Some of you may have noticed that there’s been a bit of radio silence for the last few weeks. There are a few reasons for that. Part of it is that there has been some vacationing going on, and another is something that we hope to tell you about soon. Still another part is that Episode 14 is the Godzilla of episodes. It is obese. All others bow before it. That hyperbole simply means that it is big.

I’d say we’ve got about a third of it left to film, but it’s the hard third (that’s what she said), so take that with a grain of salt. When we’re nearing about a week from release, we’ll let you know. It’s not that time yet, good sirs.

Maybe these screenshots will tide you over, but probably not.

Feel free to speculate. Thanks for sticking around to see this thing through with us, dudes. You’re kind of awesome in that way.

That should be tomorrow, by the way. I can’t promise a particular time, it could be morning, it could be later on. But it won’t be today, so lay off the F5 juice.

The final running time is somewhere around 18 minutes, and it’s an action packed mofo on top of all of that. We will spend most of the evening and into the morning hours toiling away, and then Nick leaves me to fly to California for a (much-needed) vacation.

Happy waiting. If you haven’t yet, check out our Announcements about what’s going to be coming after the season is over. Cool stuff.

EDIT: Good lord, dudes, chill. Yesterday I said it would be out at “some point” TODAY. It could be out tonight for all we know. Don’t expect it until much later in the day (it’s early morning right now). And if you don’t what time of day that is for you, google it.

Downloadable versions are on their way in the morning. If you missed Part One, you can view it here.

Enjoy!

By the way, be careful when reading comments- there are bound to be some spoilers in there.

Last Friday, in the span of just 24 hours, Daniel, our Director, after effects dude and quality control guy, left his job in order to start freelancing in the film world. Little did he know that by the end of that day, he would have a one-month stint offered to him out in the land of California. A job which began this past Monday.

Daniel had just one day to make this decision, and took the plunge and the job, leaving Nick and I to scale Mount Doom (and finish the season) on our own. Luckily, it’s just a temporary 30 day job, but it happened at our busiest point of the season.

As a result, the two of us have been scrambling around all three parts of the Finale this week, finishing Part One on Monday night, filming for Part Three on Tuesday, editing and faceposing for Part Two last night and the night before. The immediate effect of Daniel’s notable absence was that we were not able to get a new shiny intro in front of the Season Finale for you guys, which Daniel was pretty disappointed about, because he’s been planning it for awhile now.

Needless to say, we’re totally supportive of Daniel’s decision to take this short term job. Let’s get real- man’s gotta live, and this show doesn’t pay the bills. When left with the choice of starving or The Leet World, Daniel made the smart move, trusting that with parts One and Two already filmed, we could complete the task. In 30 days, he’ll be back and helping us with our next projects. I’ve got to say I’m a little bummed he won’t be here to celebrate with us when the season’s over, but I know we’ll live it up when he’s back in town.

I’ll stress again that this is only a one month job, and Daniel should be back in July.

In addition to this news, I bring some screenshots from Parts Two and Three of the Finale. Enjoy!

NICK EDIT:

  (Direct Link)

This is a proud moment for Smooth Few Films, as not that many machinimakers have completed a lengthy season of a series like this. Once again, thanks for hanging in there and being so supportive. Part One gets the ball rolling for what will hopefully be an exciting conclusion to the first season.

Downloadable versions will be available later. Click here to Digg this episode.

Enjoy! Also, I’m sick. Soups, plz?

EDIT: Comments were borked for a few hours, but they’re back now.

Part One will be arriving sometime in the next few days. Just like assaulting some kind of notorious floating Star de Death, an episode is a multi-pronged attack where several factors have to be aligned just right in order for us to release it. We’ll let you know once we’ve hit that “eve of release” window.

And now, to complete the cast of main characters, we are bringing you the bio of one Cortez Emilio Alejandro Jesus Cardinal. Don’t assume you know everything about our favorite blind avenger…

Name: Cortez Emilio Alejandro Jesus Cardinal
Age: 36
Team: Terrorists
Role: Leader and General Badass

While Benito Cardinal had acquired much in his life — fame, power, wealth and respect — his crowning achievement was the birth of his two sons. Cortez (the older child) and Mendoza (the youngest) were raised to be just like Benito, the esteemed politician and diplomat within the capital city of an unnamed Central American government. They attended various political functions, dining events and even rallies where their father made appearances, appealing on behalf of the people.

When their father was away on his political duties, they received their education in a small village where they lived with their mother. Like much of the rest of Central America at the time, the city was often in political turmoil, under attack from various rebels and guerrilla warriors. As a result, Cortez’s father Benito deemed it much too unsafe for growing young boys.

During their escapades, Cortez and Mendoza grew a close bond with one another. They mixed well with the other local boys, despite the “opulence” that others assumed they grew up with. Cortez also discovered that he was kind of a badass. It didn’t matter what situation he was in, his badass-ness always seemed to show. Cortez tended to rise to the top of any social gathering, up-ending bullies in the neighborhood and solidifying positions of power. Mendoza always followed along, letting Cortez do the talking and the punching. They even learned to fire guns. They always said Cortez could hit any target with his eyes closed.

And then things changed. A sizeable corporation, Lobo Grande, moved into the neighboring territory, digging in the mountains and taking down the trees of the lush Central American landscape. Along with Lobo Grande came a sizeable mercenary force and untold amounts of dollars into the local economy- which ends with intimidation and consequently corruption in the lives of local politicians. In exchange for the co-operation of the local government, the mercenaries don’t cause too much trouble and the politicians get richer.

To his credit, Cortez’s father Benito was one of the last to hold his ground to the demands of Lobo Grande, who wanted zones restructured, impunity and the ability to hire workers at a rate below the country’s average pay, and in some cases, no pay at all. Benito finally caved when the mercenaries came to him during the night and threatened his family.

Afterwards, the man was a wreck. Devastated by the loss of his political reputation, he turned to heavy drinking and carousing with women, spending his untimely wealth gained from the deal with Lobo Grande on anything and everything to wash away the guilt. With the mercernaries running rampant in the city and local villages, Benito’s wife Armandina decided to send her youngest son away for his safety. Thus, Mendoza went south to live with her family.

When Cortez was a teenager, he had a run-in with a band of Lobo Grande’s mercenaries. They were pulling one of his schoolyard friends away from his home, beating him and laughing. Cortez intervened, and one of the soldiers told him to go away, recognizing him as Benito’s son and taunting his lineage. Enraged, Cortez promptly beat the man within an inch of his life in front of his compatriots, removed his sidearm, and then shot the others. He left one alive to run and tell Lobo Grande to leave the people alone and that “el lobo malo” was on his way.

Rousing the men of the town, Cortez lead an assault on the Lobo Grande compound that evening. Many died, but by sunrise, Cortez watched in silence as Lobo Grande burned to the ground, its slaves and workers freed from oppression. While many locals were pleased by the outcome of Lobo Grande’s removal, it was too little too late. Corruption had already taken the government, and it soon collapsed.

Two days later, Cortez left home for good, fearing that the owner of Lobo Grande’s revenge would be swift and terrible, and he did not want his family receiving that on his behalf. After all, they said that the man who ran Lobo Grande was very powerful indeed, and obsessive with those who crossed him.

Cortez trekked south to find Mendoza, who had stopped writing to the family many months before. Eventually, they met back up, but Mendoza had changed. Something was… not quite right.

One day, Cortez was walking Mendoza home from school when the neighborhood boys started chanting his name, again and again. Mendoza told Cortez to just leave it alone, that they always did this while they beat him up. The oldest brother grew angry at this injustice and taught the boys their lesson, kicking the ass of the one he found most annoying. However, Mendoza surprised him when he pushed him out of the way, and then beat the boy to death, shouting that he would never say his name again.

The brothers Cardinal left that night, wanted for murder. After hitch-hiking and surviving on their own for nearly a year, they hooked up with a group of guerrillas deep in the jungles of the south. Cortez impressed them with his knowledge of the baddass ways, and the two were allowed in the group. Within a few months, Cortez was their leader, with Mendoza bitterly playing second fiddle. Eventually, Cortez changed their directives from a disorganized group of violent mercernaries to a team with a purpose.

Down to just 8 members, Cortez called the group the “Ocho Muertos”, and they devoted themselves to up-ending corporations that preyed on local towns, villages and the like. Their tales are great and too numerous to list here. Needless to say, Cortez slaughtered many, including one legend where he escaped from a military compound with just a sharpened razor blade and a body count well in the fifties.

However, all that changed when Mendoza finally acted on his jealousy. The jealousy that grew from his exile from the Cardinal house at a young age, to Cortez always impressing their peers. He had grown tired of it, and knew that deep down he had what it took to lead the Muertos. He was tired of fighting for a cause — he wanted the fame and the money. He challenged Cortez in front of the team one day and got his ass handed to him on a platter.

On their next mission, Mendoza paid one of the Muertos a large sum of money to plant a bomb early at their destination. When Cortez arrived, Mendoza promptly locked him within the room, and listened as Cortez shouted his name while the explosion sounded.

Cortez woke to the startling discovery that he could no longer see. Stumbling his way blindly for several miles away from the explosion, he was picked up by nearby villagers who knew of his legend and nursed him back to health.

Once he was recovered, Cortez was crushed, reliving his father’s footsteps and depressed that his life was in shambles. He had been such a great warrior, only to have it stripped away from him by his own brother. Fortunately for the young terrorist, fate would not leave him alone for long. One day, while Cortez was moping to himself, a local blind villager who was a war veteran spoke softly to the young man about his handicap. The elder man was in his sixties, yet still seemed tuned to his battle senses. Feeling that this old man had something to teach him, Cortez studied underneath him, learning to re-do all the things he used to do when he took eyesight for granted.

Cortez eventually extended this into combat, and trained for months on end to regain his sense of battle, aim and timing, sometimes fighting the locals three-to-one for practice. He relearned how to fight, but only using his ears and his nose, rather than his sight. Eventually, Cortez was able to leave the village under his own power, and began a long and strenuous search for Mendoza and the Muertos.

His search eventually brought him to America, but he hit a dead end on their trail of destruction. After months with no progress, Cortez was ready to call off his search. However, one day, he heard a commercial on TV for The Leet World, a show that might give him back his sense of honor. His sense of self respect. And maybe, an avenue for his revenge…

Stay until the end, and you’ll even get a sneak peek not only of what is to come in the Season Finale, but also a window into the release.

Enjoy.

I’m currently busy with putting the finishing touches on the script for part three of the finale, while Daniel cuts the trailer and Nick is both getting part one ready for Jace’s skillful composing and starting the rough edit of part two.

Trailer’s coming terribly soon. More screenies below.

Drink up, me ‘earties, yo ho.

I’ve just finished the detailed outline of part three of the Season Finale and now I’m moving into the writing stage. Shouldn’t be too much of a task, since every other line on the pages say “they shoot at each other”, “they have a bad-ass gun battle” or something of that ilk. I imagine it’s much like the script of Episode III of Star Wars. Only with heart.

As promised, this week we bring you the next installment of our beloved character bios. Today, we focus on none other than the lovable Westheimer.

Name: Westheimer
Age: 50
Team: Counter-Terrorists
Position: Team Leader and Life Coach

Westheimer’s first taste of the warming embrace of law enforcement wasn’t from the same side that we know him from today. With the typical identity crisis you would normally associate with a pre-teen American-born boy with a whore of a mother growing up on the streets of Italy, Westheimer wandered the neighborhoods in search of a release for his pent-up aggression towards the rest of the world. He was emo before there was emo. How did he get there?

Born to a woman with loose morals and little sense, Westheimer was moved around a lot as a young boy. His father abandoning them when he was just a toddler, he learned how to take care of himself, and often took his anger out on other boys at school. Bounced out of day cares and pre-schools alike, his mother was left with few options as she lost job after job. One day, she received a call from a distant relative informing her that the aunt that had raised her was dying. Westheimer’s mother spent the last of her savings to move them and their minimal belongings to Europe by boat.

By the time he was in his pre-teen years, Westheimer was pretty much a delinquent. A vagabond. A vagrant. And whatever other word you want to use to describe a snot-nosed punk. On one particular fateful day, Westheimer had his first brush with the law.

Feeling the pangs of hunger after his mother had failed yet again to put food on the table despite the open-door policy on her bedroom, Westheimer nervously approached the market vendors on the streets of Italy. Reaching out his small sweaty palms, he started to grab pieces of fruit, vegetables, bread, whatever he could take. Suddenly, a strong hand clasped his shoulder from behind and turned him around to come face-to-face with a middle-aged police officer by the name of Adamo Russo. The man who changed Westheimer’s life.

Sergeant Russo immediately took Westheimer under his wing, acting as kind of a surrogate father to him. Russo taught the boy everything he needed to know about being a young man, from shaving to shotgunning beer to re-assembling an assault rifle in under five seconds. It was from the strapping Sergeant that Westheimer gathered his sense of honor, duty and leadership. The most memorable conversation of his life came when he and Russo smoked cigars together on the officer’s balcony. “Westheimer,” Russo grunted. “The most important thing a man can do in his life- is leave his impression on the life of another. Never forget that”. Westheimer never did.

Westheimer was transformed from a juvenile statistic into an active part of his community. He volunteered at orphanages, soup kitchens and the like. He was also extremely involved in his English-speaking school, becoming the classic over-achiever. Or as some would call it, a poindexter. By the time he was finishing high school, Westheimer was the captain of several extra-curricular teams, including the school tug-of-war team as well as the glee club. He was a mean tenor.

Through it all, Westheimer desired to become a member of the law enforcement brigade, to follow in Russo’s footsteps. During a summer internship, Westheimer was witness to a tragic event that would alter the course of his life forever. On a routine patrol with Russo as his guide, Westheimer pulled over a couple of suspicious looking characters. Unfortunately for him, they were small-time terrorists smuggling weapons over the border. Russo was shot and killed in the ensuing altercation, leaving Westheimer fatherless yet again. It was in the months after that Westheimer dedicated his life to counter-terrorism.

Naturally, the determined young man flew through the ranks of counter-terrorism training once he was back in America. With a discipline that few of his commanding officers had witnessed, Westheimer was dedicated to ruthlessly beating out his classmates in every pursuit, whether in the classroom, obstacle course or shooting range. Not surprisingly, Westheimer finished with top honors and soon began an illustrious and decorated career as a counter-terrorist.

Westheimer was married to his job on the force. He spent all of his energy day and night hunting down criminals and pursuing terrorism wherever it was hiding. However, he still felt empty inside. Having no wife to speak of or family to be in contact with, Westheimer began to feel a yearning. He remembered the lesson that Russo taught him about leaving an impression on the life of another person. Thus, Westheimer requested a rookie partner, someone that he could teach and mold into a great sidekick and teammate.

Jake Hudson was Westheimer’s first and only rookie trainee. After eight months on the job, Jake fell into a hacks addiction in order to improve his aiming skills, feeling they never matched up to Westheimer’s strict standards. Eventually, Jake was kicked out of the force and Westheimer was relieved of his post as instructor. Feeling embarrassed and ashamed, he contemplated retirement.

What could he do to prove that he hadn’t wasted his life or his efforts? What could he do to make the people proud that sacrificed great things for him to get where he had gotten to? As he pondered all of these questions, Westheimer stumbled across a poster that was a shining beacon of hope. It was an advertisement for The Leet World. Yes. He could prove that he was a good leader. He could prove that he was a good man after all.

A bio is on the way this week as well as some other goodies in the near future. More screenshots from the Season Finale below. And if you haven’t listened to the outtakes from Episode Thirteen yet, go do that.

More information is coming on the Season Finale soon, including release schedules, etc. I’d tell you more, but many Bothan spies have already died for that info.