Pardon My Laser Eyes 27 April, 2010

“What kind of name is that for a blog?” you say? Just imagine the contexts in which such a phrase would be used: “Pardon my laser eyes. They tend to make things burst into flames.” Or, “Pardon my laser eyes. I didn’t mean to zap off your limbs with my astonishing, uncontrollable power.” Does it not exemplify the pure awesomeness contained within whatever it adorns or is uttered from? If you don’t like it, than consider yourself better off than if I had used “Mayonnaise” (which was my first choice).

So anyway, after pondering for a while what would make an appropriate first post, I figured that I should just start off with a recap of what I’ve been up to.

At the top of my list is an “anime” project that I’m working on with a friend. We’ve done a lot of concept art, a test animation, and even have a background or two ready to go, but we’re trying to contain our enthusiasm enough to get the entire screenplay done before entering real production. We have the first two episodes finished as of this writing (yes, we intend for it to be a series; yes, we also understand how ridiculously ambitious that is; we’ve got it covered). We’re quite confident that if nothing else, we’ll end up with a pretty darn sweet script and a pilot episode.

Aside from that, I’ve been creating art for a Marathon scenario project, and I’m on board an unannounced Blender Game Engine project as a general 3D modeler. Lastly but not leastly, another friend and I have been working on and off on a very small 3D short film project. When I say very small, I mean that it involves a bar, two characters, and will be… I don’t know… one minute? More on that when we have some substantial progress to show!

Needless to say, I’m already working on too many things, but since school has managed to get in the way of all of them, it hasn’t really affected much. Speaking of which, I’ll be graduating high school in June, after which I’ll be heading off to Air Force basic training! The way things are right now, that might be in July, it might be in September… it’s very iffy at the moment, but it really is a win-win situation. If I leave right after I graduate, I get to start my job and earning money ASAP. If I have a wait a bit, I just have more time to work on all of these projects, and hopefully finish a couple off if I haven’t done so before then.

Some quick shout-outs to specific people who may be reading this:

Bethesda Softworks Forumgoers: If you’re wondering about the status of my Morrowind modding, I’ve been inactive for a while, and I’m not sure what will become of it in the near future. However, I have been contacted by a very talented person interested in texturing the Better Dwemer Armor set. As with all things done on our own time for fun, though, that may or may not happen.

Daily Click Forumgoers: As of this writing, both of my game projects are on an indefinite hold. You’ll probably be seeing some small products of my game design class assignments, though. In fact, the one I’m working on right now is just… it’s awesome.

YouTubers: I know that there are a bunch of people waiting for me to do a bunch of video tutorials on a bunch of different things. My problem has been that, not only is it unlikely to find a couple hours of peace and quiet in my house, but I cannot, for the life of me, find a reliable way to make high-quality videos without downloading and using the heck out of an Adobe Premiere/After Effects free trial (of which there seem to be none available during this transition to CS5). This development may finally change that. I might also try to see if Blender’s VSE has caught up with my needs.

I think that’s all I have to touch on for now (no, not really; I can ramble indefinitely if not forcibly withheld). If you want to keep up with all I’ve mentioned above and more, please subscribe to the RSS feed! Whether you’re an open-source software geek, an amateur filmmaker, a 2D/3D digital artist, or all three, I think you’ll take interest in what I have to talk about. :)