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.

Me the Modder

Since getting Skyrim, I've started to learn bits and pieces about modding.
Anyway, looking back at the Mods I've done, I can quite happily see that I've progressed from knowing literally nothing about the CK to knowing quite a bit.

Anyway, here's a little picture showcase.

Firstly Dremora Assets.

I'm happy with the way this turned out. It isn't really a mod, just assets. The horns are vanilla, just moved around. The detail maps are higher resolution, and I've made 3 more based on the original. The eyes I made myself, based on the vanilla texture (the alpha channel is vanilla, the rest isn't)

Second is just a quick Race mod. Velothi Race - The True Chimer.

Basically the Altmer, with altered ears. That's pretty much it. Their racials are purely destruction magic boost. May change it so that one of them is ancestor guardian (Like the Dunmer in Oblivion)

Thirdly is Orc Eyes Alternate

My first purely Aesthetic mod. I really liked the way it came out. The reason I made this was that I use Natural Eyes, but their Orc eyes aren't lore friendly, so I made my own.

Fourth is Female Orc Horns

The males have horns, so why not the females? Honestly, this one's a little wonky. The .tri files that morph them to the brow are for the male, so I had to make some fixes.

Fifth is Deep Elf Race  - The True Dwemer

Really happy with the way this one turned out. need to do some updates for the Racial Compatibility, but that should be a doddle. Their base is the Dunmer, but with altered ears and new eye textures. Their racials involve turning all automatons in an area into allies (perhaps a bit overpowered, but it only works in Dwemer Ruins.)

And Finally Snow Elf Race - The True Falmer

On the left is their standard look. On the right is with Ethereal Elven Overhaul.

This is the one I'm spending the most time on at the moment. I really like the way they look. Their abilities are frost flesh and frost resistance. The player can also smith armour and robes.

Link to my nexus profile is on the top right >

right now, I'm pretty much living and breathing Elder Scrolls, but haven'tactually played it since I ran through the Falskaar DLC sized mod.

Anyhoo, time to get back to editing that chapter for An Elder Scrolls Saga.

Red Faction: Armageddon

So I pretty much played through this in 2 sessions, and overall found it to be the poorest game in the series. I know it has been a number of years since it was released, but finally got a boxed console version for quite cheap.

First off, I have been an RF fan since the first game, which was an FPS. the fact you could tunnel using GEO mod was really fun. It was a unique experience.

Now, I didn't particularly like RF2 and found RF: Guerilla to be too much of a departure being a TPS. RF:A is similar to RF:G, but is a linear space monster shooter.

Anyway, onto the unique game mechanics. First up is the use of the Nanoforge, which is simply press left trigger to rebuild objects. novel idea, but not well used in my opinion. It does lead to the fact that no platform is safe, as it can be destroyed beneath you, meaning you have to rebuild it, which I did like.

As for the combat. it wasn't anything special. Mostly killing massive amounts of alien creatures, which is the only thing stopping this game from being an hour long. There are no puzzles to solve, not that I can remember, it's just shoot everything in sight.

In honesty it was quite boring.

There was only few saving grace's, one of them being a strong female character called Kara, who SPOILER was killed near the end in a moronic asinine (and open for interpretation) way, making the rest of the game feel even worse. It was kinda expected, but I felt she shouldn't have just been stabbed by a tentacle (or whatever it was) and dragged off the cliff.

In fact it irritated me so much, that I wrote a first chapter for a fan fiction where she survives. Probably won't upload it to FF.net unless I finish it, but as for now it has quelled my disappointment of an already lacklustre game

I absolutely loved the first Red Faction. I hope that now Nordic Games (I think that's who owns the license now) make it an FPS and take it back to its roots, which was far better than what it became.

Starship Exeter: The Tressaurian Intersection

The Tressaurian Intersection has been released. A decade after the wrapped up shooting, and about six years since they released act three, they finally went and finished it. It was shot in standard def, so no HD option is available.

Anyway, my thoughts without spoiling.

The acting is pretty good throughout. There are parts here and there that could have used an extra take or two (Mainly with Jimm Johnson/James Culhane, who played Garrovick). The effects are trying to recreate the 1960's feel. What I get from it though is that this is what TOS trek would have looked like with a bigger budget.
The sets are flawless, and the story is engaging and VERY TOS. That's a plus for me. There is an issue with act one being quieter than the rest.

What is obvious is that a lot of love went into this. Especially if what I read about the temperature in the studio is true. You can tell on a few of the actors as they're really sweating at times.

Anyway, as far as fan films go, this is probably among the best.

Edit: The following was added on May 11th 2013

Just re-watched TTI again. I have to add more to what I wrote above.

This is the only TOS fan film I have seen that feels 'right'. The acting may not be perfect from beginning to end, but it doesn't matter because I am able to lose myself in the story of what's going on.

Productions like Phase II and Continues just feel like facsimiles of TOS, due to them recasting Kirk, Spock and McCoy. No matter how well Vic Mignogna can impersonate Kirk in Continues, or no matter how much a like Doc John in Phase II, they'll never be Kirk and McCoy.

As I dislike reading Elder Scrolls stories that feature the Dragonborn, I'm starting to feel the same way about TOS fan films that use the original characters, or where we meet the ancestor's of future characters in the other shows (Tasha Yar's Grandmother in Phase II B&F). I've seen Kirk and Spock in TOS, give me something else. Also don't use stunt casting to try and draw me in.

This is where Starship Exeter's second episode really did it right. They don't have any familiar actors, or characters (Chang was in their first episode which I thought wasn't particularly well done), and they don't mention the Enterprise or Kirk, even though Garrovick has a tenuous connection with them.
His uncle died while commanding the Farragut when a young ensign/lieutenant? Kirk was unable to fire on a cloud creature. You also have the fact that Exeter's previous crew were all killed, and Kirk was the one that found it in orbit of the planet that promised 'eternal youth' with the demented Captain Ronald Tracey.

I feel other fan films would have shoehorned the mentioning of Kirk and/or the Enterprise in, but it's not needed.

Ten years it took to get this out of the door, and I must say that it isn't disappointing. Not in the slightest.

One Year On/Original Sci-Fi fic/ESS/TUToT/future posts

Prepare for the scattergun of a post that follows.

ONE YEAR ON
It has been one year six days since my first post. My last post was actually on the exact day, one year later.
I'm glad that I started this blog. It's become somewhat of an online diary, because as I read through it I can see everything that I've done in the last year, and it makes me feel somewhat accomplished in regards to my writing. How I've gone back to fix a story, only to then go back again because I've progressed and seen that it still needed work. It also cements my mindset at a certain point, and perhaps I'll look back and wonder "What was I thinking?"

ORIGINAL FIC
My OF is going quite well thus far. There are already things I know I'm going to change on my second draft. One thing I made sure I did from the get go was add diversity in both ethnicity and gender. One of my leads, if not the lead is African born and my second is Hispanic. Heck the first character I introduce is the President of the Planetary Union and he's Arab.
The premise of this story has been done before, I'm not going to pretend that it's a new idea. My goal though is to be more involved with the people of the story, to see different perspectives from people in different areas. Though mainly it's military/government/and a little bit of civilian. (though I'm thinking of expanding this in draft 2)

AN ELDER SCROLLS SAGA
I'm happy with the way this is progressing. I'm sticking to releasing the Prologue/Chapter 1 in June. Whether it's the beginning middle or end of June is another matter.

THE UNTOLD TALES OF TAMRIEL
This is a cool little community page on fanfiction.net started by someone by the username your.daily.dose.of.fanfic. I'm a staff member (Albeit a rather useless one) along with SuperGreG and also Augustinian Frog. The community's goal is to find decent original fiction set in the Elder Scrolls universe that isn't just a novelization of the games or that feature the playable characters of the games.
I'm hoping that someone comes across this, who'll take some interest (After-all I myself have found gems after reading random blogs).
The-Untold-Tales-of-Tamriel (I'll be making a proper post about this later if I remember)

FUTURE POSTS
I may expand this blog, or I may make a new one where I'll be maybe reviewing books I've read or albums I've heard. This is all a maybe though and is far from set in stone. I also was going to say something else here, but forgot while writing the rest of the post. D'oh.

Elder Scrolls Online - AKA Why I'm Not Buying

First off here's a link to a review by Angry Joe. Second I haven't played ESO. All I have to say is based on several opinions that I have heard.

It outlines pretty much all of my fears of why Elder Scrolls doesn't work in an MMO space. The commentary of how you're sneaking and then another player comes in hopping about like an idiot, or going to the cave to kill spiders on a side quest only to find other players standing around farming them. It just breaks immersion. You're so aware that this is a game that you can't become wrapped inside the world, cannot become immersed.

Full price plus the subscription model isn't worth it. Not when Skyrim and Oblivion can offer such better experience.

Another thing, is apparently how the loot works. It's on a first comes gets it. Essentially whoever gets it first has it and everyone else has to wait a minute or so till it respawns. Dumb. I don't want to be doing a quest to find a guy called "Mr Snuggles" runs in hopping about like an idiot, grabs all the stuff then runs out. It'd really irritate me.

If it ever goes free to play, then I may take a look, but to buy something that is barely an ES game and is an average MMO just ain't worth it.

Edit: Holy moly. This post was made one year after my very first post.

An Elder Scrolls Saga Part 3 and Other Stuff.

ESS: Of Tooth and Nail
I have the outline, and I've begun to write part 3 of my Elder Scrolls fanfic. Already I can tell that this is going to be massive with huge amounts of characters in all different locations all doing different things. I might actually burst through the 100,000 word mark (so far my stories are from 70,000-80,000 words [approx])

In a way, this marks the end of a trilogy, even though it's not the end of the story. The end point is really just yet another start. Will it be of another trilogy? I'm not sure, but I already know the gist of book 4, and what it will entail.

Original Fic
I'm also writing an original fiction. It's sci-fi set in a universe I created. My earliest document on this is 25th March 2012, and some of the ideas began well before then. Writing fan fiction was a gateway into this, writing my own story, that I actually own. Playing in other people's universes is fun, but at the end of the day it belongs to someone else, and I can never really claim any ownership for it, apart from the original characters I created, but they are so entwined in those owned universes that the two are integral.

So far I'm trying to write 1000 words a day, though sometimes I go over that by an extra 400, but other times I struggle to get as many as 1000.

What this means is that I will be spending less time on my fan fiction, yet I do still enjoy writing for them, so they probably won't stop, just slow down.

An Elder Scrolls Saga: Old Wounds - Breaks 80.000 Words.

Trivial for some, but not for me.
Right now, I'm writing my Trek fiction, but on the side, I'm updating ESS:OW. Just adding in a few bits of detail into the chapters and correcting mistakes (Possibly adding new ones while I'm at it)
Last chapter I updated was 17, which knocked me over 80,000 words. (Though it's actually less, as I've got the chapter number at the start and at the end of each chapter I have  the date it was updated)
Still, I have 9 chapters left, then I'll move onto Dagger in the Wind.

On further news, my Trek fic is nearing the end. The next chapter will feel a bit like wrap-up, but the chapter after I hope will be a bit of a surprise regarding what happens. Then it'll be wrap up, and a slight teaser regarding what comes next. (I've got a lot of arcs that I want to get to)

After my Trek story is done, then it'll be onto An Elder Scrolls Saga: Of Tooth and Nail. After that, I'll probably go back to trek, as I don't have any urge to return to my Fallout series.

Deviant Art

So I've had a Deviant Art page for years now, but rarely every used it. I posted a manipulation of an image of the Lucky revolver from Fallout New Vegas a few years ago now, to make 4 weapons. Lucky, Skill, Power and Will. Was pretty proud of it at the time, and had forgotten about it till I decided to start uploading new stuff. My second thing was just a GTA map, a sort of what if another Island was added.

Well anyway, I've started uploading pics related to my fan fiction stories, such as Starships, and I've even got an unused image that I was going to use for a cover for my Elder Scrolls fic. If anyone comes here from FF.net then maybe you'll be interested to check it out. Or not.

Link is to the side >>>>>>>>>
with a link to my nexus page and to my FF.net profile.

Music Helps Me Write

Sometimes I can't think of what to write next in a story. I know what happens, it's just filling in the details, making it interesting etc.
Usually when I'm struggling, simply staring at the last paragraph I wrote, I like to put on some lyric-less music, usually soundtracks, and usually connected to what I'm writing.

When I was writing my Elder Scrolls stories, I mostly listened to the Elder Scrolls Soundtrack, by Jeremy Soule.

With my Fallout Story, I listened to Mark Morgan's 'Vault Archives', which is the Fallout 1 & 2 Soundtracks that he remastered. I also listened to the FO3/NV Soundtrack by Inon Zur (Gotta love that name)

With my Trek story, I have been listening to the TOS soundtrack (Got the LaLaLand Records' TOS soundtrack collection, which is 15 CD's) The 'Doomsday Machine' soundtrack is something special, I mean wow, does that episode have some really good music. In fact TOS has good music all throughout, It's just that some cues such as the Kirk/Spock fight music from Amok Time has been overused, and turned into a cliché.

I have also listened to Bear McCreary's Battlestar Galactica Soundtracks on occasion while writing. (Usually when I'm writing a fight/battle scene) I have all of them, and think that Bear is probably the greatest TV composer in recent times. The stuff he comes up with is pretty unique. There's no soundtrack like a Bear soundtrack.

On a side note, on FF.net, I was looking for other Star Trek TOS fan fiction, that wasn't on the Enterprise, or connected with the crew. Found absolutely nothing, so I might be unique in that regard, which is nice.

Star Trek: Overwatch - Building the World

Star Trek is a very visual medium. From the starships to the colour palette of the sets, it has quite a unique look and feel. Putting that on the page can be quite daunting, as it's very important to get the "feel" right. As Overwatch is set in the TOS time-frame, I try to get the characters to somewhat feel like they should, as though this fanfic could have been written in the late 60's. (I will use "warp factor" a lot as it's a TOS term.)

Having said that though, I don't want to limit myself. That means that while I want the over-all feel to be classic Trek, It will have some modern ideas, and feature terminology from later Trek shows, such as plasma for an example. I will endeavour not to do all out technobabble. (The energy field outputs a quantum trionic field. We can destabilize it by reconfiguring the phaser banks to output a frequency of 1.54 Terajoules while the captain simultaneously pats his head.) - None of that S. If I do it to that extent, (minus the head pat part) then call me out on it.

Anyway, as I stated earlier that Trek is a visual medium I made some pictures using a self-modified version of Vance's toolkit, which is essentially a series of 2d images from 3 different angles. Top, side, front. I added rear and bottom and coloured them.

Warning pictures reveal my real name. My identity has been blown!!! (Also these pics are like 3 years old)

U.S.S. Evergreen This ship is front and centre for Fire and Rain, the first story in what will be a more casual series. As in each story doesn't have to follow directly on from the last.

U.S.S. Shaandra This ship also features predominantly. Each ship mission patch I made myself.

U.S.S. London Mentioned a few times.

The Shaandra and the London are actually FASA ships I believe. I took liberties with both the Shaandra and the London, changing the exact type. (Both are Constitution and Loknar, I just made them variants) Both their name, registry and basic class are correct with Memory Beta.

Star Trek: Overwatch - Take Two.

So, It's been a while since I've written anything for this story, and it's pretty stagnant right now. Well, I read through all the currently uploaded chapters and found that before I do anything further, I need to correct some glaring mistakes.
I'd also like to add in some more detail, and alter some sentences so that they read better. Overall though, it surprised me how compelling it was so far. I want to see what happens next, and that's what I'm going to be doing once AaD: Survivors is done.

Speaking of AaD. I'm way ahead on written chapters to uploaded chapters. I'm actually writing what may be the final chapter right now. It was fun to write for the most part, and as with all my stories, I feel that I am better at writing now, then I was when I began. You begin to see things, start to notice how sentences flow.

I hope that I can improve what is written so far for ST:Overwatch, and continue it to its conclusion. The thing with Star Trek though is its fandom is over-saturated with fanfiction. I just want to write something that fits in the universe, that feels like it could be a legitimate ST novel. In fact I want that with everything I write.
With every word typed, I hope that I'm getting closer to achieving that, and while I know I still have some way to go, all I can do is keep trying my best.

Starbase 47 by Wolfy, Cordanilus and MScott. WC PhaseII Enterprise by WileyCoyote.

Both are mods for Star Trek: Bridge Commander.

Textures modified by yours truly to rename them Starbase 59 Overwatch and U.S.S. Shaandra NCC-1795.

Star Trek Fan Films

I'll be honest. I find the majority of them to be sub-par. Anything set in the 24th century so far that I've seen just looks bad with shoddy green screen and often unbelievable characters. The best, but still clunky is probably Intrepid. Though as they are from Scotland/North England they all sound like they're from that region, so you get a weird vibe from it
Stuff set in the TOS Era fares a little better, only because they usually have actual sets. But often the acting lets it down. Farragut, and New Voyages' acting is often not so good, breaking the immersion. When New Voyages became Phase II, the acting seemed a little better, but their latest offering "Kitumba" was the first time I didn't notice them "Acting" And hey it had Buck Rogers in it.
Star Trek OGAM - the less I say, the better. It was an embarrassment to everyone involved.
Star Trek Continues suffers from the acting problem to a lesser extent. I almost believed Chris Doohan was Scotty, but Vic Mignogna sometimes fell into William Shatner playing Kirk, which pulled me out of it a bit.
The best all around effort I have seen in Trek fan films is Starship Exeter - The Tressaurian Intersection. (Their first episode the Savage Empire was simply too cheesy for me to enjoy) Unfortunately TTI is still not finished after 8 years.
Out of all the fan films I prefer the TOS ones that aren't on the Enterprise. I find I can forgive more if it's not people trying to be Kirk and Spock. Let's be honest, unless you go for something completely different, you aren't going to be able to pull of Kirk without it feeling like parody.

As for Trek audio, I listen to Star Trek: Outpost. It's probably one of the best things produced fandom wise. That's not to say they haven't made screw ups. I've heard on more than one occasion, them using text to speech programs for a voice in an episode, and it sticks out like a storm-trooper at a Trek Convention. Apart from that, it's the most solid effort so far.

As for upcoming Trek fan efforts, I am blown away by what I've seen so far from Star Trek: Axanar. (Battle of Axanar) Set twenty odd years before TOS (2245) they are going with a fusion of TOS/Abrahms-trek (notably the Kelvin design aesthetic) and Enterprise. They currently have Gary Graham, JG Hertzler and Richard Hatch on the project.
Axanar is going to be a one-shot, a movie. I haven't seen the weak point of the production yet (the acting) but I don't think they've filmed anything yet. Oh and Captain Garth (Garth of Izar) will be portrayed by Alec Peters, the founder of Propworx, who is the one who's been at the helm for this project.

Also apparently we'll get to see the Enterprise in drydock. 2245 is the year she was built. I don't care if the rest of it is shoddy, but I just want to see the Enterprise being built.