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.

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.