FUS News Robot

I know, I know.. I announced a new Sea3on artist some time ago as I had found one.  Sami as you all know has worked on shorts before in the past, plus her work has always just been amazing.   So, we (myself and her) were hoping for her to get back on her drawing path and become our main artist.
Sadly over the course of the last month plus some her work life just became too hectic.  With working the next town over and working 6 day weeks (which currently show no sign of ending) she came to me this morning expressing that there is no possible way for her to get going as the main artist at this time.  We chatted about holding off on the comic a bit longer, maybe things will clear up come summer..But in the end we both decided that for now at least it is best to try finding a artist.

So..I hope to end this artist curse that seems to be haunting Sea3on.

So..Looking for artist(s).   I'm actually wiling to accept a team of people this time.  I know a lot of you last time wanted to try something and were waiting for a page for me to toss out...Anyways I have that page now.

But be warned... Taking on this job apparently throws your personal life into absolute hell.  For it is the CURSE OF SEA3ON!!!

 

So PM me on the forums with your work, email me Paul@Sonicsatam.com or jump into our IRC chat room and chat with me about this.  http://www.sonicsatam.com/sample-page/chat-room/


As for a promo page to try out..

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Page One
Plain white background. The Freedom Fighters are all standing, side by side, in the foreground and looking at the audience. From left to right: Antoine, looking bashful; Bunnie, giving a big wave and an even bigger smile; Sally, arms folded in font of her chest and a calm smile on her face; Sonic, winking and giving a flashy thumbs up; Rotor, arms folded behind his back, eyes closed, but a small smile on his face; and Tails, hopping up and waving with both his eyes with an enthusiastic grin.
Everyone: HELLO!
Close up of Sally, still smiling calmly at the audience.
Sally: Welcome to the Audition! This little exercise is designed to-
Same shot, but Sally is now being pushed aside by an eager-looking Sonic on the right side of the panel, much to her annoyance.
Sonic: We wanna see how awesome you can be!
Normal shot; we can see the characters from the waist up now. Sally is on the left, pushing Sonic away toward the right side of the panel. Sonic is stubbornly trying to get back to the center, flailing his arms at her, but it's no use. Sally is glaring daggers at him, and he at her.
Sally: That's only part of it, Sonic! They're not just here to show off, but to practice!
Medium long-shot. Rotor is in the background, and has picked Sonic and Sally up by the scruffs of their necks; he is looking at Sally with a chiding expression. Sonic and Sally are both looking quite surprised.
Rotor: C'mon, you two, settle down. What we're trying to get at is...!
Same shot, but we are now seeing it from the bottom of Rotor's neck upwards. His hat has now been snatched by Tails, who is hovering over him in the upper portion of the panel with his tails spinning; he looks very amused with himself. Rotor looks befuddled.
Tails: We're trying to say, we're here to have fun!

Page Two
Long shot. Bunnie is in the lower left corner of the panel with a cocky little grin, extending her robot arm up to Tails, who is in the upper right of the panel looking surprised, and grabbing on to Rotor's hat; Rotor (still holding on to Sonic and Sally, both of whom look mildly annoyed) is in the center, still confused by all this.
Bunnie: Now now, Sugah-Fox, don't you get carried away up there.
Medium close-up of Bunnie looking at the audience with a friendly smile; her robot arm is pulling back in from the upper right of the panel, with Rotor's hat in its hand.
Bunnie: Now then, why don't we get back t'business 'n' introduce ourselves to...!
Medium long-shot. Bunnie is on the left of the panel, looking up in shock at Rotor, who is looking pretty mad and has tossed a shocked Sonic and Sally aside into the lower right of the panel so that he can begin to try and tackle Bunnie. Tails, also looking annoyed, has begun diving toward Bunnie from the upper right of the panel.
Rotor and Tails, simultaneously: GIMME THAT HAT BACK!!!
Same shot, but everyone has fallen to the bottom of the panel in a big, messy heap, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris in the process.
Same shot, but everyone is now lying down, looking mildly pained, at the bottom of the panel in a crumpled heap.
Same shot, but Antoine, nervously twiddling his thumbs, looking at the audience with a sheepish smile and sweating a little, has side-stepped in front of the pile.
Antoine: Eh-heh-heh...I am most apologizing for zis embarassing display, but...to get to ze very point....
Medium close-up of Antoine, eyes closed and smiling awkwardly, waving at the audience.
Antoine: ...Goodbye!

 

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Okay so first of all I would like to thank all whom applied.   I never knew that S3 had such talented fans and..Well just some amazing work got handed in over the past few weeks.  I will be contacting some of you in the near future to work on the occasional short, or funny (Been thinking about doing a B&W comic for gags recently).  So keep checking your inbox.  I am also aware that there is a small group out there who wish to split up the rolls as artist.   I do hope to see your work still as... Could come in handy for the shorts.

 

Anyways I'm sure the lot of you are wondering who I have decided to replace Stephen with...And well, I couldn't have picked anyone better in my opinion.  Not to mention I first thought of her when I needed a new artist..Just took some talking, some figuring stuff out, random nights and huzza.
So without wasting any more of your time the new Sea3on lead artist is the always lovely Sami!   You may remember her from  The Mechanics Puzzle as well as A Christmas Carol.  So be sure to check out her Deviant ART account and drop her a word of encouragement.   It takes a lot to step into Stephen's shoes, and I'm sure she will do wonderful.

I have no time frame on the next page just yet.  Over the course of the next week or so Sami told me she has to start practicing on model designs ad so on for the comic. Once she is comfortable enough with that the pages shall start rolling out once again.

Thanks again for all of your support,

Cheers,
Paul

I have had a few proposals over time about making Sea3on into a animated movie or series.  All of these I have of course turned down.  Mostly because as a website we don't have the time or expertise on hand to do such a task.  Ive got my staff quite busy with just Sea3on, and the SatAM game that is in production.  After that we start stretching ourself s out too far.

Not to mention the time and talent it would take to animate something.  Hell even a 8 minute animation would take a small group of people and a huge chunk of time to animate.

So the other day I got another email from someone saying "Hey, lets make a Sea3on series!".  And even though this email was thought out a bit more then the others I have gotten over time.. I still did my "Yeahhh..No" response.  Cause I'm nice that way.

But the following day I recieved  another email from the gentleman in question..Which actually peaked my interest up enough to bring all of this foreword to my Sea3on staff, as well as Bakuda and RedAuthar.    Together we looked over some stuff, talked it out, and decided..What the hell.  Might as well give this guy a chance to explain himself further.  I mean really, all I would be doing is wasting a few minutes over skype at the worst..   So I called Matt into a meeting (you can check out his facebook page here actually https://www.facebook.com/pages/Classic-Sonic-the-Hedgehog/102023493218132?fref=ts ) and with Bakuda by my side we basically went over a few things.

I thin over all the meeting lasted around 40 minutes or so..Which was a lot longer then what I was originally planning on doing.  But the reason for that is because I had to actually start putting some serious thought into the proposal he was putting forth.

Over all I think the meeting went good.  There were a few demands that I made in the interest of FUS before I give any final say on the matter.    Such as I want to see the first script and animation story board before I give the final "yeah okay go for it".  But at this moment from certain things I have seen from past work..It looks pretty good.  Would make a interesting small fan project.

 

One of the interesting things that made me think "Pretty good.." is one of the producers behind this, as well as a (probable) voice actor. Sally Test

 

So anyways, be sure to check out the Facebook Page  this started at.  Especially if you wish to give it any support.

 

As well stay tuned for a announcement in probably the near-ish future about whether not the site will be fully supporting and going forth on this.    But be sure to toss down your support for this if you would like a animated Sea3on series.

I get email's all the time..Most of the time it involves me saying something like "No..I do not think SatAM was a devil worshipping cult"  Or "I'm sorry but your crazy fanfic involving SatAM and time travelling squirrels  just won't make a good story for "Sea3on"  However every so often I do get an interesting email. Something that is almost touching. Makes it completely worth while for running this website along with my staff.   Something myself and John are proud of.

 

Last night I actually got one of these emails.  One that made me think how awesome this was.  In fact I liked it so much I had to share it with Bakuda first thing.   Now, because I have been giving permission to share it with you all..I will.

 

To the good folks at FUS,

 

I just made what I have to admit is kind of a large donation (at least for me) to your site, and I want to explain why.  It was prompted by last week’s comments on the Season 3 comic that you need a more powerful scanner, and I hope it helps toward that end.  (I have no idea whether PayPal shares the names of donors with you, but I did enter “toward the scanner” as the purpose, if you want to verify that I’m telling the truth.)  But it’s also to say thank you to you and to the SatAM fan community, because crazy as it sounds, rediscovering SatAM has meant something to me on a deeply personal level.

 

Without going into details, I have been going through some really difficult stuff over the last six months or so.  When I initially watched SatAM back in ’93 and ’94, I was also going through some difficult stuff—suffice it to say that I had more than the usual share of adolescent troubles.  My introduction to the show was probably no different than most fans’—I enjoyed the Sonic games, and when I watched the first part of “Supersonic” on that Saturday morning preview special they used to do on TGIF, I couldn’t help but be curious what was going to happen next.  So—even though, at 14, I felt like I should be too old for Saturday morning cartoons—I hauled my butt out of bed early the next morning and watched the show.  I was hooked.  I loved the sci-fi/fantasy atmosphere, the characters, and the comic banter (especially between Sonic and Sally).  But where it really touched me was on a thematic level—the struggle for freedom against the forces of dehumanization and mechanization (as a Star Trek fan, I was always fascinated by the parallels between roboticization and the Borg); hope in the face of overwhelming odds; the innocent (some would say naïve) belief that if we work together, we really can save the world.

 

Like all the other fans, I was shocked and saddened when the series was cancelled after ending on a cliffhanger, but it never left my mind.  In my spare moments, I imagined what might have happened.  I actually wrote notes for a plan for my own Season 3 (blasted out of the water when I found out what was actually supposed to happen), and I continued to make up stories in my head—my own ongoing saga—up until adulthood.

 

But I kept my obsession private.  I always felt like some kind of freak for fixating on a kid’s TV show that only lasted two seasons.  I knew it had spawned a comic book series (which I’ve never read, and judging by what I’ve been reading is happening lately, am afraid to start).  And I did some research on the whole Sonic franchise back around 2000.  At least that’s the date on the labels on the little Sonic Underground plushies they were giving away free at Denny’s, which my dad picked up for me because he knew I was a Sonic fan.  (I continued to play the games up until Sonic R—at that point they stopped making them for the PC, and I didn’t want to have to go buy a new video game system every year or two.)  Besides embarrassing the heck out of me, my Dad’s gift sparked a Web search on what the heck Sonic Underground was.  (I was tempted to watch but never did.)  And that devolved into an all-night link-following fest into all things Sonic, which was how I found out what was supposed to happen in Season 3 as mentioned above (sort of—the description had a few omissions and inaccuracies).

 

So yes, I was aware that there were other Sonic fans out there.  But for some reason I assumed they must all be younger than me.  By that time I was 21—supposed to be all grown up, right?  There must be something wrong with me if I was still into this kid stuff.  So I decided it was time for me to move on.  But I never forgot.  SatAM would come to mind at the oddest of moments—usually accompanied by feelings of nostalgia, followed by embarrassment.  (“Oh God, haven’t you gotten over that yet?”)

 

(I have to confess that in the mid-2000s I also had a brief stint with Sonic X—nowhere near as good as SatAM, but it had its merits.  It became my guilty Saturday-morning pleasure—if my parents came in the room, “OH GOD QUICK CHANGE THE CHANNEL PRETEND YOU’RE WATCHING LAW AND ORDER OR SOMETHING!!!”  Yes, I was still living with my parents, which says a lot.)

 

Another decade passed, and I figured the series had been all but forgotten.

 

So imagine my surprise when, at the height of my recent troubles, I’m playing some online video games as an escape…find some homemade Sonic stuff…say “what the hell, I can just play some games, right?”…end up on Newgrounds…find a bunch of attempts by people to make a SatAM continuation or movie (all of which seem to have been canned)…follow that to Deviant Art…and from there, discover the forums and FUS’s amazing Season 3 Comic.  (The whole process actually took a couple of months.)  I was stunned.  The series hadn’t been forgotten—if anything, it had achieved cult status.  Here were all these people, almost 20 years later, as obsessed about this cartoon show as I was.  And most of them were at least as old as I was 12 years ago when I decided I should be moving on, and some probably as old as I am now.  Not to mention the dedication that I learned the writers and artists had put into the series, and the efforts made to revive it.  Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone.  (As I typed those words, I actually started to cry.)

 

Now I’m not saying that SatAM or FUS saved my life or anything.  But for someone who has spent a lot of her life feeling alone and abnormal, it has been a tremendously powerful experience to find out that I am neither.

 

Since then, however, I’ve remained in the closet—though I’ve done a little lurking and commenting on DA and Newgrounds, I haven’t joined any discussion groups or anything.  I’m not too social media-savvy—I’ve never Facebooked, Tweeted, Flickred, or anything like that.  (Another reason I haven’t explored more is because I started working on a fanfic of sorts, which has been wonderfully therapeutic—and it seems that the more other great stuff I read, the more I say to myself, “Dang, I’ll never write anything this good.”  In fact, I’m kind of glad I started writing before I found the Season 3 comic—I think that would have shut me down completely.  I’m still working on it—I’ll get there.)  But I bought the full series DVD box set, and I’ve been following the Season 3 comic, with its beautiful art, inspired storyline, and faithfulness to the original—particularly the characters—with the same weekly anticipation that I once experienced for the series.

 

Then last week I read about Season 3’s scanner woes, and it seemed like fate.  I am taking this opportunity to come out of the closet, even if it’s only to whoever’s reading this email.  Judging by the email address, that would be Paul.

 

I AM A SATAM FAN, AND I AM DARN WELL PROUD OF IT!!!

 

So this is to thank you and your wonderful artists and writers for keeping the dream alive, both through the site and through the Season 3 comic.  It’s also to thank my fellow SatAM fans for teaching me that growing up doesn’t have to mean leaving behind your childhood (or in my case, teenhood) passions, and that a sometimes little healthy obsession can be good for the soul—and connect one with a larger community.  Perhaps—when my schedule becomes a little less hectic, ha ha—I too will join that community.  For now, I’m doing what I can.

 

If anyone ever tells you that the work that you’re doing is silly or trivial, that it’s not really making a difference in the world—don’t believe them.  You have created a community of talented and passionate individuals, and that is a huge accomplishment.  And if you want to remember how deeply you’ve touched at least one person, just read this letter.

 

Keep up the fight.

 

Hugs and funny kisses,

Michelle Freedman, Age 32

AKA Tabbyzgirl (Tabitha is my cat, and the model for the furry with Sonic below.  As you can see, my own scanner ain’t that good.)

 



 

 

P.S. Speaking of fate…one of the difficulties I’ve faced is the loss of my grandmother to lung cancer in October.  Going through her old costume jewelry with my mom a couple of months later, I found this:

 



 

It’s got three twists instead of just the one, but it is a Mobius.  Given my recent rediscovery of SatAM, the coincidence struck me as downright eerie.  I now carry this piece with me, even when I’m not wearing it.

 

P.P.S. OK, I have to mention this—I do take a little bit of issue with the comic leaving out Dulcy without any kind of explanation—like she went to go find other dragons or something.  I know a lot of people hated her, but I always liked her.  It’s all right though, I still love you.

 

P.P.S. You have my permission to share this email, with my name, in whole or in part, on your site—that would really put me out of the closet!  But it’s OK if you don’t.  I’m sure you get emails from crazy people like me all the time. J

 

 

 

Michelle,

 

You were correct in your assumption that the email address Paul@SonicSatAM.com  would in fact connect you to me, Paul.   However, due to your permission the entire website shall see that email (look above) also they will see my response (look here).

 

Its kind of interesting to see you first started watching SatAM at the age of 14.  I myself started watching it as a kid at 7 or 8..However it was at the age of 14 that I decided to find the show again, and thus I found FUS.   Now the reason why I bring this up is that when I joined the website at 14/15 I was considered one of the younger members. Most members at that time were actually around 5-8 years older then myself.   So people your age watching the show was actually quite common.

 

I'm sure I can speak for myself and the rest of my team in saying Thank You!  We work hard to please our viewers and fans.  Be it with Sea3on, or other projects, or the website and forum.  All of this is done for you and others like you, not for ourselves.  If this site was run just for myself you would only see one page stating how awesome I am...I should create a page like that...

 

Also on behalf of myself and my staff I am sorry for your terrible loss. Stuff like that is never easy to get through.  If FUS helped out any in that way I am glad.  Makes everything we do worth it.

 

Again, thank you for your kind words.  I loved reading your email and..I can't say anything else on that.  It just made me proud to be apart of this community.

 

Cheers for everything,

Paul

 

PS.  A lot of people bring up that Dulcy thing.  I guess we will have to just wait and see.  Our talented writer has plenty of surprises for everyone yet.

 

 

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Hello! You may notice the site has been given a bit of a makeover. Pretty much everything has been rebuilt from the ground up, from the look and feel, to the CMS. Expect a few rough edges, and if you find anything that is obviously broken, please let us know!

If you're wondering where all the old news items went, they're still available in the forums. More improvements will be coming in the next few months, including a new reskin of the forums. Hang tight, and thanks for your patience!

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