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

One of my very first posts here at the Web-O-Blog was about Alexis Van der Hague’s animation Stilt Walkers: an animated short that was rendered with 3D tools in such a way that it recalled the style of traditional paintings. That, and the lyrical style of the piece, impressed the heck out of me. Just lovely.

3D Total is hosting a "Making Of" article for a new image by Van der Hague. Here we see a portrait, within an 18th century landscape, of Papageno from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

This time around we get not just the final product, which is sensational, but a breakdown of how Van der Hague has used 3D tools (ZBrush, Maya, and Mudbox) to build something that’s beautifully not photorealistic. That’s pretty close to a description of what I try to do. It’s just that the "not photorealistic" styles we’re each aiming for are pretty different.

This article’s a great example of how that can be done. Excellent work!

Technorati Tags: Alexis Van der Hague, papageno the bird catcher, art, illustration, maya, zbrush, mudbox, photoshop, stilt walkers, digital art

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

The rayguns have come out as I near the end of this batch of illustrations in Doctor Rognvald’s lab – and when these are done I think I’ll have nearly reached the "light at the end of the tunnel" stage. Almost.

When I guesstimated that Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves would need about eighty illustrations… I was pretty much exactly dead on. Amazing, seeing as how that involved arithmetic and everything. Next time I’ll track the exact number as I refine the script. It was hard this time because some of the story nodes shared the same illustrations and I didn’t keep a tally of those as I went. Anyway, like I said, eighty pictures was about right. Sixty seven down as of this morning.

I got to thinking last night about Kickstarter. That’s a fundraising web site where a lot of musicians and artists are raising funds for their projects. I’m toying with the idea of trying that when I start Part Two of the story.

The whole thing ends up being a bit like a Public Radio fundraiser in which ever-neater premiums go with the ever-higher contributions. You can see that there’s some math involved there (egad!) to make sure that the total raised, minus the cost of those premiums, still gives you the funds you need. And if the cost of the premiums is high then the project’s funding has to be higher… which makes it harder for the project to reach its goal.

There are some Kickstarter anecdotes here at the Whitechapel forums. Fora. You know what I mean.

And you need an invitation to start a project, so when the time comes I’d have to scramble around on the web looking for one. But it seems like there’ s some potential there. Still thinking.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, retro science fiction, sci fi, interactive fiction, kickstarter, fundraising

Paypal is now accepted as a payment option at several of my online stores. So for those who are allergic to credit cards and debit cards, or those of you who’ve burned those cards in a wholly understandable protest against the rampant consumerism that is eroding the foundations of our culture while, oddly enough, paying my bills… now’s the time.

Paypal payments are now accepted at these sites of mine:

	Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design
	at Retropolis: all products except for the ‘Retropolis Transit Authority’ T-Shirts and water bottles
	the Non-Conformists’ Union
	the Retrovert

So from here in my all-seeing Internet cockpit it looks to me as though the only places you can’t buy my swag with Paypal are my T-Shirt shops.

Technorati Tags: retropolis, celtic art & retro-futuristic design, paypal