Tag Archives: Secret Project

Realm fantasy warfare competition

08 Saturday Dec 2012

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The wonderful people over at Serious Lemon have created a give away for anyone interested in wargaming.

In case you weren’t aware, Realm Fantasy Warfare was a project I got involved in as a2012-06-02 16.24.38 writer. I produced the background based on concepts and ideas provided by the rules writer. The aim was to try to subvert many of the cliches inherent in fantasy settings while still maintaining recognisable races and ideas. I will leave it up to you to decide if we have succeeded in this.

The competition is over a set of miniatures donated by Eureka . The winner can choose either a Vaetari (Elves) or Drogar (Dwarves) set. The second place winner gets the remaining set. The miniatures can also be custom painted for you or left bare for your own painting.

The giveaway details may be found on the Realm Website (http://realmfw.com/giveaway/) but the basics of the competition are:

Two winners will be drawn at random from all entries. The first drawn will have their choice of either the Drogar or Vaetari starter set. The second drawn will receive the remaining set.

 illathynn   To enter the draw, first you will create an original discussion piece online regarding Realm. This is intentionally vague but could include things like a review or a battle report. You might initiate a discussion on a forum regarding a particular aspect of Realm, or you might post a video online discussing the validity of certain game mechanics within Realm.

    Essentially, anything is valid as long as it is discussing Realm and available publicly online.

    To enter, email us the url of the aforementioned content you created. All entries must be in by midnight, Monday, December 31st (AEDT – UTC+11:00). The winners will be notified by return email.

So, there you are. Get your entries out and about there…

Photoshoot II: Attack of the texting Zombies (with Romans)

02 Sunday Sep 2012

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For a lazy and disorganised person like myself, being a shoot director is HARD. You have so many things to think about – models, costumes, make up, timings of the shoot, positions, locations… There is a lot to organise.

Onryo Necromancer played by Wednesday

Thankfully, as a lazy and disorganised person I have over the years spent much time developing an invaluable skill – delegation. Using this extremely useful ability I was able to fob off all the difficult bits to other people, not least onto the head of Jessica Newey who so ably performed duties as model for the Empress at the previous shoot and was now serving as Make Up Director, Warderobe Mistress and general maintainer of sanity …

However, one issue I could not solve was the weather.

I seem to talk about the weather a lot on this blog, most recently in my Fire and Ice entry where I talk about the extreme storm we had. The reason is because the UK and Manchester in particular is known for its chaotic and unpredictable weather patterns. In the case of this photoshoot, the weather was doubly critical because we intended to go outside and shoot in a local woodland.

So, with everything planned and prepared to meticulous detail, our only wild card factor was whether the rain would stop play.With models coming vast distances (well, vast in UK terms, ‘just down the road’ in American terms and ‘from next door’ in Australian) we needed to make a call to cancel as soon as possible to avoid unecessary trips. However, the weather reports were sketchy and unreliable and we oscillated between joy at a reasonably clear report and despair at one which showed storms. With photography equipment costing something up to the budget of a small South American state at risk we realised we would have to cancel.

The Minidress hits Elf botiques this autumn… Alex poses with half her costume

But then PLAN B was mooted! There was a suggestion from the photographer that as everyone was already free that weekend, no one seemed to be free for any other weekend in the near future and the studio we used last time was free we could shift plans and do it in the studio where rain was not an issue. It only took a minor bit of plan jiggling and suddenly we were on again!

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny. Yes, the predicted rain and storms were not to be seen, the skies were clear. Cursing whichever deities or Meteorologists were to blame for the inconsistancies in weather reporting, we headed into deepest, darkest Yorkshire. All the way there I kept wondering if we should have reverted to plan A because the weather was fine but at that point we had already gone too far.

Luckily, we were justified in sticking to plan B because midway through the day there was a massive rainstrom that took everyone by surprise…

Look… no rain. Or trees… Rich in the studio

Now, the studio, with its convenient roof, solved the pressing issue of the equipment getting wet… However, the plan was to shoot in a woodland and the shots were arranged to suit this. Generally speaking, you rarely find trees or other woodland foliage inside a studio. I had assumed that the photographer was planning to repeat what we did before – single shots of characters against a black backdrop. However, I was wrong. His plans were far more ambitious.

His idea was to do some compositing. Essentially, take photos of all the models in costume against a white background and then superimpose them onto the backdrop of our choice. It requires a lot more editing work than simply doing it in a real woodland but it was our only choice at present and, besides, I think he relished the technical challenge. More to the point, while the layout of the shots I had planned called for two or three figures in each one, his plan was to shoot each figure individually against the white background and work from that to get the required vingettes.

Personally, I have doubts as to whether this will work or not. However, I am willing to wait and see what the final results look like. Past results where I have doubted have been awesome.

There were two vingettes I wanted to see. One, possibly the simplest technically, was an image of the three Vaetari Audenti – the historic leaders of the elven race in Realm. This required two female models and one male dressed in the Roman style costume. This required little make up other than a pair of latex elf ears each. The second was to represent the Onryo – the cursed undead race with a distinct Japanese theme. This involved a significant amount of make up.

Injuries

While Jess fussed around with costume and make up, creating some wonderfully realistic wounds, the photographer worked on the lighting. This took even longer than it did for the previous shoot as he needed to get a completely white background without shadows. This was not as easy as you might think and probably needed at least one more light to properly drench the area but after a lot of faffing he finally achieved it.

There was then the same process there had been last time of posing and taking shots, critically appraising them and suggesting changes. However, because we had a lot more figures to shoot, this process had to be more condensed to allow time for all the subjects to be covered. There was also the added complication of pondering how the figures would eventually be placed in the final vingette.

While the models were waiting for their turn in front of the camera, there were a number of activities to keep them amused. Some read, some slept, some played with mobile phones and some posed for joke shots as 1960’s style elves…

21st Century Zombies all have smart phones

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted but left the studio with a sense that we had created something great in our time there. Now it is just a question of waiting for the shots to be edited…. Once that has happened, I will post more on the subject.

Fantasy Photoshoot – The end (or is it?)

16 Monday Jul 2012

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Earlier this week I got the CD of images from Quattrofoto for the fantasy photoshoot studio session. Unlike previously published photos, which were either mine or Lucy’s ‘photostory’ of the day in the studio or ‘rough cuts’ with little or no editing, these were the final versions of the shots with all the special effects and photostudio tricks added to them. In fact, the person who did the editing (the wonderful Isabella Favilli) did admit they went somewhat mad with special effects on this one mainly because it was a fantasy theme.

Some of the changes are subtle, very subtle. A change of eye colour can be seen in some of them, for example.

can you spot the difference between these two images?

 

Click the photo to get a closer look at them…

Others are far more blatant. For example, in this shot we have a little more magic added to an already fascinating lighting effect.

Sparkles!

Here we have some magical sparkles added to the object our Druid is holding in his hand (it was actually a glass pot stuffed with grass and leaves to represent a selection of herbs) which were definitely not there when the photo was taken.

If anyone is curious about how these effects were achieved, you are going to be out of luck asking me. I know nothing about it. However, if you do have any burning questions, I am happy to pass them onto Isabella for you. I can’t guarantee she will answer but I can pass them on. Feel free to leave a comment with the questions…

In all, I am very pleased with the way this has come out. The shots have come out better than expected, but then I would expect that when using a professional instead of a rank amateur like myself.

So, this is the final post I will make about the day we spent in a photostudio. However, ‘adventures in fantasy photography’ is far from over. Plans are already afoot for the next stage which will be the location shoot, which we hope to manage to get done sometime before the end of summer. Provided, that is, the rain stops long enough for us to get the cameras out from under the waterproofing. It also depends on me managing to acquire all of a long list of esoteric items to use as costume and props and some more innocent victims to force at gunpoint to stand in front of a camera. However, at the time of writing, things are coming together so there may be more to report very soon…

A day in the life of a Fantasy Photostudio

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Musings, Photos

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While I was in the middle of writing the background material for Realm, there was a discussion about the need for more artwork for the website and I wondered if it was possible to use photographs to achieve the same visual impact as drawings and colour art in a roleplaying or wargame. I knew that they had been used to great effect by live action roleplaying games – particularly the rulebooks and websites for Profound Decision’s Odyssey and Maelstrom games which make great use of the medium – and in theory there was no reason why it should not work for fantasy games in other formats.

The lighting set up around Andy as he plays Edvard

The main objections to the use of photos seemed to revolve around the old ‘LARP does not look as good as what you can imagine when playing a wargame or tabletop game’ argument. This is a fair argument, though one which is becoming increasingly stale in light of improving kit standards across the board at UK based LRP events over the past decade. The other main argument seems to be tradition – wargames and roleplaying games have always had artwork rather than photos. Why change what people expect to see?

There is nothing which can be done about the latter opinion other than to be a trailblazer and let people see what you have done and decide based on that. I am not trailblazer though hopefully others might follow my example here. For the former, I could take more direct action and attempt to set up a photoshoot to try to achieve something as good as what can be achieved with artwork.

The lights and fans around Jess as she plays the Empress

My initial plan was to take my camera, a couple of models drawn from the LRP community and a load of kit to some locations in and around Manchester and take some photos. However, a photography keen friend by the name of Lucy put me in touch with a professional photographer (Ste Manns of Quattrophoto) who was interested in doing some fantasy themed shoots to expand his portfolio. Suddenly, my modest plan became a complicated operation and we had access to a studio…

So, yesterday saw myself, Lucy and two friends by the names of Jessica Newey and Andy Mason travelling to a small town near Dewsbury to meet with Ste and his family at the studio he uses – a small corner of an industrial estate modified with the equipment and other requirements of a professional space.

It was a long, tiring and very educational day. Both myself and Lucy learned a lot about photography using a proper studio set up and I got to play with a 50mm Prime lens belonging to Ste and see the difference in the quality of my shots with it. Andy and Jess may also have picked up some information about lighting but mostly they seemed to get an education in patience and how to follow direction (specifically how difficult it is to convey an emotion or action on cue).

The plan for the day was to create images of two characters I had written into the Realm background history. One was the Empress of Onryo – the undead Necromancer who was trapped by a curse to live forever in the caves beneath her palace on the Island of Onryo. For this we needed a vague mythical Japanese theme. The other character was Edvard Vermogen of Hohle, the author of several important magical texts in the game. For Edvard, we needed to get the idea of a civilised scholar who had headed off into the wilderness to research his books.

A compromise: Turn the photos into a pencil sketch, using photo processing software…

We decided to start with the Empress so Jess got dressed into her kimono* and made herself up to look undead. There was then several hours of test shots – trying to get the exact lighting effects that were desired. As this was largely an experimental shoot, there were no standard lighting set up guidelines for this so there was a lot of trial and error. Once the correct conditions were achieved there was even more work to try to get the right poses and facial expressions to ‘tell the story’ of the character. Fans were used to make the kimono flutter and many attempts (some more successful than others) were made to try to time Jess making a movement to coincide with the shutter on the camera being activated. Each shot was transmitted to two laptops (one connected directly by a wire, the other using a wireless internet card in a slot on the camera) and critically appraised by all involved before the next shot was set up. To my limited technical experience, almost every shot looked fantastic (yeah, ok, quite a few were amusing due to mistimed movement or inappropriate facial expressions) but to the experienced professionals there were minor flaws with almost all of them which needed to be corrected with either another adjustment of the lights or a new set of instructions to the model. By the end of it, Jess had sore muscles from holding poses and was a little chilly from standing in front of a fan in a flimsy kimono.

The Empress

We began photographing sometime between 11 and 12. We finally finished with the first model at around 4. That’s a lot of time to be standing in a big white space with lots of people telling you what to do. When we finally got round to shooting Andy, I think Jess was pleased to be able to sit down and relax.

For Edvard Vermogen, I had brought along a selection of wool and fur clothing – including a heavy wool cloak covered in a patchwork of fur**. I also brought along a selection of props that a magician or scholar might happen to have on his travels such as a staff topped with an antler, a small chest and a selection of bottles and stones. Andy then posed with these while there was another series of lighting changes and more critical appraisal of the results. Tricks used this time included hiding a wireless remote flash filtered with a coloured gel (first purple, then green) inside the box so that it appeared as if a magical light was coming from it. Andy’s main hazard here was looking down at the wrong time and getting an eyeful of flash. There was also an issue of his hair being too clean and brushed. This was resolved with some backcombing and a handful of leaves and twigs.

If you look closely, you can see the wireless flash in the box

Lucy and I spent the time when we were not helping with the shoot or making sure the models were ok (including finding a drink that could be drunk without spoiling make up) taking photos. Some of Lucy’s can be seen on the blog post linked above and are fantastic. Some of mine are shown on this post, the rest can be seen here. Our main focus was not to take phenomenal quality shots of the models with great artistic quality (we both left that to the Pros) but rather to take photos of the process – behind the scenes footage of the equipment used and the people involved. I hope that between  us we manage to convey the way the day went.

Sometime in the next few weeks, once Ste finishes doing whatever arcane things he intends to do to them with computer software, I will hopefully be able to share some of the final processed photos from the actual shoot and show you all the dramatic difference between the shots taken in ‘ambient light’ and those taken using the special lighting rigs…

Also, in a few weeks time we should be getting prepared for ‘part two’ of this shoot where we take some models to the woods and get some images of some other fantasy characters… One of these will hopefully be the second half of the Empress shoot, involving some undead samurai in a woodland.

*She made this herself. She is a talented seamstress.

** This belongs to and was made by Sarah, my wife… yes, I know a lot of talented people who can do wonderful things with material… It was originally made for a norse based LRP character but has been used several times since. The furs, by the way, are all second hand and some of them date from the 1950s. They were acquired from a re-enactment market.

The state of the Blog

01 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Musings

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It occured to me recently that it has been six months since I first started this blog with the post New Beginnings. Actually, it was six months ago on the 18th of March so it is actually six months and, er, some weeks exactly. However, I got so distracted with Vampire month that it slipped my mind.

So, how have things been going since this blog began? Quite well in my opinion, though still plenty of room for growth. The recent Vampire month guest posts have done very well with Ninfa Hayes so far racking up the highest number of post views with her post Giving Birth to my Muse and all the other participants gaining respectable numbers of readers too. Posts I have made myself have also done reasonably well, with my post for the AW Blog Chain, Rainy Days, racking up the second most views of any post. Which is amazing since that was a random piece of nonsense I babbled out following a prompt and based on some stuff I came up with while on holiday. All of this is reasonably promising after a mere six months of activity. I am getting hits from all over the world (at one point Australia was the place I was getting the most hits from, I blame Rebekah Harrington, but the UK soon took the lead with the US second and Australia third) including some far flung places such as the Phillipines, Peurto Rico and Mexico (actually quite a lot from Mexico, I have my suspicions).

My work on other blogs has also done rather well. I am now a regular reviewer on the ePublish a Book website and on Cult Britannia. I am also starting to post on the News from the Spirit World blog and my contributions there will get more common over the next few months. I am enjoying all of these, especially the opportunity to read self published books and see what is out there – both good and bad. I’ve posted on the Am Writing blog and also on the blogs of a few other writers (and am always willing to do a guest blog if anyone out there wants me to).

I’ve also ventured into writing a wargame called Realm for a company called Serious Lemon and this, along with the royalties from Pirates and Swashbucklers, constitute my first professional writing achievements. There are a few more irons in the fire so hopefully some more writing projects will start to come to fruition in the near future.

So, there you have it. In the next six months, I am hoping for the following:

 – More people reading this blog

 – More people commenting on this blog

 – My ascenstion to ultimate god king of the universe and ruler of all I survey.

If I manage to achieve two out of these three I will be very happy…

Realm Fantasy Wargame

21 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Secret Project of Secretness

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A few times on this blog I have talked about a ‘secret project’. I even have a tag ‘secret project of secretness’ on this blog. I have talked about how excited I am about this project and given some details (and a few people who I know read the blog do know more) but I have not revealed all.

Today I can announce that I am now permitted to ‘spill the beans’ on the secret project of secretness…

At the end of last year, I was given an opportunity to write the world building documentation for a Fantasy Wargame. This amounted to almost 40K words of background including the culture of 12 races, the metaphysics of the world and an outline of the history. My brief was to use the familiar fantasy races (elves, dwarves, goblins etc) but spin the cliches a little (after all, elves living in woodlands is just so 1970’s…). There was a lot of discussion over how to do this and some requirements from the developers (the wonderful people at Serious Lemon) but I was largely given free rein in terms of creative input.

The result was what became Realm Fantasy Wargame

This is intended to be an ever evolving game. You subscribe to the site, paying pretty much whatever you want (min $1 Australian, I believe, for a whole year of access), and have access to everything on it for a year. You can download stuff, print it off, all that. The developers will continue to add content (new rules, scenarios, new units) and revise the rules and background.

But there is more… there is another way you can get access to the site and that is through this site: http://www.indiegogo.com/realm-fantasy-warfare

This is a page with the same concept as Kickstarter in that you can donate to a business enterprise and gain benefits. If you subscribe to Realm through this site (again, a min $1 donation) not only do you get the benefits of access to the site for a whole year but there is also the possibility of getting your name listed on the site as a donor. So, access to the game for a year AND an ego boost… There are also other benefits for those who pay the higher amounts, including being drawn by the team’s artist as a character from one of the races.

Oh, and some of my writing appears in the video teaser advertising the game. The quote that opens is one of mine…

So, what are you waiting for… go there and check out what I have written…

More secret project goodness

05 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Musings, Secret Project of Secretness

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My dropbox has just flashed up with a notification telling me that a new file has been uploaded into it. This is not an unusual occurence. I have several people who share dropbox folders with me and who routinely upload different files to them at all times of the day and night. However, this file was a special one. It was an image file of artwork for the secret project I am working on and it looks wonderfully cool.

Unfortunately, I can’t share this artwork with you because I haven’t got explicit permission from the artist to do so. Once I properly announce the secret project and get that permission (maybe by the end of this month) then maybe I will be able to show you some of the art. After all, what is the point of having a secret project if you go and tell everyone about it 🙂

In the meantime, I am posting to find out if any of you have ever had the same sense of squee on seeing art work based on your writing. Did you find it to be as great a feeling as I have at the moment? Feel free to tell us all about it in the comments…

A glass half empty year?

01 Sunday Jan 2012

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I’ve been looking through several reviews of the year from a number of people, mostly friends, and the overwhelming opinion seems to be that 2011 was a bad year for many. A lot of people seemed very happy to see it go, with a number of references to ‘staking it through the heart’ as though it were an evil vampire year that will never die.

I suppose many have good reason to dislike the past year. It seemed to be the year that the recession hit particularly hard in many industries – the public sector cuts hit hard and the retail sector is creating unemployment at a fantastic rate not to mention all the riots and protests that happened. So, there are arguments for it having been a bad year. However, I have seen people declare it a bad year when some really good things seem to have happened to them. Which leads me to wonder, has 2011 simply been the ‘glass half empty’ year? Have people been declaring it a bad year despite evidence to the contrary?

From my point of view, I prefer not to try to rate years in any generalised or specific manner. I don’t like to say it was good or bad, it just was. 2011 was no different. If I were to assess it any way, I would see it as a score draw. The number of good things that happened have been balanced by bad things.

In the past year I have:

 – Made a mark on the publishing world. OK, the mark in question is like a very small scratch on a large thing made out of very smooth stone, but the mark is there nontheless. As a result of my two publications (one out, the other pending still) I have also gained more opportunities which have served to increase my exposure. I’ve done guest blogs, interviews and have started doing reviews on another site as well as a rather juicy work for hire job which should prove interesting once it makes it out into the world. In all, I consider this past year to have been a success in terms of publishing. A small success but one which is building. In comparison with other years, this is a massive improvement.

 – Of course, I also started this blog which has been a strange experience. Previous blogs of mine have been more personal and intended for friends only whereas this one is intended for strangers. Sometimes the challenge in that is remembering that strangers are less interested in your day to day boring life than friends may be. Speaking which (and apologies for the next comments…)

 – I moved house. This was a massive undertaking which took almost half a year to achieve (and most of the stress and work fell onto my wife…). We relocated from Birmingham to the outskirts of Manchester and have gained much in social life as a result. Therefore this also counts as a success, despite…

 – Job situaiton. Moving house did not help my job situation. On the plus side, lots of time for writing. On the negative side, no money. While the start of 2011 had promise with a long term role in a college in Solihull and a chance to clear a lot of debt, the second half of the year has been less promising. Hoping for better job prospects in 2012.

So, as I say, overall a draw and a lot of promise for the future.

So, what is to come in the next year? Well, Transitions is due out as an ebook sometime in the first half of the year (each ebook in the Shades of Love series will come out once a month, starting from this month, until June when the collected anthology will be released in print). There is also the secret project I am working on at the moment which is due to be released soon after January 31st, assuming I can get everything done before the deadline. There is also a Mystery Antholgy I am contributing too which may come out sometime in 2012 (it is still being written). After these are out of the way, I really need to look into getting more writing out there in the big, wide old world. Several of my stories are currently doing the rounds of publishers and maybe one of them will be picked up soon…

In closing, I would therefore like to say Happy New Year to each and every one of you and hope for a 2012 which, if not better than 2011, at leasts seems to be in hindsight at the end of the year. Let us pledge on this day to make 2012 a glass half full year. In fact, sod it, let’s all complain to the management that the glass we want is a bigger glass and we damned well want it full or so help us we’ll protest or riot or throw a strop or something!

Secret Project and productivity update

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Musings, Productivity, Secret Project of Secretness

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This picture is here for no good reason. Nothing to do with the post at all, honest...

I just got an awesome bit of feedback about a piece I wrote for the secret project I am working on. Apparently they liked it 🙂 I suppose it is one of the advantages of a set up like Dropbox and shared folders. Everytime I update a file in the Dropbox folder, the person I am writing this for gets an instant notification that there is something there for him to read.

Of course, the disadvantage of this is that everytime I update a file, he gets a notification that there is something for him to read…

Anyway, the upshot of this is that the secret project is going wonderfully and at some point over the next month or so I may even be in a position to tell you all what exactly it is. Assuming I manage to make the deadlines, which is where the next bit of this post comes in. Productivity…

This photo is also here for no reason. Enjoy.

My productivity plan is going great with one exception. I have been useless at remembering to post the word counts to Twitter every day. I have been managing to write 200 words a day minimum, every day except weekends and ‘official holidays’ (defined as days where my wife has a day off or days that everyone else in the country considers a holiday such as Bank Holidays). On most days I have more than exceeded that target (today’s, for example, is well over a thousand and today is a Sunday so I was officially ‘off duty’). I am therefore still declaring this method as a success because it has got me writing every day, avoided the ‘no productivity doldrums’ and generally increased my output. Now, the flaw to this is that only doing 200 a day is not likely to see a novel completed in any short time scale but as I said, I only see this as a minimum target, not a maximum. On average I am between 200 and 1000 words a day with the 200s only really coming out on days I am working fulltime. This contrasts with previous efforts to improve productivity by setting a high target of 1000 – 2000 words a day when I soon gave up because there were days where this was not possible.

Therefore, in conclusion, I heartily recommend this method if you find the more traditional ones not to your taste.

Review: Deep Black Beyond

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Reviews, Secret Project of Secretness

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It’s review time again and this one is of a short story collection by Annie Bellet.

The review may be found here

In other news, you may remember me mentioning on Twitter as part of my regular word count updates that I was doing ‘audition pieces’. Well,  I have just had word that those auditions were successful and I will be starting on a ‘work for hire’ project next week. Details are currently secret but if it goes as planned the outcome should be rather cool and will allow me to achieve the unthinkable – make use of skills I have been developing for decades and actually get paid for using them.

Feel free to speculate wildly in the comments about what this project is if you wish.