Ephemeral-Nightstorm

I'm working on stuff. Stuff is being worked on. There's some fanfic, and a short sequential series I'm about a quarter ways through. I upgraded my video card this year, which broke DAZ Stuido for a while, but that's fixed now, so yay.

I have a Hentai-Foundry profile now, which you can find the uncensored versions of my images on.

Anyways,

I've been feeling a little strapped for cash lately, so I am offering my services as a colorist. If you've got a a sketch, or some manga pages, or some other black and white art you'd like to have in color and don't feel like coloring it yourself, contact me.

My base rate is $15 an image, but that is negotiable depending on the complexity of the image, how specific your request is, and the number of images you want colored, and may go as low as $5 an image.

It has become apparent to me that The Raiden Saga has no following what-so-ever. No one gives a crap about it, apparently not even its voice actors.

There's this thing called the "Sunk Cost Fallacy" which is basically the fancy name for people's tendency to continue to put effort and resources into something that's an obvious loss, purely because of all the effort and resources they've already put into it.

So, I'm going to do the smart thing, and avoid that mistake, since it is looking like any further work put into Raiden would be wasted. I'm going to cut my losses and put Raiden on the shelf.

I do already have a new Big Project that's going to become my primary focus now that Raiden is out. Don't want to say much about it yet, except that its going to be a Graphic Novel / Webcomc, and that it's going to have erotic elements in the forefront of the story. One of my goals is for this project to take the line between porn and art and smash it to bits. I'll talk about it some more once I've got more of the story hashed out and the DAZ character designs done.

The following is a Random Rant of Randomness.

So, I recently picked up Sonic Unleashed for the PS3 and had a few thoughts. (Yes, I am aware I am hell of late on this.)

Firstly, don't you think its about time Sonic Team got with the 21st century and did away with the Extra Lives mechanic? I mean, what purpose do they serve other than annoying the player? It's not like we have to put more coins into our PS3 when we run out of lives. What the fuck, Sonic Team?

Secondly, THOSE FUCKING WEREHOG LEVELS WERE THE STUPIDEST IDEA SINCE BIG THE CAT's FISHING ADVENTURE!!!!!! And they're like 90% of the game! (Time-wise) Whoever approved that idea ought to be fired! Out of a cannon! Into the sun! Why the hell did anyone feel it was necessary to pad out the game with all that boring tedium? What the fuck, Sonic Team?

Thirdly, please note that unlike other controllers, the dualshock does not have a handy little notch at 12 o'clock on the analog stick that helps you keep it pointed perfectly forwards. Designing levels where not-dying depends on holding the stick perfectly forward IS NOT OKAY ANYMORE. What the fuck, Sonic Team?

So, firstly, episode three of RAIDEN is out! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR6Gi7…

Sony Vegas 10 is a big step up from 9, if anyone was wondering. It was the only software I needed to accomplish everything I needed to.

I'm having a lot of fun with DAZ. I sprung for the Evolution Morph packs and have found the range of faces and bodies I can create to be immense. I'm working on something right now, look out for it. I'm trying out a new drawing method in Photoshop with styled vector shapes, which seems to be working for that image but probably won't hold up for something more complicated or anything with unstraightforward lighting.

I'm on the fence right now between being able to draw hair well enough, and needing to shell out for more 3d hair for DAZ. I'll need  to look around to see if there are any hair-drawing tutorials that are both efficient and match the sort of look I get with the toon-shaded DAZ renders.

After that, I'm planning on turning more of RAIDEN into comic form. I'm hoping it'll give me a better sense of graphic novel page composition, for when I attempt one of the original graphic novel stories I've got outlined.

So, firstly, I still suck at drawing freehand and don't appear to be getting any better. However, I have gotten my hands on the new DAZ Studio 4 which isn't just neat to play with, but can work as an awesome figure reference. Now I never have to worry about getting proportions wrong! Yay!

I really need to figure out a more efficient way to shade, though. The minimal shading on the Kyla Valstar portrait took longer than the rest of it put together. Currently, I'm using a clipping mask on the color layer and the vector shape tool, and while this produces excellent results, it is very slow. Or more likely, I'm just slow at it. It might get faster with practice.

So I'll be doing more of that.

In other news, my attempts to learn Japanese have fallen by the wayside without anyone to practice with. I'm living on my own now and I still don't have anything resembling a social life and my job involves looking after the house where I live... The isolation is starting to get to me. I'm worried for my sanity.

But enough about that.

I seem to have gotten horrendously distracted by fanfiction dot net over the last several months. www.fanfiction.net/u/2574969/ I am astounded and a little disgusted by how much horrible fiction I've read there, though I do have a few favorites, such as Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which EVERYBODY should read because it's just that good. On the plus side it got me to stretch my writing muscles again.

RAIDEN. The third episode of my machinima series is going into post-production as soon as I get Sony Vegas Pro 10, next week. As soon as I get that finished and released, I plan to convert more of the show into graphic novel form to post here, and maybe once I have enough pages, on either the Raiden Saga website itself or on some other webcomic site. I may or may not take Raiden into webcomic exclusivity; it depends entirely on how many of my voice actors stick around and for how long. I hope the show can finish its run in its current machinima form, but that may not be realistic.

That's about it, I guess.