Nihil Novi Sub Sole

 Okay, for those of you not familiar with Latin, the title of this post translates to a rather familiar phrase: nothing new under the sun.  I entitled this post with that, as it seems to be very true.

I bring this up, as I have discovered that a few names that I have been intending on using in a couple of my stories, have shown up in other properties.  Also most, if not all of these stories contain similar tropes, resulting in creative uniqueness being difficult to attain.

When I first started my table-top superhero role-playing game back in 2017/18, there was one player character named Echo, and another named Justice.  About a year after starting the game, I discovered that there was a Marvel Comics character named Echo that appeared in Marvel’s “Daredevil” series, and has recently made its live action debut in the Disney+ series, “Hawkeye”.  While recently watching a Youtube video about the history of the original “Guardians of the Galaxy” team in Marvel Comics, I learned that there was a mutant character named “Justice”.  Just to be more sure of “covering my bases”, I looked to see if DC Comics had any characters by those names, and sure enough, there were several unconnected characters named “Echo”, but no characters named “Justice” though.

The Marvel Comics characters bare no similarities with the characters of the same name from my game, with the exception that both Echo characters are female.  Thus, I believe, there should be no issues arising there.  Of the nine (yes, 9) characters in DC Comics named Echo, two of them have very slight resemblances to “my” Echo.

One of them, a character named Terri Eckhart, has the ability to absorb and redirect energy.  The other, Myke-4 Astor, has the ability to manipulate sound.

The Echo from my superhero game has a number of sound based or sound related abilities.  Notably, in this case, the ability to absorb kinetic energy, and use it to either heal herself, or expel it as sound, although at a significant “signal loss”, resulting in just an “echo” of the original intensity.  She also has the ability to generate and manipulate sound in various ways.  The similarities, although not great, are unfortunately there.  I think I may consult a legal expert at some point about this, before proceeding with including Echo in any stories that I produce.

The last issue is too much of a similarity for me to continue with.  Back in 2010/11 when I was originally working on The Phoenix Imperative, I was planning on using a virus called The Hunger Virus as a major story element that lead up to the apocalypse.  Random Youtube watching revealed to me that in Marvel Comics, the Marvel Zombies storyline involves a virus known as “The Hunger”, which was responsible for all of the heroes and villains becoming zombies.  This is something I was completely unaware of at the time, and is much too similar for me to continue using.  I will have to think up some other name, perhaps attached to a real bacterial or viral infection that is similar in effect to what I envisioned my “Hunger Virus” to be.

Time will tell, I guess.

Update on Permissions

 I have recently been able to get in touch with more of my original story contributors, and asked them for permission to continue using their creations in the reboot of The Phoenix Imperative.  Happily, I have not had one refusal.  :)  So, I now have the ability to use: Bridget, Ghost, Silas Caine, Rain, Stryder and Maeva.  I am not expecting to get permission for a few of the other characters, but I can manage to replace them.  Given the original setting, I will be making quite a number of changes from the original setting, but I will do my best to keep the "flavour" there.

I hope to hear back from you folks!  :)

Moving Along

 When I first started working on The Phoenix Imperative, almost 12 years ago now, I needed to put a fair amount of work into setting things up before I could even do the first in-game screenshot.  The same is true this time around, for working in Daz Studio.  I need to build myself a visual reference library for all of the poses I have, see what scene/setting resources I have that I can use, as well as what is available and I can get at a later date, including suitable outfits, props and figures.  This is almost the exact same thing I needed to do before for doing the work in Fallout 3.  I also have to redo most of my story notes, as a number of story elements are different (no Brotherhood of Steel or Enclave, for instance).  I am also running some story changes through my head, mostly involving the introductions of both Cameron and Bridget.  Some changes are also needed with some of the other characters, to maintain some plot consistency with them.

For example, even though no one seemed to notice originally, Maeva's part in the story actually changed a fair bit, in the small number of episodes I released.  She went from being someone that was a mercenary bandit, to a member of an organization with grand and dark designs for the Wasteland.  I guess I managed to make that a rather smooth transition story-wise, thus no one noticing, but it is still a rather jarring shift to me.  This time around, I aim to avoid that sort of thing.  I guess we will eventually see how that goes.

Minor Update

 If nothing else, I am trying to keep working on my renders, if not story work.  Having finished the renders of the Player Characters from my last Marvel Superhero table-top game, I decided to work on some more characters from The Phoenix Imperative.  I spent some time last weekend starting to work on Ghost, but ran into a slight hurdle with her basic outfit.  After that bit of frustration, I went ahead with Silas Caine and Maeva.  Both of them turned out very well, with the in-game facial data of both characters translating fairly well into Daz Studio.  If you are familiar with the original game versions, you can tell right off that Silas is Silas.  I managed to approximate his usual outfit and hair quite closely.  Maeva, oddly enough, did not transfer as closely, but turned out very well, none the less.  I got her eyes almost exactly, and her hair is also close.  The outfit, on the other hand, is not even close to her in-game outfit, but I think it suits her quite well.  I also went ahead and added a set of fangs to her, something the Fallout version did not have, but her creator probably added to his versions in Oblivion and Skyrim, as her background there, is she is a demon.

I have added the initial renders of Silas and Maeva to the "The Phoenix Imperative" image page.  Enjoy!  :)

New Images

 Just thought I would let people know that I have added a new render to the TPI (The Phoenix Imperative) page, and two new ones to "...And Doom Follows".  If anyone wants to know anything about the characters in the "...And Doom Follows" section, you can read about them on my Deviant Art account.

Enjoy!  :)

Dealing With Obstacles

 In case I have not actually come out and said it, I want to generate an income by telling my stories and sharing them with a wide ranging audience.  To do this, I believe I need to be able to keep to a regular, or at least semi-regular release schedule, even if the releases are just story snippets and/or images of renders that are works in progress.  You know, things to show followers, patrons on Patreon and fans that I am actually working towards completing a project.

As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I have at least a few issues in trying to achieve that.  Issues such as not enough time to work on the projects, having a computer capable of completing complex renders in a "reasonable" amount of time, and the ability to maintain enough focus to work on a project.  The first two can be dealt with by having a sufficient income generated via Patreon and a presence on Youtube (yes, I am considering a Youtube channel).  My issue in maintaining my focus can be partially mitigated with having enough time to work on the projects, but my biggest hurdle with that, is how I deal with frustration at the projects, when something does not go the way I planned.

In general, the frustration can be dealt with by just "taking a step back", and doing work on something else for a short period, or researching why what went wrong, did go wrong.  Unfortunately, I am diagnosed as Clinically Depressed and flare-ups can be triggered by quite a number of things, or they can even make an occurrence even worse.

This past weekend was an example of this, having run into some repeated programme crashing with Daz Studios, while trying to complete a render of one of the last two Player Characters from the superhero table-top game I was running back in 2017 - 1018.  I made a few attempts to complete the render over Friday night and part of Saturday, but each one resulted in a CTD (crash to desktop).  I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time playing Dead Space and "surfing the 'Net".  By Saturday night, my lack of progress led me to questioning my ability to actually make a living at sharing my stories, and that set of a nasty bout of depression, which I am still dealing with as I type.

I have improved, but I am aware of some signs that I am still dealing with this bout.  Having taken some time to think about the situation, and having chatted with a few friends about this particular issue, I realize that this is going to happen, but it does not have to keep me from working on my projects and sharing them.  I also realize that I still have a lot to learn with the Daz Studio programme.  It is a very complex and comprehensive programme, with a rather steep learning curve.  I can learn quite a bit, if I put some time into researching parts of the programme that I am unfamiliar with, or just having some trouble with at the time.

These obstacles will keep getting in my way, but I am learning how to overcome them, and for any followers that consider themselves "fans" will most likely understand the issues and still be supportive of what I am trying to accomplish.  I am basing that upon the support I had when I was originally working on The Phoenix Imperative, over ten years ago now.

I can hope, right?

Blog Update

 I added another section to the blog, under the "Pages" heading.  There is now a section for image renders related to superhero table-top game/story.  Like the TPI section, I will be adding to it when I have new renders available.  Enjoy!  :)