Status Report

About 2 days ago Michael Grant updated his Facebook with a new status regarding a promotional Animorphs video that he was making for the Scholastic sales people:

And not too long after, he sent a direct message to fans via Richard (owner of RAF). It seems that they are going the same route as they did for the Gone video submissions from a little while back. Here is the full letter from Michael and K.A to the fans:

Katherine and I have some information we’d like to share, and a favor we’d like to ask.

Not sure if you’ve heard this yet but ANIMORPHS will be re-issued in spring/summer 2011. That is definite and official.

An editor at Scholastic is combing the first two books for outdated references, sending suggested fixes, and asking us to approve. Which we’ve now done.

Scholastic will re-cover the books using something called a lenticular cover. So far as we know it’s just the first 2 books, then I guess they’ll wait and see how sales go before issuing more.

Scholastic has asked us to prepare a small video to show at the sales meeting in early August. We realized that the sales people probably don’t really know what ANIMORPHS has meant to so many people. So we wondered whether RAF participants might be interested in sending us some brief video clips just saying what ANIMORPHS has meant to them. They could be extemporaneous, or they could read from some of the lovely letters they’ve sent over the years. The only real guidance we have to offer is to make sure the audio is audible. Use as high definition as you have available, but don’t sweat it if it doesn’t quite look like Avatar. Sincerity is more important than technique.

If you’d post this letter that would be very helpful.

Please ask any who wish to participate to forward their video to jake-at-jakemates.com.

Thanks,

Michael and Katherine

So to sum up, here are the new things we now know:

Regarding the Re-Release:

• The first spring/summer 2011 re-release is now said to be covering only the first 2 books: #1 The Invasion, and #2 The Visitor. Not as volumes for multiple books, but as an individual release of those two books only, with the new covers.

• The books are now going to be updated with outdated references. An editor has gone through the first 2 books, and Michael & K.A have just recently approved the changes to them.

Regarding the Animorphs Video Submissions:

• The video is being submitted to sales people who apparently have no previous knowledge on the kind of impact the series had in its original run. According to Michael & K.A’s letter, the meeting is sometime early August, so time is crucial if fans want to get their videos in. The sooner fans can get their videos submitted, the more time Jake (their son) will have to edit and piece it together for Scholastic.

• Submissions should be sent to jake@jakemates.com. (Anything on Youtube might not be taken, so send the files directly to him!)

• RAF has already begun a discussion thread on how they should go about with their videos. To participate, please go here.

• Please remember that this is for all Animorphs fans. Michael & K.A sent this letter to RAF because they are, without a doubt, the largest Animorphs community online at the moment. However the message is openly directed to every Animorphs fan online as well. There are plenty of smaller Animorphs communities out there. Youtube, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, Facebook, etc, wherever they may be, please pass this message onto them (or individually onto your friends) if you’re in touch! It would be a great help to make sure that K.A & Michael have enough material to work with, and that they have a lasting impact on the sales force that is in charge of reviving the series for next year.

• UPDATE: Thanks to a poster named Kalamu at the Animorphs LiveJournal Community, I was reminded of how many Animorph fans we have in different countries. Kalamu said that she couldn’t make a video because she was not very fluent in English. This is not a problem at all! In fact, it’s a bit of a plus!

  If we have fans in foriegn countries telling Scholastic how much they love Animorphs (in their first language), then it’ll be the most direct way of letting Scholastic know of how much of a worldwide appeal the series still has! And who knows? It may even give your country a better chance at having the Animorphs be re-released in your own language! (The original run of Animorphs was published in over 20 different languages. So yes, it’s very possible to have that again!).

  However, please just remember to add in English subtitles to your video before submitting it in, so that the Scholastic staff can fully understand what you’re saying. (It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Any basic program like Windows Movie Maker can easily do this. OR, if you’re really not that good with computers, then simply film the entire thing using Flash Cards, as another LJ poster suggested!)

That about covers it for now. I will keep you guys updated as I hear more. NOW GO SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO!

Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator) of Animorphs contacted me yesterday with a quick update regarding the Animorphs Classic re-release:

It’s official: Animorphs books will be re-released with the first 2 coming in summer of 2011. They will have lenticular covers. (Look it up: we had to.)

Lenticular covers basically means that they will be 3D and/or animated. You may have seen examples of this already on various products or DVD releases throughout the years. I’m guessing that Scholastic will most likely use the current covers we have and add a morphing animation to them (much similar to the morphing cards that we got with the Invasion Board Game). But this is entirely speculation on my part, so we’ll have to see where they go from here.

Anyways, that’s it for now! I’ll post more details regarding those 2 summer book releases as they come.

So for those GONE fans that haven’t seen this yet, here is a new interview of Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs). It gives a quick recap of his series, as well as an update on the movie/tv status that many of you have been discussing.

No movie/tv updates regarding Animorphs, sadly. As Michael & K.A have previously stated in their Q&As, it’s a decision entirely in Scholastic’s hands, which apparently they aren’t willing to discuss with the two authors.

That’s all for now. More updates will be posted as we hear them.

You can now support Hirac Delest through the Amazon Associate’s Program! Following up from our previous post, if you haven’t purchased any of the upcoming books, but plan to, then please use the following links! Each time you purchase from these specific links, Amazon gives us a small percentage of your sale back towards this site. This money then goes entirely towards the hosting & domain payments of Hirac Delest.

We hardly make enough to profit from this (approx 4-6% per sale), but every little bit helps in making sure that this archive stays online and ad-free. It’s a great way to support us if you’re already going to be ordering the books anyway. Thank you for your continued support to Hirac Delest for the last two years that we’ve been online. It’s greatly appreciated!

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This isn’t technically Animorphs news, but it is related to the people who were involved with the series. Most of you fans already know this, but if you don’t, then here’s a quick rundown of what you can look forward to this May.

The first one is obviously:
 

LIES (Gone #3) by Michael Grant Release Date: May 4th, 2010. See Product Details Watch Trailer Read the first 6 chapters.

It is the highly anticipated 3rd book (out of the planned 6) in the GONE series by Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs). As part of the release of this book, Michael Grant has also once again announced a tour date to promote his series. According to his latest Twitter update, his first meet & greet is at:

Tuesday May 04, 2010
6:00 PM
Orange Town & Country
791 South Main Street Suite 100
Orange, CA 92868
714-558-0028.

The second book that might be of interest to fans is:
 

MONSTER SLAYERS by Lukas Ritter (aka, Jeff Sampson.) Release Date: May 11th, 2010. See Product Details Visit the Official Website Read the “Training Day” prequel short story. (Online exclusive)

‘Lukas Ritter’ is actually just a pen name for Jeff Sampson. If that name doesn’t sound familiar to you, then simply open up your copy of Animorphs #22, and you’ll see that the book is dedicated to him!

Jeff Sampson is the Animorphs fan who is mostly known as the owner of Morphz.com, a popular Animorphs fan site that ran until the series ended. He was in direct contact with K.A for several years, and provided fans with many exclusive sneak peaks at upcoming books, and various news and trivia regarding the series. He even helped write the Anibase for Scholastic, acted as The Informer, and then later went on to writing a bit of K.A’s following series Remnants as well!

He’s now a published author, and Monster Slayers is his very first hardcover release. I enjoyed his Dragonlance series quite a bit in the past, which is why I’m promoting his new book here. For D&D and fantasy fans especially, I think Monster Slayers will be worth looking out for this May.

That really about covers it for now. I’m currently going through many of your submissions and trying to find the time to get to them as best as I can. So don’t worry, I’ll still keep you guys updated, depending on my schedule.

Until next time!

Just a heads up, the deadline for Michael Grant’s Fan Promo Video is tomorrow (April 16th). If you plan on participating, be sure to submit it by then! For those that don’t follow Michael Grant’s Twitter, this promo video is for the GONE series, which will hold compilations of fans talking about why they love the series. In order to participate, here are a few things that Michael Grant has listed you must do:

1. Follow @TFSubmissions, and send an @reply to this account saying that you want to participate.
    
2. Record yourself saying what you like (or don’t like) about the GONE series. High quality video is better, but anything is accepted.
    
3. At the start of the video, have a parent say that they are OK with you being in the video.
    
4. After they step out of the video, pause for a second, and say what you like/don’t like.
    
5. Email the video to jake@jakemates.com. Don’t upload it to YouTube or any other video site, just email the file.

To keep up with any future updates for the video promo project, just follow @TFSubmissions. Best of luck to everyone!

An update from our previous post, K.A & Michael have now also joined AFF (The Animorphs Fan Forum), along with RAF, to answer questions from the fans.

The same rules apply on AFF as they do on RAF. Members have to send their questions to the staff before they are approved to be submitted to K.A & Michael. This is done to avoid any repeated questions from previous Q&As. Here are the updated links and details for both forums:

• See AFF Q&A Thread.
• Post your K.A & Michael questions here.

• See the RAF Q&A Thread.
• Send your K.A & Michael questions to Richard here.

There’s also still the Facebook Group set up specially for Michael Grant’s Gone series, for those who are fans of that. Michael Grant is still regularly answering questions there.

• Go to Gone Group Q&A

Lastly, as a way to keep all of these Q&As organized and documented (this is still an archive site, remember?), I updated the Articles section with the original RAF Classic Q&A that was held back in 2008 (It’s the one that holds that infamous response to that Animorphs movie we’ll never ever see, sadly).

• See the full RAF Classic Q&A.

As for the current Q&As, I won’t document or archive them until they are fully finished. In the mean while though, do check them out if you haven’t already. There are some great answers posted on both forums. In RAF, K.A. & Michael are even asking fans on their thoughts of a possible re-release for Animorphs in a monthly ebook form. So definitely share your opinions on this. You can bet that both K.A & Michael are reading, and that they are very interested in their fans responses.

That’s all for now. Until next time! 🙂

Michael Grant has informed fans, via Facebook, that the first 6 chapters of LIES (Gone #3) have been published for free online at Pensive Sarcasm.

Read the first 6 Chapters of LIES here!

Also, in relation to this, I have noticed that there has been a lot of discussion about the Gone series in general here on the blog (see right side under recent comments), so I’ve decided to create a separate section and category on the Hirac Delest Community Forums to talk specifically about the Gone series. Simply click on ‘Community’ in the header above and sign up at the forum. (Registration is free and only takes a few minutes).

Registered members of Hirac Delest also get special privileges to the Downloads Section at the forum (some of the content which is unavailable at the site, and invisible to those who are only guests).

That about covers it for now. More updates coming soon.

Richard, site owner of RAF, recently posted an update to let fans know that K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant are coming back to answer questions from fans on the forums! The Q&A is going to be working a little differently this time though. Instead of everyone rushing in and overwhelming the duo, Richard is asking posters to send in questions directly to him instead. This will get rid of any well known FAQs, or duplicates that the fans asked last time.

• See the RAF Q&A Thread
• Send your questions to Richard (to pass along to K.A. & Michael)

Also, for any Gone fans out there, there is a separate group on Facebook where Michael Grant has begun answering questions on a weekly basis.

• Go to Gone Group Q&A

Lastly, you can now also follow us on Twitter! Our Twitter account is @hiracdelestnews. Follow us to get the latest updates, like this one, tweeted directly to you! You can also join our Facebook Fan Page to get the same benefit. Everything has been updated on the right side of the blog!

That’s all for now, until next time! 🙂

Bob Lippman, a freelance sculptor, has shared a few pictures of his amazing fan-made sculptures with us. Both him and his 9 year old son are Animorph fans who began reading the series together a little over 2 years ago. The 2 sculptures (one Dak Hamee from HBC, and the other Visser Three, from Visser) are currently work-in-progress projects as a part of his hobby.

However, he wishes to share the progress along with rest of us as they are being made. Below is one snap shot featuring both sculptures. If you click on it, you’ll see more photos in his fan art page, which I’ve added to the site under the Projects section.

Bob hopes to eventually make these for any collectors who may be interested, but more importantly, he wishes to send at least one set to K.A. Applegate as a thanks for making the series.

Amazing work Bob, we look forward to the final product!