172 pages of “The Dreaming”, 7 chapters in total… all done. Amen.
…And about 2 weeks left to go over and fix anything I don’t like.
Oddly enough… I feel strangely energetic. I’m FREE!! For now.
Category: The Dreaming Series
The Dreaming: The REAL cover!!
This is (going) to be final cover – definately more manga-looking than the first draft – if it’s approved by the powers-that-be at TokyoPop. It’s probably going to require some changes (hopefully not too much), so I’m not too worried about what it looks like now. I only got news that it was needed on Saturday, and had to be finished by Monday. So I only had 2 days to do this, so maybe I should amazed it turned out well. *phew* Now I absolutely MUST get started on Chapter 7. Last time I had trouble whipping myself into action, but now I’m raring to go!!! The busier I get, the more likely I am to FEEL like working. Strange… at least Chapter 7’s not official due until 15th August. HUZZAH!!
The colours for this turned out a bit odd in Photoshop, but luckily that sort of thing can very easily be fixed with changing the Hue/Saturation. Anyway, I’ll leave that to the art department people, who is also designing the logo. I’m so grateful I don’t have to do the logo, because if I did it would turn out to be an illegibal mess. But seeing it’s in good hands I can just kick back and get Chapter 7 done!
The Dreaming: Chapters 1-6 all done…
I’ve been bumming around for the past 4 days, largely because I only have 1 chapter left to do and about 5 weeks to do it, which is more than enough. I tell myself, I MUST get started on Chapter 7 inks tomorrow… get it over and done with. Come on!! *tries to whip self up into a frenzy*. I’ve heard through the grapevine that I seem to be the only TokyoPop creator who is actually ahead of schedule. Well, what an honour, not that it matters at the end of the day. Anyway, here are 2 sample pages from chapters 5 and 6.
Sprites!: That’s not saying I haven’t been doing anything – look at this! I’ve always been a great admirer of sprite artists (the ones that don’t rip sprites from other games, that is). I love how the way they’re able to inject personality into a smattering of otherwise insignificant pixels. I’ve always been interested in graphical story-telling, regardless of the kind it is, so I have more than a passing interest in animation of all sorts. Oddly enough, I think that sprite story-telling can be extremely effective if one uses it well. *Gets all sorts of ideas in head*. Being someone with an agenda at all times, it’s actually a more efficient and less time-consuming form of telling a story. Definately less dramatic, but hey, I need to get these stories outta my head (and I’m only talking about the good stories) and I ain’t cranking manga pages out fast enough.
Link and Epona!
This took me a fair number of hours to animate smoothly. Damn horse tail…it’s only 11 frames, and each frame is running at 0.04s …I should be working on Chapter 7, really.
Block 6: Another new page at Wirepop.com! Now that “The Dreaming” is wrapping up, hopefully I’ll be getting back into Block 6 and all the other “left hanging” manga at my site. I’m planning for volume 2 work to start in January 2006, so hopefully I can use the time from August to November to fix up any manga I have left in the frozen food section. That would mean finishing off “Keeper of the Soul”, who is a mere 3 pages from end of the prelude, and “Blood of Snow”, which is about 24 pages from the end. Not to mention I have to start promoting “The Dreaming”… and the art exhibition coming up too… ARRRGH!!
The Dreaming: Going on…
Well, I’ve finished inking chapter 5 and 6, and is now currently toning chapter 5 and making some corrections. As usual, I’ve been lazy about informing folks of my progress, partly because there’s been a revival of old DOS gaming at this end of the spectrum and THIS person happens to be playing old DOS games while toning. Which is the best thing about computer toning – I exercise my (and the computer’s) multi-tasking skills in full force. Either way, “The Dreaming” will definately be completed by the end of July, and until then, the release date is tentatively set for Jan 2006.
Great Site for Old Games: Try Abadonia, which is a GREAT site full of old DOS games. There are many of them out there, but Abandonia includes a message board, a rating and a review facility and the page just looks alot more professional than the other sites out there. And it has… HTTP downloads!! One game I can really recommend is a fan-made game called 5 Day a Stranger, which is a horror-based game that is quite impressive for a one-person venture. It’s a short adventure game about a gentleman thief called Trilby, whose purpose was to liberate an empty mansion of it’s riches after it’s owners mysteriously died. However, after going in, he finds himself trapped within the mansion, and oddly enough, there are also 4 paranoid people trapped there under the same circumstances as him. Some nice scripting and use of music – it’s also got a sequel called “7 Days a Skeptic”, which I’m going to download later.
Reading Fun: “5 Days a Stranger” unsettled me because I have been reading a collection of HP Lovecraft’s stories, called “The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories”. I really do love his stories – he really IS (one of) the best innovators of the horror genre (and the Edgar Allen Poe influence). Oddly enough, Lovecraft’s work is really difficult to find in this country. Can you believe the librarians and book sellers I spoke to haven’t even HEARD of him, and can’t spell his name properly (“Lovegraft?”), let alone know what I’m talking about. Meanwhile, there are enough Isaac Asimov books filling the shelves of libraries and bookstores everywhere to the extent where I don’t actually need to buy any of it. I’m thinking of buying “Robot Dreams” though, since it has some of my favourite stories in it, but for now I’ll stick with Lovecraft. I haven’t been able to find “The Illustrated Man” anywhere though, or any of Roy Bradbury’s work. Maybe all those volumes of Asimov’s work ate them.
Sydney Film Festival: Ahh, ofcourse I went. “Howl’s Moving Castle” was the Closing Night bonanza, and it sold out in a flash so I had to settle for other good movies. I’ve seen one feature out of the three I booked – namely “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”. A fantastic documentary about the Rise and Fall of Enron, which as far as corporate scandals go, is probably the biggest scam in history. I’m also set to see “Kindergarten”, another documentary-style film, and one African film I’ve been dying to see called “Moolade”. Most of these films got good reviews elsewhere, and it seems that “Howl’s Moving Castle” has been released in the United States – if rottentomatoes.com is to judge. The barometer of the critical response is mostly positive, though top critic Roger Ebert had an unfavourable review. This is not surprising – the man is a HUGE fan of Miyazaki (and animation in general), and his disappointment in Howl’s storyline, which I share, is palpable in his review.