An Airship over the Retro Future

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

Just a random, unprocessed frame from the bit I’m rendering right now for the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual trailer. This is from the second scene. Now that I’ve pretty well worked out the timing for the first minute, I’m going in and making the final versions of those shots.

I’m not sure when I’ll be uploading the finished trailer (heck, I’m not sure when it will be finished). I may not want to promote the site until I’m done with the first printed volume, and ready to get to work on Part II. But I have a good and mysterious reason for wanting to get it done early – I’m thinking about incorporating it into something else that needs to be ready before I start on Part II.

Anyway, this is pretty fun. It’s always nice to see what happens when I put a camera in Retropolis to see what’s moving around, and I don’t do that often (enough?) these days.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual: Progress, and a Trailer in the Works

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I’m in that last (ish) long haul here, and so I’m quiet; but I’ve got just four more illustrations to go for Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves. One or two are challenging ones, but heck… I’ll take what I can get in the not quite instant gratification area.

I’m actually going slower than I might because I’m splitting my time between these and an animated trailer for the Thrilling Tales web site. It’s weirdly relaxing to switch from working hard on one thing to working equally hard on something different. I can’t explain why that is, but like I said, I’ll take what I can get.

It’s been quite awhile since I dusted off Premiere and put together a piece of video with it (and why do we still call it video?) My old version of Premiere won’t install on my main computer (16 bit installers: gotta love ’em) and on my second one it looked at the memory available – which was way more than its programmers had believed possible, I guess – and ran screaming into the other room. So I had to remove memory to make it work. Go figure.

But anyway, that’s working, I have some neat period music for the soundtrack from the public domain Prelinger archive, and that, like the story, is slowly coming together. Prrrrrrrrogress!

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Thrilling Tales Countdown: 70 Down, 12 to Go

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

Seventy illustrations down, twelve to go!

Doctor Rognvald, like me, is pleased.

I do have one massive exterior set to rebuild for half of those pictures (I’m not happy with the version I made originally) so it’s not what you’d call a slam dunk. But still.

Then there are three remaining inventory images. That’s because – in adventure game style – characters may pick up and carry items around. You get to see a bit of information about those, hence the illustrations of the objects. Add about four or five redos for illustrations I think should be better… some global adjustments for brightness and contrast… and then the art for Part One of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS will be done. Incredible as that may seem. To me, anyhow.

The brightness and contrast adjustments are mainly necessary to sync the web and print versions together – printed art is always a bit dimmer than it seems onscreen – but I’m also fighting the gradual decay of my fine but aging monitor. Every few months I have to check it out and adjust its display. So I’ll make a final pass through all the art at the end to make sure it’s copacetic.

Once the art’s done I can go back to work on the web site. I need to disable or modify one feature that I haven’t used, add another feature that I thought up while working on the illustrations, and implement a couple of things (saving and restoring your place in the story) that I didn’t bother with until I had a story to save and load. Add in some supporting pages, season to taste, fix the couple of problems the site has in the Chrome browser… and there it’ll be.

I’m still hoping to launch the Thrilling Tales site by the end of March. We’ll see.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Thrilling Tales, Continued, and Thoughts about Fundraising

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

The rayguns have come out as I near the end of this batch of illustrations in Doctor Rognvald’s lab – and when these are done I think I’ll have nearly reached the "light at the end of the tunnel" stage. Almost.

When I guesstimated that Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves would need about eighty illustrations… I was pretty much exactly dead on. Amazing, seeing as how that involved arithmetic and everything. Next time I’ll track the exact number as I refine the script. It was hard this time because some of the story nodes shared the same illustrations and I didn’t keep a tally of those as I went. Anyway, like I said, eighty pictures was about right. Sixty seven down as of this morning.

I got to thinking last night about Kickstarter. That’s a fundraising web site where a lot of musicians and artists are raising funds for their projects. I’m toying with the idea of trying that when I start Part Two of the story.

The whole thing ends up being a bit like a Public Radio fundraiser in which ever-neater premiums go with the ever-higher contributions. You can see that there’s some math involved there (egad!) to make sure that the total raised, minus the cost of those premiums, still gives you the funds you need. And if the cost of the premiums is high then the project’s funding has to be higher… which makes it harder for the project to reach its goal.

There are some Kickstarter anecdotes here at the Whitechapel forums. Fora. You know what I mean.

And you need an invitation to start a project, so when the time comes I’d have to scramble around on the web looking for one. But it seems like there’ s some potential there. Still thinking.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Thrilling Tales: Brain Thieves Countdown

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

As Gwen and her wrench have a strange interlude in the laboratory of Doctor Rognvald, I seem to be about 75% through with the illustrations for Part One of The Toaster With TW0 BRAINS. That’s nineteen more pictures to go (ten of them set here in the laboratory) plus a couple of redos, and then a little more mechanical work on the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site before it’s ready for the public.

What a long haul!

As I’ve worked on this first part – Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves – I’ve learned some things about what will and won’t work well in the format. And about scale: the density of the illustrations is nowhere what you’d find in a comic, but there are still a lot of pictures and they do take time. TWO BRAINS will likely continue in a very similar way but in the future I may try to do shorter story segments just to make sure that the site gets more than seasonal updates.

For reference: I spent a week on the script. Although I’ve edited it some since then, it was pretty well settled at the end of that week. But in order to finish the eighty-odd illustrations I’ve kept at it almost continuously since late August. So at that rate even "seasonal" is a bit optimistic, isn’t it?

And I’ve wrestled a bit with style since at the beginning, knowing what a long road was ahead, I was determined to work out ways to get the pictures done speedily. I’ve pretty much abandoned that by now and I’m more in my usual mode of "It’ll be ready when it’s ready". But there just has to be a middle ground for something of this scale.

Anyway I do hope it works out between the free web versions and the printed book versions – and that I sell a few of the books! The great thing about making so many illustrations is that there’s a handful of them that I want to redo at, say, 18 by 24 inches for posters and prints. Along with preparing the print version and working on Part Two…!

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Thrilling Tales: Gwen Meets Doctor Rognvald

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

"Then his eyes fell on the toaster, and he stepped forward eagerly. Gwen held it out at arm’s length. She was pretty happy to keep the doctor as far away as possible. As he lurched forward, the rolling tray creaked after him with its smaller, modified toaster. She could clearly see the cables that ran up his sleeve and then – she was sure! – out of his collar at the back of his neck. Where they went from there, she told herself, was absolutely none of her business."

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Doctor Rognvald’s Lab, from the other side

Filed under Computer Graphics, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I’ve spent some time working at the far end of the laboratory, and pretty well wrapped that up and added some clutter here, at this end of the table. Finicky, finicky.

The dusty old Interociter doesn’t have a thing to do with the story; odds are Doctor Rognvald just picked it up second hand. You find those things in labs all over the place, of course.

I really need to wrap his one up soon. I keep making the mistake of approaching my test views as though they were actual pictures, which leads to all sorts of little adjustments that simply waste my time until I catch myself at it.

Another day or two and I’ll have to set the laboratory aside while I work on the last couple of props I’ll need in there… and then – finally! – I can concentrate on the illustrations themselves.

Out of all the crazy stuff in here I think I’m getting my biggest kick from the high voltage Frankenstein switches with all their gauges and dials, which only serve to flick the lights on and off.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Doctor Rognvald’s Lab: Now With Practical Lights

Filed under Computer Graphics, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I’ve worked out the basic lighting setup for Doctor Rognvald’s lab, and added practical light objects to match them (well, except for that door up on the catwalk, anyway). So far I’ve only got one "cheat" light in here – that’s premature, really, since I’ll mainly add the cheat lights when I’m setting up shots for the illustrations I need. But I wanted a little rim light on that floor lamp.

What we’ve got here is a pretty realistic general lighting setup that I’ll mutate and change and modify for the individual shots I need for the story.

What’s left to do is to add two more light fixtures, and then have a look at the camera angles to decide what other clutter I need on the table, and what indistinct shapes I want to add in the shadows… at which point the lab itself will be pretty much done, and I can move onto a couple of important props. Altogether I’m dangerously close to being able to make pictures in here. Muahahahahaha!

The more time I spend in here the more I find that I’d kind of like a room like this to work in. It’s well equipped: you can’t tell in this shot, but that’s an espresso machine at the far end of the table. What more do you need?

The downside of working on a project of this scale is that it takes so long to get everything done. But part of the upside is that I’ll have such cool sets and props to use in other pictures. I know I’ll want to revisit this lab when I can. I’m really looking forward to making poster-scale images of this one.

Even at high res, though, you’ll never be able to make out the ridiculous labels on the dials and buttons. There’s a "Hyphenation" dial, not to mention the "% Froglike" one. I guess those are just for me.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Mad Doctor Rognvald’s Laboratory, in progress

Filed under Computer Graphics, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

Here’s where ‘ve been for the last… oh, I have no idea. It’s the laboratory of mad Doctor Rognvald, creator of the Toaster With TWO BRAINS. It’s the second mad scientist’s lab I’ve built for this Thrilling Tale. The two are quite different.

That’s because Cornelius Zappencackler’s lab is sort of a pleasant place for tinkering – one that you or I might like to work in. Oh, you’re right – some of the things he gets up to in there do sort of threaten to destroy the planet. But he’s an affable old gent, and he means well.

Okay. Maybe "well" isn’t the word I was looking for. But he doesn’t mean harm. It’s just that sometimes harm happens anyway.

But this! This is a laboratory that you or I might like to tinker in only if we were evil geniuses! This place is a textbook example of the kind of room where you Meddle In Things That Man Was Not Meant To Wot Of! This is the sort of lab where every now and then you just have to throw your head back and crow: "It’s ALIIIIVE!"

I’ve been having a great time with the glassware and instruments. This is just the point where I’ve dropped a real light source into the scene so I can get an idea of what to do next; but it’s well on its way… it’s…. nearly…. aliiiiive!

See what I mean?

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Today & Tomorrow: Winsor McCay and Me

Filed under Hodgepodge, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

…from Winsor McCay, via Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Here’s hoping all our futures will be better ones.

Winter’s finally decided it’s really here at the Secret Laboratory and it’s doing its best to make me glad I’m in here, finishing up the last of the remaining characters for Part One of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS, my first installment at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.

This is the mysterious Doctor Rognvald. The big interior set I’ll still need to build is his laboratory – and to do that, I’ll have to sequester myself with Just Imagine and an old Boris Karloff film because they have such great mad scientist glassware. The sacrifices I make, I just can’t tell you.

That’s what I’ll be up to till that freelance job attains "check on the desk" status, anyhow. Then I’ll have to drop everything – carefully! there’s all that glassware to think of – for a bit.