Okey Doke. As milestones go, this is the big one: I finally finished the last illustration for Part One of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS.

For the moment, I’ll ignore the fact that I still have three inventory illustrations to go; and having ignored that so successfully, I’ll pretend that I don’t expect to redo ten to fifteen of the illustrations I’ve already done; and while this ignoring thing is going so very well I will also neglect to remember that with all the art done I’ll still have a few weeks worth of debugging and finishing to do on the web site. And extras, like desktop wallpapers, to make.

Hey! Ignorance really is bliss!

On the other fronts I am pointedly not looking at the trailer because I’ve looked at it so much I can’t really see it any more. It’s pretty close to being finished. But I need to look at it with fresh eyes so that I’m sure what changes I still need to make.

I have a test book coming from the printer to work out any kinks in the printing process… so that once the art is really, definitely done I can put together the print version.

And I’ve continued to work on the Pulp Sci Fi Title Generator I put together for the Thrilling Tales web site… it’s continued to improve and it’s gotten a spiffy graphical facelift. And I’ve even made a Mini Title-O-Tron that people can install in the sidebars of their own blogs or web sites, if they like: I want to do a Facebook app version but so far whenever I look at their docs, my brain hurts.

So I guess I can take a deep breath for a bit, at which point I’ll need to stop ignoring those things I mentioned above, get them done, and try to catch all these balls I’m juggling at about the same time so that I can launch the site.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, interactive fiction, retro science fiction, pulp sci fi, art, illustration, really need to have a bit of a lie down now thank you very much

Just a random, unprocessed frame from the bit I’m rendering right now for the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual trailer. This is from the second scene. Now that I’ve pretty well worked out the timing for the first minute, I’m going in and making the final versions of those shots.

I’m not sure when I’ll be uploading the finished trailer (heck, I’m not sure when it will be finished). I may not want to promote the site until I’m done with the first printed volume, and ready to get to work on Part II. But I have a good and mysterious reason for wanting to get it done early – I’m thinking about incorporating it into something else that needs to be ready before I start on Part II.

Anyway, this is pretty fun. It’s always nice to see what happens when I put a camera in Retropolis to see what’s moving around, and I don’t do that often (enough?) these days.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, retro future, airship, zeppelin, dirigible, monoral, world of tomorrow

I’m in that last (ish) long haul here, and so I’m quiet; but I’ve got just four more illustrations to go for Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves. One or two are challenging ones, but heck… I’ll take what I can get in the not quite instant gratification area.

I’m actually going slower than I might because I’m splitting my time between these and an animated trailer for the Thrilling Tales web site. It’s weirdly relaxing to switch from working hard on one thing to working equally hard on something different. I can’t explain why that is, but like I said, I’ll take what I can get.

It’s been quite awhile since I dusted off Premiere and put together a piece of video with it (and why do we still call it video?) My old version of Premiere won’t install on my main computer (16 bit installers: gotta love ‘em) and on my second one it looked at the memory available – which was way more than its programmers had believed possible, I guess – and ran screaming into the other room. So I had to remove memory to make it work. Go figure.

But anyway, that’s working, I have some neat period music for the soundtrack from the public domain Prelinger archive, and that, like the story, is slowly coming together. Prrrrrrrrogress!

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, trailer, retro future, vintage, fiuturistic, rockets, the toaster with two brains, trapped in the tower of the brain thieves

Seventy illustrations down, twelve to go!

Doctor Rognvald, like me, is pleased.

I do have one massive exterior set to rebuild for half of those pictures (I’m not happy with the version I made originally) so it’s not what you’d call a slam dunk. But still.

Then there are three remaining inventory images. That’s because – in adventure game style – characters may pick up and carry items around. You get to see a bit of information about those, hence the illustrations of the objects. Add about four or five redos for illustrations I think should be better… some global adjustments for brightness and contrast… and then the art for Part One of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS will be done. Incredible as that may seem. To me, anyhow.

The brightness and contrast adjustments are mainly necessary to sync the web and print versions together – printed art is always a bit dimmer than it seems onscreen – but I’m also fighting the gradual decay of my fine but aging monitor. Every few months I have to check it out and adjust its display. So I’ll make a final pass through all the art at the end to make sure it’s copacetic.

Once the art’s done I can go back to work on the web site. I need to disable or modify one feature that I haven’t used, add another feature that I thought up while working on the illustrations, and implement a couple of things (saving and restoring your place in the story) that I didn’t bother with until I had a story to save and load. Add in some supporting pages, season to taste, fix the couple of problems the site has in the Chrome browser… and there it’ll be.

I’m still hoping to launch the Thrilling Tales site by the end of March. We’ll see.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, toaster with two brains, interactive story, pulp adventure, retro future, serial, dieselpunk, art, illustration

Tell it to My Giant Robot

Celtic Knotwork Biohazard

My T-shirt printer is four years old this month – and I have to say, anything I did at the age of four just pales by comparison – and to celebrate, they’re having a sale that is slightly less complicated than I’m about to make it sound.

The deal is, you get a discount of up to 20.9% on an order of $25 or more by entering this coupon code during checkout: 4PFBDAY. The exact amount of your discount varies, but for example: on a dark colored t-shirt it’s just over 20%.

I think 20.9% is the top limit. I tried the coupon on a bunch of different orders to see what it would do. ‘Cause, you know, I’m just like that.

The neat thing about this sale is that it’s not, say, $5 off on a shirt: the discount gets applied to whatever your total is. So if you order twenty shirts (please do!) you get a discount on all twenty of them.

The sale runs through February 17.

This is good news if you like the shirts from my Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, or Hot Wax Tees. It’s significantly less good news if you don’t like any of them. In which case, those pants make you look fat.

Technorati Tags: t-shirts, retropolis transit authority, saga shirts, hot wax tees, sale, coupon, printfection