CHARLEY CAT QUICKIE 4
                            © 1997 Anthony Whitaker
29th June 1997

    Hello, again, everyone!  Still got your Amigas?  Good!  'Cos I've got
here another cartoon starring Charley Cat, my star creation (and good
friend, I suppose) and overall dude of British cats.  Yes, this fourth
Quickie (which I never thought I'd do in light of recent Amiga problems)
is here, and with it comes a new character - but more of that in a moment.
    The basic story is that Charley's preparing a romantic meal so that he
and his beautiful fiancée Alyson can dine together.  Trouble is, he's got
no fish left, so he must somehow get hold of a suitable one.  And he's got
a new enemy to get around in order to do it - a greyhound guard-dog named
Scooter!
    Part of the reason I chose a new character over an already-established
foe like Mutch was decided by the fact that Scooter is guarding the place
where Charley is trying to get his fish from, and thus deserved to be
someone who could more easily give Charley a run for his money (literally!)
whereas Mutch is more of a streetwise trouble-maker who would most likely
turn on anyone who tried to own him as he is totally ruthless (which if you
watch the outcome of the squabble between Scooter and Charley made him even
more unsuitable).
    As you will notice, I've retained the new-look Alyson from CAMERA-
RADERIE as she looks so much more feminine than she did previously.  Also,
Scooter is the first animated character I've done with counter-shading on
his tummy.
    If the truth be told, this has one of the most nightmarish scenes I've
ever had to do in a MovieSetter cartoon - there is a point where Charley
uses a fishing rod, and unfortunately MovieSetter's normal set (that's its
equivalent of the bits traditionally drawn on cels) size was too small for
many of the frames, so I had to do a lot of trimming and patching together
in the final production; so if you see any glitches in this sequence, it's
a compromise MovieSetter forced me to make (it's put me off animating any
more fishing rods in a hurry, though(!))

    Oh, dear!  I'm getting ahead of myself!  You'll need 2½Mb of RAM to run
this cartoon - and accelerated machines will also be a benefit to enhance
certain parts of the cartoon.  And if you have a hard drive (as most Amiga
users do) then I'd really recommend you set up some assigns and run it
from that rather than floppy if only to load it quicker!

WARNING: Although the cartoon itself is freely distributable (you may make
copies, provided that everything on the copy is in its original unchanged
state), the characters and other graphics themselves are copyright and may
not be used without my permission.

By the time you read this, Charley will have celebrated his fifth birthday
on May 13th.  Yes!  Charley has indeed reached his half-decade!  And
only a couple of months later way back in 1992, he starred in his first
animated cartoon, OUT IN PUBLIC!  Wow, it's hard to believe it's been that
long!  I've therefore enclosed a special IFF celebratory picture to
commemorate this occasion on disk 2 - I hope you like it.

If you have any questions concerning this or my other cartoons, do drop me
a line at: 1 Trent Crescent, Thatcham, Berkshire RG18 3DN.  Please take
extra notice of the postcode - the old RG13 code no longer represents my
postal area, so please don't use it any more.

Finally, congratulations to Gateway 2000 for making a sound decision to buy
Amiga Technologies!  Just PLEASE don't screw up - do PLEASE advertise, do
PLEASE develop the machine further while keeping its user-friendliness that
us Amigans are so used to (none of this selling-1992-specced-A1200s-for-
1992-prices-like-£399 that Escom foolishly did), and do PLEASE please us
in general with your propositions for our favourite computer.
    Oh, and PLEASE DON'T just kill the Amiga or you lot won't have many
friends left...

THANKS FOR READING - ENJOY THE CARTOON



Anthony Whitaker.