Project Forlorn

September 18th, 2018 I have completed my third and final draft of the script.  After having the environment built, I had some new ideas that changed the way the end of the film played out, and for the better.  I decided to scrap the idea of a vehicular chase as it was too hard to set up and felt out of place, and that's also not considering its artistic complexity.  It is now a more intimate but hopefully equally thrilling set piece.  As for scene 3, that came together nicely.  I shifted some things around to create a more cause and effect scene that has greater ramifications for the entire story as opposed to a stand alone scene.  And I decided to cut way back on the dialogue.  Some of it was meant to provide some exposition and context for the state of the world in the story, but the new scene 3 is now able to convey that without any words.  Scene 7 is the only scene with any spoken words, and even then it is lessened to have a greater impact.  All told, I'm quite pleased w

September 15th, 2018 Now that the exterior environment is all roughed in, it's time to work on the interior.  The cathedral has three main rooms - an entrance, a great hall, and a throne room.  The entrance and throne room haven't changed much in my head since their inception, but the main hall has a bit.  After completing a draft of the script, I decided to give it a bit more verticality.  I also did some work to the exterior of the cathedral to make sure everything fits together in a sensible way.  I'm not keen on making some magical space where room sizes don't make sense.  The rooms right now are just some gray cubes in maya, with pillars and doors and stuff to block in how it feels structurally.  I also did a small amount of detailing to the exterior, with buttresses and the like, just to see how they'd fit.  So far everything connects.  My plan now is to shift to characters, but the first room I'll actually create is the entrance room.  It's fair

September 1st, 2018 Having always been interested in writing but never really done much actual work since school, I thought now would be a splendid time to bust out the metaphorical type writer and clickity clack up a real no-foolin' script for this bad boy.  After a month of design and brainstorming, I started officially writing.  To do this I ended up getting a trial to Celtx, which is what I used in college.  I'm quite saddened to see that it's not a program anymore, but more of a service.  Oh well.  While the main pieces of the story are there, I'm still missing a few elements.  The plot consists of seven major scenes, but scene 3 and scene 6 are a little vague in my mind.  There is a lot of "The Hero enters this place and then something exciting happens to get her from point a to point b."  That is the biggest hurdle I need to overcome.  For scene six specifically I hope to have a vehicular chase sequence of some sort.  I also have a bit of dialogue I

August 25th, 2018 Today I'm working on the environmental layout for the film.  The environment is one large connected piece, consisting of a bridge/ stairway, a cathedral type building, and the surrounding city streets.  There's also a big tree in the background.  Attached is my terrible drawing just to get something to  paper.  I can't recall how my ideas for the city came about, it seems like I've always had them.  The city is shaped like a ring, with a lot of high walls and honeycombed streets, and a bit sunken areas in the middle.  In Maya I made a big circle and lined it with big cubes in city grids.  In the center I put in a roughly shaped castle/ cathedral.  I have on my a large number of royalty free buildings which I plan on kit bashing and retexturing to fit my aesthetic, but I place some of those in there as well to fit the scene.  I'm also building the scene to scale, which makes it a little tricky to work with because it's so huge.  Having eve

Early August 2018 So, here's where we get to the normal format.  This blog will function basically as a diary of the making of the movie, complete with dates!  Yay dates!  Unfortunately, in the beginning I didn't do a good job at writing things down so some of the more specific dates from the very beginning are lost at the moment. Speaking of writing things down. Now that the story was figured out the first thing to do was to put ink to paper and design everything.  And I mean everything, from characters to environments to props.  Thankfully for me, as I am doing this project mostly alone at the moment, I can get away with not having to get too specific with my designs.  This project consists of three human characters, one humanoid creature, and two other creatures.  These characters have names, but saying them sounds super dorky, like I'm a sixth grader trying to get you to read their fantasy book, so for the time being I'll just use code names.  The creature fro