The Atlantis Ashes... continued.

I am sitting here right now staring at an unopened word file on my desktop, feeling a great sense of apprehension. Should I open it? Or should I get my customary morning pot of tea boiled and brewed to sooth my frayed nerves?

Every now and then, I have a new short story dropped in to my inbox by a fan, enthusiast or someone wanting to help. Not everything that is sent to me is a work of Hemmingway, mind you, but once in a while it does surprise me what you - the reader - can come up with. It is both a very rewarding and very terrifying experience to see Atlantis through someone else's eyes. Sometimes they nail it, other times... they need some direction.

To be candid for a moment, Atlantis has been a project of mine for over seven years. In that time, it's grown in to something bigger on its own, and I because of that, I care about what happens to it. Taking a leap of faith and letting someone else try and alter or expand on what you've created can be daunting, and while I love to allow this, the biggest challenge is trying to gently adjust this outside content to fit with what I see as being the world, look and feel of Atlantis DSV. It is much harder, of course, to get the persont that created to see Atlantis in the same way.

The amount of material being produced behind the scenes as of late is staggering, and this will be underscored in the next day or so with another update for the Atlantis site. There are no less than five people at this moment working on things for Atlantis. These ranges from short stories to 3D work, and even technical concepts for a few planned projects.

For today however, here's a couple of developments that you can expect very soon.

First... the Broadsword.

This is the successor the SA-29 Lysander class commonly seen in Atlantis, and seaQuest 2032. It's a large fighter, and I've been sitting on the design for quite some time. She was designed and built by Luke Wrightson, and was based off the older Broadsword concept that began life as a design for the Nosferatu stealth fighter. I textured her recently and these are the results.


For a point of comparison - here is the original design.


Next up, we have the NSC's flagship fighter... The Seafire.

The Seafire is named for the Supermarine Seafire of the Second World War - essentially, the navalized variant of the famous Spitfire. Designed by Nathan Leong and Keith Carpenter, she was built by Keith last year and I spent almost all of yesterday texturing it.

Drawing from a multitude of other designs, including the SR71, SU27, Spitfire and even the SF38 Raptor, the Seafire is the NSC's answer to the UEO's own flagship fighter class - the SF-38 Raptor II.


Both of these are coming to the Atlantis site in the next couple of days. So while I witness the systematic annihilation of the Australian Cricket Team in England, I have to grudgingly give Round One of our own Atlantis Ashes series to Keith.

History demands rivalry.

Just a note to say that there is, unfortunately, going to be a delay in the release of the new Seafire class subfighter of the NSC. Some complications with the model have arisen that need it to be revised. With any luck, we'll have it back within a few days.

In the mean time, here's something that I'm working on between all these updates. I suspect it will make for the subject of a really, really big update at some point in the future - as it really is a labour of love.



In other news... I really do think that this is an appropriate time to post the NSC, and as I've had a few requests recently for more Macronesian material, I have a dastardly idea.

For those in the British Commonwealth, you are undoubtedly aware that this is a time of epic struggle between two titans of sport... (Ok, so maybe it's more of a David and Goliath relationship at this moment)

Yes, the Ashes is underway in England, with the first test last night being drawn for a level series between Australia and the home side. Last night's highlights, of course, saw a lot of British procrastination in trying to avoid a horrid defeat at the hands of the colonials, and some laugh-inducing moments of cowardice (literally) as English batsmen physically tried to hide from the fast bowling of Australian paceman Peter Siddle.

A century of sporting tradition between these two sides dictates that the rivalry must be fierce, and there can no surrender, retreat or quarter - this is a grudge unlike any other in world sport.

And so... While Keith continues the onslaught of NSC (English) ships, I'm going to respond by ramping up the Macronesians.

As I'm sure Keith is reading this, he can take it as a friendly challenge...

NSC vs. Macronesians... Blow for blow, for three weeks. It doesn't matter who wins, or even what the victory conditions are, but I'm propsing nearly a month of head-down, tail-up work in an attempt to get the entire fleets of Macronesia and the North Sea Confederation on the website and out of the way.

It's long overdue, and sure, it's a big task... And sure, I'm going to have to spend more time in Photoshop and Maya than I thought my already-wanting social life permitted...

I think it can be done.

Video: Photoshop compositing... And the mystery sub.

Well, here it is.

Apologies for the slight delay. Computers arent being very cooperative this evening

I won't say much, because as you can see - she's not my boat! Any questions you may have about it can be directed at her designer and builder... Which, I suppose you can pass through me.

(Video: 36 Megabytes, H.264. 1024x576. Right click-> Save as to download)

Content Inbound!

Yes, that's right.

It is July First, and that means it's approaching time for a significant update on the site. Over the next few days, you can expect to see around three new entries in the site's tech library, as well as a few more character biographies.

But what of that announcement?

Well, stay tuned, because at 8:00pm, Australian Eastern Standard, I will be making one more post that will put to rest this month's mystery sub.

The mystery deepens...

Well, look what the Office of Naval Intelligence just found.

I'm going to throw a cat amongst the pigeons.

Whatever could she be?

The big reveal, soon...

Live from Federation Square, Melbourne

(Photo: 1:53pm, Saturday, June 27th, 2009 in Federation Square...)

Hello from sunny Melbourne.

(Believe me I am as shocked as you are. Sun in Melbourne? Preposterous!)

I'm under pressure to throw this out as quickly as I can before this laptop's battery dies, but sufficed to say, MIAF goes well.

After having spent nearly 6 hours drinking with a bunch of eccentric animators last night til about 4:00am, I have some new and very scary insights in to the workings of these people in the professional world. One of these people is Canadian filmmaker Chris Landreth, who the film-inclined may recognise as being the Academy Award-winning Director of the animated short, "Ryan."

Landreth is in Melbourne to screen his new film, "The Spine." It's a technically brilliant piece of work that brings justification to the statement that Landreth is nothing less than an unparalelled guru of CGI. (Indeed, he counts people such as John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton of Pixar Animation Studios among his immediate peerage.) His knowledge of 3D applications and methods is utterly intimidating, and I'm planning on spending a lot more time interrogating him on how to do this kind of thing.

It's rare that one has an opportunity to speak with such a person, let alone sit down in a bar with them for 6 hours over too many drinks!

As you probably guessed - I am in fact not going to reveal the identity of the secret submarine just yet. I'd much prefer to have access to my machine back in Wagga so I can finish refining a few things before I throw it up on the main site, but the speculation has been utterly fascinating to say the least... for reasons I won't yet explain.

Updates as they come.

-Jim

The mystery sub... Continued.

Wow.

In the last twenty four hours, between comments and emails, we've had a very strong response to the mystery sub I showed you all. There is a very strong theme amongst all of you that she is the new seaQuest DSV, and thus represents the Odyssey class...

This is an interesting little experiment for me. The identity of the sub isn't being revealed just yet. Let's see what happens there on Saturday. What I will say for now is that this is giving me some ideas about something special that I've been considering for a while.

Every now and then, a project comes up that I decide to pass on to someone else. The list of people who I generally have on this 'contact list' is small, and the reason I ask others to design subs for Atlantis is two-fold.

Firstly, I don't have time to do it myself because of other projects. It almost goes without saying that having someone else working on something else simultaneously drastically increases productivity.

Secondly, I leave many aspects of design to the builder, and seperate myself from the process as much as possible, because it usually brings a different design aesthetic that I otherwise don't consider. This could be because of personal technique or taste, but regardless, on a couple of ocassions, these other designers have greatly influenced the way Atlantis continues to develop in very positive ways.

I would like this to continue...

And so, some time soon, I'm going to start a little competition to solve a problem I've had for a couple of years. You can probably guess where this is going, and all I shall say for the time being is that you may wish to start thinking about your own designs, and that there will be rewards.