Status Report

A poster named thedolphingirl at the Animorphs LiveJournal Community recently posted a new flash animation of Cassie talking. The animation itself is done by a Trisha. It’s a small clip, but I actually thought it was really well animated, so I just had to share it with the rest of you as well. Check it out:

Also, an update in the Articles & Interview section. Matthew Weaver, an Animorphs fan who also works as a staff writer for ‘The Vanguard’ at the University of South Alabama, recently published an article for Gone’s next book ‘Hunger’. In the process he got to interview Michael Grant and allowed us to post it here on Hirac Delest as well. Take a look here.

It’s actually a very interesting interview, where they discuss everything from how K.A. and Michael first started out in the writing business to where they are now. Do check it out if you haven’t read it yet.

According to Michael Grant’s newest blog post at Stupid Blog Name, both him and K.A. Applegate are planning on making some special appearances in this month of May.

K.A. APPLEGATE
Ridgedale Library.
Minnetonka, Minnesota.
May 4th.
7 PM.

K.A. Applegate is also visiting some schools in Minneapolis during this week. She will be making personal visits to talk about her last book ‘Home of the Brave’. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out any information regarding which schools she may be visiting as the blog post itself is pretty brief on this.

Be on the look out for Michael Grant in that week as well, as he may sign books at the International Reading Association. If anyone knows of any specific times, then be sure to forward them to me so that I can pass them along to the rest of you.

MICHAEL GRANT
Anderson’s Bookstore.
Naperville, Chicago.
May 28th.
Time unknown.

Michael Grant is also planning a second visit at the end of May in Chicago for the launch of his newest book in the Gone series called ‘Hunger’. The time is currently unknown, but I would assume it’s in the evening. If anyone can give me a confirmation on this, it would be much appreciated.

That’s all for now. If you happen to be one of lucky fans in Minneapolis or Chicago that ends up seeing these two authors, then be sure to say ‘Hi’ from the rest of us. 🙂

Its been quite some time (well over a year) since we last heard about the possibility of an Animorphs movie. Previously Michael Grant and K.A. Applegate stated that it was being pitched by a producer to some studios to be considered. This was around the time when the WGA strike was still happening. Since we never heard anything further and were told that the entire thing was a 20 to 1 shot, I assumed that nothing ever became of it.

However, according to Michael Grant’s newest blog post at Stupid Blog Name, it looks as if an Animorphs movie is still in discussion amongst him and some Hollywood producers that he knows. His new series ‘Gone’ was also apparently part of the discussion too. Unfortunately, it seems as if the meeting itself didn’t go too well, but it’s hard to say from the post since it doesn’t exactly go into a whole lot of detail. Here is the direct quote:

“Talked to various Hollywood weasels re: ANIMORPHS and GONE. Results: blah blah blah, we respect your work, blah blah blah.”

Michael Grant (Stupid Blog Name)

Think of that what you will from reading that. As for the rest of blog post, it’s a list of highlights for many of the things that Michael Grant has been preoccupied with lately, such as the Crack and Stack Signing Contest in England in which he recently participated in, in order to beat Meg Cabot by signing more than 1000 books in one hour.

Some other highlights in the blog post also include upcoming appearances by him and K.A. Applegate (info coming soon), along with new information for the Gone series — The 3rd book, titled “Lies” is now complete and being edited, with the 4th book now being named as ‘Plague’ (Still a working title).

There’s also 2 new videos of Michael Grant that he filmed while in UK for Wordia. Watch as he describes “Nemesis” and “Bald“. Also, check out the new poster for Gone in the back, featuring Stephen King’s quote from our previous post 😉

More coming soon regarding appearances by Michael and K.A., so stay tuned!

Turns out that Michael Grant (co-creator and author of Animorphs) has been in touch with Stephen King lately, and has gotten him hooked onto Michael’s new series: ‘GONE’. Stephen King read the first book, as well as an advanced copy of the unreleased second book ‘Hunger’, and this is what he wrote about the series to Michael’s editor:

I’ve been corresponding with your “Michael Grant” about his Gone books. More important, I’ve been reading the Gone books–the first and Hunger, the follow-up. These are exciting, high-tension stories told in a driving, torrential narrative that never lets up. There are monsters, there are kids with mad-crazy super powers, there’s the mystery of where all the adults went. Most of all, there are children I can believe in and root for. This is great fiction.

If you want to quote any or all of that, be my guest. I love these books.

Stephen King

The quote was taken from Michael Grant’s SBN (StupidBlogName). The full article can be viewed here: http://stupidblogname.com.

—

A very big congrats to Michael! I highly enjoyed ‘Gone’ myself, and am glad that the books were well received. The praise is well deserved.

Gone 2: Hunger is set to be released May 13th, 2009.

Also, for those that missed out on the first book, Gone is being re-released on paperback on April 28th, 2009

Looks like the reviews for the Animorphs Musical are already in. Thanks to the Animorphs LiveJournal community, here is the article:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/28010

I’ve also updated the Articles section with this as well. It is posted here, under Fanbase.

 
UPDATE: The people involved with the musical have informed me that the performance from their last show has indeed been taped, and will be coming online soon enough. I’ll post it here once it does.

I’ve uploaded a new video of K.A Applegate, where she talks about one of her newer books ‘Home of the Brave’, which she wrote after Animorphs. This is the second video that K.A. has made an appearance in. (The first one was an Animorphs Webcast, in case you missed it).

I’ve also re-organized the videos section. I wasn’t liking how it was set up. The new layout will also hopefully look the same on both Firefox and IE.

There is a new article posted as well. This one is is K.A. and Michael’s response to the fans of the Animorphs LiveJournal Community, which happened about 2 years back. Thanks to Dan for providing me the links.

Lastly, I went around and changed a few things here and there on the Database and Downloads section. I’ve also given their subsections their own header pages so that it’s easier for you to link those specific sections of the site to others directly now. (ex. Music, Videos, Articles, etc). I did this mainly so that it avoids confusion amongst newer visitors. The headers link everything back to the main site, making it easier to navigate.

That’s all for now. Until next time!

I stumbled upon this interview of Michael Grant (co-author of Animorphs) on his new series ‘Gone’, so I thought I’d share this with the rest of you.

I’ve added two new links on the side bar. The first one is an interesting site I came across that collects and documents well known TV Tropes. Surprisingly, Animorphs was not only mentioned, but had an entire page dedicated to it! It references both the TV show and the books from the series, and is actually a pretty interesting thing to read through. Check out:

ANIMORPH TELEVISION TROPES & IDIOMS
(www.tvtropes.org)

Also, I thought I’d let everyone know of another blog by Michael Grant:

ANOTHER LUCKY B*STARD LIVING IN TUSCANCY
(www.alblit.com)

The time has come to give Hirac Delest a real domain. Starting from today you can all access the website through www.hiracdelest.com

I figured that since this website has grown and proven popular enough over the last year, that it deserved its own address, rather than as a long subdomain instead.

If for some reason the website doesn’t work for you with the www.hiracdelest.com address, then please let me know immediately. You may have to hit refresh or reload on your browser since it’s new, but it should work. (Although if you’re seeing this, then it’s working! :p)

I’ve transferred everything over from the old domain, but incase I’ve missed something (i.e. if a page is missing or if something isn’t loading properly) then please let me know, or comment below.

Please update your bookmarks, and welcome to hiracdelest.com

Thank you 🙂

Hi everyone! HIRAC DELEST IS NOW ONE YEAR OLD! 😀

Amazing that the time has flown by so fast. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you for the great amount of positive support that you’ve shown this website over the last year. I only started it last summer as a personal project of mine, and I never expected it to take off and be as accepted as it did.

I know, I know, this sounds like the start of a very lame and monotonous honorary speech that you’d fall asleep to, but it’s true! It really makes me happy to receive such positive feedback in emails and messages from the loyal fanbase, who still loves this series even 7 years after it has ended (yeah, it really has been that long). So in conclusion: Animorphs rock! Thanks for helping Hirac Delest keep the series memorable! 😀

As you can see, some changes have been made. Most notably, this page! I’ve completely redesigned the banner and menu above, and framed the entire site. I have also now put in a blog for the status report (the page you’re reading now), to make it easier, faster, and more organized for you guys. Also, it gives all of you a chance to comment and discuss things on all of the latest updates! (look below for the comments option). Please reply and let me know what you think of this so far!

Of course, I doubt any of you care at this point. Most of you have likely already read the second part of the title of this update and are now frantically skimming down to this part just to get to it (kudos to those who can actually stand to hear me endlessly babble!).

HEY! STOP! THIS IS THE PART YOU WANT TO READ! *ahem* Yes, that’s right — As a special surprise for our ONE YEAR mark, I’d like to present all of you with K.A. Applegate’s First-Ever Video Webcast! For those that don’t know, I’ve been looking for this video of K.A. since I started this website. Most of you newer fans have probably never even seen (or heard of) this video before, which makes this update that much more sweeter.

Out of everything that I’ve wanted on this site, this video was definitely the first thing on my list to find. I looked up, down, everywhere! I even hunted down people (non theateningly, of course) who had this video in the past, and could help me search for it. After a long long time, it seemed almost hopeless until I got an email from James a little while back.

James was originally known as Monster, and ran the Monster’s Animorphs Website (now shut down). With his help, he was able to dig through his backups and find me this webcast. It was possibly the only AND last copy available for it online. I know I’m still babbling, but I just want you guys to know how big of a deal it is to finally find this video. It’s a rare one time opportunity that we’ve ever gotten to actually see K.A. for real. I am forever thankful to James for providing this video for us to see.

And with that, click the picture below to start watching K.A. Applegate’s First-Ever Webcast! 😀

Let me the first to warn you that this video can be a bit glitchy on some browsers. The video itself is presented in SMI format (something I’m completely unfamiliar with), so it took some time for me to figure out how to present it to you guys. Basically, if you hate Real Player (and I know many do) you’re going to have to suck it up and download the newest free version if you want to see this video. Restart your browser or hit refresh once you’ve done so and it should work (I’ve tested this out on different computers already and it works everytime).

If for some reason your browser still can’t work it right (audio, but no video), then you can download it straight to your computer from the provided zip file. The instructions are all on that page.

As for the rest of the site, here’s a brief summary of what I’ve updated:

REPORT DETAIL

DATABASE

Added in K.A’s Webcast, Transcript, and Download in the Cast & Crew section of Articles & Interviews, and also on the Downloads page. The Help Wanted page has also been updated to this change.

The Memorable Quotes have also been updated with several new submissions. Feel free to add more if you have any good ones that you’d like to share.

FAN PROJECTS

I updated the links on the page since some of them were outdated. I also added videos for Huntsgirl12 (4 Music Videos) and Visser2Azula (1 Trailer) in their individual pages.

RESDESIGN

As part of the redesign on the website, I’ve also changed the banner and menu up top as most of you have probably noticed already, and I’ve edited many of the individual pages on the website to work with the new look. A few more things still need to be changed, but this is all I had time for today.

Lastly, let me know how you’re liking the new blog. I still have to tweak a few things here and there. But I think it’s going to work out pretty well. Comment below. Let me know what you think of K.A’s Webcast too. I’m sure if K.A ends up seeing it posted on this website anytime soon, she’ll flip, but it’s okay (She’s doesn’t like the attention apparently). Either way, I’d like to hear your reactions on it too. Especially you newer fans who have never seen this before 😀

Until Next Time!

-iS