5 posts tagged “novel”
This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The challenge is to write 50,000 words during the month of Nov. I dove in immediately after the World Fantasy Convention. The great people I met at the convention must have inspired me because I've been on fire since then. I'm writing at a record-breaking speed for me. Yesterday was my most productive day at 3,700 words. That's a long way from the 1,000 word glass ceiling I used to live under.
I'm off to LA tomorrow for a filmmaking seminar so I needed to meet my 25,000 word goal for Sunday by today. Good thing I'm deadline driven. I'm now at 25,349 words. Yay!
Now if I can just keep myself from being distracted by my lust for a new netbook, I'll have a very rough draft of a novel to work with by mid-Dec. I'm keeping my fingers crosssed.
I submitted my novel, WAR GAMES, to the Amazon Novel Contest today. The prize is a publishing contract with Penguin and a $25,000 advance. Contest submission period runs from today through 2/8/09 or until they receive 10,000 submissions. I'm assuming they will get their 10,000 contestants (world-wide) so the competition should be fierce. But I'm learning that the competition is always fierce.
This is my first novel contest. One of the things I've come to appreciate about writing novels is that it's so cheap compared to filmmaking and screenwriting. Aside from all the crazy costs involved with making the films, the cost of simply submitting films and screenplays to contests/ festivals can be surprisingly high. Each festival submission fee is about $25-$80, with most falling in the $35-$60 range. It's pretty common to submit a film to at least 20 festivals. But with novels, it's a no-no to charge for submitting a manuscript. Novel writers start to scream "SCAM" when they see those kinds of fees. Yay for novel writers! Hence, I'm pleased to say that the Amazon contest is fee-free. :-)
Cheers,
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Here's my 3D water, take 2...
Turned out I was doing more than I had to. Cinema 4D defaults to gravity and some kind of "natural" motion anyway. I realized this through trial and error after trying out some various motions. So in the end, I just took out the vibration and tried it out. Voila!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
So here's my first Cinema 4D model and animation: water!
I could have bought 3D water but instead, I chose to learn C4D by trying to make it. The reason why I needed water was that I had a scene in my novel trailer (WAR GAMES) where one of my characters, "G," is climbing a cliff above water. I started my animation of G on the cliff in DAZ and just stuck a background of 2D photo of water (see "G w wrong perspective"). First of all, the perspective is wrong - it looks like he's crawling out of the water onto the ground. Secondly, when I animated it, it looked very wrong to have the water so still. So my challenge was to make water so I could choose the perspective and also animate it.
To make water, I followed this tutorial. I used the "metal" texture that comes with C4D for the material reflection, and "water" texture for the bump and environment. I tried a few of the other tutorials where the water looked better (by using caustics) but when I tried it, it took a l-o-n-g time to render and my results sucked. So this was the best way I've found.
Once the water model was made, I needed to animate it so it looked alive. I ended up applying "vibrate." Right click on the water in your objects tab, cinema 4d tags> vibrate. In the Attributes menu (click on the vibrate icon in your Objects menu), I used the following vibrate parameters: Relative, Enable Position, Amplitude 10, 0, 0. I'll refine the parameters as needed. I may want a gentler motion.
The next challenge will be to combine the animation of G climbing the cliff with the water animation. I have two choices: "green screen" G and composite it with the water animation in After Effects; or import G's scene into the water animation (or vice versa) and combine them. I'm totally new to 3D so everything I do will be an experiment. I've also never used green screens before so that will be a learning experience too. Right now, G and his climbing animation is in DAZ and the water is in C4D. I'll need to figure out how to import one into the other if I choose that route.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about my first modeling results!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Check this out. It's an interesting hybrid of novel and short films. From Publisher's Lunch list:
"Creator and executive producer of the CSI television franchise Anthony Zuiker's series of three suspense-thriller "digital novels" (every five chapters readers are given website codes to access two-minute films that bridge to the next five chapters) beginning with SQWEEGEL, about an former FBI forensic investigator who retired after his whole family was murdered but continues to work a variety of grim cases, to Brian Tart at Dutton, at auction, for publication beginning in fall 2009, by Dan Strone at Trident Media Group (world)."
Variety says "Zuiker will write a 60-page outline for each book, then supervise a novelist who'll turn it into a 100-chapter book. Zuiker will write and direct 20 "cyber-bridges," the two-minute video segments that supplement the pages."
Sounds awkward to me but kudos to them for trying something new. I'm guessing that if it was sold at auction, we're talking a six or seven figure advance. And the guy hasn't even written it yet! Must be nice to be famous...
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com
PS - Variety says it's a 7-figure deal.
