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While Mike is sworn to secrecy (still) on my not as secretive project, I am not sworn to secrecy on his project. Probably because his isn’t a secret anymore, if it ever was.

But, in any case, his project, The Mysterious Minute-Men Omnibus, is now published and available for purchase.

Since my project is still “under development,” as they say, pop on over and get a copy of his book. That ought to tide you over until my project is ready to be released. And, if you like his work, you’ll also like my project because–so long as he is still willing and able when I’m set–he’ll be doing some work for my project too.

And, if you don’t like his stuff, well, you’ll still like my project because he’s not the only one on board.

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Haven’t posted a weird head in a while, so I figured I was past due.

Sadly, it doesn’t look as good as previous tries (1, 2, 3, 4). Maybe because this one started off as a rocket ship. Sigh.

I don’t think Pixar will be looking for me anytime soon.

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Several days ago, actually yesterday but it seems longer, I talked about finding the time to do a short animation that Michelle may enjoy. I have a big project at work I’m trying to finish, so who knows when I might get to that animation?

By the way, have you visited the Broadcasting Brain blog? It really has nothing to do with this blog post; I just figured I’d give him some link love with the correctly ordered name this time.

Anyway, I was going to take work home with me and work on it at home too, but after spending the day on it, plus staying after hours a bit to finish up the section I was on, I decided I couldn’t take any more of it for the day. So, I went home, ate dinner, watched TV and then did some 3D rendering.

Below, you’ll see my rendering of an MP3 player. I modeled it last night, but didn’t do the render until lunchtime today. Actually, I did the texture (the “paint job”) during lunch as well. But, the model itself was completed (late) last night.

Sorry, no earphones just yet. Just the base model. Earphones cost extra.

And, what do the unleave’ed trees have to do with anything? Well, it was the closest photo I had to anything that might resemble album cover art. Maybe it’s some kind of mood music, “Winter Days, on a bleak and grim December…” Who knows. I’ll probably need to update it before I do the animation, because you wouldn’t be able to break-dance to a sad song. Not that there’s break-dancing, but there’s certainly no slow dancing.

At any rate, as you might have imagined, the animation short in some way involves an MP3 player. That’s all I’ll say for now. So, that’s two clues for you. First clue was “Ron.” So, you and Michelle will have to ponder on that for a bit. I still have work to do before I do any more on the animation.

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Click on the image for the full-size view.

Curiously, my first YouTube video was 7 seconds long. The second was 6 seconds. And the third is 5 seconds. At this rate, pretty soon I’ll just be posting single frames…

Anyway, so today (and yesterday) I worked on a new space ship design. Picked up some tips from another modeler on my last design, so figured I’d start from scratch and see what I could do.

As well as modeling the ship (which is fairly basic, except for the addition of a Docking Bay door, which none of my previous models have had), I also did the textures (what 3D modelers call what you would normally identify as the “paint job”) and the displacement map, which gives the tiled appearance on the ship. Mind you, I spent more time on the texture map than on the displacement map. I hope to do better tiling in the future.

I think I am finally getting the hang of 3D modeling. Not quite ready to take on anything too elaborate just yet, but I feel that I am finally getting into the swing of creating things. Still a lot to learn, but I feel that I am making some progress.

Oh, the video? Here:

I still need to learn the best format to submit to YouTube to get a good quality image. If I render as a QuickTime movie with no compression, I get a high quality movie that YouTube rejects. If I render with MPEG-4 compression (tried 90 KBytes/sec and 192 KBytes/sec) and I get a low quality image (like you see) that YouTube takes, but it looks bad. Video encoding will be another day’s lesson.

The flight path did not turn out as I had hoped. While I did focus the camera on the ship, in the hopes of creating an effect where you stick with the ship but you can tell that it’s flying through space, the flight path was supposed to appear as though it was going straight ahead, with some banking. But, it just appears to wobble in space.

And, the flame exhaust isn’t really animated either. It moves, but the flames don’t have any real motion. That’ll be a future learning experience too.

I am most proud of the Docking Bay door on this one. It could still do with more detail, but it is more detail than I have had on my previous models. This was relatively easy. Since I was creating a model from scratch, I could simply add the door where ever it was easy to do. I also chose a place that was a reasonable place to have one. But, if I were trying to recreate a specific ship design, it would be more difficult, as determining a precision location is going to be harder than just sticking it where it is convenient. You know?

I also think the bridge (the “glass” bubble on top) turned out fairly well. That was more due to the lighting than the ship design.

Enough play for now. I’ve got to get some work things done now…

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I thought my last video, “Buzzing Around the Earth,” was a little too fast, although in retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t after all, especially if you’re not planning on stopping for a visit and just trying to get through the neighborhood as quickly as you can.

So, anyway, this new animation clip is much slower. And, oops! I did it again! I rendered the animation at a lower resolution than what YouTube displays. I must remember to change that in the future!

Without further ado, here it is:

I did create the whole thing this evening, from building the model to rendering the animation. I’m guessing maybe about two or two and a half hours were spent on it. I started with creating a rocket, which ended up looking something like a booster rocket. So, then I duplicated my completed rocket, bridged them together, extended the bridge and then added the spherical head. And, that gives it a Star Treky look, which wasn’t what I was going for at all.

I was just playing around with the modeling software. It’s been a while since I’ve used it, so I had to brush up on it. Not that I was too advanced with it anyway, but you still manage to forget what little you did know! I skimmed through the manual the other night, and read up on a feature I hadn’t tried before, so I gave that a go and have a better idea now how and when to use it!

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As in steampunk, not Steampunk.

At any rate, I’ve heard of steampunk before, but not paid much attention to it. I did like The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. when it was on the air. But, beyond the works of fiction, what caught my eye was the design aspects. Perhaps you’ll see something partially steampunk-inspired in the future. It’s not terribly unlike designing retro future technology for my Lemurian Dawn series.

First, let’s take a look at the Apple IIgs laptop modification done by Benjamin J. Heckendorn. Okay, so it’s not steampunk, but he did try to make it look as though it was a laptop that was actually made in the 1980’s (even though it does have design elements not used by Apple until more recent laptops), so it’s only off by about 100 years for steampunk. (The original PowerBooks looked nothing like the clam-shell era iBooks.)

That brings us to (like my segues?) Dave Veloz’s Mac Mini Mod, Monitor and Keyboard, which is definitely steampunk in design. You can read more details on the keyboard mod here.

I didn’t see a mouse in that setup, but I imagine it may have looked something like this.

Even the Russians enjoy steampunk, as you can tell from this Russian-built steampunk computer.

Of course, in the good ol’ USA, we built the real thing for the 1890 census.

If you enjoy steampunk design, you can search Google for different things, or checkout Steampunk Magazine.

And, too, keep your browser pointed at my blog, ’cause you never know what might show up…

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Previously, the aliens had opted not to visit Earth. That was just a very basic GIF animation, since I’m not sure that anyone else (besides me) can view a MOV file. And, thus far, I have completely failed at making this video in Flash and uploading it directly to my blog. One would think there would be a very simple way of implementing such a thing, but apparently not. And, the Flash experts seem to be tight-lipped about that sort of thing, hoping instead to sell you software or contract with them to do it for you.

Thus, I have had to resort to YouTube. Why not Revver, you ask, which I have encouraged people to use? I am saving my quality content for Revver, is the answer. I don’t want to build a profile over there of low quality, test stuff that no one will care about and, thus, (potentially) kill any potential audience I may have over there.

Anyway, so here it is:

Note that it’s pretty low quality and that’s because my original animation is a lower resolution than what YouTube uses, so it looks a little fuzzy blown up. Also, I do have a sound track that goes with it, but I didn’t include that in my upload because I wasn’t going to put together a string of credits for a 7 second test video.

I actually made this animation last Christmas-time, so that’s how long it’s been sitting on my hard drive. I made some attempts back then to get it into Flash, but with the same results as today’s attempts. Though, I did fare better today, as I did have player controls embedded this time around. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get it to obey the command not to autoplay. Play=false is not doing the trick. And, besides that, I can’t get it in a format such that I can post it here in WordPress.

On top of that, I can’t seem to get the encoding right so that it displays nicely in a web browser without a lot of interlacing. And, no, the various interlacing options didn’t seem to do the trick. So, that’ll all be a lesson for a future date.

In the meantime, at least I’ve demonstrated (to myself, at least) that I can make a video and upload it to another site for viewing.

Oh, you wanted to know more about the video? Okay, it’s just a basic animation of what might be a spaceship’s outside view when passing around the Earth. They are probably going a little too fast, but I’m sure they have inertial dampeners. In this one, the spinning of the Earth is more noticeable than in the last one. Perhaps too fast, but this is a test video, so cut me some slack.

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Thanks to Mike Aragona, I have a plan now for my Lemurian Dawn project!

Mike is one of the people who will be working on the project, unless, of course, I manage to frighten him off before any work begins. Mike is a writer. Check out his “Online Spell” story. It looks familiar to me. I think it was one I either rejected (doesn’t quite have the impact of his other shorts) or never got back to him on, in which case this may be his subtle way of encouraging me to dive back into my slush pile. I’m pretty sure it’s the former though.

Mike also has something to do with comics. He publishes a magazine and I’m not really sure what all he does; I’ve never asked him. Something to do with comics though. At any rate, even though that’s not necessarily my target audience, I thought he might have some insight into what direction I should take with the project. I’ve mentioned previously the different options; I’d link to that post but I just don’t feel like tracking it down, and you probably won’t follow the link and read it anyway. Heck, Mike is probably the only one still reading this. The rest of you have dropped off and headed to John Chow’s blog by now, or something.

Yes, I actually do think you read my blog before his. What do you mean you don’t!?

Anyway, Tuesday evening while I was putting together a banner for a client, I had an imaginary conversation with Mike. Mike didn’t say much. He just listened. But, discussing the options with him helped me to realize the direction I need to go.

Which is basically back to the original plan. And that’s the kind of roundabout thinking that Joanne would appreciate.

But, Plan C (or was it Plan B?) will still be part of the plan, just not at first. The audience for the one way versus the other way, while overlapping, would also be different. So, I am planning that going ahead with Plan A and making it successful will lead to me being able to implement Plan C (or B, or whatever) later on.

And, if things go badly, it was all Mike’s fault.

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A number of years ago, I started a story (that’s still in progress). It takes place in the far future, but a number of significant events in the backstory take place later in this century.

In one part of the backstory, people got fed up with government officials, and started killing them off. Like this.

And, there are other things, that I don’t want to mention because it may spoil the plot.

Am I a prognosticator?

Or, maybe what I visualize comes true, in some way? In that case, what do you want me to visualize for you? Maybe this should be a paid service. Send me $25 and I’ll visualize something for you, just about whatever you’d like. I cannot guarantee that it will come true, but I will visualize it for you. Money is non-refundable; this is for entertainment purposes only; and, all that sort of thing.

Plus, I’ll write up a little story about it and post it. Okay, the price is going to $50 now. These are value-added services.

Let’s break it down:

• Basic Visualization Service: $25
  You tell me what you want and I’ll imagine it happening. And, as I mentioned, no guarantees. No physical action will be taken on my part. This is just visualization, not actualization.
• Literary Visualization Service: $50
  You tell me what you want, and I’ll imagine it happening plus write a short story about it. About 500 words worth. Give or take. Same disclaimers apply as with the Basic Visualization Service. I retain the copyright to the story too. But, you’ll get a linkback when I post it on my blog.
• Decorative Literary Visualization Service: $250
  Same as the Literary Visualization Service, except that I’ll print out the story on some nice paper and frame it. And mail it to you. Offer limited to customers within the United States.

As I mentioned, no guarantees. So, the $25 Basic Visualization Service is probably pretty much useless. You might as well go to the $50 Literary Visualization Service instead. At least you get something out of it.

Offer expires February 28, 2008. Yes, I know there are 29 days in February this year, but I’m taking the day off.

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