Status Report

Thanks to Illa for informing us, the new Relaunch editions for #1-3 are now available in French on Gallimard Jeunesse, the French publisher for the series, and Amazon.fr.

It looks like #1 & 2 were released in September 2012, and #3 was released this year in February 2013. Since these were released after the cancellation of the series, it may be an indication that the rest of the books are also being planned to be released in French, provided that they sell well. They were also released with translated covers:

These have been added in our relaunch pages. At the moment, there is no new information regarding other language translations, but if you come across anything, then please let us know!

Dan Letchworth from Scholastic returns again, this time confirming the conclusions we had drawn up in our previous post:

“Hi again, just to put doubts to rest about what we’ve all already deduced–my editor at Scholastic just confirmed with me this morning that Animorphs #8 was cancelled at a very late stage, with no plans for any further rereleases.

Hellfire and damnation!”

-Dan

Sad to say, this also removes the chances of an Animorphs 2.0 or a movie adaptation any time in the near future. We’d like to thank Dan once again, for keeping us and the fans up-to-date on the official progress of the series.

As a side note: If you were holding out on buying any of the new reprints in paperback, then now might be the best time to get them. They are unlikely to ever get a second printing, making these now ‘limited time editions’ even harder to find than the ones from the original Classic run.

That’s everything for now. As always, we’ll keep you informed should there be any further official announcement to the continuation of the series, and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with those latest Animorphs-related updates. Until next time!

Adam from the Cinnamon Bunzuh! blog has posted an exclusive interview with David B. Mattingly, the Animorphs series cover artist from the Classic run. Here’s a small excerpt:

Adam: When you were working on covers with animals in them, did you have physical animals in front of you to work from sometimes, or did you just use photographic reference, how did that work?

Mattingly: No, I use photographic reference, but its very rare where you find the perfect piece of reference. I also needed to avoid, you go on google and you find a picture of a tiger and morph the character into the tiger, because you’ll get sued for that. There’s actually a zoo in New Jersey that I went to, where I shot a lot of photographs. It’s called the SpaceFarms Zoo. I looked it up the other day, because I wondered if it was the zoo that this Matt Damon movie called I Bought a Zoo was based on, but it wasn’t. But Space Farms New Jersey, it’s sort of a weird private zoo. And they had bears and tigers and all kinds of stuff. And they let you in and you wander around, just like a regular zoo. So that was the source of a lot of reference for the series.

Adam: Likewise, when you were working with human models for the covers, how did you tend to work with them?

Mattingly: I’d shoot models on it, and a problem I had throughout the course of the series is that it went on for I guess five years, and the kids, kids from when they’re ten to fifteen change profoundly, and I’d bring the kid in for another shoot, and he’d look like a completely different person. And Scholastic didn’t want me to reuse old photographs because it would have forced them to re-pay the models, so I consistently shot new models and then attempted to make them look as close to the old models as I could, I’m not sure entirely successfully. The only model who I used throughout the series was the model for Cassie, because she was kind of a petite girl, she might have been a little older when I cast her, and she changed little enough over the course of the book that I used her consistently. She was also a wonderful model.

Read the full interview at Cinnamon Bunzuh! >>

Good news for Animorphs #7: Scholastic released the book 2 days ago, a half month earlier than the official release date! If you pre-ordered, then they should already be in transit. If not, then expect them to be shipped to you soon!

In other news: I have updated Animorphs #5 with the full relaunch edits! A larger cover for Animorphs #7 has also been posted, and a few other relaunch pages have been updated with minor details as well.

Oh, and I gave the character profiles an update too (You can view them by clicking on the individual Animorphs on the header up top). I rewrote a couple of the profiles, fixed the parent details (there were many of you who told me about this, thank you), changed up the pictures, etc.

That covers everything for now. Until next time!

Thanks to Jason, there was a new interview with Jay Barnson recently in PC World. He was the former senior programmer of SingleTrac, which was the studio that was responsible for Animorphs: Shattered Reality, the 3D adventure platforming game that was released on Playstation in 2000. Here’s a brief snippet that provides some insight into the project.
 

The last official game by SingleTrac was Animorphs: Shattered Reality. In addition to being SingleTrac’s only licensed game, it was also an unusually low-key release for the studio. How and why did this uncharacteristic project come about?

JB: I don’t know the business side of how it worked out, but I know we’d had several discussions about doing licensed games previously that had fallen through. Animorphs was just the first and, as fate would have it, the last licensed title on which we went into full-fledged development. We ran into a lot of problems on that one, though.

What were the issues that you encountered?

JB: In the middle of development, the Columbine massacre happened, and for several weeks the media was making the video game industry out to be the designated scapegoat for that tragedy. Scholastic and [Animorphs series author] K.A. Applegate grew concerned and wanted to distance themselves from anything resembling “violent video games,” even though the books themselves got pretty violent at times. They demanded that we radically change the game design, salvaging what work we could, but the release date wasn’t going to move too much.

The new design was much more of a platformer, but that style of game wasn’t one of our strengths. It was a really pretty crazy scramble to re-design and re-write the game to get it ready for release. Before the final release, half the studio was laid off, including myself, and the remainder knew the company was on borrowed time. That might be part of the explanation why the release was “low-key.”

You can read the full article at goodgearguide.com.au. Thanks again to Jason for providing us with the link.

Marco never wanted to be an Animorph. He didn’t want the ability to change into any animal he touches. And he certainly didn’t want to be one of a handful of kids that are the planet’s only defense against a secret alien army. His friends know why he feels the way he does. He’s worried about his dad — the only family Marco has left. If anything happens to him, his father will be alone. But something big is about to change for Marco. Something that could finally give him a reason to fight.

PAPERBACK EDITIONS

Order from Amazon.com (U.S.) **

Order from Amazon.ca (Canada) **

Order from Amazon.co.uk (U.K.)

eBOOK EDITIONS

Order Kindle Edition (Amazon) **

Order NookBook Edition (Barnes & Noble)

The next book will be Animorphs #6: The Capture and it will be released March 01, 2012. Links are up on our order page. Also, if you haven’t already, then take a look at our update from yesterday. Scholastic has released a new writing contest along with Animorphs #5, with the grand prize of autographed Animorphs books from K.A. Applegate, and a Nintendo 3DS!

The Animorphs #4 relaunch edit list is now up on our Missions page. As with the previous three books, there some more updates to technology and pop-culture references that I think people will find interesting. If I’ve missed something in my re-read, then please do let me know!

Also, Animorphs #7 is now available to pre-order! The links are set up on our order page. A slightly larger version of the cover for #7 was also released via the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair Rights Guide (see right). I have uploaded the PDF catalog, and posted the picture for it in it’s relaunch page.

In addition to this, I have also gone through all of the relaunch pages and taken away some of the clutter and added a few new things as well. Here are the new additions in today’s update:

• High-Res Front Covers for relaunch books #2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
• High-Res Back Covers for relaunch books #3, 4, and 5.
• New/edited Trivia on all relaunch books.
• New relaunch edits and updates list for #4.
• Frankfurt Rights Guide and larger cover for #7.

Finally, Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs) recently posted on Facebook that Sony Pictures has acquired the movie licensing rights to his new and upcoming series, BZRK, for the Sam Raimi Company! This exclusive post was made by Deadline New York, and the article can be viewed here.

This is very surprising, and shows a great amount of confidence in the material, considering that the first book in the trilogy isn’t even going to be released until March 2012! A very big congrats to Michael Grant from us on this excellent news!

That’s all for now. Be sure to let me know of any edits or mistakes I may have missed, and I’ll get them fixed as soon as I can. Until next time!

Rijab is back again, this time with the cover for Animorphs #7: The Stranger! (He previously gave us a sneak peek at the covers for #3, 4, and 5!)

As before, this is just a thumbnail preview, but it gives us an idea on what kind of design to expect from this future release. Animorphs #7 currently does not have a set date, but is confirmed to be released in Summer 2012, with Animorphs #8. (Our guess is in May, but we’ll make sure to confirm that.)

The new #7 cover has been updated on our relaunch page, and #6 has been given a larger version of its cover as well. Thanks again to Rijab on passing along these great updates! If anyone has any extra relaunch details, please feel free to contact us via our email, Facebook, or Twitter.

Until next time!

It all started with the dreams. But Cassie didn’t pay much attention to them. She and her friends have been having nightmares ever since they acquired the power to morph. But when Cassie discovers that Tobias has been having dreams too — the exact same dreams — about the ocean, and a voice that’s calling to them for help, she decides it’s time to start listening. Now she and the others have to figure out if the dreams are a message, or a trap.

PAPERBACK EDITIONS

Order from Amazon.com (U.S.) **

Order from Amazon.ca (Canada) **

Order from Amazon.co.uk (U.K.)

Order from Amazon.co.jp (Japan)

eBOOK EDITIONS

Order Kindle Edition (Amazon) **

Order NookBook Edition (Barnes & Noble)

The NookBook Edition still hasn’t been listed on the Barnes & Noble website, but it should be online soon as well. The next book in line is Animorphs #5: The Predator on December 1st, 2011. Pre-order links for Animorphs #6: The Capture are also up (see right).

Until next time!

 
UPDATE: Links updated. NookBook Edition is now released as well.

The relaunch edit list for Animorphs #3 is now online! I have also updated the edit list for the first two books as well, with 2 KASUs fixes in Animorphs #1, and an error fix in Animorphs #2.

Along with this, I have also gone ahead and added KASU lists in the Animorphs #1-3 Classic books too! This will hopefully be an interesting comparison between the two types of editions, and the kind of editing that went into the reprints.

Also, a big credit to Anifan12 who gave me the list of KASUs for the Classic books! The list was originally hosted on Geocities, so he handed it off to me for the archive when Yahoo was shutting those pages down. I’ll now be making sure to add these Classic KASU lists along with release of every reprint edit list that I come out with.

That’s all for now!