Status Report

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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And we’re back! Most of you may not have noticed the slight downtime we had for about an hour or so, but I’ve now upgraded our blog to the latest version. It was seriously outdated by a few years, so I went ahead while I had some time off.

Visually, you won’t notice anything different, but in terms of security (with all those juicy juicy plugins I can now use), it’s a very big deal in a behind-the-scenes sort of way. Everything should be working fine now, but if you experience any problems, then reply below or contact me through the forum or my email.

UPDATE: Okay, I couldn’t resist. I’ve added in a new feature for all the iPhone/iPod Touch users like myself. If you’re viewing this through your iPhone right now, then you’ve already seen the changes happen. It’s an automatic redirect that takes you to a much simpler and easier interface to navigate through. The rest of the web will still see this blog the way it is, so don’t worry.

Also, for the iPhone users, if you decide that you don’t like this new view, then you can always scroll all the way to the bottom of the blog and change the setting there (However, you’ll be directed to the blog without the header, so make sure you have http://www.hiracdelest.com/status.htm added to your favourites!)

Lastly, I’ve also added in the same lightbox javascript plugin that I’ve used on several parts of the site already (Missions, Merchandise, etc). What’s lightbox? Well, simply click that little iPhone picture that you see with this post (on the right). Spiffy, no? It’s not new by any means, but it’s nice that the blog can do this now too.

That’s all for now. More updates coming soon! 🙂

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! 🙂

Looks like after we posted our previous bit of news, fans from both the Animorphs LiveJournal and RAF communities asked Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs) if the rumor of the re-release was true.

The answer, is YES. The re-release is definitely happening! Michael Grant confirmed this via his Twitter account. I’ve compiled all of his responses so far in the image below:

So to sum up and update upon our previous post:

1. Yes, the re-release is happening. It is no longer a rumor.

2. There WILL be new covers. Our Scholastic source told us that they are going to be “lenticular”. We’re assuming this means that they will be 3D covers that morph from one image to another when they are tilted.

You may have already seen examples of this in a variety of products, everything from trading cards to dvd covers. (Those that have the Animorphs Invasion Board Game will have a better example, as they came with a deck of morphing holographic lenticular cards for all the Animorphs. We’re guessing that the new covers could be similar to that).

3. The release date is now no longer 2012, but is estimated to be 1 year from now, so somewhere around late 2010 to 2011.

4. The re-release is still being used by Scholastic as a way to test out the market, and see if a brand new ‘Animorphs 2.0’ series will be profitable enough to invest into. They will be looking at both the sales and fan reception once the books are re-released.

5. Editorial changes to KASUs and continuity errors are still unconfirmed, and so are the packaging details (whether the books will be sold in volumes, or individually as they originally were).

More updates to come as we hear them here at Hirac Delest. 😀

Edit: Thanks to wildweathel for correcting us on the proper term for the covers. I’ve made the appropriate changes to that above.

I’m sure a lot of you older fans remember Vegemorphs. It was a one time book parody that was released when Animorphs was at the height of its popularity. It even ended up being part of an Arthur episode ‘D.W. Tale Spins’. (Thanks to Sarita Wolf from The Animorphs Fan Forum for finding this episode).

There was also a live-action fan film that was based on the book, and then posted on Youtube a few years back. I’ve posted both parts of the Arthur episode, and the live action fan film, in the Vegemorphs book page. You can find the Vegemorphs book in Articles & Interviews, under the Database section (since it is not officially linked with the series). Both this and the Cracked magazine parodies have been listed under the Published Parodies category.

IT. IS. DONE! It took nearly 2 years to collect, assemble, and finish, but it’s done. It’s finally ready. The full Mission (Book) Database for Hirac Delest is officially online! Click the link up on the header, or go directly there.

Once you’re in there, you will notice that these aren’t just any regular old book pages, but the complete and definite pages for all Animorph books. They include:

• ALL Front U.S, International, and Inside Covers (submitted by many of the visitors here at Hirac Delest);
   
• eBooks (courtesy of RAF, and all of it’s amazing contributors);
   
• Trivia (written by me, but also mostly by Jeff, who wrote the official Anibase), as well as Terms, Species, Morphs, Characters, and Promotional Items (Avatars, Screensavers, Videos, etc).

Basically, if there’s something relevant to note about a certain Animorphs book, you can expect to find info for it within these pages! I’ve spent a lot of time creating this part of the site– editing, coding, assembling all the data and info, to make sure that it’s good and ready for the archive.

I also, of course, want to individually thank all of the contributors who submitted the inside covers, pictures, and scans for these individual pages here at Hirac Delest. They include: Ryan S, Slayer XY, Neo X, Raevyn, Foamy, Monster, Gloria, Michael, Liz, and Sat. Many apologies if I left anyone out, but I do greatly appreciate the amount of personal time and effort every one of you has given me to make sure that I could complete this archive. Also a major thanks to Jeff, who not only wrote most of the official Anibase, but also provided much of the behind-the-scenes insight to the series. I’ve made sure to clearly credit and label everything that has come directly from the Anibase (especially in the trivia, terms, and characters). Everything else has been written by me.

That about sums it up. Please let me know of what you think! Also, since I did assemble all these pages solo, please let me know if you catch any errors or mistakes on these pages. I did my best to make sure that there are none on there, but if you do find some, I would appreciate them pointed out so that I could fix them quickly. At the same time, if you wish to submit something for these pages, just go ahead and do it the way you guys normally do (email, message board, etc) and I’ll be sure to add it in.

This update itself has been a long time coming, and I’m very excited to finally have it up, so I hope you all enjoy this collective nostalgic geek-out as much as I do. Until next time! 😀

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.

I’ve added in a Book Clubs page for the Merchandise section. You’ll see images in there for the Animorphs Alliance book club that Scholastic used to run many years ago. Thanks to MSGohan for providing the pictures of the gifts, and Michael for providing a scan for the Alliance Poster. The poster has also been added in the Posters page, along with another poster from Megamorphs #2.

Lastly, the I’ve changed the look up a bit in the Merchandise section. Hopefully it looks a bit more presentable now.

That’s all for now. As always, if you all have something to share, then just get a hold of me as your normally do. Until next time. 🙂

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!

Thanks to Mirienne and Dameg, we now have 30 new Japanese illustration scans that were printed in the Japanese Animorph books! Here are a couple of my favourites:

 

The rest can be viewed here, in International Books under the Merchandise Database.

Aside from that, all of subpages in the Merchandise section also went through some minor cosmetic changes to make everything uniform. I’ll be sure to get to more fan submissions on my next update. 🙂