Don't worry, I'm not dead - I am in fact coming to the end of my final year at university (I've got just under 2 weeks to go now) so I'll have plenty of time to get on with Steve 3 very soon. While I've been doing my dissertation (which is thankfully finished now) and revising, I have actually been able to get some more done, so production on the episode isn't at a complete stand-still. Still, there's quite a bit left to do, so I'm just gonna keep going at it until it's finished.

As a reminder, keep in mind the finished cartoon will represent roughly 3-5 months worth of work, rather than roughly 21 months which is how long it's been since Steve 2 came out. I'm certainly extremely pleased with how the cartoon looks and it is undeniably miles in advance of the first two, but I'm sure I could have made something even better if I had two years of completely commitment-free time to do so; unfortunately this never happens in that crazy thing called real life.

Anyway, thanks for all your continued support, I'm just unbelievably grateful that the last episode came out in August 2006 and yet many of you are still e-mailing me about the series and asking me about the third episode. You're awesome! Also, here's a picture of Jimmy's cubicle:

Mr Gunkiller recently asked me about the plot of Steve 3, and since I love it when people show interest in the series I thought I'd let you know what to expect.

In a nutshell, the boss (who we find out is called Sullivan) hasn't turned up at the office and Jimmy reminds Steve that he's very rarely late for work. After some minor detective work, the pair find out that Sullivan has got into trouble with a bunch of Colombian drug dealers and so it's up to Steve to catch the next flight to Colombia, find out where the boss has been taken, shoot some bad guys and BRING SULLIVAN HOME!

I was basically a little worried that the series' obvious format (there's a crisis, Steve shoots some guys, the end) would get stale very quickly if I kept things in the office, so I decided to take the idea a bit further and run with it. I've always said it's important to keep a series progressive, not just in terms of animation but also in terms of plot, so it's nice that I've done something a bit different for this episode. Future episodes will also have new twists and turns and all that bobbins, plus I'll be introducing the often-requested RECURRING VILLAIN in Steve 4.

As a final note, keep in mind that the series is and always will be about action and laughs, so don't expect any serious drama or water-tight plots. A lot of the series' charm (for me anyway) comes from the ridiculous pace and the fact not everything needs to explained - sure, I could have gone into more detail about where the Nazis came from in Steve 2 or why exactly zombies appear in the first episode, but I figure people enjoy watching Steve fighting these guys and 'cracking wise' rather than listening to him ask a bunch of boring, unnecessary questions. With that said, certain elements like the recurring villain and Steve's past with the company will be fleshed-out and have their own backstory, but this will all be in the name of fun and 'megalulz'.

So there you go!

Just a quick update to let you know that Steve 3 is coming along nicely, I'm hoping to have all the scenes with dialogue done by the end of next week. Although I'll still have the action scenes and some of the extras left to do, it's nice that I can actually see an end in site for the cartoon - for the majority of the year I've just had so much left to do and have kept putting it off.

HAVE A NEW PICTURE!

It's exceptionally late (or early, depending on how you look at it) so I'll keep this brief - for those of you who have been following my site, you might be interested to know that a) I'm back online now and can update again and b) Mr Ahmed 3 is finished and ready for viewing - check it out here.

Good news, Steve fans - I've managed to do a fair amount of animating over the last few days and it looks like I won't be slowing down for a while yet. I can't claim that the speed I'm actually working at is particularly fast (it isn't) but given I spent the previous couple of months worrying about Steve 3 and yet failing to so much as open Flash, this is a huge improvement. As it stands I've still got an awful lot of animating left to do (and I still need voice-actors!) but it suddenly feels like the fire of animating enthusiasm has been stoked, or something.

More information and images over at Questionable Films.

I've had a few e-mails asking how The Everyday Adventures of Steve 3 is going, and the answer is 'slowly'. I am unfortunately very busy with work right now, so Steve 3 won't be done for quite some time. If you want to see any of my other animations/movies, you can check them out at my site (questionablefilms.com).