Blueshift City – Act 1 Complete

It was a long time coming.

Act 1 is finally complete.

Please let me know what you think

Milestone – All lyrics and melodies written!

Huge step reached late last night. All the words and melody for the words are completely written! So the rest is just recording for the first act. It’s taken a while to get to this point, it feels good to reach it though.

Lyrics Sample

Lyrics Sample

Sequencing time and animation notes

Not long now.

Act 1 – Almost Done!

Quick entry.

Over the Christmas holidays I bought a real proper laptop! No longer using my 10.1″ Intel Atom netbook to write the opera on. Got a full size laptop to work with. It’s powerful enough to run Sony Vegas at high resolution! Before it was…tricker but with this upgrade in hardware, the later acts should be coming out a lot faster than before. A lot of time was spent working around the speed issues of the older netbook. But no longer!

So a biggish gif below to show you something new, but the first act should be ready really really soon.

Menacing 4D Cube

On Walking

The opera is taking shape and the end of the first act looks like it is within reach. The amount of work required to get this opera working is surprising.

This post is just a way of showing more the how-to side rather than the finished article.

I decided to cover an important part of the opera. Walking. As I am doing this opera almost frame by frame, it quickly became apparent that I would need a way to make them walk, sit, stand and a whole host of other things. I needed a way of taking a static picture of a character and changing it so that it looked like they was moving and walking. A walking generator was what I needed.

After searching online I found the perfect Walking Generator that is easy to use, malleable and works perfectly for 2D animation.

WCEdit Application

The way the character walks is entirely customisable within XML. After a bit of educated guessing and some trial and error, I was able to get my characters walking from entirely static images.

Sgt. Adams Walking

Jean strutting her stuff

The program is also capable of having characters walking towards the screen. I like that the program can do that but am not sure if it will be implemented in this project. It feels that a character walking towards the viewer could feel unnerving and change the opera from voyeuristic to an almost forced claustrophobic interaction. We shall see at any rate.

Hope to have another update as regular about my progress soon.

BlueShift City Update #3

Apologies for the lack of update. Updating this blog every month was the plan, but maybe every other month will prove more flexible and fruitful. Documenting these steps is useful.

Found him!

There is progress, of course. But it’s coming a lot slower than previously imagined. The second section of the first act (1-2) is almost done. The third section of the first act feels considerably shorter than the first two sections, but that will have be seen in time.

Landing the StarShip

This man looks dangerous!

Slowly, the opera is coming to life. It is doubtful that the entire opera will be completed this year. I will release each act separately, then once all parts are complete, it will be rolled into one super-long HD video. Here is just a taste.

Dressed to impress

BlueShift City Update #1

I’ve written a operatic script called a libretto that describes the story of BlueShift City in some detail. I’m just continuing to go over the main story and may make some minor changes to the main script but the idea exists in the most part, in writing. This opera has 3 acts. I’ve decided to further sub-divide each act into 3 parts to further aid storytelling and music writing for me. I’m currently working on the the first third of act one. I think by doing this sub-division of the opera, I would be better placed to judge timing and get a better sense of how things run and timing.

For a lot of the imagery and looks I only had to look at some NES flight sim games like Top Gun and and see how the cockpit was constructed so the gamer felt immersed in the game. I also looked at several space fan art to get some ideas about how lighting on planets should look and relative distance between different planets.

Below are some of the screenshots that have come about from some of the work I’ve been doing.

The Planets with the Starship barely visible

The Starship in empty space

Inside the Starship in the cockpit

Starship flown by a barely visible character first seen in BlueShift City Intro

I’m continuing my minimum monthly update schedule to record and log my updates and hope to show you more next month regarding characters moving. Something I’ve found to be somewhat tricky to try and resolve.