My oh my, time flies. It’s almost August and we have the longest rain season I can remember in Japan. Still the rain season is probably the lesser evil, because once it ends we’ll have the same humidity plus the brooding summer heat on top.

Production has been dragging on slower than usual for about two months, because I had to create a lot of background drawings (which I hate, I never get the perspective or camera height right) a lot of it simply for pre-visualisation (I’m kinda crappy at that). I’m finally done and for the last week I’m back animating and that’s really fun! Considering that I haven’t been animating anything for over a month, it was easier than I thought to get back into it.

One Down

So I created a female alien character for episode 2 that I really liked, alas I couldn’t find a narrator/narratress, (willing to work for free and still dedicate some time to this – honestly, who would?). And I’m not going to do female voices myself unless it’s a more comical one. This one was just some kick-ass, sexy, cool, powerful type and I couldn’t screw it up with a cheesy fake female voice.

So after wasting time and energy hunting for people to join me on my quest, I came to the conclusion to make my weakness a virtue. Doing it all alone also means you don’t need to rely on anyone else. So now I’ll make it a principle to produce Phungus & Mowld as a one-man operation. That is one differentiator to make this project more interesting – especially in this time and age of social distancing. (even if it’s just for the first season).

Two Up

So who took her place? A bunch of catfish aliens with pickelhauben and German accents. Why you ask? Well, why the hell not. I started doodling alternative male alien characters, and one thing led to another and all of a sudden I had these two guys with a full back story, a planet, a new race, an whole Empire, and a story about how they came to be the greatest explorers. They are even sensitive to bright daylight, so they come with goggles.

It doesn’t get more Steampunk than these guys, although I never intended them to be. These elements just came together somehow. Of course I couldn’t help myself to put in some wordplays and puns. “Catfish” in German are: Wels, hence the name Welsenberg. Silur because they are of the order of siluriformes, they come from the panet Troglos/Troglonian Empire, because they live in caves (some catfish are troglobites) and finally “von Katz“ is a play on the “cat” from catfish (Katze in German).

The script for episode 2 was already finished and fully recorded (except for the female part). However, with the change of names species and last but not least gender I had to rewrite many parts of the script and will have to probably re-record 20-40% of the narration.

This again is a reminder to never name any file “final”. There is no such thing as a final version, it’s an illusion, a lie we all perpetuate. So for August there’s going to be more narration recording for me, and hopefully finalising of episode 1. It could actually happen – I can’t believe it. If that happens I am definitely starting to shoot my first vlog episode as well!

So in conclusion, despite the setback of “losing” one character and the hitherto only female one at that, I think the new character(s) even though considerably different seem fun and have a rich background that just naturally came along with them, they could actually be quite handy for reoccurring roles. And this time voice work should be easy, I think I can do an over-the-top German accent without much effort.