As everything appears to be laid out in a widescreen format, and a lot of it is very dialog-driven, have you ever considered making this in more of a video comic style? Not animated, but animatic. Still images still, but with voice acting and sound effects/music? An alternative if proper voices cannot be found is to still have speech bubbles appear and disappear, but can still be made video, and it is easy enough to find TOS music tracks and sound effects. Just a thought, one that I personally would love to see ^_^
A LOT of that would come down to time. I personally would love to voice my own captain, but then we've got at least 7 or 8 other major voices and then guest voices. So there's that. I do have a small catalog of sound effects and all of the TOS music (I think on CD of all things SOMEWHERE) but that still comes down to time. The comics themselves take me about 15 minutes to assemble from the renders and to put dialogue in. The renders themselves run about 30-45 minutes depending on the set complexity and number of characters in the scene and I run a minimum of 6 and so far a maximum of 9. I do render those overnight generally or while I'm at work, but.... that doesn't include set-up time for characters, and prop interaction which takes longer on the initial panel usually and then it's tweaks as I save them out as separate scenes. And of course there is editing in Photoshop to include any effects that didn't work right on initial renders that I gave up on and PS'd in as well as lighting correction (my home monitors are notoriously brighter than everyone else's - y'all need to stop browsing in the dark!) so they're more visible, etc. This is why you only see one posting a week from me on these instead of two or three. I do have a day job that eats into it, and I spend quite a bit of time with my turtle (my wife's nickname) gaming and just hanging out. I think doing it up animated would be fun, but it is also more likely to land me a C&D from the evil overlords, and it would take way longer to put together than the comic.
There is also the possibility of doing the individual panel renders and handing them off to someone to put them together with the music and SFX (for the video comic rather than fully animated), freeing you of the workload. Many hands make light work ^_^ Oh no doubt. Do not miss out on life around you. "I'm no writer. But if I were, it seems to me I'd wanna poke my head up every once in a while and take a look around. See what's going on. Its LIFE, Jake. And you can miss it if you don't open your eyes" - Captain Benjamin Sisko Indeed... that is the major factor. To that I ask, have you ever considered making your own original universe? Sure it requires more original design work, but it does give you more creative opportunity without having to dodge lawyers. That being said, I would love to know how you make the renders in 15 minutes. It would help a lot with my own OW.
15 minutes to make, no, assemble all the panels into Comic Life, yes. Renders are 30-45 minutes a piece not including set-up. The key is actually the more cartoon like characters and fewer of them. I can cheat the textures, plus the TOS sets I'm using have less detailing than the TMP and TNG sets so fewer polygons to sort. The more characters, the longer the render time and more likely my poor ole PC chokes. Ship renders actually take WAY less time than interior renders. Like 5 minutes, 10 minutes tops. I do have several of my own ideas kicking around in my head. I did start two of them, a dark fantasy setting called Infernal Isles (long ongoing sprawling fantasy dark epic storyline) and a more grounded sci-fi setting I don't have a name for, but I'm setting the initial stories for it on a ship called the Swallow Tail which is a converted space tug turned salvage vessel. I actually jumped back over to Trek, because while I love both Infernal Isles and Swallow Tail, both of those universes and stories are DARK and it was depressing me too much to work on them, so I shelved them for now to play in a setting with a bit more hope to it until I can get my brain sorted. Infernal Isles (more adult language) DNDecember posts in my Fantasy folder which started me off on creating the Infernal Isles Swallow Tail (adult language)
That is actually what I meant. I know rendering time takes forever, but you can step away while it does it. Assembly time is what I am most concerned about, currently. Exactly. Though I was looking for character style similar to Overwatch, or at the very least Fortnite. But either way, like yours, something comfortably on this side of the Uncanny Valley. Not only saves render and processing time, but also eliminates the unsettling nature of things that are just not realistic enough, yet no longer charming visually. I had an idea about that, in original universe. Instead of showing lots of external shots, instead show much of the space action on the display screens in the control rooms. That way not only can you justify hearing sounds and have dialog and information displayed visually, but you can also have the ship images be a far lower polygon count, thus saving additional processing power. And justify showing them so close together despite being hundreds or thousands of KM apart. I would love to see them ^_^ For myself (not meaning to self promote as much as just share) I have: My primary original sci-fi world, which I tentatively call "Perseus" which I intend to stretch out to cover at least a full decade of the characters' lives. I intend to make a complete visual anthology of the entirety of real-world Spaceflight History. Not just the "important" missions, but ALL of them, as every single one deserves to be remembered. Not just NASA either. I wanted to make an anime Wrestling Federation of sort. Not a dumb storyline like wrestling for the fate of the galaxy, no just a proper wrestling show just animated rather than live action. And of course sprite animations, like a MegaMan battle royal I hope to have finished by the end of the year :P
- Gosh! I hadn't realised that these take so long to do - It's because the closest I get to computer generated art is MSPaint Anyway, thanks for spending the time you do on Tiny Trek Adventures - it's a lovely little treat to look forward to each week.
I shared links Infernal Isles folder (more adult language and only 8 pages so far) DNDecember posts in my Fantasy folder (which started me off on creating the Infernal Isles) Swallow Tail (adult language and I think also only 8 pages) Aww why thank you! I do have fun doing it! Now that the ship sets are done, honestly it's almost like playing with dolls and then taking a photo and slapping some dialogue over it LOL Speaking of, comic probably isn't happening this week. We had a power outage yesterday and it killed a whole nights worth of work, plus I had to run recovery on a bunch of stuff I was working on my PC. I'm more upset about all the detailing work I had done on the refit bridge when the power went POOF. Right now getting the comic rendered alongside work and my home life is a careful balance and the one day threw a whole wrench in the works. So probably a week off and I'll try and get a week ahead this weekend since this week's comic was at least mostly set-up.
Oh, no! How frustrating/annoying (the power outage ruining your work, that is). Still, I'm glad to hear that it's fun to do - I actually did play with dolls (well, Zoids), took some photos, and slapped on some lettering for my most recent art
TOS Phaser rifle by David Metlesits and converted to Poser by mattymanx Remaining Sets and props built in Truespace Rendered in DAZ Studio Uniforms are V4 Courageous Figures are Genesis 3
That last panel really made me laugh! Oh, and nice turn of phrase "completely out of the white" [why isn't there an Andorian emoji thingy?]
"Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around sometimes, you could miss it." Ferris Bueller
"Seize the time. Live now. Make NOW always the most precious time. Now will never come again" - Kamen/Jean-Luc Picard
"I'm a Doctor, not a night light" -EMH I'd originally wrote it as out of the blue, then when I was re-reading it, I'm like WAITAMINUTE and went back and they live basically underground with nothing but ice around them so that had to change lol Someone told me that it is both amazing and worrisome that she'd do that to someone working on a phaser rifle. She is Andorian though and their definition of 'safe' is very different lol
Sorry to go off-topic for a second, but that reminds me that I always wanted to create some additional Star Trek emoticons to use on the board or just update some of the already existing ones. Here's an Andorian for you:
Most logical Exactly. Although, I'm sure zh'Ramai must have seen the safeties were on, or that it wasn't charged up or something. Mustn't she? Mustn't she?!? Thank you! And I'm sure @Therin of Andor could find it useful, too...
Well the day job reared it's ugly head and the 10-12 hour days this week just left me with not enough time to get Tiny Trek out this week. Sorry all
Food and Drink props by Mylochka Remaining Sets and props built in Truespace Rendered in DAZ Studio Uniforms are V4 Courageous and M4 Valiant Figures are Genesis 3