Konk action figure sculpture guide

Posted to eBay in late 2014. This illustration contains details and specifications for the Konk (or Conck*) action figure by Hasbro (along with the accompanying close-up images).

*Conck was the originally proposed spelling for Konk. Originally his name was Conch, then Conck, then ultimately Konk. 🙂

Old eBay auction: scripts from existing and unproduced episodes

Tim Lawrence, who had written for the show previously, posted these incredible documents to eBay in 2015:

  • King Niddler: script – written by Glenn Leopold
  • King Niddler: outline – written by Glenn Leopold
  • Series Bible
  • Script for an unproduced episode, titled “The Chamaeleon Stone” or “The Shrine of the Northern Rim”

IF YOU WON THIS AUCTION, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

Note the scribbled notes (some of which I can’t make out) and the unique Pirates of Darkwater (one word!) wordmark/logotype.

CALL FOR HELP: organizing the site’s content

Do you have a few minutes? I’d love your help with a little activity.

This is an exercise called card sorting. I’ve created separate cards for the individual sections of this site, and I’d like to ask you to sort them in a way that you think makes sense to you.

There are NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS. Repeat: NO RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS. This is all about your opinion on what’s important and what’s not, and this will help me organize the site’s info in a way that makes sense for you all. If you have thoughts on content that’s not important to you, that’d be helpful, too!

Once again, you can access the card sorting activity right here.

If you have any questions or comments, you can comment here, or email me if you prefer to do so privately.

THANK YOU!

♥,
Smitha

What I’ve been working on…

(Thank goodness for Illustrator’s pencil tool, to let me “sketch” these straight into vectors…so much easier than carving out every little detail with the pen tool!)

screenshot-dwcoins-wip

It feels like these images have held a lot of sway for a number of fans. I’ve seen people reference them in various ways over the years and marvel at the meanings behind the symbols. (These are the background “sigils”/”seals”/”coins” in the end credits of episodes 1-5.) So it seems only right to make vector files of these, so people can use and remix them as they see fit.

I’m definitely working away at a bare-bones redesign of the site (content/layout/interactions first, styles and graphics later), to use as a portfolio piece. My intention is to post the vector files of the logo and these 5 “coin” images there under a Creative Commons license. (SVG should do it, right? Would you all need any other file formats?)

Do you have any other images or symbols you’d like to see vectorized? (The Compass and the Treasures of Rule come to mind, but beyond that I don’t know.) Let me know!

To those of you who’ve emailed/contacted me…

I wanted to apologize, in case any of you happen to see this. My grandmother passed away at the end of May, after two months of attempting to recover from a major stroke. I was driving to her rehab center in Ohio almost every weekend between late March and late May to help take care of her, and it’s taken me a while to recover physically and mentally/emotionally from this whole experience, and to get back on top of things.

This isn’t meant as a pity-party–I just want to apologize and explain, because I’m still very much behind on a lot of my emails, and as some of you know, I tend to let PoDW-related emails pile up for a couple of months before replying to them in bulk. I’m also facing more big events in the months ahead, so it’ll be a while yet (and I seriously doubt there’ll be any site updates for the remainder of the year, beyond these occasional blog posts, unfortunately)…but I’ll at least try to write back soon!

Hugs to you all. Hope life is treating you all well!

That recent screenshot redraw meme

Just sharing a couple of pieces of my own quick, intentionally sketchy art lately–these are redraws of screengrabs from The Game Players of Undaar (such awesome action poses in that episode!). The screenshot’s on top and my art’s on bottom.

Longtime visitors may remember that I used to draw a TON many years ago, all the way through my undergrad years, but somehow fell off the bandwagon (I guess photography while I lived abroad, followed by visual design while in grad school and working, had been my major visual outlets). But I really don’t want to let this slip. This meme was an awesome excuse for me to try my hand at this again, and to try painting the characters in a slightly darker and more detailed light than early-90s American animation allowed.

ARTISTS: you totally should try this yourself! And if you do, send me a link or a copy of your art and I’ll post it to the blog!

Ioz and Tula - The Game Players of Undaar (screengrab redraw)

Ren vs. the Korb - The Game Players of Undaar (screengrab redraw)

🙂 Thanks for humoring me.

Testing out RedBubble

Check it out! For the moment, there are stickers and smartphone/iPad cases available with the PoDW logo. (As much as I love that dark red background, it’s too bad it won’t let users choose various colors–I’ll upload different cases with different background colors soon. Also, no t-shirts because I’m boycotting American Apparel for their horrendously sexist/exploitative/prejudiced advertising and other questionable business practices. Unfortunately, RedBubble/Zazzle/Society6 all use AA shirts, so…crap. Any suggestions for alternate websites/vendors?)

A note: for some digital illustration practice (and to kill time at my last job), months ago I decided to re-create the PoDW logo in Adobe Illustrator. It’s taken a bit of tweaking every so often, but I’ve finally got it as close as I’m going to get it. In addition, I’ve made greyscale and b&w/outline versions as well, and hope to put up more stickers/merch/etc. with all the logo variations. (EDIT, 2:45PM ET – just put up the greyscale and B&W logos, too! Would love input/suggestions on/for background colors.)

(And shout-out to Brittany and Ian for their other PoDW Redbubble work! Totally not meant to step on Ian’s toes, but now you have both a regular and a pixel version of the logo to choose from.)

And my ultimate goal is to make these vector files of the logo public under a Creative Commons license, so anyone and everyone can use them to create their own wares! As I said on RedBubble, the more PoDW swag there is out there, the happier our generation of geeks will be. (And the more attention the show will get, which may have a positive ripple effect…)

– – – – –

In other news…nothing to report. My grandmother’s having some major health issues, so I’ve started spending my weekends helping her while she’s in a rehab facility (proximity to relatives is one of the numerous reasons I wanted to be in Pittsburgh again), so that’s kind of robbed me of most of my free time. The site redesign’s definitely in the back of my mind, and I’ve been exploring less onerous CMSes to work with as well (WordPress is great, but kind of a beast). Little by little, it’ll get there…!

Hope you’re all doing well. Peace and hugs. 🙂

World Book character sheets ARE ALL ONLINE. (plus other goodies.)

It’s only taken me…what, 10 years now? But–it’s true–after major fan demand, ALL THE WORLD BOOK CHARACTER SHEETS HAVE BEEN SCANNED AND ARE ONLINE.

They’re up as individual images for the moment. I need to transcribe the last ~45 and will start to…okay, eventually…put the images and text into a document/PDF. (I was going to say that I had done this with the World Book, but the PDF version actually does not have any images in it. Something else to add to the to-do list!)

For those who have been asking me (for YEARS now), I am truly sorry for the delay. Just…you know…life and stuff. I hope that these have been worth the wait!

Well, in other news…hello! Stuff is definitely in the works. It’ll be quite a while yet but a redesign/update of the site is in progress, to finally dust it off, clean it up, and bring it into this decade of web design.

A few things of note, sent in by some awesome people over the months:

Alexandre has captured the Sega Genesis PoDW soundtrack and converted it to mp3s for our listening pleasure. ** will host these files on this site once I update **

Neike has edited and uploaded an incredible collection of screenshots of locations and creatures, the Treasures of Rule, and more.
** will host these files on this site once I update **

Brittany contacted me about a doll she spotted on eBay a while ago. It’s a doll of Ren that I’ve never seen before, and even the original listing has no real information on it beyond “Made in Korea.” Do any of you know know anything about this? See below…

ren-doll-ebay-unknown

Jakub, and possibly some others, have been working on building out a wikia.com wiki for PoDW.

Sony/”Konway” has uploaded a few choice videos: the end credits of Dark Water, the Dishonor cut scene* with Roddy McDowall vs. Frank Welker

Want a hi-res scan of the background image behind episodes 1-13? Doug pointed out that the original painting was up for auction at Heritage Auctions a while back but the image is still there.

And deviantART user DanFelix has been maintaining Dark-Water-Pirates, a collection of fanart from across the website. People have created some really interesting, clever, and fun pieces lately.

*I refer to this as “cut,” though some people were fortunate enough to see the show on TV with this clip included. Different stations made subtly different cuts to the show.

That’s it for all, but hopefully not for long. Cheers! Thank you so much for your support and kind words–I never say it enough, but I deeply appreciate your encouragement and enthusiasm over all these years.

A smattering of this and that

Quick lunch-break post…

Happy 100th(!) birthday to esteemed animator Don Lusk! He worked on PoDW during his tenure at Hanna-Barbera (as well as Captain Planet and others in the late 80s/early 90s), and has an amazing history, having also worked for Disney for nearly 30 years and animated some very memorable scenes for them. (More info at Cartoon Brew, which called PoDW out by name (woo!).)

Also, the PoDW opening made an appearance at the Alamo Drafthouse as part of a pirate-animation-themed montage that aired before viewings of Captain Phillips. (The opening of Peter Pan and the Pirates also aired.) Cheers, William/@whatevercove!

And to answer the questions that some people have left in the comments, I SWEAR that I want to get back to scanning the RPG module’s character pages, as well as my copies of storyboards from The Quest. Maybe I’ll commit to doing 10 pages a day or something…I give you all permission to nag me about this! (I’m also pretty behind on e-mails due to the move–will catch up soon.)

As usual, there’s probably a ton more that I’m forgetting. More soon, I hope! (Life is great. Leaving Boston and moving back to Pittsburgh was absolutely the right choice for me–I am so much happier here already. Currently starting week 4 of my new job–so far so good! Any local/regional PoDW fans, do drop me a line and let me know if you ever want to meet up if you’re in the area!)

Hope you all are doing wonderfully, and I do mean that truly. 🙂