Status Report

Animorphs #3 is now officially relaunched today! The book has already been released early at a few select locations, but it should be at all retailers now, including in ebook form. Book summary:

Animorphs #3: The Encounter (Lenticular Edition)

When Tobias and his friends were given the power to morph, they were also given an important warning: Never stay in a morph for more than two hours. But Tobias broke the time limit, and now he’s trapped in the body of a hawk — forever. When he discovers an important Yeerk secret, Tobias knows he has to do everything in his power to destroy it. But to do so, he’ll have to contend with a part of himself that’s wrestling for control. A part that isn’t human.

See: Paperback and eBook Order Links

In addition to this, there’s also some interesting relaunch info by Renata from Why, a Blog!, who attended David Levithan’s panel at the annual American Library Association (ALA) conference this year. Here’s a brief quote:

Anyway, so he starts up his presentation and the first slide is covers of the Babysitters Club and Animorphs relaunch titles, though he said that he didn’t have anything to do with Animorphs (although he did work at Scholastic when Animorphs was being published). He talked about the late 80s and early 90s as the “heyday” of series fiction, when books would come out once a month or twice a month. He cited BSC, Animorphs, and Goosebumps as Scholastic’s “Big Three,” which was interesting to me because I never thought Animorphs were as popular as BSC or Goosebumps? As a kid, I definitely knew more people who read the other two series than Animorphs. But maybe that was just my school. Also, he described all three series as being “episodic” fiction where it didn’t necessarily matter if you read them in order, or read all of them. To some extent that’s true of Animorphs (there are definitely books you could skip, for example) but I don’t think it’s true in the same way it is for BSC or Goosebumps.

Oh, and he talked about revamping the series-es (I think the plural of series is just series but whatev) and making them “time neutral.” The example he gave was if a character was listening to a Walkman, they didn’t change it to “iPod,” since you’d just have to change that again in 10 years. Instead they changed it to “music.” He said it wasn’t that hard to do, which I thought was a little surprising.

I suggest everyone check out the entire post, as it’s an interesting read. She covered the event by posting at both Why, A Blog! and the Animorphs LiveJournal Community.

Lastly, I have also updated the missions archive. Animorphs #1 now has a list of all the relaunch edits that I could find in the re-read (Please let me know of any edits I may have missed), and Animorphs #3 now has the back cover added (via amazon), and a new higher-res front cover.

Oh, and I renewed Hirac Delest‘s hosting/domain for another year (We’re now 4 years old!). Thanks to everyone who has supported us through the years! Until next time!

Taking a little break from the relaunch stuff, I came across this neat trailer a little while back that I think is worth sharing. It uses a few scenes from the TV show, but is otherwise filmed entirely by fans:

There are also a few fans out there that have written their own scripts for the adaptation of the books. The first one is by Dogman15, for Animorphs #1: The Invasion. And the second one is actually a theatrical production for Animorphs #6: The Capture by Drake. He tells me that this has already been staged and is in production for a play-writing college class in Florida. He’s going to try and get this filmed, and pass it along to us if possible! I have added links to both scripts in our fan fiction section.

To close off today’s post, here is another great little clip I found that the Animorphs TV Show fans will appreciate. It’s Nadia Nascimento (Cassie) being discovered at a party:

Several fans have informed me that the Animorphs #3 (Lenticular Edition) has already been released to them via Amazon and Barnes & Noble a full week before the actual launch date! Not only that, but The Scholastic Store apparently already had them in stock 2 weeks ago! (With an additional 30% off, as they did with Animorphs #1 & 2!)

Jason, one of our visitors, even sent us proof from his local store:

Those holding out for ebook editions will still have to wait though. Expect a full paperback/ebook release from all retailers on July 1st, 2011.

Michael Grant (co-author/co-creator of Animorphs) informed me today that Animorphs #7 and #8 have now been confirmed for a Summer 2012 relaunch release! Like the first six books, they are going to be re-released with lenticular covers and updated references as well. This is hopefully a good sign that the sales from the May relaunch of Animorphs #1 & #2 went well (although we currently do not have the exact figures to know for sure).

In other news: A larger cover for Animorphs #5 is now released via Amazon. Please remember, however, that this is still for the first Marco. Although Scholastic has confirmed that this Marco will be recast from the whitewashing controversy, they have still not yet updated the new model through the official site. Rest assured that we will definitely keep you updated once that happens.

There are now also official online advertisements for Animorphs too! These are flash banners that show off Jake’s morphing animation from the first book, and I have converted them to GIFs for us (See: Ad #1 & Ad #2). These are apparently being shown on various sites, however I have only seen them on Scholastic’s official site myself. Please do let me know if you see them anywhere else.

Lastly, I have also gone ahead and updated the Missions section to add #7 and #8 to the relaunch list, and I have updated the FAQ to reflect this change as well. That’s everything for now. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as we hear more! (Can’t wait to see the new Ax!)

The Official Scholastic Youtube Channel has just released another video featuring K.A. Applegate, author of the Animorphs series. It looks like this was filmed during her first-ever autograph session at the L.A. Times: Festival of Books. Here it is:

OR, you can directly launch the video on Youtube.

UPDATE: The launch of the video and L.A. Times event is further covered by Scholastic’s OOM (On Our Minds) Blog. Full article: oomscholasticblog.com.

Interesting thing to note: Kheetor84, who we previously mentioned in our community highlight post, got a mention in the article as well! In addition to this, there is also another K.A. Applegate interview posted by the Scholastic Kid Reporter. You can read it here.

This is, without a doubt, the coolest thing anyone has ever sent me! I got it in my mail today, and was caught completely off-guard by what was inside. They were sent from Jenny (aka AniJen21), who offered to order me the advanced relaunch books from the Scholastic Store sale we had a while back.

She gave me some random excuse and told me that they’d be coming in late, but it turned out that she was being totally sneaky and getting them signed by K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant at their first-ever autograph session together in the L.A.Times: Festival of Books. Here they are:

I can’t express how thankful I am for this! This is one of the nicest things I have ever received, and I will most definitely treasure it forever. Thank you so much to Jenny for going out of her way to do this! And thank you to both K.A & Michael for their kind words! 😀

A very quick post today: I have upgraded our Community Board so that it is now ad-free! This should hopefully last us a little while, as it depends on the user usage vs any length of time.

Also, the Relaunch books now have their own forum as well! This forum is for both new and old fans to discuss, so please remember to keep all details and spoilers regarding future books away from this area. A separate forum (“Animorphs Classic”) is still in place for older fans to discuss the series openly if they wish to do so. I have also added specific book threads for both Animorphs #1 and Animorphs #2, and have linked them on our archive pages so they will go directly there as well.

Lastly, I also wanted to highlight a new thread that Xan (our most recent, and 200th member!) made. He is asking for a request of ideas on a very cool project that he is making for his final term. It involves some guerrilla/viral-like marketing to promote The Sharing for his Animorphs project. I don’t post requests like this for many forum topics, but I think this shows some promise and is a very cool way to go in promoting the series. The thread can be found under the ‘Animorphs Classic’ Forum (or click here to go directly there).

That’s all for now!

Following up from our post about the first book, Animorphs #2 is now available as an official ebook by Scholastic! It has been released on both the Kindle and the Nook. Also, Animorphs #5 is now available to pre-order in paperback as well! All of the links have been set up in our order page (see right).

Along with this, I have also gone ahead and updated the Relaunch book pages. #1 & #2 have their back covers posted (thanks to the scans from Ian), Animorphs #4 has a larger cover, and the rest of the relaunch books have been edited with new pictures and trivia as well.

Lastly, I have also gone ahead and changed our domain (hiracdelest.com) so that it now redirects right to this blog. (If anyone misses our old intro, I’ve saved it over here). That’s all for now. Until next time!

“‘Give me liberty or give me death.’

A human named Patrick Henry said that. I wonder if the Yeerks knew before they came to conquer Earth that humans said things like that. I wonder if the Yeerks knew what they were getting into.”

This is it everyone: Animorphs is now officially relaunched! Even though many of us have already gotten the books in advance, this is still an exciting thing to note about. This is the first time in 10 years that the series will finally be available in book stores!

So I want to know: What does everyone think? What do you like? What don’t you like? I posted my review on Goodreads, in case anyone is interested!

Along with this, K.A. Applegate also had her first ever autograph sessions yesterday! Michael Grant (K.A’s husband and co-writer/co-creator of Animorphs) was kind enough to give us some great photo and video updates via Twitter and Facebook:

So for those that made it to this event, let us know how it turned out. If you have any pictures that you would like shared as well, then feel free to comment below! And don’t forget: Spread the word! Animorphs is back!

Alright folks, today is all about the community. I want to take a little break from the relaunch stuff and highlight a few of the interesting things that the fans have been doing.

First up: Webcomics! We have a lot of dedicated artists in our community who have been using their talents to re-create the Animorphs books into graphic novels. All of these are a work-in-progress, however new pages are added every week through scheduled releases! Here are some examples:

Animorphs #1 By Char Reed	Animorphs #5 By Lisa Charly	Animorphs #49 By FauxFolklore	MORPH By Kheetor

Next we have Animorphs Smilies! These are some very cool and original animated gifs that are being made by DinosaurNothlit and Goom from the RAF Community. They feature everything from morphing regular animals to alien creatures like Andalites and Crayak (see right).

Another project that really caught my eye was the Animorphs Infographic List. This ambitious project was started by Kiriska at the Animorphs LiveJournal Community. It’s where each fan is given a specific Animorphs book, and then asked to tally up the number of 90’s references that they find through it. The end result is pretty interesting, and you can see the current progress of it over at: livejournal.com/animorphs (Example on left).

Moving away from that, here is a really cool recreation of the Animorphs TV show theme on the piano by Arizash! I found it impressive, considering he played it by ear. I believe he plans on making some sheet music for it later:

All of this has been listed in our Projects section, so head on over there if you would like to see more details on any of these projects listed above. I have also made a new addition in there by Kevin, who has created some Animorphs Spore models as well. These are very popular over at Youtube, and people have already created several simulations of Andalite/Hork-Bajir/Yeerk battles as we previously posted about a while back.

However, before I end this post, I also want to give a quick shout out to Jeff Sampson. For those who don’t know who he is, simply flip to the start of Animorphs #22, and you’ll see that the book is dedicated to him. He was the co-founder of Morphz.com, which was easily the best Animorphs fan site back when the series ran. It provided many exclusives that the official site never even revealed!

He later on became The Informer, and even helped K.A write a few of the Remnants books as well. And now, he’s a published author! His YA debut Vesper was released earlier this year. I have personally read it, and really enjoyed it. I definitely recommend everyone else to check it out as well!

I think that covers everything new in the Animorphs fandom for now. You’ll find that the Projects section has also been cleaned up, and I have removed many of the ones that are cancelled, or no longer active. If you have any interesting projects that you’d like to share, then please feel free to forward them to me. Until next time!