Category Archives: Writing

27/01/2012

Redstone Magic, animatic

By Seamus

While browsing videos on youtube recently, one of the youtubers I was watching at the time made a request if someone with vfx know-how could make a quick intro piece for them. So I figured while I’m still on the look out for paid work, why not take a break from ToT related material and give it a go!

Suffice to say, despite some rage moments with getting the camera inside After Effects to function on tight bends and angles like I wanted to, within 2.5D space, it turned out pretty alright. But I still look forward to when I can replace my current machine for one that works so I can get back to doing some real 3d! I might even redo this within Lightwave! It’d certainly be a lot smoother. Though I’d have to work out another method for transitioning the red stuff (known as Redstone dust in Minecraft) to fade on so it looks like there’s power flowing through it. So in that way, After Effects has a good advantage!

But enough of my rambling on, here’s the video. ^_^

Complete with some nice SFX obtained through Freesound.org , still the best source for SFX under a creative commons licence I’ve seen.

If you’re in to Minecraft, and perhaps want to learn some interesting circuit systems, feel free to dro by Redstone Magic’s youtube and show your support with a thumbs up if you like it. The owners also starting to do some Lets Play videos too.

Finally, I am making sure I keep to my word! The next chapter of UNTITLED is up, and the next shall follow next week! If I forget, you all have permission to spam this post telling me to hurry up! And I shall give you all a totally legitimate excuse about how I forgot because I was busy battling cyber-ninja-pirates in a galaxy far, far away… and then post the next chapter up immediately.

Until next time.
~Shea

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23/01/2012

Getting back to writing

By Seamus

After lazily disregarding my promise to post a new chapter or section of a novel each week since I started doing so, months later I’m making sure I’m getting back to the habit. Next week I’ll be trying to put up a chapter each Friday night, which will hopefully stir me back into writing as its been so long since I wrote anything outside of the story-boards for Tales of Thyilos.

I’ll have to re-read back on everything I’ve written thus far to make sure I’m up to scratch with what my narrative direction was, which is a good excuse to re-draft earlier pages.
The Chapters I’ve put up are Chapters 10 through to 14.
Though I am posting u UNTITLED at the moment, I am going to re-read all of Samurai 2020 and re-write that lost chapter so that it can finally be put to its rest. Or at least, put the draft version to rest.

Comments/opinions on my work is a muchly appreciated thing from the constant barrage of spam. 🙂

Lastly before I go, it seems the Beta Demo for ToT will be released on the 30th. Mainly so I can exploit the last moments of time to make sure that we really have done what we can before the public release.

Till next time! ^_^
~Shea

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28/11/2011

Novel update

By Seamus

It’s been a long while since I updated any of the books, mostly due to forgetting due to a busy work schedule at TAFE.

But I’ve gone about and made sure to post up more chapters of Untitled. Chapter 6 to 9 are now available for reading, and I’ll be trying to get back into my routine up putting up the next chapter each week on Friday night.

Also, some new vids and artwork coming soon.

~Shea

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05/10/2011

Short holidays projects!

By Seamus

Stuff to eventually go up for display. Hopefully, a painting, maybe two of them. I’ve never been able to gauge well when I’ll finish a painting because they’re always things I just start on and eventually finish when I get around to it.

But, what I do know will hopefully be done within the coming week, is an old project that never quite got finalised and was put on the shelf for half a year. A re-visit of an old-city scape sequence I did last year (but never uploaded because there were many things I wished to improve on it), and there’s a few random selections I’ll be fiddling through in order to create a show reel for the end of the year.
With luck, the re-visits my teacher requires us to all look into, will hopefully be taken out of the way quickly. Then it’s smooth sailing on getting the end of the year production done, which at the moment, means getting a bunch of filming down, most of it just green screen. On the upside, almost one 3d environment, and I’m set for the entire movie. On the downside, have to re-shoot one of the scenes, and a matte painting.

Alright, so the point of highlighting all this is mainly to point out that updates will be more irregular (due to a busy schedule), but despite this, you can be glad to know that both Tales of Thyilos will be released on time mid-December, and a bunch of new videos will hopefully be uploaded, along with some new artwork.

Eight weeks left till my Advanced Diploma is done, then out there into the thick of it.
Anxious, but looking forward to it!

~Shea

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28/08/2011

Untitled

By Seamus

Yep, I may have forgotten by 2 days, but I put it up. That most recent of narratives which most likely needs more editing still than I could imagine. But since Samurai 2020 is lost still and I’m trying to track it down, I gotta do something. ANd my paintings are way off still.

So Untitled, for which I explain on the page there why it’s still got that as it’s title, is going up. Hopefully I’ll find Samurai 2020, post that, then I can work on Untitled and keep up to date on it before I have to post each chapter ^_^;

~Shea

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14/08/2011

I thought I’d make a note on this

By Seamus

For those of you who were following it each week, you may have also noted me saying that I can’t find the last chapter for Samurai 2020. I’ve rummaged everywhere, including through our oldest computers HD, and can’t locate it. Which means some time during the process of finishing it, then getting my laptop and moving over here, the copy of the novel that was on my External HDD, was not the updated version, and the completed version was left on the main computer. But that copy isn’t up to date either?

But since that comp’ has had many issues in the past, the old files have been lost, and re-backed up by my HDD and the files on it. That might be why the folder in there is no longer the complete.

But after finishing my novels, I tend to send them to some friends who offer to read my novels even though they are in their shoddy first draft stage, and right now I’m hoping that one of them still has the copy of the original, so for the sake of not having to go by my memory of the basics of what occurred in that last chapter, re-reading the book so far several times to get a full grasp of what I really wanted to happen, and then trying my best to mimic and pull things together again, I really, really hope she still has the original complete copy.

Samurai 2020 just wont be the same re-written without it.

Word of caution for people: Having 4 backups isn’t enough. Save and update them all when writing books and working on long projects. Seriously, I know a lot of people who don’t, and hitting Ctrl+S (cmd+s) every minute may seem annoying, especially when the file takes longer than a few seconds to save, but it pays off in the end every time.
Never, under any circumstance, rely on your digital hard copies. Rely on your own organisation and common sense.

~Shea

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07/08/2011

Am I missing something?

By Seamus

This week seems like I’ve done nothing but wake up, head to TAFE, work in front of a computer all day with barely any break, then head home, take care of chores and return right to sitting in front my laptop to work. Sleep, rinse, repeat.

It could be madness setting in from getting 3-4 hours of sleep each night and then being coffee deprive… But I really do love my line of work.

oh, and I also forgot about Friday’s novel post.
https://studiowisp.com/content/novels/samurai-2020/s8-p3/
Sorry about that. >_<

Now, back to work I go!

~Shea

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18/06/2011

Tonight’s update (or today, if you’re on the other side of the world)

By Seamus

There’s actually less for me to put here than I’d have hoped. IN fact, I’m posting due to a conscious effort!

Actually, there is one thing, though it’s not exactly important, the novel I’ve been posting up, Samurai 2020, apparently has no finale. Either I did finish writing it and somehow miss placed the chapter, or I got to the end and decided that I’d take a break to get other things done, and just forgot.
I’m thinking that was the case, more or less. What it means though is some time before I upload the final section before the closing chapter, I need to read my own work to get into it, and then find inspiration to help me finish writing it. So there’s something to do during my absurdly long mid-year break.

Which leads me to note that though there was a mass production stall in the tutorials I’ve been mentioning in the odd post, there the first one should be uploaded some time next week, and then each one to follow within a 5-7 day gap. The gap’s more to do with barely managing to get one of the files from 24.7Gig to 3gig, without compromising on quality. There is a 408mb version, but it’d defeat the purpose of doing the tutorials in a 1280×720 video size.
So look forward to finally getting those released! All goes well, more will come.

Sooo aside from finding other work to keep occupied, and looking for additional team-members to help with that RPG project, there is absolutely nothing else worth posting.

Yep…

all pretty dull…

So you can stop reading now.

…

~Shea

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16/04/2011

Changing novel heirachy

By Seamus

To free some space, after each Section of Samurai 2020 comes to a close, I will merge the pages together. When the novel is finished, I’ll then clean that into one page as done with Experiment.

This is just to make space. No other reason. When I upload future novels I’ll do a similar thing. Depending on how I’ve constructed out the book, it’ll be each part to a chapter on it’s own page before being merged to make room for the next chapter set. And if it’s a straight chapter, then I’ll post up all the chapters on their own page until it gets crowded (so probably 4-5 of them) before I merge them together.

And that’s all the news for today! Unless you want to know how I managed to ruin cooking chocolate. But that’s not something you readers reeeaaallly want to read now… is it? o.O

~Shea

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28/03/2011

I do apologise

By Seamus

I seem to have made an error with setting up the next chapter in Samurai 2020 to publish automatically. Or perhaps something went wrong during some recent WordPress maintenance? Regardless of which, I’ve rectified this and the next chapter is up and ready.

Section 2 – Part 1

Will keep a closer on eye on this from now on to prevent such a recurrence.

~Shea

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