Tag Archives: vfx

Back in action!

After a not so much to plan 3 months, I’ve finally gotten a hold of a tasty new computer! It put up a bit of a struggle when there were some hiccups with getting it installed and configured right, but its now going at full power and ready to take on all the bits and pieces of work I’ve had on hold for way too long!

That said, I’ve still got another day before I can actually jump into any major work, because it’s still taking a good day to transfer over files from my external that were recovered from my ex-laptop; along with getting necessary programs and such installed and updated, etc.

I am jumping back into working of Legends of Thyilos, a game which was meant to have a Beta Demo 6.2 released, quite coincidentally, the night after my laptop ceased all function. The 3 month over-due patch release will hopefully go up tomorrow night (Friday), and then with all major bugs having been taken care of, I can set sail for the Full Demo release sometime later. My estimate was July 31st, but I’m not all too confident I can make that date due to other projects; ie Within 10 Minutes tutorials and getting back into a routine of making animations in After Effects and the like.
So the Demo will probably go up in two months from the Beta 6.2. Enough time for myself to tackle it head-on and get some major features fully implemented! I’m pretty ecstatic about it!

There’s some bits of work I’ll be scanning onto the computer in the coming days, and then finishing them up in Illustrator and Photoshop. I might stick up the sketches on here, but since they’re all game project related, I might slip them onto the Lucid Flame site instead; but I’ll be sure to link back here.

As for my novels, I’ll be trying to get back to them. I never did manage to get anything done on them, both to a lack of motivation, looking for work, and constant house-work and renovations going on. But its something I will not let slip into back of my folders. Eventually I’ll return to working on UNTITLED, and I’ll also pop out the lost final chapter for Samurai 2020.

While I’m rambling about novels though, I’ve concluded that the Thyilosian Lore book I was working on is not going to work out, as the knowledge specified would not fit into the current time and perspective. So the book will be broken into a series of different books. The current Thyilosian Lore will be a collective knowledge of the world so far, excluding any knowledge about the “Shroud”, a impassible barrier which is meant to have a whole kingdom within it.
The next will be inside the Shroud, and be a collection of knowledge from that, and I’ll work on this when the games relating to within the Shroud commence.
The third is a Biography of Rein; an evil tyrant who caused the utter damnation of part of the Kingdom of Zanzibar, and launch a genocidal campaign. The bio will give a look into the region he reigns over both before and after, and also shed light into the mad mans min.
The last book, will be like a lost tome written by the Ancient Immortals when they still existed. it’ll contain their own personal history and be more like a log book of key events and such. It’ll go as far as up to the Calamity, when the Immortals disappeared.

It'[s going to be a lot of work to get these done, but thankfully I have good friend willing to proof read and tell me where I screw up so that each book works!

I’ll be going back to regular postings soon, and I might put up my new computers specs later just for a random post. It should be able to tackle some intense 3d, but my real test is going to be going into Minecraft, a Java-based mining/exploration.adventure/sandbox/building game you may or may not have heard of. And seeing how big a cubeic stack of TNT I can detonate at once before the game completely crashes. A friend of mine could manage 100×100, and he has a pretty powerful laptop. I’m hoping my machine can hit 200×200!

Wish me luck with that little “stress test”, and a warm hello to all of you. its great to finally be back to routine. 🙂

~Shea


A momentary return!

*POOOOFF!!*
That was the sound of me appearing through a cloud of smoke wearing a ninja costume! Because I am apparently like the wind and can do awesome ninja stuff like that.

I’ve stolen away the computer at a friends in order to drop by onto here while I hurriedly check the accumulation of emails from around four weeks! But I didn’t just slip onto here to describe myself being a ninja, I slipped along in order to announce that the previous delay for when I can get a new computer is a lot closer than originally thought! It’s just a simple matter of saving up the last few hundred, then getting together some brain trust to find parts to build a new computer! Preferably something that can render out in 1920×1080 HD 3d models with lots of lovely delicious details on it, and 3d modelling is a definant to return to! Especially since I keep getting notifications about people subscribing to the Studio Wisp Youtube page, in which I am certain are mostly there for the 3d Tutorials that were put on Hiatus when my laptop lost the ability to do anything involving OpenGL.

I have other great news though! When I was getting information extracted from my laptop, things were taking a WHOLE lot longer than expected. Turns out the drive had seriously done itself over. Only a few tiny scraps actually made it over from Drive C, nothing really useful. But to my great relief, Drive D, though slow, did eventually transfer its files over, and Drive D is exactly where the Project Files are stored, namely Legends from Thyilos, which means as soon as I can get a new computer that project will be right back on the go. A Beta 6.2, meant to have gone out literally the day after my laptop died, will be finished and uploaded as soon as possible in order to take care of the bugs I knew about, and some bugs others have come across.

On he topic of game projects, the LF team might be announcing another little project soon too. I might have mentioned it already here, or perhaps just on the Dev team site. But it’s seen some progress, and though we may not yet be able to start on its actually development, there could be some little illustrations to get the juices going in anticipation for its call to go!

I think that’s all the news I have. The house, since the floods last November, is finally being put back together. The flooring in the lounge-room and kitchen is first, then the hallway and bedrooms. Once they’re in, the new furniture can come in, and if I’m really lucky, the computer will follow shortly after. It feels good to know the house will be back to normal. The winter mornings have been quite chilly, and having no curtains or carpet has rendered the heaters a little useless as the house can’t hold much heat.

Ah, one other thing before I disappear again. I’ll be helping out a friend with a short film he’s doing for his Uni course. I’ll be playing the role of an Ice Mage! Should be good fun. If he does happen to upload the film at some point in the future, I’ll be sure to link it up. He’s going to be some tasty VFX and from our conspiring last night when he showed me the script, some crafty cinematography too. It’d be interesting to see if any of those tricks are picked up on.

That’s all for now, I must be off! Up, UP, AND AWAAAYY!!! (yes, ninja;s can fly now)

~Shea 😛


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 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


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. 🙂

Till next time! 😀
~Shea