArtStation, and his creations are more in the fantasy-horror vein. That’s reflected in his version of Werewolf Feasting, which depicts a lycanthrope with fur that’s matted, almost tentacle-like, and a more relaxed pose, as if to say “yeah, I ate this guy, and no matter how fast you run, you’re next.” Rodion also posted two time-lapse videos of his work on this that are available on his YouTube channel.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rodion Vlasov (@rodionchik1337)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rodion Vlasov (@rodionchik1337)

Feb. 21st 2018

You can’t watch “Monster Family”, the animated film that was based on a ride that was based on a book

“Monster Family” is animated family film of the sort where the trailer features a lovingly-animated fart joke. As far as I can tell, there is no way to watch it.

When I saw the character art I was sure it was a spin-off from the Hotel Transylvania series, but nope – it’s based on David Safier’s book “Happy Family”, which was then somehow turned into the premise for a 4D cinema/ride at a cave-based theme park called Wookey Hole, which was then – because this is how these things work – expanded into a feature film. It follows the misadventures of a shitty family who get turned into monsters because Dracula hates them for some reason. I’m posting about it because the boy becomes a werewolf who looks like Rhea Butcher.

This British-German production features the voices of Emily Watson, Nick Frost, Jessica Brown Findlay, Celia Imrie, Catherine Tate, and Jason Isaacs. The trailer and the airport scene that follows it seem to contain dialogue animation matching a non-English script – German, maybe, or perhaps Brazilian Portuguese, for the sake of the film’s premiere, which was in Brazil. It arrived in American theatres on February 9th 2018, and now doesn’t seem to be playing anywhere, nor is it available for purchase. It does not exist. Did it ever exist? Or did Genndy Tartakovsky have a bad dream that we all shared?

Wookey Hole, if you’re looking for another attraction to turn into a feature film, I have a suggestion.

Feb. 19th 2018

Canfeng Chen’s Red Riding Hood werewolf design

I like the werewolf design in this short animation by illustrator Canfeng Chen, completed as part of some coursework he was doing in 2016. But who is this werewolf? Well, I’ve included an image of one of the other two characters in the animation as a clue.

Feb. 18th 2018

“Werewolf: The Apocalypse” video game storyline & game mechanics preview

Zoe Delahunty-Light of Games Radar recently spoke to Julien Desourteaux and Guillaume Blanchard of White Wolf about the status of the upcoming and widely-anticipated Werewolf: The Apocalypse video game.

The interview was conducted as part of publisher Focus Home Interactive’s yearly press event, “Le What’s Next De Focus Home Interactive”. Delahunty-Light explains the concepts and mechanics of the W:tA universe (Wyrm, Weaver, Pantex, rage, it’s all in the game) and outlines what the game proposes to do with those ingredients.

This action RPG has you step into the shoes – or paws – of a member of the Fianna tribe, an Irish group of werewolves who prize family over everything. Yet you’re an outcast, a veteran of battle that has turned into a lone wolf (literally). After spending some time alone in the wild, you’ll be called back to help your ex-pack out of a spot of bother, as something’s happened to your son, which probably doesn’t bode well. At its heart Werewolf: The Apocalypse is a story of the bond between a father and son, but you’d be forgiven for forgetting about your son thanks to all the general devastation in the world around you.

The franchise’s tagline “when will you rage?” is a literal game mechanic. Environmental elements and plot points will max out your rage meter, which you can ameliorate through anger management techniques or through the less stealthy (but more fun-sounding) practice of killing everyone around you… including, if you take it too far and wind up in a Frenzy, your allies.

“You have to kill your allies as well,” [Desourteaux] says, “because you see them as a threat. When you go into Frenzy, you’re not able to recognise everybody – everyone looks like a threat”. Like an awkward family reunion, the game will remember that you massacred your friends. Your brutality will affect future quests, the ways NPCs behave towards you, and even what kind of enemies you face.

Everything about the game seems designed to satisfy the Wt:A super-fans out there. I, for better or worse, am not among those folks, being a reprehensible “casual” gamer and, frankly, increasingly disenchanted by Wt:A as a property and a delivery mechanism for the werewolf content I crave. That said, I’m happy on behalf of folks who have been waiting for the franchise to receive a proper video game adaptation – it’s long overdue.

No screenshots or gameplay footage have been shared – maybe a tiny bit worrisome, since the game’s been in development for a year. No release date has been announced, either, but with expectations high, I think it’s wise for Focus and the developers to take a “when it’s finished” approach.

Feb. 17th 2018

Weekly Werewolf Art: “2018.5” by Howlitzer

The werewolf often appears in art as a representation of inner turmoil – animal ferocity channeled into a fight-or-flight response to an attacker metaphorical or physical. Howlitzer‘s werewolves capture this struggle without relying on the extremes of cartoonish horror or cringing animal fear. His werewolves, with their boxy muzzles, spiked pelts and black claws, are clearly deadly creatures, but as with this week’s feature, the practically-titled “2018.5“, that mortal danger is at a simmer. Preoccupied by some unknowable ennui, his werewolves seethe, always on the precipice of lashing out, seemingly struggling to maintain control, or perhaps a coherent shape.

https://werewolf-noises.tumblr.com/post/170136936368

Howlitzer’s werewolves are never happy. At best, they’re contemplative, perhaps self-soothing with a bloody snack, and at worst they’re drowning in (or perhaps coalescing from) grey goo, or externalizing their divided mind with overlapping Cerberus-style heads. Whenever I see a Howlitzer werewolf, I feel like my headphones have gone silent and I’m two seconds from unmuting them with the volume accidentally cranked to ear-splitting maximum. That’s a kind of danger I like.

You can find more of Howlitzer’s work on FurAffinity, Weasyl and DeviantArt. If you’re a werewolf fan on Twitter, his account there is a mandatory follow – he’s almost singlehandedly responsible for the “werewolf shitposting” phenomenon that makes that terrible web site bearable.

Feb. 13th 2018

The Onion: “Gruesome Werewolf Slayings” moves cities to outlaw hollow-point silver bullets

Exactly one month after an article about a local asshole who has a better reputation as a werewolf than as a human, the Onion is back at it again with another werewolf post.

“There is simply no place on our streets for ammunition with the destructive capability to blow off a werewolf’s entire head in one blast,” said Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who was moved to champion the bill after the brutal December slaying of beloved physical education teacher and nightwalking loup-garou Davis Johnstone.

The short article is great satire and refreshingly pro-werewolf, but the accompanying image (rather graphic, despite being a stock composite) is funny and weirdly heartbreaking in a way The Onion has mastered.

Feb. 12th 2018