Status Report

Thanks to Ian, we now have two very cool things to share with you today!

First: The sale we mentioned about earlier this week for the relaunch books, is most definitely for current orders, not pre-orders! Scholastic is shipping Animorphs #1 & 2 out early (almost 2 months in advance!), and this is now confirmed. To prove it, here is Ian holding up his copies of both books:

We have no idea why Scholastic is suddenly releasing these so early, but I suggest fans take advantage of this while they can! Remember, this is only for The Scholastic Store, not Amazon or anywhere else. The 30% off sale is still in effect (as I am posting this), and there is no closing date posted for it yet. The advanced shipments are also only for U.S. residents at the moment, as the Scholastic Store does not ship out for international orders. (Please correct me on this if I am wrong!)

Second: The inside of Animorphs #1 & 2 features a sneak preview of all 6 relaunch books, which also finally reveals the cover of Animorphs #6! Ian, who is now lucky enough to own both books, was able to provide us a scan:

All of this has already been added to the relaunch pages. The relaunch trailer we posted about recently has also been added to Animorphs #1 & 2, as well in our video page.

One last thing: there is also a new link! In the excitement of revealing the trailer last time, I completely forgot to mention that Scholastic has released a new link related to the relaunch. It is scholastic.com/JoinOurFight. At the moment it just redirects to the official animorphs.com site, but if it goes to anything more than that, then we’ll definitely keep you updated!

That’s all for now. Thanks again to Ian, for providing us with the pictures and scans. Also thanks to Jordan, who also confirmed the early shipments by forwarding me a copy of his shipment notice from Scholastic.

Until next time!

The Scholastic Store has put the Relaunch books Animorphs #1 & 2 on sale for 30% off! There is no date posted as to when this sale is supposed to end, so people should take advantage of this while they can! Links:

Animorphs #1: The Invasion (Buy at Scholastic Store)
Animorphs #2: The Visitor (Buy at Scholastic Store)

The odd part is that I don’t even see anywhere where it says that this is for pre-orders. (Could Scholastic already be selling these before the launch date? Hopefully one of our fans will be able to answer this!)

On an unrelated note: I’ll be updating the Project page soon (hopefully next week), so if anyone here has a cool community project they’d like people to know about, then please forward it to me (either by email or by commenting below). I’ll be choosing a select few to highlight for that post.

Until next time!

UPDATE: Thanks to Tara (who posted below), you can also get an additional 20% off if you type in SCIENCE as a promotional code during checkout. I saw the code before originally making this blog post, but since it said it couldn’t be combined with any other offer, I just assumed that was the case. Apparently, not so! So with this code, that now makes the books 50% off!

Important thing to note though: The ‘Science’ Promotion ends tomorrow (March 14th), so jump on this sale while you can!

We’ll also hopefully know whether these are for pre-orders or not by the folks who have ordered this already. Since I live in Canada, I am unable to take advantage of this sale, so I’m counting on you guys to keep me updated!

It doesn’t look like much, but we finally have a custom header for our blog! It took about a month’s worth of frustration, and for me to learn just enough PHP in order to figure out how to do it.

So what does this mean? Well for one, the rest of the site will no longer remain isolated by that framed header I had in its place before. You can link away to individual articles all you like, without worrying that people can’t see the entire archive. The rest of the sections on the site are still framed up top, just to simplify the 100+ pages (900+ files!) I have for updating needs, but the blog is no longer held back by it, which was my biggest concern of all.

I think that’s all for now! Our blog link is hiracdelest.com/blog, so please update your bookmarks! If you notice any problems or issues, then be sure to let me know right away. I would most definitely appreciate it! Also, be on the lookout for another archive update soon. I’ve got a big one coming!

A big thanks to Paula, who shared a picture of her son holding up an ARC (Advanced Reader’s Copy) of the Lenticular Edition of Animorphs #1!

These ARCs were released as part of the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in San Diego (January 7-11, 2011) that Michael Grant and K.A. Applegate both attended.

As you can see from the picture above, these ARCs are ‘uncorrected proofs’ and are only available through promotional/publishing connections. They also seem to have been printed and released before Scholastic changed the covers, because this one uses the old Jake that we saw in the earlier version.

The actual book for Animorphs #1 is set to be released May 1st, 2011 (Click here for full info and pre-order links). For full coverage regarding the ALA event, check out www.ala.org

“If we squirm, the Yeerks will win.”

Coincidentally, I think Hugo Weaving would be a great voice for Elfangor (or Visser Three). Unfortunately, this picture is from another franchise, but we can still <hope>, can’t we? The new year is filled with possibilities, and I’m excited to share it with the rest of you!

I have no official news at the moment. This is just a really long overdue ‘Happy New Years’ message that I was too sick to roll out to you awesome fans this past week. Regardless, I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and is excited for the re-release of Animorphs this year! I also currently have a few things planned out for the archive this year, which I will be slowly working on as I get the time (when I’m not updating with the latest relaunch stuff). So stay tuned and be ready!

Until next time!

What can I say? Our fanbase rocks. I received an email from a fan named Rijab today, who not only forwarded me the lenticular cover for Animorphs #3, but also for Animorphs #4 and #5. These last two books are not even listed to be released until the end of next year! So yeah, needless to say, I was ecstatic to find these in my inbox this morning!

These covers are official, and are coming straight from the Scholastic Rights & Co-Editions site. Here are a few things to note:

1. As you can see, the cover morphs for all of the books are now definitely following the same animal morphing choices from the first print of the series. (#1: Jake to Lizard, #2: Rachel to Cat, #3: Tobias to Hawk, #4: Cassie to Dolphin, #5: Marco to Gorilla, etc). So, aside from the Chronicles and Megamorphs, expect to see the same treatment for the rest of the books (if they publish past the first six).

2. Like the first sneak peeks for #1 and #2, consider these covers to be a work-in-progress. These could be the final covers you’ll see, or they could be updated with further changes in the future. The alterations could be anything, as drastic as a complete recasting of the model and animal (in #1), to a different blend of the tech-skin background (#2).

3. Along with these covers, we now also have a list of languages Scholastic has the rights to publish Animorphs in, and the publishers who would be responsible for distributing these books in under those language prints. However, it is still unconfirmed whether Scholastic has decided to republish Animorphs under these languages, so don’t get too excited until we say so. Here is the list of languages available:

   Bahasa Indonesian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified only), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese- Brazil, Russian, Spanish, Spanish-Latin, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

   To see the publishers individually associated with each language, see the Scholastic Rights & Co-Editions page again and click on one of the books to see them on the right.

You may have also noticed that the covers are only available in small thumbnail formats at the moment (publicly). So if anyone finds any of these with higher resolutions, then please by all means email me, so that I can share it with everyone else here as well.

In the meanwhile though, I’ve gone ahead and added the individual books and covers into our Pre-Order Page, with summaries, ISBN, and all. I’ll be adding pre-ordering links to those once they are available.

I think that’s everything for now. Be sure to also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay current on updates like these.

And again, a major credit and thanks to Rijab for finding these book covers.

Until next time!

I still surprise myself when I get a little adrenaline rush from stumbling onto something like this, and realize just how much of an impact this series still has on me. Here is a very exciting new promo by Scholastic that features K.A. Applegate herself. In here, she talks about the story origins of Animorphs, about the 90s culture, and about the new relaunch coming next year! On top of that, the video also gives us our first glimpse of the new Rachel model from Animorphs #2! (Why are you still reading this? I know most of you have already clicked play):

You can also see it directly by going to Scholastic’s website!

As for Rachel’s new cover model, you can see her along with Jake at the 1:40 mark, or by clicking on the snapshot I took (above). Also, as last time, if anyone is able to get me a downloadable copy of this video, then please forward it to my email so that I can save it for the archive.

UPDATE: Thanks to a speedy response from Veronica, we now also have the actual video file for the interview! I’ll be sure to add that into the archive once I get some time.

That’s all for now! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more updates like this on the Animorphs relaunch. Until next time! 🙂

The new Animorphs #1-3 (Lenticular Editions) are now available to pre-order in United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany through Amazon!

UK and Japan have #1-3 available, while Germany only has #1 & 2 at the moment. All of them are released with the same release dates as Canada & U.S (#1 & 2 in May 2011, and #3 in July 2011). Here are the pricing and pre-order links:

Animorphs #1: The Invasion (Lenticular Edition)

£4.49 from Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)
￥ 611 from Amazon.co.jp (Japan)
EUR 5,99 from Amazon.de (Germany)

Animorphs #2: The Visitor (Lenticular Edition)

£4.49 from Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)
￥ 618 from Amazon.co.jp (Japan)
EUR 5,99 from Amazon.de (Germany)

Animorphs #3: The Encounter (Lenticular Edition)

£4.42 from Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)
￥ 739 from Amazon.co.jp (Japan)

As for international covers, they look exactly the same as the ones that are being released in Canada and U.S. Also, it does not look like these are translated copies, but the same English ones that are being made available in North America. I also did not see any pre-orders available for France, China, or Italy (yet).

In the mean while, I’ve gone ahead and updated these links in our Pre-Order page (see right side). If anyone has information regarding other countries/translations/international covers, then please do let me know so that I can forward it to the rest of the fans.

Until next time!

For those of you looking for something creative to do over the holidays: The Animorphs LiveJournal Community is hosting a contest for both fan art and fan fiction. The submissions are due by January 5th, which is roughly 3 and a half weeks (a little less than a month) from now.

This contest is being held by blue rampion, so all submissions must go directly to her. For full info regarding the specifics of the contest’s theme, prizes, and rules, go to: community.livejournal.com/animorphs

**Please note that while the date on there says December 19th, it was pushed to January 5th in a recent post to give everyone time for exams and allow them to work on it over the holidays.

Good luck! 🙂

Thanks to a speedy response from Elaine, Dameg, and Nguyen to our post yesterday, we now have a copy of the morphing animation from Animorphs #1’s lenticular cover!

Elaine was kind enough to give me a GIF of the animation (posted below), while Dameg and Nguyen gave me the original SWF (which I’ll be placing in the video/book database later). I also went ahead and stripped the animation file of its frames, so that we can see the entire morphing process from start to finish (in the form of the older books). Here it is:

(Click here to see the animation in action!)

As you can see, this Jake model is a different Jake from the first lenticular cover that was released. We have no idea why they did this, but there is a definite difference of age between the two models, and the lizard seems to have been changed as well.

That’s it for now! Thanks again to Elaine, Dameg, and Nguyen for sending those files in! We’ll keep you posted on any more updates and changes.