Refinement

Hello all! This week has been very productive, though not necessarily in the context of new material as much as the improvement of the old. Since I learned a lot over the course of turning out Gatewalkers, especially in regards to audio cleanup, I'm going back and refining what I can to make the feature edit a better experience overall. As mentioned before, we're choreographing a fight to place over part of the historical monologue: We are most of the way through the mass combat, and will be developing the duel between elven lords this coming week. Work on the Chaos backgrounds continues to be slow, as multiple HD 3D layers has led to some buffering and fragmentation issues, but here's a quick sample of the work in progress. Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

On the Need for Random Title Generators

(Seriously, a guy can run out of original titles after doing this kind of thing for years.)

This week was a dense melange of assorted tasks, but alas, very few of them were movie related. In order to reduce the number of backgrounds we'll have to render, I've been on the hunt for textures that would make respectable walls with only a few details added. That has gone moderately well, but laws can be somewhat sticky if an otherwise free to use texture gets used in the wrong medium, so regular research is required.

 

The stunt team met for a choreography drill, which then devolved (or evolved, take your pick,) into a free-form sparring match, which yielded some interesting results regarding the balance of power between weapons and their wielders.

 

 

 

For instance, strength and skill only matter so much if the unit is not cohesive. As a result, better individual combatants can be steamrollered by less experienced ones if the latter work well in tandem. Perhaps the thing that makes someone a good duelist actually harms him in massed combat, but the jury's still out on that.

 

We also discussed ways to expand the audience for our channel. One thing we're looking at is entering a certain well established choreography competition. The LCC (Lightsaber Choreography Competition) is going into its 13th year, and has been a great boon to the YouTube endeavors of its winners. If all goes well, that may soon be us as well.

That's about all for this week. Until next time!

A Study in Scarlet... Tape

 So... yeah, this week was actually both boring and mind-numbing in equal measure. Good things did happen, and progress was made, but the bulk of several days was comprised of legal research, which is enough to cross the eyes of most filmmakers... or knock them out cold. Either way. (I am drawing up a proposal to teach swordplay at a local college, so that takes a bit of time as well.)

The effects for the final scene have been completed, including the masking of assorted track points on the green screen and other such fiddly minutia. The stunt team met again, and this time focused on the sword and shield.

 

 

 

We're looking at polishing up some bits of Gatewalkers Season 1 and turning it into a feature length edit. We may also be adding a deleted scene or two, plus bits of historical montage for Gwyn's history lesson. (Hence the continued training.) Hopefully we can turn it into a more complete package.

Well, that's about all for this week. Until next time!

Back in Action!

The arrival of a new year has marked many changes for us, but fortunately a few of them include progress on projects. The stunt team met again to refresh on unit tactics...

 

 ...and at long last we have our first screen capture, featuring a background and prototype special effects!

So maybe not a lot to say per se, but pictures are worth a thousand words, so hopefully that last one will speak for itself. Otherwise things pretty much proceed apace, and as always you will be updated as events unfold.

Until next time!