Still...

Getting things organized for next month's writing frenzy. I read over some tips and tricks that a veteran Nano'er put together a few years back. I think I came away with some good ideas of how to keep things rolling. Still struggling with character names... that always seems to be the hardest part for me...

More NaNo

Another day and still no plot. But the world and the main character are really starting to take shape in my mind. I'm starting to figure out some of the secondary characters as well. So I guess it's all coming along pretty well.

In my first attempt at a novel I didn't have anything planned in advance, really. I kind of had an idea for a story and I had a name and physical description for the two main characters. Beyond that I had nothing. And the story never did quite go the direction I had planned, but it seemed to be gearing up to head that way, at least.

I actually read over the whole thing today and realized it wasn't half bad. Certainly it wasn't exactly 'good' but I think it's workable and I'm actually considering finishing it in the next few months. Not next month, of course, I have another book to worry about then....

I Think...

I may have figured out at least what the setting for my novel will be. And I'm starting to figure out the main character. I still don't have a plot figured out yet, though. On the one hand I'm trying to avoid anything too cliche... but on the other hand, when you really take a good hard look at all your favorite books/movies - it's all cliche.

Oh well....

The other day I did a ZBrush experiment using someting that has been dubbed the "Zeeble". As near as I can tell, a Zeeble is when you take a standard primitive object (box, sphere, pyramid, cylinder, etc.) apply a simple texture to the object, turn the texture into a mask and then deform the object. Here is my first attempt...

NaNoWriMo

Well, next month is National Novel Writing Month. I plan to give it a shot and signed up at the official NaNoWriMo website.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo after last year's offical challenge and attempted the "Novel in a Month" thing earlier this year. I only made it halfway to the goal by the end of the month, but I did learn quite a bit in the process. One of the most interesting discoveries I made is that it's actually harder to meet the goal when you have nothing else to do.

The whole reason the novel in a month thing works is that you're (theoretically) so pressed for time that you just write and leave editing for later. But when you aren't pressed for time (like me) you end up going over passages again and again trying to make sure you get the scenes just right until you eventually end up at a point where you realize there is just no way you can finish in time. Even though I still don't have a busy schedule, I hope just recognizing this will help me succeed this time around.

NaNoWriMo - Don't get it right... Get it written!

Finally

Well I said I'd post some of the results of my "practice" sessions with ZBrush. For the first picture I decided to post an image I made from following one of their tutorials.



I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, but I still need more practice with this program. I'm dying to get some of the tutorial dvd's available at The Gnomon Workshop. I've heard a lot of great things about them. From the clips I've seen of them, some of their techniques are amazingly simple.

...and Again

Well, things got a bit crazy for me here. And then I ended up out of town almost 2 months with little internet access. I just got back last week.

I did get in some good practice with ZBrush and I hope to put up some of the results from those practices in the next few days.