CSB's Infinite Worlds: May 2011

Saturday, 28 May 2011

The Phoenix Imperative First Teaser

Alrighty then my faithful readers...I have faithful readers, right? Anyway, its getting closer: the release of the first episode of "The Phoenix Imperative" isn't as much a dream in my head as it was a few months ago. I started working on a prelude episode earlier this week, but I put it on hold temporarily, pending on whether I will be getting a newer computer system or not. While I am impatiently waiting to find out, I decided I should get started on the promotional strips for the story.

So, early Friday evening, I sat staring at a map of the DC Wasteland, trying to figure out where might be the best places to find the images that I was looking for. A number of sights I wanted to look at I haven't even been to during this play through. So, off I sent Cameron trudging through the wastes to reach the desired locations. I'll tell you, location scouting in a post-apocalyptic wasteland requires more body armour and better firepower than in the world we are all used to dealing with every day.

I managed to reach the locations I wanted, finding some better choices than others, as well as finding choices that I wasn't even looking for. For example, the screenshot with the Deathclaw, is from the second random Deathclaw encounter within a few minutes of each other. When this one attacked, I toggled on the video capture and let it beat on Cameron for a couple of minutes (hurray for "tgm"). Finding just the right shot in the video took a bit of time. Next I edited the screens, making only minor adjustments to the script I had written out for it, then stacked them together. Voila! You now have before you the first advertisement for my story, "The Phoenix Imperative"!

I hope it whets your appetites for more ;)

Monday, 23 May 2011

The Adventures of Silas Caine

I have been going on about things with The Phoenix Imperative practically exclusively since I started this blog. But I think its time I mentioned another comic series on the FO3 Image Share: The Adventures of Silas Caine.

Silas is a member of the Wasteland Rangers, an organization that has similar goals to the Regulators. He wanders the DC Wasteland bringing law and order where ever and when ever he can. He has recently learned that not everything is exactly what it appears to be.

The person responsible for bringing us these tales of adventure, is my Nexus friend, vancleef. He is also the person responsible for giving me the idea to use other players' characters as guest stars. He made a joking reference a little while back, about the two of use doing a cross-over of our respective stories. The idea might not be so much of a joke now.

To thank vancleef for allowing Silas Caine to appear in "The Phoenix Imperative", I made a companion version of Cameron for him to use in his stories. I gave him a bit of background from my story that could, if he so chose to do so, explain why not only Cameron is in his world, but why so many familiar faces are in both of our worlds.

We shall have to wait and see what he decides to do. In the mean time, I have a couple images of Silas and Cameron that vancleef posted on the FO3 Image Share.

Saturday, 21 May 2011

Last, Best Hope for Humanity?

Today, NosCo (tm) and Stark Enterprises (tm) succeeded in jointly testing their newest technology! Yes folks, The NosCo Invictus series AI and Starks latest addition to their Power Armour line-up passed their first combined live combat senario with flying colours, mostly various shades of red! As you can see, the Invictus AI was just as excited about its victory as the developers and investors were.

An anonymous source is quoted as saying "Those Commie bastards don't stand a chance now! Heaven help us if this thing ever goes Darkside."

Oh, great...you just had to go and open your mouth...

Friday, 20 May 2011

New Section on the Blog

I have been wanting share my various game related screenshots with everyone here for a while now. I understand not everyone that stops by is a member of the Nexus, and doesn't get to see what silliness I've been up to, or what progress I have been making with the visual element of the comic. Well, I have that corrected now. If you look to the right side of your screen, you will see a new heading, unimaginatively named Images, with a link below it to my online photo gallery. What is in this gallery, currently, are random screenshots from my FO3 game plays, plus some "Phoenix Imperative" related material.

That material includes my first multi-panel comic, entitled "Jet's Arrival". It is called "Cast of The Phoenix Imperative 2" on the FO3 Image Share. I finally received a copy of Ultrajet's character, Bridget, and decided to use the opportunity of finally including her to do an actual comic strip. Making it was a learning experience, and one I fully enjoyed :) I consider it a "behind the scenes" episode for the comic.

I plan on getting around to adding two more galleries to the list soon. One for "production shots" used in making my screens, and the other strictly for material related to "The Phoenix Imperative", including promotional screens.

EDIT: My appologies to anyone that has tried the link for my screenshot gallery. The URL was copied wrong, and when I tried to edit it correctly, Blogger started messing it up. I deleted the link and started fresh. It works now. I tried it to make sure...this time *looks sheepish*

Sunday, 15 May 2011

Umm, Oops

So apparently I really need to pay more attention to proof-reading and spelling in things I publish publicly.

I have recently made a change to the blogs title, adding on the name of the comic. You may or may not have noticed, but one reader did notice, and was kind enough to point out the fact that I spelt "phoenix" incorrectly. The e and the o were in reverse order. And it is probably spelt that way throughout the blog, and everywhere else I've mentioned it >.<

Its a wee bit embarrassing, but I'll live. Thanks again Michael!

In other news, we have a gentleman on the Nexus named vancleef (yes, not capitalized) to thank for the idea of my using guest stars in "The Phoenix Imperative". Just to make it an almost complete sharing of characters between the two of us, my character and star of my story, Cameron, has been converted to a companion and will soon be ready to get shipped off to vancleef for use in his adventures of Silas Caine. And those stories have turned out to be damned good, in my opinon. Hope my story turns out to be half as good :)

Sunday, 8 May 2011

The Story So Far

Ok folks, here is where we stand. I now have eleven episodes outlined, and another one "under construction", so now I move on to scripting them. There are also two "promo" ideas rattling around in my skull, as well as an introduction strip. I need to do some more thinking on them before I will commit to anything there.

I have also decided on grouping the episodes together in either chapters or books, not sure which to call them, but both lables more or less end up being the same thing for now. If nothing else, using a sub-title to section off the story will help me focus on an individual theme, as well as give you readers a hint about what's to come in the short haul. As a teaser, I'll tell you that the first two books/chapters are currently entitled "The Pheonix Imperative: Rude Awakenings" and "The Pheonix Imperative: Past Tension". Obviously, the name of each part will begin with the overall story title.

I think I have all the poses available to me visually referenced now, including Lost Riders updates to his Slave in Pose pack. The mod included a visual reference of the first 83 or 84 poses, but it wasn't updated along with the mod. No big deal, I have to learn what these things look like anyway. Under the heading of "Too Much Information", I used Satanslilhelper's Susurrus for the references, and found that to be a little more arousing than I cared for *ahem*

That said, I have also started practicing with setting up poses, angles and editing the screenshot. Four of my recent works are posted on the FO3 image share, and I'm going to eventually get around to creating an image area here for non-Nexus members to view.

You folks are getting closer to seeing the first episode, but I still have a way to go before it gets posted.

Five Genres