Help Save Academy, Get Rewards, Watch LOAF Dance! (October 20, 2016)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
The campaign to archive and digitize the lost art of Wing Commander Academy has reached a major milestone! Ten of the thirty boxes available have now been funded. LOAF has posted a cool video thanking everyone for their support and sharing some of the interesting discoveries that this project has already uncovered such as ship names and confirmation of suspected universe lore information. Also, by popular demand, several reward tiers have been added that have some cool bonuses for Wing Commander and LOAF fans! If you think you can help, check out the project page and join in!










Hello everyone!

WHAT A DAY yesterday! We cleared NINE boxes and as of this morning are just a few dollars from hitting #10 and being a third of the way through this. Ali and I recorded a Periscope to thank everyone last night, and it does include the promised dancing. All of your donations are so greatly appreciated; every bit helps. Just think: for every dollar, roughly 30 pieces of Wing Commander art will be saved and preserved!

We???re going to get the word out however we can. The folks at INN were kind enough to invite me to do episode commentary this coming Saturday. I???ll let you know the details as it approaches, but we???ll be watching through the entire series, talking about all the crazy details and why it???s so important??? and hopefully raising some funding for this campaign, too!

As mentioned in the video, I???ve added some addition rewards, most of which are kind suggestions from supporters.
  • For $25 I will send you one of my awful drawings (possibly with a terrible pun). I will draw the spaceship of your choice in Sharpie. It will be terrible. Will she online if desired!

  • $50 30 Minute Skype Call with Me ??? I had two requests for this. I promise, I am not very exciting! But if you want to chat with me on Skype and also help preserve some artwork, I???m not going to say no. Calls will need to evenings and weekends Pacific time.

  • For $200 my brother has volunteered to put everything we scan on a bluray for you!

  • $300 Academy DVD with Updated Soundtracks ??? The folks at VEI were kind enough to provide a case of Wing Commander Academy DVDs, and our own Aaron Dunbar is working to update the audio tracks on the first several episodes to fix the sound volume issues! We???ll include the updated episodes on a DVD-R alongside the commercial discs.

  • $500 STAR SOLDIER ??? The rarest Wing Commander manual! I have four copies left from E3 in 2007, where Electronic Arts printed them to promote Wing Commander Arena. This full-color manual is one of the last pieces of Wing Commander canon produced and it???s really, really cool.

  • $2500 Lend a Paw! ??? A real live (not live) Kilrathi paw, used in the production of Wing Commander III! This prop is one of my prized possessions, and I???m hoping someone out there will give it a good home in the service of preserving this artwork.

  • I am also thinking about offering my Wing Commander III/IV flight suit, which is my single favorite piece of Wing Commander memorabilia. I would offer that at the $5000 level if it makes sure this happens. Please let me know if you???re interested; it???d be a hard call, but I???d rather see this artwork saved!
Well, that???s it for today???s update! If we hit $3,000 today, Ali and I will Periscope again tonight and share some more art. And if we hit $3300, I???ll draw three of my favorite spaceships live!

October 20, happens to be an important one for Wing Commander Academy: it???s the annual Kilrathi Sivar-Eshrad ceremony! If you???re familiar with Wing Commander lore, it???s the yearly ceremony in which the Kilrathi convert an entire planet to their religion in the name of their war goddess, Sivar??? it was the basis for Secret Missions 2 AND the series finale of Academy, which took place at the 2654 Sivar-Eshrad ceremony on Dolos. I???ll post some more about the lore and the history of that event tomorrow! Glory to Sivar!
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Original update published on October 20, 2016
 
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I donated!

Has anybody ever isolated the WC Academy soundtrack, or is there a score available? It'd be kind of cool to rock out to that while at the gym.

Also, has anyone ever pointed out that a good deal of the foley SFX seems to come from Fox's Space: Above and Beyond sound library. The Kilrathi fighters, especially, make the same noise as the Chig Fighters, and a lot of the gun sounds are exactly the same. Might be just part of a generic library, but the two shows have enough in common that I mention it (S:AAB predates WCA, I believe). Anyhoo, just something I didn't really notice, but my brain did. :)
 
Things like this make me wonder things like... Who'd keep 30! boxes of stuff for 20yrs? Why $300 a box? What happens to the boxes you don't buy now? Can you come back w/ $300 every couple months? I'd figure after 20yrs, they'd be happy anyone has interested in such items! That reminds me.. I have a box of Star Wars POTF figures from 20yrs ago under my bed. Gladly sell that for $300! lol
 
I donated!

Has anybody ever isolated the WC Academy soundtrack, or is there a score available? It'd be kind of cool to rock out to that while at the gym.
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I'm not aware of one yet, although I just found out that one of my oldest Wing Commander fans happens to be friends with the show's composer... haven't had time to explore that yet, though!

SAaB ended about three months before Wing Commander Academy began, so their production likely overlapped quite a bit (especially with the very long lead time for animation back then.)

Things like this make me wonder things like... Who'd keep 30! boxes of stuff for 20yrs? Why $300 a box? What happens to the boxes you don't buy now? Can you come back w/ $300 every couple months? I'd figure after 20yrs, they'd be happy anyone has interested in such items! That reminds me.. I have a box of Star Wars POTF figures from 20yrs ago under my bed. Gladly sell that for $300! lol
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That's a good question! What happened was that Universal sold off the cels in bulk to animation dealers after the show was finished. No one was especially interested in WCA, so they went cheap and sat in a warehouse for years and years. Animation dealers buy up bulk lots of this stuff and then cull it down into individual cels that they can sell. (You never know what will be nostalgic twenty years later...) Since there's not a lot of interest in WCA cels, they agreed to sell them all to me cheap. (They sell unsorted boxes from particular shows in general for $500, so the $300 was a nice discount!)
 
Whistler said:
An RSI backer by the name of NotableJoe decided to help in his own way, making banners for the GoFundMe. He posted this on my help LOAF thread:

*link removed because of SPAM protection*
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Thanks for sharing here. I couldn't post links on these forums (too new).

I thought maybe those would help, until someone with actual artistic skills could put something together.
 
Wow. The campaign is now just $1,300 short of its target - very impressive! I'm certainly not wealthy enough to put down an insane $2,500 like that other guy did, but I suppose every little bit helps, so I just put down $10 as well. Funny thing, that. A few years ago, I'd probably have put down something like $50 or more. But when you decide to go back to university to do a PhD, and the main source of income is a scholarship - man, that takes you down a notch in the "random expenses I'm willing to make" department :).
 
Wow, just wow! You succeeded so fast I didn't have time to donate. That's a good thing I suppose. I guess I'll just have to spend it on Oldziey's volume 2. :D

Congratulations LOAF!

I have a sneaking suspicion that had you not had your newfound fame helping produce Star Citizen this campaign might not have been so easy to accomplish.

I'll bet you're dancing now. :cool:
 
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