What I Did During my Novel Vacation

Tags

Blender, Kdenlive, LMMS, MIDI

Hello fellow Novel Covid19 huddlers! I hope you are all doing well. And to those who aren’t, I hope that you are doing as best you can, given the circumstances.

As for myself, I try to do the best I can, whenever I can. At least that’s the goal — I confess some days are less successful than others. But during this extended period of self-quarantining, I’ve outdone myself. Zowie!

Under my belt over the past four months are these sets of mini-milestones:

• Health
  • Both knees replaced. I’m walking again! Stairs are no longer my nemesis! Woohoo! On the other hand, I lost my excuse to not mow the lawn. Awwww…

• Writing
  • Learned Libre Office to replace my previous writing software.
  • Completed work with my diversity editor for my YA urban-fantasy/horror My Friend Jackson. I am still on target to release for late fall in 2020!
  • Completed edits for my short story Goats in the Machine, slated for the Bethlehem Writers Group’s next anthology Feathers, Fur & Scales.

The next anthology from the Bethlehem Writers Group

• Music
  • Learned MidiEditor software
  • Learned LMMS (Linux MultiMedia Studio) software
  • Learned several VST (Virtual Studio Technology) instruments
  • Edited MIDI recordings from 1984 and 1996
  • Learned Finale and Musescore3 sheet music software

All this, to achieve the goal of submitting my compositions for piano and organ to the archives of the Moravian Music Foundation. Submission requires both a recording and sheet music. Software was my best path, as my penmanship becomes truly stercoraceous after the third line.
I am happy to report that both of my first two pieces have been accepted by the archives! I guess that means I am now officially a part of history?

• Video
  • Learned Kdenlive, Olive, Openshot, and Shotcut video editors .(Hasta la Vista and good riddance Adobe Premiere!) I chose Kdenlive as it is the most versatile, and works on both Windows and Linux operating systems.

All this, to craft the first of many videos slated for my new YouTube channel. I hope to produce more videos of my music, and many, many videos of yours truly reading my own short fiction and performing my storytelling stints.

What’s next for the Author with Too Many Damn Interests? I need to purchase a new Linux workhorse PC to replace my poor dead Windows-XP monster machine. (At least it was a musclebound beast when I bought it in 2007. Thirteen years was an excellent run!)

Once that’s up and running, then I continue the progression of switching to Open Source versions of my software. Most notably, Blender will replace my beloved LightWave3D. Bon voyage and thanks for the memories old friend, but it’s on to bigger and better things. Why do I do this? Besides my animation work, I need a 3D modeling and rendering software to create my book covers. My Friend Jackson is coming this fall, remember?

Woof. I need more coffee!

So dear reader… What tools do you like to use for writing, music, and graphic arts? Let me know in your comments. Especially if you’re a Linux believer!

Next installment of my blog – the Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers comes after me. She is convinced that I am achieving too much.

Drawing On Experience

Tags

Babylon 5, books, CGI, Iron Man, Lightwave3D, OTAKON, Star Trek

One of my hobbies that turned into a vocation is CGI, or computer animation. In case you’re unfamiliar with the terms, think Pixar.

My first animation project was the opening animation for OTAKON 2001, “Mecha Run For It“. Though this 6-minute animation proved I had the chops to hack it, I simply didn’t have the bucks necessary to fund my own animation studio. And since wonderful ideas like Kickstarter did not yet exist, that dream quietly settled on the back burner.

Now that I am an (hopefully up-and-coming) author, I use this skill to enhance my publishing efforts. Although it isn’t animation, I use the same skills to create all my cover art and most illustrations to go with my stories.

How you might ask?
I employ LightWave3D, a CGI modeling and animation software package used in several sci-fi franchises (Babylon 5, Star Trek, Iron Man, to name a few).

Consider that animation is merely a series of photographs shown in rapid succession to fool the human eye’s persistence of vision. What better, than to my use animation to create my still-life illustrations?

I create the 3D models, pose the model actors, set the camera and lighting, exactly as if I were crafting an animation scene. The result is a photo-realistic image. If I need to convert the photo into pencil, charcoal, ink or paint styles, I have several converters at my fingertips in Lightwave3D itself, and other tools like Photoshop, to skin that particular cat.

You can see all my covers, illustrations and animation projects at anigrafx.com, but just to whet your appetite, here is an illustration used in “If I Can’t Sleep, You Can’t Sleep.”
And here’s the illustration submitted with my short story “If These Walls Could Talk,” slated for Firebringer Press‘s upcoming anthology “Meanwhile in the Middle of Eternity“.

Bet you can’t wait to see what I’m cooking up for my next novel, “My Friend Jackson“!

Thanks to DT Krippene for suggesting this blog topic.

I Am a Boiled Frog

Tags

change, life experience

And in all probability, so are you.

We’re all familiar with the adage that if you drop a frog in boiling water, he’ll immediately jump out. The flip side of the story tells us if you put a frog in tepid water and raise its temperature slowly enough, he’ll stay there ’til he’s cooked.

I am reminded on a weekly basis (sometimes daily) about the person that I am — and how I bear little resemblance to the person I was, or even the person I thought I would turn out to be. A long series of small changes leads to a big difference.

Today, that moment of realization occurred when I had a glass of milk. It was a glass of 2% — I normally drink and cook with 1% milk. After a single sip, I remarked on its fatty taste and texture.

I immediately flashed back to my youth, when my family struggled to make it through our weekly budget. One of my cornerstones of my childhood diet was powdered milk. If you dislike today’s fat-free milk, I guarantee you will be revolted by that loathsome bilge of sky-blue fat-free powder-and-water mixture. I have never had that vile Carnation concoction since I finished high school, and hope to never allow it past my lips again.
Time, tide, and tightening belts (due to dietary restrictions, not financial), now have me at the 1% mark. And I prefer it. How times and tastes have changed!

I’ve noted several other changes in my tastes – for example, I now love spinach and grapefruit, foods I could not tolerate until a mere five years ago.

On the non-gastronomical front, things certainly have taken paths I never could have guessed at. As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut veterinarian. My actual career path was solidly grounded on earth, wending through organist, physicist, electrical engineer, software systems analyst, animator, to arrive at my current vocation — writer.

About the only thing that has been constant through that journey is that I have been blessed, allowed to do the things I love to do.

On the subject of being blessed, my belief system has had a similar multi-directional slog through the spiritual multi-verse — from Moravian, to Jesus Freak, to sullen agnostic, finally re-embracing being born again. My stint as a church organist put me in a unique position to sample all that is right (and all that is wrong) over a wide spectrum of denominations. As a result, my belief system is one that both Catholic and Baptist would shake their collective heads at. The feeling is mutual, friends. My best advice is to remove the log from your own eye.

I don’t say that to condemn, but rather to urge you, dear reader, to try something new. Life is change. Perhaps you should have a try at being boiled. Maybe you already are, you just don’t know it. A moment of reflection, and we all can learn something.

The Multi-Task Master?

Tags

GLVWG, Kristen Lamb, OTAKON

“Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo!
So little time. So much to know!”
Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D, the Nowhere Man, “Yellow Submarine”

I’m in a phase of my work, where I’ve got the following irons in the fire:

• Pitching and sending query letters to agents for my mirthful macabre short story anthology, “No Children Aloud”
• Preparing the 2nd edition of “Pindlebryth of Lenland – The Five Artifacts”
• Ramping up a new computer and recording equipment for voice-over work
• Trying to keep up my social media presence
• Participating in three writers groups’ critique circles
• OTAKON 2015 in less than 1 month!
• Coordinator, GLVWG 2016 Anthology
• Outlining Pindlebryth II
• Converting my CGI animation portfolio to HDTV format
• Somehow crowbar in time for a social life

Several of my fellow authors, not the least of whom is Kristen Lamb, have given me copious amounts of useful advice on how to multi-task all the activities that are required of the modern author. I see it can be done, as there are so many success stories to draw from. But there are still days where I feel like the guy in the Progressive commercial, who walks up to a chain saw juggler and says, “OK, I got this!”

About a decade ago in a previous business life, my department head observed the whirlwind of activity at my desk and computer.  Shaking his head in disbelief and admiration, he complimented me with “How do you work on of all these projects at once?”
Though I still plow merrily along, I am forced to confess these days it is not as easy as it used to be!

It’s Two! Two! Two vocations in one!

Tags

D.T.Krippene, GLVWG

I am wrapping up work on my latest book, an anthology of “disturbed and disturbing” short stories I pitched to several agents at the 2015 ‘Write Stuff’ conference. In addition to the re-writes and edits from critique groups and beta-reader feedback I am cycling through, I am also working on the illustrations that will grace the end of every story.

One of my hobbies that I turned into a vocation was computer animation. I use LightWave3D to create and render the scene, then run it through any number of publicly available converters to realize it in the form of a pencil/ink/charcoal drawing. I am quite excited about the results, and have gotten a skid-load of positive feedback on them. My favorite comment:  “Gosh, Chris.  What kind of nightmares do you have?”

Here for example, is one of the pending illustrations:

Thanks to DT Krippene for suggesting that I blog this.