Plus revised- and new stories coming at some point!
Yes, new Silent Shadow content. It’s been a while—a very long while since I’ve done anything new other than that scene I posted last year. I did actually start working on the sequel to Hawk & Wolf last year, but it fell a little by the wayside—namely due to writer’s block. Recently, though, I’ve had a new burst of energy that has basically involved fleshing out the characters more, adding backstories, a planned extensive rewrite of Hawk & Wolf itself with some plot-points that clarify the story, or just improves the story in general.
The other thing that delayed things is deciding whether or not to stick with Poser (mentioned my conflicting reasons here (which was almost a year ago—wow), but basically, the biggest part of wanting to moving on from the Aiko/Hiro3 models is that they are so limited in their geometry. What complicates that move though, is that I basically already have an established “look” that I don’t want to change. As for the bending issues in Aiko3—namely the way her thighs flatten out in any extreme bends—I’m finding has a lot to do with the geometry, and not the rigging. Basically, I rigged Aiko3 in Blender, using Blender’s Human meta-rig and guess what? Got the same bending issues in the thigh that are present in Poser. So basically, the prognosis is that I’m staying with Poser for now (though I need to update to Poser 12, Python version update be damned).
One thought that I had was basically doing a retopo on the exported OBJ files for my characters, but then I’d lose any additional morphs if I needed to add or adjust features. However, that limitation may be offset by the sculpting features available in Blender (I’ve already used sculpting in Blender to enhance Syleth’s facial features, for instance).
Enough of the technical shit, though. A lot of my recent creative writing spats have dealt with Syleth’s childhood and a hinted-at love-interest, and old enemies. What I came up with was eventually enough plot points to fill out three story arcs. The current arc, that started with Hawk & Wolf, is actually the middle arc—basically, Hawk & Wolf starts off in medias res, literally in the middle of things, so to speak. Syleth is already established as a Guardian, and you have the usual gathering of heroes, that includes Syleth’s long-time friend, Kestrel (who was Guardian before her)—yeah, which I immensely improved on from her one-time addition back in 2005. Basically, her progression:
A definitive improvement, if you ask me 😉
At any rate, when the time for release comes, I will say that I won’t be releasing them on DeviantArt. Instead, I’ll likely use Wattpad and the stories themselves won’t be PG-13 either.
Till next time!
You must be logged in to post a comment.