chillyche

Hey, wow, thanks, Frothymug! That's really, wow. It's always nice to get some positive feedback, particularly from a community that you respect. In particular, I've never really shared my prose before. Most people here know me as a 3d guy, although some people have read the Macross Aria script, which I think is pretty solid, but is a totally different form than prose. I've just posted the second and third chapters for everybody to read, as well. If I can speak a little about my process... Screenwriting is ALL dialog and action. It's a very external form of writing which describes only what you can see on screen. A mistake amateur screenwriters often make is describing how somebody feels. I can't SEE sad on screen. What I can see is tears, sighs, stares off into the distance. I can hear sobbing, or cracking voices. These are the pigments by which a screenwriter paints the idea of sad. In a screenplay, one usually stays away from too many adjectives, resorting to just verbs and nouns, and the occasional visual metaphor or simile. I will always remember a line from James Cameron's ALIENS screenplay: "The tiny ship circles the roaring tower. A metal volcano thundering like the engines on God's Lear jet." Anyone that's seen Aliens knows what the Atmospheric Processing plant looks like, and this is a pretty fantastic description of it, and done without spending too much time, or sweating the details. It's up to the production designer and art department to take that sentence and fill in the details. And I love that style of writing. BUT... what's fun about prose is that I can describe what somebody is thinking or feeling. I don't have to reduce it to only what a person can see on screen, but I can let them enter a world. I can also stray from the point with tangents. I actually learned the value of that technique through the book The Corner by the guys that did Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire. From time to time, they would break from the primary action (which is documentary in nature), and just sort of explain the context. I used that technique to some degree in chapter 1. My biggest literary influences though are probably Neal Stephenson (Snowcrash is written in the present tense, which makes the entire book just blaze past, you're THERE in the moment, this isn't something that happened already, this is something happening NOW! It's the same way screenplays are written, because the action is unfolding before your eyes) and Douglas Adams. I don't really know how, because I only JUST read Hitchhiker's Guide this past winter. Although, as a kid I watched the BBC series and my friend had Dirk Gently as an audio-book, so I was no stranger to Adams' style. However, I was surprised to discover that most of what I had written in middle school and elementary school was in a sort of americanized, teenaged Douglas Adams voice. Obviously, his brand of absurdist comedy isn't really relevant to what I'm writing here, but Stephenson's flippant tone does rear itself here and there. Whoa. Apparently I'm still in the mood to write, judging from this comment... I was just going through the other posts here, and I noticed you asked about present tense writing... well... obviously I think it's a good idea. I also think it's possible to switch between tenses. There is a segment, in Chapter 2 (which I have just posted on fanfiction.net) that switches tense, to describe some past events, and returns to the present tense. I don't know that I've ever seen a majority past tense project switch into present tense momentarily, though. Except of course a story that's like The English Patient or Usual Suspects or even Titanic or The Princess Bride wherein there is a story within a story; the present tense would be characters NOW describing the action THEN (the main storyline).

Looking good, so far. What are you using to do your modeling?

I never played it. I was excited when it was coming out, but that was it. Then, I saw it, and it didn't much impress. Especially when one looks back on it today. Eesh. But, I agree, the designs are sweet. Since Macross Aria takes place during some of the same time period, it was a great excuse to revisit those designs. So, you know, some day we'll see them junks in action.

Finally. Do You Remember Motown? Chapter 1 (at DeviantArt) or here at fanfiction.net. Just figured I'd try something different. Very different.

Nice to see that M3 suit getting a little more play.

Is there a good place to post fan fics to link to?

There you go. That's the goods.

Oh, I cover the camera when playing falcon gunner. I'd rather just see the starfield than my messy office and/or room.

There's a game called Falcon Gunner for the iPhone (probably also android) that uses the phone's accellerometer to gauge where you're facing/tilting, etc. It basically is used to allow you to swivel around in your chair, like the gunnery turrets in the Millennium Falcon and say things out loud like, "Great shot! Don't get cocky, kid." I can imagine a macross game that used the motion sensor attributes of the phone in a similar way. I always feel like the action in macross is fast and furious and three dimensional, and this could really be a great way to capture that sense of 360 degree insanity.

As for the sounds, I think Hik has done a pretty amazing job culling sfx from every source he can get his hands on. We're hearing sounds from the film itself, sounds from various Macross videogames, other entries in the series, the TV show, and from beyond. The coup de grace would be if he could get his hands on the actual sfx library used in the original show, or get a "split track" version -- in broadcast, we often create a final mix, and a split track mix. The split track will have channels isolated, so that 1 is voice/dialog, 2 is sfx, and 3/4 are music. Unfortunately, without working in broadcast or a production facility that has access to original recordings, that's not a possibility. So, for fans, we just have to cut, paste, scrounge, isolate, hope, beg, and otherwise put stuff together however we can. The other problem with doing fan-work is that you can't make any money on it, and therefore you can't improve your facilities. Lucky for me, I do this junk professionally, too, so I'm always improving my gear anyway, fan-work or no fan-work. But for Hik, well, I'd love to see him get a burly new computer, some pro audio software, and few sfx libraries -- imagine what he could do then? But until we figure out a way to not get sued for fan-work, or start branching out into the shaky, expensive world of original programming, then it seems less likely to happen.

Heh, Macross Aria includes the SDFN-03 Mikimoto. I took the clue that SDFNs were largely named after admirals and generals. Strangely, I assumed the Hayase was named for Misa's father, rather than for Misa. I suppose either could be true, since by 2012 Misa is an admiral herself, and known as a war hero. Anyway, obviously the reference for the ship's name is something of a wink and a thank you, rather than based on a pre-existing character. Read a story that includes the Mikimoto here.

Dope.

Haha, I don't think I even have the version with hands!

Yeah, I got your PM, this thing is incredible. I just JUST finished this months long thing I'd been on. They actually were going to have us come in today, but MTV didn't want the liability of asking people to work in a potential hurricane. So, day off. I hope to get back to CGI stuff in the coming week. And I'd love to holler at this artist, because wow.

I feel like I saw a bunch of WWII Valk designs a while ago. Like, a LONG while ago, but a few google searches came up blank. Interesting. I think this would a really fun alternate kinda thing. Like those Steam Engine Transformers designs which I actually dug.

Got the system back up and running after cloning the HD. Small issue with the plugins, but I got 'em running. Hardest thing to get to work was frickin' iTunes of all things. Stupid iTunes. Now all I need is some free time!

looking fresh!

Okay, since Zinjo started getting into lighting details... that VF's shadow does not match the light direction of the background plate. It looks, from the shadows on the plate, like the sun is just almost directly overhead, but slightly behind the VF. The shadow should be very short, cast in front and very slightly to camera-right (VF's left).

I think one of the challenges of Macross fan fiction is that there's an established set of rules in the Macross universe, and everybody has to decide which ones to keep and which ones to toss. For instance, a lot of the military structure in Macross is somewhat baffling, they never call out FOX anything when launching missiles, they tend to speak in plain language, their rank structure is unexpectedly terrestrial, etc. So, when writing fan fiction, we get to decide, what will make it feel more "authentic" in our world and what will make it feel more "authentic" in Macross world. How closely do we adhere to canon, how much can we invent? How do we reconcile DYRL with SDF:M with M:1st? Ultimately, it's up to each author what they include. I personally tried to add a little more real life stuff into Macross Aria. Enemy targets are bandits, the deck crew references SATOPS, and all pilots are cleared hot at some point. I also went back and forth on the ranks about a thousand times. It's a Space Navy, so, Naval ranks? Flight ranks? Or Macross Army ranks? Everybody has their own opinion. Luckily, I think the only rank that is consistently mentioned in voice actor dialog is "lieutenant" which is suitably vague, should I decide to change some things up. But, once all is said and done, I was going for the fun and thrill of a Macross entry, and not hard military fiction, so, the characters often refer to each other by first name over their radios, versus call signs or other descriptors which may be more appropriate. And some of the military lingo is obtuse in such a way that it's not immediately obvious by context what it means, and therefore might cause somebody with less familiarity to miss a story beat. So, my personal choice was to make the story accessible. That said, I enjoy stuff that is done with a far greater degree of realism than what I've done. Another classic example is that those GU-11 Gunpods don't actually hold very much ammo. Yet, people will LAY ON THAT TRIGGER in the course of various Macross episodes without running out of ammo unless it's a dramatic choice. In order to maintain a level of excitement, sometimes you have to fudge reality. Again, it's all choices. Look forward to seeing what everybody is working on...

Not even sure at this point. A bunch of stuff all happened at once. The thing started acting very wonky, which could have been a software issue, or a hardware issue. Then I decided to look for new drivers for stuff, and saw my video and BIOS were hopelessly out of date, so, for some reason I updated all that. So now I'm trying to deduce if THAT messed it up more, or if it's already messed up beyond that.

Gah! Computer just took a massive dump in the bed. Massive. All Aria files are secure (living on an external HD that is mirrored on yet another external HD), but operating system and software... that's the big question right now.

I love macross related in-universe posters and stuff. Obviously, we created a bunch of straight advertising for Mercury's Word. I might post a li'l something something in this thread at some point, too. (Starscream: I dig the idea of the world you're setting up. I like that humanity and zentraedi had to pull together for survival following SW1, but old prejudices and fears and differences can die hard, so it may be easy to exploit the cultural/racial memory of the two races for political means. There's a sub-sub-sub plot to the events in Macross Aria that delve into some of this)

Crazy. Different amounts of detail in different projects. On a feature film, there are often a bazillion layers of sounds, with those sounds themselves being made up of a frak ton of sounds. But for episodics, there's obviously a lot less. In my opinion, it also depends on the animation. Productions with more static animation, or lower quality art need better sound design to keep them from feeling flat. But if things look good, and are in motion, and there's good music, then you can back off of the sound a little. It's all about the delicate balance.

Yeah, like Hik said, we've got our main cast designed -- that was a big hold up in production, our concept art. Outside commitments lead to a string of bad luck with our first few artists, but Cannon_Fodder really nailed it, bringing the characters to life, fleshing them out, helping to push the world of Aria further. The other big development, which happened last fall, was we launched the first edition of Mercury's Word, our in-universe publication. We've got a lot more planned for that outlet, which essentially will bring viewers up to date on the happenings of the Macross universe right before the events portrayed in Aria. It's sort of a prequel/backstory kinda thing. I've been splitting my free time between my music video and Aria, so I've been going more slowly recently, but also because free time has been a bit scarce. Once I reboot the Alex model, the thing that would really help would be to get another modeler on-board who can do characters or at least consult.

We're still alive. I think a lot of us have been caught up in real life stuff for a bit, so progress definitely slowed in March, after some pretty exciting months. If you check out the ning site, we've got a lot of cool images and WIPs going on. But, it's still in the getting built phase.