Status Report 3/26/26

Most Recent Activity:

   For the last month there have been activities surrounding facilities that have interfered with the work on completing the layout. But I managed to relocate my workstation and archives and proceeded to prepared the finished artwork for insertion into the layout. This has prompted me to seek to duplicate my workstation to avoid this in the future.

   Truthfully, I am beginning to feel burned out on trying to complete these books. It is SO close to being finished that I must fight the urge to just quit and work on my cars.

   I was very happy to see that Book Five looks to be complete. Two days ago, rather that work on the art, I was reviewing the technical details of the page layout and making corrections to assure that the pages all matched. I figured discover (again) that the earlier artwork I had installed was not properly prepared and needed to be gone over to be trimmed in order to accommodate the effects that are now being used (but we're not at the time the art was installed). I found this situation has occurred on many pages. With the more recently prepared artwork I have been much more detail oriented. This is in large part because we have been thinking in terms of 3D animation and the paintings must not have artifacts that will translate into the animation.

     The First Page of Book One

ARCHIVE:

  You will note that below I posted video conversations that took place three years ago. Overall that still applies. What has been happening since then you can see in other posts below. Let me just say that in all this time we have been both designing and redesigning (when necessary) the artwork. Just yesterday, I asked Jency to redo the illustration for a particular page, because in looking at the proceeding and following pages, I felt that we needed a greater diversity in the posture of the characters. In fact, there are a few illustrations that will need to be done over because the characters drawn do not have the kind of consistency and detail that I feel is needed. So in those instances, the artwork is just place holding, while the collection is completed.

§   Five Binders of finished artwork that has been inserted into the layout. There are more.

§    I'm pretty well certain that there are around a dozen pages left to do. Some pages are half finished, the ones that use multiple paintings to create the illustration panel. Once the last page is illustrated with the characters, then we will be going back to review and assess the backgrounds. Along the way I decided to make sure the characters were placed, even without a background. In some instances no background is necessary. But for diversity's sake, and depending on the shift of environment in the story, a backdrop is appropriate or required. But in order to complete the layout, insertion of the characters has had to have taken precedence over the background. Indeed, we have an excellent collection of quite detailed paintings of the environments where the story taken place, but I discovered (after creating those paintings) that there really isn't enough room in the books to show those backdrops to the story. In some instances there is room, but by the time those environments are reduced to the slotted space on the page, the detail is lost. So this collection of art will really be shown in the context of the exhibition.

§   Work has been done on these exhibition panels, but the significant progress on assembling the Exhibition must wait for the book layout to be completed. I will discuss the exhibition at another time and, in fact, will assemble the exhibition as an online presentation, for those that cannot travel to where it is physically presented. That online exhibition will be generally (in part) available for publicity, but in whole will be available by subscription. Sort of an entrance fee, like a ticket to the show. I will discuss this as it proceeds.

That's all for now.  AG

Parade Float Update

§   This year's Southampton Days Parade, which takes place on July Fourth, is in the planning stages. As much as I had hoped that this Parade Float would have been ready, sadly, that's not going to happen.

§   The truck that was acquired for this purpose was in very much more poor condition than I had expected. That means the rebuild will be more extensive and costly than I had anticipated. Components of the truck which I had planned on reusing will have to be replaced, in particular, the entire front suspension. But also, all the control cables and braking systems. It gets down to a complete rebuild, to the point of pulling the power train and rear suspension. All of this bring more complexity, time and cost. But it needs to be done if the end product will be safe, trouble free and serve a long term functionality.

§.   I have a source of numerous additional trucks if it turns out that more than one self-propelled parade floats needs to be built.

ARCHIVE:

   The templets for repair panels have been made and those panel are being quoted. 

   Here are the drawings for the Parade Float. Current activity is preparing the chassis for paint and reinforcement. The initial goal was to have the Parade Float functional in time for the Fourth iof July Parade. Truthfully however, I doubt that that will be possible. In addition to finishing the technicalities of the float itself, there is the issue of designing and constructing a presentation for the parade and then producing it (ie: actors costuming sets, materials etc,). So our goal is to just get the Parade Float/Portable stage constructed and functional (mainly for use with The Gnomes of New Hope).

    When the Parade Presentation for the Gnomes is under way, then plan is for Animatronic characters to be part of the Parade Float. We'll see how that goes. One step at a time. For now we need to finish the Parade Float and to assure that it is functional as imagined.

 In regard to Animatronics, we have advanced with building the parade float.

  

    Here you see the chassis that is being used for the parade float. It will be strengthened and rebuilt. It is the chassis of a Corvair truck the section in the back contains the power-plant and the section in front (center) will contain a cockpit for the operator. The operator will be seated under the stage. We are working on designing an animatronic puppetry presentation for the parade float.

     I was in Ohio recently and while there I bought a new front suspension for the parade float. The existing suspension is unusable due to rust, however, it will stay in place until the frame is strengthened in the critical areas, which likewise have severe corrosion that have cause the integrity of the chassis to fail. Even so, strengthening of the frame would be required in any event, because the chassis was part of the unibody, which depended upon other body panels for strength. The frame area need to be boxed and other support modification need to be made. Preparations to effect those changes are being made over the winter, with welding to taken place after the weather lets up and becomes warmer. 

Here is the Meadow Amphitheater, where we performed as  The Shakespeareans of Tamanend Park

   I have begun prepping the chassis for paint and welding support struts. As you can see above, the chassis will accommodate standard 4x8 stage platforms and not only serve as a Parade Float, but also the core of a mobile stage which can be set up in a festival or park environment.  Thinking in that direction is a result of what happened with the stage that was built in Tamanend Park, being destroyed by vandals. With this portable stage, we can take the stage with us and not leave it exposed to nefarious deeds.