Strange Surroundings

My Father-in-Law has graciously allowed me the use of his desktop computer (a Vista based Dell) while we're visiting for Christmas.  I  sincerely appreciate it, and have found it to be quite sufficient for the task.  It has also brought some thoughts to mind.

The most notable thought is that it would be nice to have a familiar work station no matter where I find myself, i.e. a laptop.

 

I've never been a fan of laptops 'cause I never really thought of them as being serious computers.  To me they were always aimed at people who valued portability over speed, power, decent sound, and a full-sized keyboard.  Four things that are remarkably important to me.

 

However, sitting at a strange desk using a different (though admittedly full-sized) keyboard on an unfamiliar computer has made me realise that portability has value.  There is something to be said for being able to sit down and write without having to reorganise things to get comfortable.  There's something to be said for placing your fingers on keys so familiar you can type in the dark.  There's something to be said for an operating system (and programs) you know with settings tailored to you liking.

 

In short, laptops today are powerful enough to word-process, fingers can adapt to keyboards, and I already own nice headphones.  So for the purpose of writing laptops are pretty cool, and gaming can be done on your real computer.  ^_^

Hiatus

I'm taking a bit of a break right now.  My break was forced upon me last week when I was struck down by an unpleasant strain of influenza.  That might not have been so bad if it wasn't coupled with a 3 day training course that had my brain otherwise occupied.

 

The icing on the cake was that it's simply easier to play video games than to be creative when your brain is already hindered so.  Thus I've taken the past seven days off from writing, and I think I needed the break.

 

I'll probably start the daily discipline again after my birthday, but that brings to mind an interview I heard with an author of whom I was a huge fan in high school; R.A. Salvatore.  When asked what advice he had for aspiring authors he said, "if you can stop, then stop."

 

I trust the implications thereof have settled in, especially in the shadow of recent confession of doing just that.  The question I counter with is this, "if I stop, what do I do with all the ideas in my head?"  The past few days have been both relaxing for me, and have allowed my mind to dream up potential new concepts for my characters to explore.

 

In short, I am not done, I just may shed my previous schedule.  I think the months of disciplined writing was good for me, as it taught me how to overcome certain obstacles; namely intimidating/uncertain scenes and days where I'm "not in the mood."  After a breather I should be back at it with vim and vigor.

The Branches or the Trunk?

I've been writing a little on and off lately, though the sessions are longer which means the volume is about the same (34,000 so far).  I know that I need to nail down the bulk of my story before I move onto (one word or two?) other aspects, at least in earnest.  Thus I find myself yearning for time in my sketchbook, or Piant Shop, or blender; but resisting the urge to prevent distraction.  That discipline would be excellent if I wasn't in turn side-tracked by YouTube and other miscellaneous internet dross.  Sadly this tale does not come with resolution.

Tens of Thousands

I've just finished the twelfth section of my book and I know that puts me easily over 30,000 words written.  It takes me about 10 minutes to write 100 words, so do the math.  Yes, we're talking about fifty hours of writing.  It's neat to think of things that way.

 

The story is progressing well, and I'm starting to develop more of the full arc the more I invest which seems to be the generally preferred way to develop a story; and yet, I will continue to use what works for me.

 

Here's a brief sample of something I wrote today; enjoy.

Nathaniel's gaze shot to the larger man, "I value his input far more than I value yours, Militiaman."  The large man bristled and stepped forward, the woman placed her restraining hand on his arm again but he brushed it off.  The gray-bearded man seemed uncertain of what to do, and Nathaniel had reached up and grabbed his own livery.  "Do you see this insignia?" he said harshly.  "Do you see that I am ranked above you?

I realise there's no context for that paragraph, but at least you know I'm not writing, "he drew his sword and it was awesome!"  ^_^

Seasonal Inspiration

So it's very much fall now, and I'm spending a lot of time indoors keeping out of the cold rains.  As such, I've been writing, and blending, and taking care of all that stuff I like to do in and around my office.

 

YouTube changed their page layout, so I decided to take a look and ended up making a new background picture.

 

I did the cityscape in Blender, and then added the text and fading in Paint Shop Pro 9.

 

I also posted another video for the Ellenoir Experience, and recorded the footage for the next one.

 

I've been a busy little bee, but in my heart I'm hoping for a couple more bike rides before I call the season officially over.

25000

I've just finished my eighth section of my work, each being over 3000 words each.  That should put my current tally in excess of 25000 words.  That's pretty good for me.  I hope I can keep up the discipline  and creativity as the months go by.

Failure

I haven't written much at all of late.  I've  been biking a bit, and messing around with my computer a fair amount since I was victim of an "update" that destroying function.  I've got lots of excuses/reasons, but ultimately I have lacked the discipline.

 

I think part of the problem is that I have lost passion for my work.  I don't have a vision for what's happening with my characters, and I really don't know where they are going next.  That hadn't been a problem in the past when they were doing exciting things, but one of my characters is just really boring right now.  Should I focus on the interesting part of the story and come back to the hum-drum?  Or should I force myself knowing that most of what I throw down will be rewritten in a year anyway?  Having little to know experience to draw from I'm really not sure what to do.

 

I do know one thing though, I need to get writing again.

Limits

I have about two hours of game play video on my hard drive right now which I'll be going through when I get a moment.  I don't really have time to do it though.  If this was a normal game I'd just play and play, flying through the levels as fast as possible.  But I'm really enjoying this slower pace.

 

If that doesn't make sense to you allow me to contextualise.  I'm taking video whenever I play DDO, and trying my hand at a "vlog" of sorts.  You'll be able to find them all on my YouTube page, which should be linked on the left.

A Typically Rough Start

Today's the day, 9/9/9.  DDO goes free to play.  I thought about staying up until midnight last night to try the game out, but instead went to bed 'cause I was tired.

I was up pretty early this morning, say 6:30, so I thought I'd get an early start.  Sadly there was no new information on the site, and I'd already read through the old stuff.  So...  I still had my DDO client installed, and my Turbine account was still active from playing the LotRO beta, but that's where I'm stalled.  I guess I need a product key to proceed, and there's no way for me to get one since they took down the ten day trial a few months ago.

I spent a few moments this morning reinstalling FRAPS 'cause I've thought about doing a video journal about DDO.  Perhaps in the styling of WoWHobbs, but we'll see how that works out.  I suspect I won't have the time to commit to such an endeavour.

UPDATE:   13:30 - The DDO site is down for maintenance, so I'm assuming the information will be available soon.
UPDATE:  14:30 - The site is back up, but it keeps crashing IE8 when I try to fill out the form.  I'm assuming there's a volume issue, but who knows.

UPDATE:  14:45 - The latest news on the launcher is that they are having volume issues so I guess I'll have to wait for this to work.
UPDATE:  15:00 - This is too broken for me to even bother trying.  I'll come back with the rush is gone and their servers are capable of the task.

UPDATE:  15:45 - Looks like the site is finally working.  I got my new account set up without any trouble.

I and took the time to make my first character; Ellenoir Fonce, a rogue as per my norm.  I took a video of the whole thing which I'll edit together later on.  So far so good though.  It's pretty cool that the rogue is classed as challenging to solo, no game balancing here.

Back in the Saddle

A quick spot of math tells me I'm up to about 18,000 words now which puts me at around 14% of a typical book in this genre (according to these guys).  I have no intention of setting a word count goal, I'm intend to write until the story is done.  I doubt that will take me 125,000 words, but you never know.

 

It's been a bit difficult to write lately.  There simply seem to be a lot of things demanding my time.  That may relax as we edge towards winter, and back into the routine of work and school.

DDO: The Low Down on the Download

I finally found a link for the client download for DDO last night.  I think it took an hour and a half for the high resolution variant to come in.  I can't play yet 'cause I don't have an account, but it's installed, patched, and seems to be working (Win7).  I guess I have 6 days to read the user's manual before I can make my free account.

Editing, editing, editing

I am trying so hard not to edit as I write.  My goal in this process is to get the plot and and story worked out, knowing that I'll have many days to edit and refine the work later on.

 

I had a cool conversation with my buddy Jordan about writing and editing when you're tired.  It turns out that 's a bad idea.  As with most thing you should put your effort in when you're at your best.  I can't imagine what it'd be like to work under a deadline that isn't self-imposed, the pressure to perform must be unreal.

From behind

The last few days have been a drought.  I haven't written a word.  Not that I didn't want to, but there are things that are simply more important to me.  I'm hoping to make up the ground this morning, I potentially have a few hours.

Losing faith...

So I'm not really enjoying one of the characters in my book, which is too bad 'cause I had planned on making him a major character.  That plan might change.  I'm actually thinking about renaming him and switching to an alternate.  We'll see, I want to stay the course a little longer and see how it pans out.

I'm a Follower

I just realised that I am not writing a story as much as I'm following my characters around my imagination and recording what happens.  I know where they are going to end up, but I have no idea how they are going to get there.

A New Project?

I found out a few days ago that Dungeons & Dragons Online is going free to play on September 9th and I think that's kind of neat.  I'm thinking about playing it occasionally, though I doubt I'll have enough time to be a regular.  Regardless when I do start playing I will likely throw up a weblog entry about how it's going.

 

Progress so far?  I can't find a decent place to download the client which means I have to wait until it goes free to play and everyone else starts trying to download it.  I'm expecting there to be huge slowdowns and all that, but if I really cared I'd just re-subscribe to World of WarCraft.

A weekend off was nice, but I missed ...

A weekend off was nice, but I missed writing.  Is that 'cause I felt guitly about breaking my new habit so early in, or is it 'cause I genuinely enjoy the process?  I can't say I'm sure, perhaps both.

 

I read a cool post by Dave today (who is one of my inspirations of dedication) about pouring work into your own content instead of someone elses.  It made me pretty happy to finally be working out all these ideas I've had in my head.

It's a rough go

 
It's not easy to write every day.  I've missed a few here and there (all with good excuses of course), but the I've easily hit my target on the rest.  If this turns into something for me or not, I'm enjoying to journey.

I'm an author!

Okay, I'm not actually an author, but I have refocused myself of late.  I'm doing my best to write everyday, aiming for at least 300 words.  I know that's only about a page or so, but I figure that will garner me a book in about a year.  Really I'm trying to hammer out the details of a story so I can take it to the next phase of presentation.  So, there won't be a lot of blender images up here, or activity in general I suspect.

New video!

New video!

<-- <-- <--

Okay, it's only 2 seconds of walk cycle repeated 5 times, but it's progress.  I've actually encountered an interesting problem; I've always edited in Windows Movie Maker, but now that I'm running Windows 7 it won't publish anything better than 4:3 DVD quality video.  This means I have to reboot into Vista every time I want to publish in high definition.  It becomes tempting to just run in Vista all the time...  We'll see.  I was hoping the live version of Movie Maker would solve the issue, but it's still in early beta.

Here's the toon-guy I was working on....

Here's the toon-guy I was working on.  I textured and posed him, and I learned a bit on the way.

I've been toying quite a bit lately, ...

I've been toying quite a bit lately, though it's been lots of little tests and trails rather than work on a project.  I created a little guy name Ecubd and I thought about  making a short with him but I think I've changed my mind.

 

Along the same lines I've modelled a cartoony looking warrior with which I'm more likely to create a short.  I'll add a bunch of simple renders in case you're curious, they aren't fully smoothed and not at all coloured; I guess they are mostly conceptual.

Leather boots with plates.

 

 

Thigh and shin guards

 

Two fingers and a thumb gloved with small shaped plates.

 

Cuirass

 

Head and shoulders with removable helmet and tracking eyes.

 

As for learning, I've stumbled across the Blender Summer of Documentation which is really informative and helpfull.  I'm most of the way through their Animation tutorial so I should be able to put that to use soon.

 

And you thought I was on a break befo...

And you thought I was on a break before!  So what have I been doing for the past two months?  Looking for inspiration I suppose.  No, that's not true.  I've been sick, bored, busy, social, and uninspired; but I haven't been looking for anything.  I was pretty content to just chill out and wait.

Then the call came for voice actors and I answered it.  I spent a few hours with Dave chatting about Archon Defender, watching some amazing clips, and recording dialogue.  It was awesome!  No only that, but it renewed my interest in Blender.  I've been toying with it for a few days, figuring out toon shading and basic animation.  I ran through a couple tutorials on armatures and skinning and made a couple videos.  I'm just finishing uploading them, so they'll pop up on the side of my weblog.  Here's the links in case they don't:  box and camera test and Gus the gingerbread man.

I've been on a bit of a break lately,...

I've been on a bit of a break lately, though I did spend little bits of time here and there trying to build a model for a head.  At present it's far too wide and blocky but those are easy to fix with scalling and subsurfing.  I previously created an eye system with a focus point, but for now I thought I'd throw up a simple shot of the head.  My next task will likely be body; but like I said I'm taking a bit of a break.

I heavily modified today's tutorial a...

I heavily modified today's tutorial as I really wasn't impressed with what I was offered.  I did learn about a neat feature which allows you to create multiple instances of an object instead of just duplicating it...  I'm getting too geeky here.  Regardless I'm getting quite confident in my manipulations of the 3D space, and I'm looking forward to more complex projects.  I'm also starting to get some visual ideas for my personal project when I'm done the tutorials and I think I'll be digging out my old sketchbook and pencils shortly.

I've been at work most of this weeken...

I've been at work most of this weekend, but I managed to squeeze in a few tutorial hours.  I spend a few more today learning about more complex models and experimenting with what I've learned so far.  No great accomplishments on this one, but it help cement the knowledge which is sometimes hard to do.

I completed two more turo

Today's focus was supposed to be on more advanced shaping.  Working with cylinders instead of cubes and stuff like that.  I did two tutorials, and at the end of each there was a little side path to explore colour and lighting.  I took both paths, and learned a lot in the process.  It took me a while to fuddle my way through some of the stuff, but I'm glad I did.

I made some decent progress t

I completed a tutorial of a penguin today.  I was excited because the end product was a coloured picture.  As it turned out, the end product was not, but there was a foot note saying, "you can even colour it, but that's for another lesson."  I was pretty disappointed, just ask my wife.

Regardless I pressed on, and was pleasantly rewarded when the next tutorial contained some unexpected guidance.

 

Will I Blend?

Will I Blend?

 

Calm down!  I do not intend on sticking myself in a blender.  Okay, now that we're all settled down allow me to explain myself.

 

I was Digging a couple weeks ago and I found this article about 3D rendering and animation using an open source program called Blender.  Now it just so happened that I was embroiled in the an online world at the time and didn't pay too much attention to my new toy; but my subscription expired yesterday and I found myself with some free time.

 

I've started running through a very detailed tutorial and I'm learning quite a bit.  As with any knowledge however, if you don't apply it you lose it.  Thus I have decided to create and publish my works here as a record and an outlet.  I will of course be starting off embarrassingly slow and weak, though I have some cool inspiration to help me along.

 

Here's a rendering of one of my first projects.  Fancy?  No.  But considering how little I've invested it's pretty cool to see some of the potential.

 

I have recently noticed that I can also record video while I'm running the program so I may eventually have some footage of myself working as well as some final product.