Leighton's Blog

New progress Report! Been working on Ice Island for the To Darkness Fled Book Trailer. Made alot of progress.  All I have left is animation! Here is a render of it, although it is not laid out quite how is described in the book because I am doing a movie interpretation of it.

Here it is:

Click to Enlarge.

I will hopefully have it properly animated soon.

The pre-production SFX progress is coming along! Here is a frame from the upcoming To Darkness Fled Trailer:

Click To See Larger Image

Although you can’t see in this frame I added lightning as well to the animation. Any suggestions?

Here is a changed version of what I did off of a Blender Guru tutorial. Here is the tutorial: http://www.blenderguru.com/create-a-shiny-new-wallpaper/

And here is what I did:

Howzat?

Recently I have been putting myself through a self-induced face making course, and I made this one really interesting… um, face. You all will have to tell me what you think of it.

Because of some blood I slapped on it, I am compelled to force you to click below before you see it, so as to let people who don’t mind (or enjoy) stuff like this see it, but not forcing people who aren’t too sure about that sort of thing to see it.

Whew. Long explanation….

Click “Read more” to see it.

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Hey! Day three of the CSFF Blog Tour, a review of Starlighter, by Bryan Davis. This time, I decided to Google “Bryan Davis".

As is usual, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher on the condition that I review it on my blog.

I found some VERY interesting and TOP SECRET information.

To the right is a photo of Bryan Davis (for real) and Quincy Hankins-Cole #23 of the Nebraska Cornhuskers  while he goes up for a shot against Bryan Davis #0 of the Texas A&M Aggies in the first half during the quarterfinals of the 2010 Phillips 66 Big 12 Men’s Basketball Tournament at the Sprint Center on March 11, 2010 in Kansas City, Missouri.

I came up with an ABSOLUTELY awesome description of him:

Bryan Davis is a basketball player for the Texas A&M; Aggies. He is a forward, standing 6′-9″ and weighing 250 pounds. His number is 0. His hometown is Dallas, TX. Find more Bryan Davis news, pictures, and information here.

Isn’t that amazing? I never knew he was a basketball player?! I’m not sure that picture quite matches the picture on the post below though. >_>

Even better, I found ANOTHER article about him:

Bryan Davis (born May 2, 1940, Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is a former West Indian cricketer who played in four Tests in 1965.

Wow. A Cricket star too?! I don’t even FOLLOW cricket! This guy is unbelievable! Ahh well. Enough joking. For the record, those are DIFFERENT Bryan Davis’s.

Pictures of other Bryan Davis’s: (other ones than I even mentioned)

Bryan Davis, Founder/Board Member of XanGO

Bryan Davis, founder and president of The Kaieteur Institute for Knowledge Management based in Toronto, Canada.

Bryan Davis, Realtor

Bryan, you related to these guys? LOL Same spelling… I just had to post those.

Bryan Davis (author) was born April 21, 1958 is an American Christian fantasy author, his most popular works being the Dragons In Our Midst series and the Oracles Of Fire series. Bryan was born in 1958 and grew up in the eastern U.S.

Bryan is a graduate of the University of Florida (B.S. in Industrial Engineering). In high school, he was a member of the National Honor Society and voted Most Likely to Succeed.  He is now a full-time author, he lives with his wife, Susie, and three of their seven children in western Tennessee.

After laboring as a computer geek for 20 years, (cool, huh?) Bryan followed a dream to become an author. He began by writing a story to motivate his seven children to gain some excitement about writing, and that story grew into a novel. After spending the next eight years learning the craft and enduring more than 200 rejections from publishers and agents, he broke through with his best-selling series Dragons in our Midst.

Bryan is the author of several other works including The Image of a Father (AMG) and Spit and Polish for Husbands (AMG), and four books in the Arch Books series: The Story of Jesus’ Baptism and Temptation, The Day Jesus Died, The Story of the Empty Tomb (over 100,000 sold), and Jacob’s Dream.

He is currently at work writing Dragons of Starlight, a new series that will consist of four young adult books and two adult books. Also he is writing a third dragon series with an unknown co-author called “Children of the Bard", the first of which is The Song of the Ovulum, and will come out in 2011.

Wow, Children of the Bard? Sounds awesome!

This post concludes the CSFF Blog Tour for Starlighter.

Wow, long title.

Anyway, here is day two of the CSFF Blog Tour, a review of Starlighter, by Bryan Davis.

To the right, you may notice a picture of Bryan Davis. I placed that (erm… him) there because it would be a bit redundant to put the cover of starlighter there for a second day in a row.

About the cover (look to previous post) I am not quite sure that Zondervan did the best cover they could have. The dragon egg is interesting, if not a bit plain, the girl behind looks photoshopped and the dragon above looks REALLY photoshopped. Ahh, well. An author can’t have everything, I guess. (ok, so I’m biased, being an artist myself)

At least the dragon logo thing behind “Dragons of Starlight” is good.

Today, I am going to cover the topics that I missed yesterday. You may have noticed, I said NOTHING of:

• The antagonists, except a minor mention of overlord dragons.
• The plotline.
• The purpose. (as interpreted by me)

So, there you go. To start things out right, lets have some organization:

The Antagonists

The Dragons Of Starlight	Headed by Magnar they are on a dying planet bereft of Pheterone, also known as Extane, a gas breathed by Dragons, fatal to humans when inhaled in excess. They force the humans to serve them and mine the gas from subterranean pockets. Koren’s master Arxad is a nicer, almost “human” dragon. The evil Maximus, guard of The Basilica  is not one to tell stories to.
Zena	I thought I would give slight mention to this character. Zena is a former human slave (I guess) who has been changed to a zombie basically by the evil (or so is my opinion) black dragon egg she serves. She is not very nice. Period.
Governor Prescott	Although he meets his just end in the book, he is a lying sneak who DESPERATELY wants to join forces with the dragons and (so I assume) sell the humans as slaves thus benefiting himself. He has kept his portal finding hobby quite secret and outlawed any pursuit of it by others. He has the litmus finger (don’t ask) embedded in his chest but it glows an unimpressive yellow color. (wimp) Fortunately he is assassinated by some other bad guys who cut the litmus finger out of his chest and stupidly give it to Jason Masters thus allowing him to find the portal without them.

The Plotline

The basic plotline is a quest to rescue the slaves on Starlight and bring peace to dragon-kind. There are some weird twists throughout the story as well as some hints of an underlying evil plan hatched by the unpredictable Magnar.

He is very old and was the first and only dragon to capture humans and bring them to Starlight to work. He was stopped by Uriel Blackstone who blocked the portal. Few have found or penetrated it since then. The only one’s who did were Jason’s two older brothers Adrian and Frederic. Frederic disappeared and was thought dead, but Adrian and Jason know better.

They have a cryptic message sent in a genetically activated courier tube from Frederic that explains why he’s been missing so long. He somehow made it to Starlight and has been plotting and lurking there while waiting for the others. Adrian leaves near the beginning and (supposedly) arrives there as well.

We don’t see them again in book one.

The Purpose

Hmm. This one is hard to decipher.

I had trouble seeing any specific purpose in the plot or anything. There were some “Pro-Life” comments and/or sentiments. That was good.

The book was slightly more on the suggestive side in some parts and definetely not for small children. I really just have to say I couldn’t tell what message it was trying to carry. It very well may have had many different messages but no DEFINITE and obvious one.

Bryan, can you enlighten me? Anything you were trying to get through to this generation through your fiction?

Hey guys! As part of the Christian Science Fiction Fantasy Blog Tour I’m going to review Starlighter by Bryan Davis! As is usual, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher on the condition that I review it on my blog.

First, I would like to tell you… I was NOT ordered to give a favorable review of this book. Thus, I am compelled to tell you my opinions of this book. Here goes:

I. Did. Not. Like. It. That. Much.

The book follows the intertwined (and then separated) journeys of Jason, Koren, Elyssa, and Randall.

One correlation to Wolf’s Bard, Starlighter starts out with a sword contest. (believe it or not, even though Wolf’s Bard was written well in advance to Starlighter and not released to the general public yet in full).

About the setting,

The story takes place in the mythical land of Mesolantrum, a land filled with all kinds of interesting things such as Photo Guns, medieval Castles and Sci-Fi Genetic identification filters. As usual with any Bryan Davis book, it is a mix of genres. Everyone lives like they did in Medieval times, but with little hints of weird technology.

Jason Masters

Is a kind of typical younger brother. I was unable to relate properly to him, seeing as I have never had an older brother, myself being the older brother. Jason’s older brother Adrian leaves near the beginning of the story  to go where (plot spoiler) Jason ends up and we never see him again. I found that frustrating because I had just bonded with Adrian as a character (really awesome character, slightly similar to Tiwyr from Wolf’s bard) and then for him to never be covered in this book at all was quite disappointing.

Elyssa

Is the obvious love-interest of Jason, plugged into the story without the reader’s permission. She was kidnapped out of her home by the evil (and fat) Governor Prescott (Who blamed it on a bear killing. Starting to sound like The Oath, huh?) and then rescued by Jason (for a reason I forget). She has some kind of un-explainable sorceress-like power.

Randall

Is the slightly spoiled-rich-kid son of Governor Prescott who thinks it was Jason who killed his dad. (at first) and is handy with a photo gun. He is the (Walter-like) side-kick to Jason throughout the story.

Koren

Lives on the planet Starlight and is a slave gifted with the power to tell stories (weird, huh?) which somehow that makes the evil dragon overlords sleepy. (so boring that I… *SNORE*) She is the second Starlighter (yeah, that’s where the name of the book comes in) and prophesies say that she will one day bring peace between the enslaved human race and the power hungry dragons. There is also a minor love-interest character for her names Charlie who ends up (somehow, don’t ask me) liking Elyssa instead of Koren. (wimp)

Tibalt

Is the son of the person who made (and then blocked) the doorway to Starlighter from Mesolantra. He is very old. His nickname is Tibber the Fibber (Not a very good example at truthtelling) and he lives up to his name many times throughout the story.

Now that I have covered the basic story (without giving too much away hopefully) I will tell you that the MAIN reason that I wasn’t to enthusiastic about this book is the ending. The ending not only solved NOTHING, but mixed and matched the wrong people with and separated them without any word as to what became of Adrian!

Augh.

Here is the list of people participating in the CSFF Blog Tour.

Brandon Barr Beckie Burnham Jeff Chapman R. L. Copple CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson Jeff Draper April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Nikole Hahn Ryan Heart Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Dawn King Leighton Jane Maritz Rebecca LuElla Miller John W. Otte Donita K. Paul Crista Richey SarahFlan Chawna Schroeder Rachel Starr Thomson Steve Trower Fred Warren Dona Watson Phyllis Wheeler Jill Williamson KM Wilsher

Hey guys! Leighton here with some SLY Games updates! First however I decided I would say something about movies.

Last night I watched a “G Rated” (quotes intended) movie called The Last Unicorn. It was one of those classic animated films that no-one really knows about. It was SICK! I came away feeling:

• Cheated
• Angry
• Insulted
• Inspired

First before I explain why I felt those seemingly contradicting emotions let me tell you more about the movie. (I don’t expect to be spoiling anything for you since I HIGHLY discourage you from watching it)

The Last Unicorn is about a fantasy world which used to be populated with Unicorns. A unicorn is portrayed as a kind of immortal super-human horse like creature that is full of “Magic” and beauty. The unicorn specifically covered in the movie finds out that she is THE LAST of a race that once brought good to the world.

She goes off in search of the rest of her kin, with the help of a magician/sorcerer who relies on freak accidents and bursts of inspiration to work real magic, otherwise relying on card tricks to fool people.

They come to a barren kingdom (after having an interesting run in with an outlaw band who don’t believe in Robin Hood *sniff*) rumored to contain the other unicorns who have been chased there by a fiery red bull of phantasmic power.

Unfortunately the bull finds them at night and attempts to drive the last unicorn into the sea to join (as they find) her other kin.

The Magician (who, let me inform you, stole the outlaw leader’s wife) changes the unicorn into a human girl to save her from the bull who somehow doesn’t realize that they are the same person and goes off in a huff, cheated of his prey.

The small band then travels to the (REALLY evil looking) castle of King Haggard and his son. They are accepted as castle employees (sort of) as they try to figure out how to save the unicorns trapped in the sea from the red bull. Meanwhile the unicorn (humanized) unwitting bewitches the King’s son who promptly tries to court her.

After they find the key to the red bull’s lair by lying to a talking skeleton, the unicorn, the magician, the prince and the outlaw’s ex wife traverse the red bull’s lair. Meanwhile the unicorn (starting to become more human by the moment) falls in love with the overjoyed prince. Unfortunately the foursome encounter the bull who (this time, idk why not before) recognizes the unicorn in her human form and tries to capture her and stick her in the sea.

Somehow, the bumbling magician (out of selfishness as explained in the movie) manages to turn the human girl back into a unicorn,  who is then in more danger (and thus unable to marry the prince unless turned back into a human) backed up almost into the sea when the prince attempts a heroic act (coincidentally getting killed in vain because of it) and the unicorn has to save herself which she does by pushing the red bull (wimpy guy) back into the sea himself and thus rescuing all the unicorns.

She brings to life the prince and goes off and joins the other unicorns who go back to their magical forest with a wannebe happily-ever-after ending.

Now that I have wasted your time telling you all that, you can properly understand my reaction. For those of you who don’t, let me explain. Not only did the movie have swearing and gratuitous near-nudity (and it was rated G!!!) but it had several bad messages. Here goes:

• Don’t get married, if you fall in love, just break it up and go off and be yourself.
• Adultury? What’s that?
• Magic is a god-like force. (I know I didn’t cover that in the synopsis but yeah)
• Selfish gain is more important than others.
• Animals are more important (and smarter) than people. (especially guys)
• And for the biggest one: HEROISM DOESN’T WORK!!!

I know those are some pretty heinous accusations but they are all in there. As I said before, it was a pretty sick movie. What a thing, trick the parents with promises of a fairy-tale ending and cutting edge animation and then stuff the kids full of all kind of secular, new age propaganda. That’s why I came away feeling angry. I felt cheated because the Hero and the Heroine didn’t get married in the end (although they were in love), as well as other Heroism related problems. I felt insulted because there was a strong anti-guy thing throughout the movie.

Ok, you may be wondering why I felt inspired. I felt inspired because I am currently planning/making/learning a video game off of my sister’s novel, Wolf’s Bard, and a big theme in there is Heroism. In fact that’s all it is about; God driven Heroism. So when I see things that absolutely drag heroism in the dust it makes me want to wave it high where it belongs. You see? Also, I watched another video recently that Jay Lauser recommended, this one a short. It is a VERY good movie.  You guys will have to tell me what you think of it:

Haha, anyway… It’s time for my SLY Games update! I recently was researching several different college courses on Interactivity Development and found a lot of them were being taught using a game engine called Unreal. I had heard other vague references to this piece of software before but hadn’t paid them much time. This time I took the time to research it a little. I came with two conflicting pieces of info:

• Unreal is FREE!!!!
• Unreal costs 700,000 dollars. *dies*

Ok, haha. You guys are probably laughing right now. How could two such conflicting reports exist?!

They are both true. LOL

The Unreal engine is available to ANYBODY for free download. Yes, there is a catch. It’s for noncommercial purposes only. BUT not REALLY! You can sell anything you make in it for a profit, you just have to pay Unreal Technologies a royalty. Once you get enough money you can BUY the official software and then not have to pay any royalties on any software made with that version. Obviously that’s dependent on how MUCH money you make off of your video game. LOL

Hey guys! Leighton here at SLYGames.net with an update on the latest book trailer in progress!

The To Darkness Fled trailer is coming along! We have set a tentative date for the filming, the week October 10th and on. Also, as the CGI guy, I can be working somewhat ahead.

Here is a Gowzal. A gowzal is a kind of bat-headed ravan that is inhabited by an evil spirit. It can be manipulated by mages to their evil ends. Not-withstanding, when brought down with a bow (and cleaned and gutted properly) can be quite good when cooked with rosemary and garlic.

Now, mind, I didn’t make that completely by myself. That was a combination of a ravan .blend file and a bat .blend file. I changed them both a lot as you can see (and in ways you can’t), but I would still like to thank the guys at http://www.blendswap.com for the awesome models.

This  is the first day of the Christian Science Fiction Fantasy Blog Tour and I will be posting again tommorow. In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This completely awesome book is the first of a trilogy called The Blood of Kings by Jill Williamson, it is placed in the mythical world of Er’Ets and follows two main characters:

Achan

Achan is not a lord. He’s not a peasant. He’s not even a slave. He’s a stray. Strays are orphans born into bondage and suffering when their parents are either killed or leave them without a trace. Most strays are completely unaware of their parentage, completely at the mercy of their master, the lord of the castle nearest to them.

Achan’s master is Lord Nathak. Lord Nathak is the lord put under obligation to protect the spoiled and mean Crown Prince, whose parents were both murdered by a stray, (hence the current low rank of those who go under the title) and has built up the rural fortress or Sitna where he undertook the training of Gidon Hadar, the Crown Prince.

Achan is put under the charge of Poril. Poril is the cook and head chef of the Royal Kitchens that supply Sitna Castle with all kinds of delicacies… and supplies Achan’s back with all the kinds of things a belt can do. Achan is the person in charge of milking the Castle’s goats and other such chores. You may be wondering… How does he endure it all?

He has inspiration. Gren is the only person who ever showed him any form of kindness. She’s his age, 16 and her father has been thinking of betrothing her… But not to Achan. Gren Fenny is the daughter of the Sitna’s only tailor and is a peasant… Two times about Achan’s rank. Not so much luck for him. Also, to top it off, Riga and Harnu the castle browbeaters have a “special place in their hearts” for Achan.   And an eye for Gren.

Vrell

Vrell is short, has a scratchy voice and is about as skinny as a beanpole. But Vrell is a girl. In fact, her real name is Averella. Prince Gidon Hadar, as mean as he is, wants to marry her. Not out of love however. Her mother is the Duchess of Carm, a rich duchy well know in Er’Ets for it’s bounteous vineyards and rich soil. If Gidon married her… He would inherit everything. But her… and her mother, are disgusted with the idea (yes, you can breath now) and Vrell has left Carm to go hide from Gidon’s men at her aunt’s castle—as a stray boy. Her aunt however has to leave to go visit (you guessed it) Vrell’s mom. Vrell’s uncle knows nothing of Vrell’s identity and gives her to kingsguard soldiers who are searching for…

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