About
Our Mission | The Staff | The History | The Business
Our Mission
This website started out as one of the many sites about Dragon Ball in the 1999 and early 2000. It was there to be informative, to share media, and to develop its own Dragon Ball community. As we all know Dragon Ball is over and is coming to its end in America. The Subbies lost the war against FUNimation and the Dubbies are moving on... However, this isn't the end of the Grand Tour, we will continue to bring fans the joy of Dragon Ball and prove that everyone can still enjoy it regardless of their age and gender.
The Staff
The site started out as a solo production by Son-kun. Now, there are three team members: Son-kun, Cannibalistic Orange, and Cloud Forever! While Son-kun takes care of the website design, coding, and multimedia, CO and CF take on gathering information and compiling it along with advertising and web testing. Otherwise the Grand Tour receives help from its friends.
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Name: Son-kun
Hobbies: Working on my site, watching anime, reading manga, playing the viola and piano, drawing, writing, playing video games, and watching TV. Favorite Characters: Gokuu, Gohan, Goten, and Vegeta. Anime/Manga I've Seen: DB/Z/GT, Dr. Slump, Sand Land, Kajika, Neko Majin Z, Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, Gundam Wing, G-Gundam, Ronin Warriors, Oh My Goddess, Saiyuki, Inu Yasha, Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin, Nedesico, Lain, Lupin III, Detective Conan, Transformers, Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Peice, Naruto, Ghost in a Shell, Blue Submarine No. 6, Outlaw Star, Big-O, Full Metal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, Card Capture Sakura, Chobits, Tenchi Muyo, Evangelion, Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Metropolis, Eerie Queerie, Peacemaker, Grave of the Fireflies, Tonari no Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Racoon Wars, Spirited Away, and a whole bunch of others I can't remember. |
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Name: Cannibalistic Orange
Hobbies: I love to write and read, anything involving letters (not numbers, screw numbers). I enjoy singing a lot too and being outside. Favorite Characters: DBZ: Vegeta, Gokuu, Gohan (I'm predictable); Cowboy Bebop: Ed; Saiyuki: Hakkai; Tokyo Godfathers: Hana. Anime/Manga I've Seen: Dragon Ball, DBZ (which, quite honestly, I think would have been better if it had have gone Toriyama's way after the Cell Saga), Cowboy Bebop, Tokyo Godfathers. Um I like Saiyuki and Kenshin, again the movies the most. And a bunch of the same movies as my tomodachi up there, Grave of the Fireflies. Totoro, etc... |
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Name: Cloud Forever
Hobbies: DBZ, Anime, Manga, Videogames, Friends, etc. Favorite Characters: Trunks, Vegeta, Gokuu, and Cell. |
The History
The Grand Tour was originally released in 1999 on www.angelfire.com/anime/dragonball2. For some odd reason I decided to do a GT theme, and I don't even really like GT all that much. My inspiration came from the old days of anime websites (I was in the fifth grade at the time) such as Planet Namek, the Temple O' Trunks, VegettoEX's Homepage (now known as DaizenshuuEX), and as well as some other good sites. I wanted to bring the joy of Dragon Ball to fans like they did. I wanted to give users like myself DBZ fulfilled entertainment, accurate information, as well as some media.
However I was far behind any of those webmasters. I started the Grand Tour when I was in the seventh grade with a small knowledge of HTML, no scanner, no video capture card, and hardly any sense of organization. So I did what I could. In 2000 I acquired a horrible scanner, but it did the job (...well kind of). In 2003, I convinced my mom to purchase an ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 Radeon Video Capture Card. Over time the Grand Tour slowly gained it's resources that it has today.
The first layout was horrid! It was a combination of randomly slapped together pages relating all back to a GT skit I created. There were several skits which I took the main persona of 2000Pan-Chan, otherwise just Pan, as well as a minor persona of Trunks, Goten, and Gokuu. At the time I never disclosed who I really was. The skits were usually based on a kind of sibling rivalry and slapstick-ish comedy.
For my beginning years (1999-2000) I did quite well. However in 2001, my hosting server Homestead decided to change their service into pay only. At this time I ran back to Angelfire under /anime3/grandtour0. I worked on my site and created the DBZ News, Articles, "Ask Me Anything", Images, manga, fanfiction, FUNimation Quotes, and Odd E-mails pages. At this time I thought I had come to the point to where I could add media to my site. One problem was, I didn't have the space. In 2003 I went from server to server, there were so many I can't remember them all.
After server, after server, in late 2003 I transferred to a mainly German hosting service. But as luck would have it, shortly after this transfer my personal life ran into an obstacle. My dad was transferred to Louisiana, because his job, Kaizer Aluminum, was slowly shutting down its locations, which happened to be the one my dad was working at. In my last months I struggled to create a plan to stay with my best friend's family to finish school at the same high school. And it was a success! As of September 2003 to June 2005, I stayed with them. Unfortunately my website suffered severely. I didn't have enough time to up-date nor enough resources to do a decent job.
Due to my lack of internet access, I wasn't aware that my website's server had collapsed. In 2004, I tried to create a new layout and a new server. This again didn't do too well. Now I'm back with all my resources and a decent server. However, I have lost all my traffic and am starting all over again.
The Business
In the beginning Grand Tour Productions (GTP) was just a fun little I made up to put on my files, so prevent people from stealing them (mostly on my music videos). I kept it around because it was kind of cute.
In 2003 it became the start of a potential real company. Unfortunately my best friend's (Cannibalistic Orange) grandmother died shortly after I arrived into their family to live with them for two years. In preparation for funeral, CO's mom came up to me and asked for me to make a slideshow. She asked me to use my video camera to zoom in some pictures and use the fade effect to transition from each photo, then not use any audio. Which I replied to, "Sure, but I have a better idea."
This became GTP's first big project. I told CO's mom that I would use my computer instead of my camera to retain the quality of the pictures. She trusted me and lent me the photos. I scanned the pictures, cropped them, and added them to my video editing software, while adding the song they were going to sing during the funeral (although adding the actual song to the video was only indented for viewing after the funeral). It turned out wonderful, which gave me a nook into the business. Although I did this just because they're family.
Grand Tour Productions does slide shows, videos, photo restoration, special photo cropping, photo printing, photo printing from negatives and slides, fabric printing, transferring VHS to DVD and vice versa, CD burning, transfer Vinyl (LP and 45) audio to CD, DVD burning, web design, and internet access (I charged people 50 cents to use my internet). GTP also got into a little business with working for Papa John's. I would update their coupons and paint their windows for events and holidays (non-computer related).
There really isn't any future plans for Grand Tour Productions so far. I have moved out of state and lost my Washington customers. So it just depends...
*Grand Tour Productions derives from the title of the website "Grand Tour" and has no intention of violating or infringing on copy write laws to "Dragon Ball". Grand Tour Productions has no relation to "Dragon Ball" other than a fan website.