Tag Archives: update

A little link to a project

This is just a short little post to highlight a new project that was finally made public. Me and the others over at Lucid Flame decided it was time that a large collaborative project we’d been discussing and slowly working on over the last year had reached its time to take a spot in the limelight.

For now though, there is only going to be updates and features about the new game, Thief of Time, over on Lucid Flame, until it of course reaches a point where there’s enough information for it to be made public on RPG Dev Forums.

If you choose to follow the link here and take a look, I really appreciate it, and if you like what you see, then please feel free to leave us a like. It really does help motivate the team, especially the others I work with who sometimes feel like they can’t find the effort. ๐Ÿ™‚
(which lately, includes me! I’m getting out of my lazy streak, seriously!)


Trying to break my chains

Sticking to the title right there, I’m literally doing exactly what it says. I’m trying to break my habit right now of being lazy. Seems since my laptop broke down, I lost all work motivation and albeit, slipped into a bit of depression. So lately all I’ve been doing is aimlessly browsing the net, and trying to find actual work so I can get some money on my plate. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing, since finding a job is important; but my old hobbies were once my dream to be my job, and I can’t just forget about them.

Truthfully, I feel very guilty about my lack of work ethic, so over the last month I’ve been forcing myself to do a little bit at on something, but each time I do start I only get a little bit done and then get distracted by something else. But I’m going to change that right now! It’s time to go back to %100 focus. Normal sleeping hours, normal waking hours, and I think I’ll kick my caffeine addiction and drink more tea instead to limit myself. Then i can go back to posting updates here, rather than feeling like its pointless because there’s nothing to post an update about (which is kinda ironic since over on LucidFlame it’s me who was always telling the others they should post updates on their work regardless of how small it was, just so the readers know what’s going down. Talk about a taste of ones own medicine).

So, to conclude this, here is some stuff I DID manage to do in the last… I think it’s been two months now. >_<

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RunicGriphonCharm
RunicShield

Both these designs I’d created for a Role play narrative I’ve been taking a part in. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a person who loves writing would take part in an RP. I think they’re quite good ways to improve ones writing skills since you’ve gotta adapt on your feet to keep canon to the narrative and characters present, whilst others do the same, sometimes at the same time you are. Always fun to have to edit your last post due to another posting right you were. ๐Ÿ˜›

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Collage of Kingdom banners link~
This is a large one, so rather than clog up everything here, I’ll just link it back to my DeviantArt page.
The image is a collage of the kingdom banner designs I’d bee working on while my laptop was dead, which I recall in a prior post over a month ago, I said I’d upload… better late than never?
I haven’t done enough with the full vector version of these, however, to warrant uploading those just yet, but I will hopefully do so soon.

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That’s it from the work I do have to put up on display. Aside from these, Legonds from Thyilos has still been progressing, slowly. I’ve lacked motivation for doing actual work on it, so I’ve instead been doing other written pieces associated with its lore. One of the bigger pieces is a written journal by a rather important figure-head in the series, called Rein. I was thinking of doing a biography of him, but when I truly considered it, and the man Rein does become, a biography became impossible!
There is not a single sole alive throughout Thyilos or any other dimension who would ever be able to get close enough to actually interview Rein.

So instead, his background is narrated through him by way of a journal. It starts off when he is only ten, and goes on from there. I’ve got some ideas in my mind about twists and such that could be precursors to the man he becomes today, but I’m still a while off from there. It’s a bit of a challenge though to write this journal though. mainly because even though he’s from a wealthy family and has the proper education, he’s young. So I’m having to write as a young boy would, not as I would write today. it’s all a part of showing his growth.

Another key reason for doing a journal instead, which I thought was rather a good plan, is that if Rein were to still keep journals to the current date, then that would show his human side. Even though he is current meant to be a mad, near-inhuman monstrosity whose selfish ambition is to annihilate and control the world as the one dominate ruler. He is still a human, somewhere… really deep down… Maybe inside that black void of a soul he has? Who knows. But if it exists, and it might, even if just a teeeeeeny bit. It’d be noticeable in his journals. Which, unlike getting a biography. It’s possible to steal Rein’s things, provided someone were able to somehow get inside his dark castle and do so.

Before I depart once more, hopefully this time not for more than a week, I’d like to announce a new member to the LfT production team. A good friend of mine, David R, has agreed to being the games musician, and he’s already presented his first piece of work; a remix of the default theme I’d been using for the games title screen. I’ve high hopes for this partnership, and am elated to have the chance to see someone create music to fit the narrative.
Depending how things progress, me or he, my put up the audio examples for people to hear.

That’s all from me folks. Hope you’re having a good start to the week!

~Shea


Gained a year!

So I’ve gained another year, which I guess if I were a tree means I’d have another ring inside me, which should I be spliced in half would show my years. But I don’t really want to test similarity, instead I’ll stick to the bags under my eyes or wrinkles in my brow.

But this got me thinking that I started this site about a year ago. Technically, I’d been using “SilentWisp” as a business name for projects for years, but this site itself came to be sometime in February. But, its officially didn’t come until I changed the name to something that made more sense and registered my first web domain!

So if WordPress’s records are right, “StudioWisp” reaches 1 year old on the 17th this month! So I guess I should do something special for it, because if not for this site pestering me in the background scene to keep doing work, moderating the spam que, and leaving its pages as a reminder for why I started work as a graphic designer, I’d probably be sitting in a cubical taking calls from people who’ve forgotten which AV leads plugs into what (which admittedly, I sometimes confuse myself on too).

Now, I’m not sure how to thank the site for these things, but I have an idea. In some cases, mostly on Facebook and Google+, I’ve posted under “StudioEntity” or something similar along those lines. Soooo, what I’m thinking of doing is giving that ‘entitiy’ I keep posting as a face! Which means tracking down some old folders I had when working out concepts for the site and seeing if that can give me any ideas, but you can expect it’ll probably have something to do with Wisp’s, or maybe I’ll go for the classic one-eyed floating fluffy green critter like thing?

I’m also planning to vamp up the theme on the site.

On an unrelated note: Tales of Thyilos is once again on the lookie for people who’d like to get a first hand chance to play the game before the next Beta is release. The current version is still up, and this time I’m almost %100 sure it can be played through without crashing at some point… Never-the-less the next release may crash, but only because I’ve deleted most everything in the default database in order to build it from scratch. That’s kinda why I’m hoping to find people who’d like to help and make sure it’s playable.

People who want to be an official tester get crediting for their help in the game and may get a sprites version of themselves made and put into a secret room I’m making in the game, OH SPOILER!! ๐Ÿ˜‰ I’ll be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in posts that’ll hint how to find that secret.

If you’d like to help, you can comment on this post here, or send an e-mail to smeadth.studiowisp@gmail.com

Now, it’s time for me to go, for there is a far-too-large-for-most-humans-to-eat-by-themselves-pizza with my name on it, and if birthday rituals exist, then I’m sure gorging on it is mandatory!

Till next time, have a great day (or night) everyone!

~Shea

( ps: one more important caviar to mention, I set up a livestream account for Lucid Flame. Follow the link here to read more )


Redstone Magic, animatic

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 powerย flowingย 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


First Update of the new year

So it’s 2012 and there’s a fresh new year ahead to get right into the thick of it! With TAFE over and done it’s time to focus 100% on my design practices, which is exactly what I intend on doing, and this month should be a heavy one!

BETA Release of Tales of Thyilos is due this month along with my promised BETA Release of the Thyilosian Lore book, which is that complete narrative piece I mentioned in an earlier post last month and specified that I’d intended to make at least one hard-copy and auction it for charity!

Hopefully this month I will get my hands on anew computer. It’s been months since me and person I’m collaborating with did the tutorials. At first we paused new work to focus on study, then my laptops video card got fried, and though it still does work, 3d programs glitch-out and recording became impossible. But this’ll be solved when I obtain a new computer! Hopefully we’ll expand and release some tutorials for different applications as well.

With this luck holding, some older projects that needed clean ups will be finished, especially the Major Production I’d meant to complete! But we can’t always foresee a technological mishap, and without a 3d program working it can’t be finished, as about 80% of the entire project is 3d environments compiled with Live Action. But it’s something I plan on finally finalising sometime at the end of this month, and having up not too long into February.

I’ll leave off with the latest piece I’ve put up. This ones a part of a Product Photography assignment, where we had to design a scene and set up for a full on production shoot of our chosen product, which in my case was for coffee. I rather enjoyed this assignment, but it’s always easier to enjoy something when its with something you enjoy, or on a subject enjoy; in this case, for me, it was both of those!

And before I forget! I’ve added a new page with hotlinks right to any tutorials that are created with us. ๐Ÿ™‚

Till next time! ๐Ÿ˜€
~Shea


That busy time of the year

Much has been going on recently. Tales of Thyilos has been getting a bunch of new concept art popping up, along with some new features to make the game run more smoothly and more enjoyable. It’s going along just as I’d hoped, which means being able to stick to the deadline of releasing a demo sometime in January! ๐Ÿ˜€
ToT isn’t the only game popping up with new art though. The other members over at Lucid Flame are flipping the switch and are on the go. Seeds of Time has also reached the point of construction and the first screen shots are up. ๐Ÿ™‚

Along with the game projects, some more commissions are slipping in through the cracks. There’s a SFX Project going for a web-game client. In honesty, the SFX part is going well, but making jingles are proving to be out of my range (as I tried to explain early when I was recruited), but, it’s something I’ll have to somewhat manage for now! It’s probably the toughest challenge yet that I’ve undertaken design wise.

Speaking of which, there’s been an awkward delay in finishing and posting up the major production from this year. It hasn’t been forgotten, just nudged aside to allow for current work to be taken care of. I’d hope it too would go up some time in January. I guess only time can tell how successful it is!

Lastly, It seems I’ve fallen behind on posting narrative updates again. So here’s my pitch instead of apologising for terribly delays.
By February, I will publicly release a BETA version of the Thyilosian Lore book, which will for now, be an e-book (free unless you want to donate to the respective designers who did the art and concepts that’ll appear in it), but in time I hope there’ll be enough work compiled to release it as a complete E-Book (which will probably be free as well), and if possible, a Book book. Like physical pages and stuff! ๐Ÿ˜€
But if only one print can be released, we’ll probably auction it, signed and stuff, and then the money can go to a worthy charity. ๐Ÿ™‚

… yes I think that’d make up for my tardiness on novel updates. ๐Ÿ˜›

Alright, all that aside. Here’s a some quick links to weapon art I’d finished since the last time I posted some up. I’ve one more of these commissions to go, then I can try and move onto another commission! Hopefully done before Christmas like that SFX one ย :S

Hopes Stave

Kindness

Bloody Delight

Dragon Sabre

Pain Hammer

 

Bye-bye for now ^_^;;
And have a safe holidays! (or for that matter, be safe anyway. ๐Ÿ˜‰ )

~Shea


Novel update

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


Some complications

My computers bugging out, but it’s looking like it could be something that may be fixed by something as simple as a factory restore. Which I know people tend to look at and go “Oh, that’s not necessary, why are you doing that?”, but the truth is, I’ve been meaning to refresh my computer anyway, and with what it’s doing now, there’s no better time. I just hope it really does fix the problem, otherwise, it’s a hardware problem…

So all the work i was working on will be delayed since I’ll be prioritising what needs to be doe while I’m at TAFE. This will include having to push Tales of Thyilos’s Demo Release back as I’ll have to put full focus into said TAFE work.

But while I’m not at TAFE I can spend more time doing more conventional crafts like finishing my paintings.
I’m thinking of a new one which will be of a fire pace with a nice warm, roaring fire in it. Inside that fire, there shall be computers.
For an ironic take, I’m thinking of filming myself burning the painting of the computers burning in a fire. It may seem like a waste of time and effort, but I believe it’ll be quite therapeutic.

That’s all for now. Expect a very happy update if we can get a factory restore to work.

ps: my Cd/DVD Drive isn’t working either. This’ll be fun.

~Shea


Short holidays projects!

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