Afraid of the Dark

   Mechmaster finally came up for air from his comic
 (check it out here: http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/cg-lair/daleks/secemp-index.htm )
and sent me back Afraid of the Dark to correct my numerous past tense errors.
For some reason I've been creeping into present tense while writing... it's become epedemic. I've created a file to search for the wrong tense with find/search and zap any. It's tedious but necessary.
   Anyway, he sent the file back and I spent part of Sunday evening and all of yesterday cleaning the manuscript before sending it back to him. Hopefully that will get the editing of it back on track. (or even speed it up)
    I've paused in working on Princess Rescue Inc, I started glossing over rough patches in order to get the editing done... not a good thing. I realized that I need to stop when I do that and go back to it later. I've gotten 1/4 of the book done, I've cleaned it up and even added alternative view points to flesh it out a bit more. Hopefully when I get back to it and when it's all said and done it will be a better product.
    So, anyway, back to Afraid of the Dark, I sculpted lots of the aliens in Sculptris last year and earlier this year and even explored turning the book into a game using the UDK engine. I've gotten some progress done but then I tabled it to get back to writing. Here are a few of the aliens:

Gryphon: It is a predator/scavenger, it has one or two small cameo's in the book.

Another alien that has a small cameo, this one is a daddy long legs, a forest herbivore.

 

I was tempted to do a forest scene with the daddy long legs. That critter like some of my others are based on ideas and concept art from Deviant Art and from http://www.creaturespot.com/

 

And last (for now, I actually have over 100 images) is the Strider.

First the baby called a medusa puppy:

Awe ain't he cute?

Now the parents:

Striders are all over the book. Think of a 2 legged 2 trunked elephant with a gangly body and spikes.

 

I modeled this guy/gal in low poly as well in order to put it in the game. this is the high res version textured in Sculptris (like all the others) and rendered in Cinema.

Imagine herds of these things and alien plants and other animals taking over suburbs and cities. :)

 

 

Princess Rescue Inc

   I started this book from a series of scene ideas back in 2009. The plot is similiar in some ways to Bootstrap Colony. (adventure by Terrans on an alien world) Unfortunately I threw it together and when I started to get the reviews back in from Bootstrap I tabled the book. I wanted to clean it up and add other perspectives to give it more depth and focus.
   Over time I've gone back, I had the cover art in mind and did that back in 2010 I believe. It took about a month of off and on work to get it sorted out and rendered. I had to make some compromises to get it done.
   Skip ahead to now, I've dusted it off and started to clean it up. I've started by editing the past presence mistakes and some of the easier common mistakes I made, and now I've started fixing the punctuation and caps while adding more scenes and viewpoints. It's hard, I don't want to detract from the story but I don't want to leave it bare either.
   One of my other problems is shifting perspective for me. I mean I'm going from writing about a future dystopia to ... well this. A medieval society built up on an alien world with a homogenous take on the civilizations of Earth prior to that... intergration of alien animals in said society to replace or augment Terran animals that would normally fufill established rolls... and then throw in a war and a group of Terran explorers.
    Let's just say it's interesting. lol

     Anyway, here is the title and an image or two of the alien beasts.

The basilisk:

The Branack, this one is a wild one:

Domesticated Branack:

And finally the Rhino Trike.

That's it for now. I'll post the hexrat and other pics later sometime.

 

 

 

Ghost Station Cover

     Yesterday I played with the Kiev model, digging through my vast library of greebles and doodads to dress it up. It's kind of vexing that after adding all that detail you can't really see most of it.
     This morning I pulled the people and equipment from the First Steps cover into the scene and scaled them to size. I played with the textures a little and then dropped them where I wanted them. After doing a render test I concluded there is no point completing the Scarab, the people are specs on the ship and the Scarab is only slightly bigger than they are.
    So, here it is. I may play with the fonts and lettering later when I get some feedback.

Yay! Ghost Station is off!

   Yay! Ghost Station is off to Mechmaster! It is out of my hands for now. :) On to the cover art and the next great project!

    In keeping with posting aliens and stuff here is a Gashg from the Wandering Engineer Universe:

   Gashg are amphibious bipeds, Mouth in their torso, eyes and nostrils on stalks on top of that big head. Scales on their shoulders and joints. Big long claws, huge feet to keep them stable. They like to scar each other in mating battle rituals. They make great gardeners.

Half way point...

   Well, I'm at the half way point, I've just about crossed the rubicon into the second half of editing Ghost Station. Yup, I finally buckled down, focused and dived in, ignoring my itch to work on Jethro 2 for the time being.
    Don't get your hopes up, remember this is me we're talking about doing the editing. I'm not nearly as thorough as Mechmaster. He's got final say on that. When i'm done I pass it on to him to go over with a proverbial fine toothed comb. Hopefully my meager efforts will make his work a bit easier. Hopefully. I've got my fingers crossed. (and my toes)
   The good news is all my efforts has added 18 pages to the book, which is cool. Hopefully the second half will also see as much added.
    The bad news is that when I'm done this I plan on finishing the cover art for Ghost Station before working on another book. I will hopefully be finished editing by next weekend or the weekend after. That is if pesky interruptions don't get in the way. Grrr...

    On another note, I'll dust off a pic of an alien. This one is untextured and very rough. Also nude:

    This is an elf, a tiny sentient that first appeared in Fool's Gold and made a couple appearences in Destiny's Choice (I think), popped up in Jethro 1 (Again I think, top of my head here), and plays a few roles in Ghost Station.

   Elves draw their roots from the smart bugger who created the watch on Ben 10. I can't remember the alien name off the top of my head. (flying blind here)

Anyway, that's it for now.

Jethro Team

   It occured to me after talking with an old friend that I needed to post the large image of the team and maybe even have captions for each of the team members.
   Here they are w/out captions:

And here they are with captions:

      The 2 humans I did with Daz3d. I think Miles is the free Behemoth model while Asazi is the free Victoria model. The weapon in Asazi's hands I borrowed from the Daz free models, the sniper rifles came from the Ghost Sniper Rifle I modeled for Starcraft a long time ago.... just redressed.
All the others I sculpted and textured in Sculptris. Including the rucksacks. :) Textures are either custom or from the web. (like the digicam)
     I posed the humans in Daz3D. Their outfits were bought from the Daz website and modified by me. The others were rigged and posed in Cinema 4d. Since they are all high poly I had to render each as a seperate element and then put the pieces together in post.

Jethro goes live in...

    I just clicked the on sale button, Jethro goes to war should be live in 24-72 hours.
You can find it here when it does:
http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?ATH=Chris+Hechtl&STORE=EBOOK

   I've been working on a fence for the past several days and I am thoroughly sunburnt and annoyed. Sleeping is not fun. That's the last time I leave the sunblock with someone else! I keep thinking... "The burnt hand teaches best... The burnt hand teaches best..." Hell, if it was only my hand it wouldn't be so annoying! Grrr