Justice League Unlimited: The Story Continues.

I actually surprised myself with this one. Justice League/Unlimited (2001-2006) is a DCAU cartoon, isn't something I thought I'd ever write fan fiction on. But it happened.

There is something interesting and compelling about people who have extraordinary abilities. They offer the viewer/reader a means to escape reality like no other. They aren't regular people, not even Batman is a regular person, not really.

Anyway, there was a certain character that caught my attention in the "Unlimited" rebrand of the series and that was the Cadmus clone. Obviously, she was a take on Power Girl, but she was made specifically to combat the league and 'supers'.
Anyway, she gets 2 episodes. She was the 'opposite' of Kara/Supergirl and they only gave her 2 episodes. One could say if the show had continued she would have gotten more, but perhaps not, because Supergirl was in the future. Why use her when her 'opposite' is no longer around. Also there was the fact that supposedly she died (unconfirmed) after being electrocuted by the power conduit or whatever in her last appearance.

Anyway, I wanted to bring her back in a story and flesh her out a little. I also wanted to give her some unpredictability in her emotions due to the fact she was force grown to adulthood rather quickly. She doesn't have life experience and she also doesn't have emotional experience. At times she can be unsure and act out irrationally because she doesn't know how to act.

Long time no post. Well here's one, now.

ESSaga Ship

So I got the ship into Skyrim with collisions. Now, at first I thought I'd made a huge mistake in terms of scale. The thing felt gigantic. The following images may demonstrate what I mean.

I decided to check its scale against the Katariah, which eased my fear on it being too large for the Elder Scrolls Universe. 

The Katariah is wider, but my ship is longer, and taller. I'm happy with it. (Note, the row boat crane parts have no collisions and are a separate mesh.)

Probably, no it IS the best mesh I've ever made. I learned a lot while making it, including how I have no idea how big things will lok in-game.

Been a While.

So it's been a while since I last made a posting on here. Well, recently my attention was diverted off of writing my FF, onto modding and I've been struggling to get back into it. Well I decided to flex my modelling skills in Blender, and build the ship that's been hinted at in the story. The deck and main hull is all new. The masts and ropes are all taken off of the Katariah model in Skyrim. the (currently) white windows are also a mesh from skyrim. The rigging ladder-or whatever its called-will have a transparency, to make it look like the rope ladder.

The ship is called "Explorers Joy" and it was what I came up with at the time. Not entirely happy with the name, but whatever. Ship names in the Elder Scrolls universe are going to be difficult.

I went for an Imperial look, or rather I modelled it on old British ships from the 1700's. (perhaps too modern, but the guy who designed it is supposed to be a celebrated ship builder, so eh)

This is how it looks currently, and in a way it's started me writing again.

My plan is to get a few chapters written, then start releasing again. I'm on the final stretch of part 3. and want to get it done by February.

So, I started this with mentioning modding. Well, I've been making an overhaul mod for children, which add in the elven children (sorry, no beast race at this point) The original children in the game, which are all potato headed clones was disappointing, and a lot of other child mods either make them look like small adults with big heads, or just plain creepy. None, I feel actually look like children, and I think the reason is the forehead. Kid's foreheads are larger than an adults forehead, and by using the original mesh, I retain the child-like features. There is also a weight slider for anything that shows the arms. You can actually see it on the Orc kid, which is at weight 1. I did this because the arms looked like sticks in the Iron armour. You can also probably tell by the Orc's stance, that it's female. Though I've made the genders almost indistinguishable, with the exception of slight changes the the morph. (I'm thinking of having both male and female orcs use the male walk like the adults, which contrary to what seems like common opinion, fits the orcs.)

Here's an image on that, which I think demonstrates my goal. (Bosmer, Redguard, Orsimer)

I've also been doing some work for someone on a Shivering Isles mod for Skyrim.

Mushroom mesh. Not as good as I'd have hoped (Not that close to the original from Oblivion) but this mesh is (mostly) original. The initial instruction was to take the epic mushroom from skyrim (Blackreach) and add the spines to it. In the end, I decided to almost completely remodel the mesh into this.

Also, as I have some experience in making races, I'm making the Aureal/Mazken. Right now, I only have a pic of the Mazken. In this pic though I use the Nord normal map, instead of the new one I made.

It's actually based on the Dark elf. I just altered the ears, brow, and made the face rounder. i also made the brow further forwards because I thought I'd messed up the race. I found however that the default elves (female) have an issue that in the CK, if you have the eyes up/forward and the brow down/back to maximum, a good number of the eyes clip through the brow. creepy.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Old Trek Novels on Kindle. Oh dear.

So, after buying an old physical Trek novel called "The Disinherited" and enjoying it, I decided to get another "Doctors Orders". Instead of getting the physical version however, I got the Kindle version. Unfortunately no one decided that it'd be a good idea to format it for kindle (or at all in some cases), so it's a mess. I'll give you an example.

This is how over intercom works. (speech not actually from the story)

-----
   "It is fascinating," Spock said.
    "Of course you'd think it was 'fascinating' Spock," grumbled McCoy, tapping his fingers against the tabletop.

"Of course doctor, will there be anything else you require"

   "No Spock."

-----

See the problem here? What is that even?

Another problem is that there's both an indent and a gap between each paragraph and sometimes it covers up scene changes, or POV changes which can be confusing.

Also at each new chapter, there's only something like four lines at the bottom of text with the chapter in large half way down the page.

While I did enjoy the read, I know I would have preferred it if the format/layout wasn't such a mess.

September Update

I thought I should post an update. I've slowed down on writing my Elder Scrolls story and am thinking of taking a slight break. Mainly because my brain simply refuses to help me finish chapter 18. I could simply remove the troublesome part I'm working on, but I don't really want to. I'm hoping taking my mind off it for a bit will help me. Sometimes when I leave something and come back to it later, I know almost instantly what I want to do. I have done 2266 words of chapter 19, but every time I start to add more, I find myself wanting to go back to chapter 18 and finish that off, where I write something, look at it delete it, then stare at it wondering what the heck comes next.
What's annoying is that I'm essentially in the final act of the story, or close to it. The story will get finished, I'll never willingly abandon a story.

Starship Valiant: Legacy - My Thoughts.

Starship Valiant: Legacy is a Vignette. Albeit a long one at just under 20 minutes. The story primarily follows a Commander Jackson K Bishop (Hope I remembered that right) as he deals with the aftermath of an attack on the Valiant, the loss of his captain as well as a-hundred others.

The first scene on the ship didn't impress me. I found the audio poor, and some of the acting to be off. From there, I enjoyed what I saw, though strange audio anomalies are audible throughout. Most notably during the heated discussion between Bishop and his daughter. When the camera changes, all audio from the previous shot is artificially cut. There should be some bleed-through of sounds. For example if someone is finishing a sentence, and the camera cuts to a different angle, we should still be able to hear the very last part of the sentence, even if it was just an exhale of breath.

Okay, I'm going to break it down into:

The Good:

1 - Well acted. Surprisingly so. The characters for the most part were very well realised. More so than pretty much any fan film I have ever seen.

2 - Commander Bishop. I enjoyed the performance. While not perfect, the character was believable. The actor really got down the subtleties of acting. You could see it in his face what he was feeling.

3 - The admiral. I liked the admiral, who we saw on the viewer. She seemed like the type who didn't take any crap from anyone, while also being very sincere . The type where people would mistake her kindness for weakness.

4 - Leeza Kennedy. Like this character. When she steps on the bridge near the end,  I thought the music choice to be odd. More of a Kirk girl music cue. While she doesn't come across initially as anything special, her performance quickly changes all that. There is something passionate and almost 'spiritual' about the way the actress plays the part. She comes across as someone you'd want around if things weren't going well.

The Bad.

1 - Audio as stated got a little clunky, and at times there wasn't any continuity between shots.

2 - I feel we could have cut a lot of dialogue. It's rare to find actors in fan films who I honestly believe could carry a scene on expressions and posture alone. I believe that the actor portraying Bishop could pull it off.

The Unexplained.

1 - Why were the officers at helm and navigation wearing different insignia's? They appeared to be from Starship Ajax (An upcoming fan film project) Did the Ajax send them over as relief? Was the Ajax involved in that battle?

If I were to give this an arbitrary score that means nothing in the long run, I'd give this effort a solid 7/10.

Familiar Scene, Different Faces. AKA: Skyrim Children Overhaul.

Quite possibly the biggest mod project I've ever done.

It started out as an idea to simply add Elven Children, but after realising how far I could go with the morphs, I decided to expand to vanilla kids.

^^^ Initial progress.

The reason I decided to expand it was because I started adding facial morphs. This meant that I could have greater variety in the children's face than the stock face that every single child has.

Now, the pics that inspired the title of this post.

The familiar scene in Whiterun, where Braith is bullying Lars. Except instead of the same face, with different hair, both kids have different faces.

The hardest ones do do is by far the Orc. I'm pretty happy with the current look, but will probably add to the Orcyness, via modifying the normal map.

Link to forum thread on the Skyrim Nexus Linky link link linky.

That's all for now.