The greenscreen room at TAFE Qld where we’ll be able to do motion capture as part of the game or animation we create.

 

June Update

Thank you so much Adelaide and Melbourne! I had two terrific Oz Comic-Cons back to back and I haven’t had so much fun in a while. Thanks particularly to Patron Naomi in Adelaide who came along to the con to spend the day helping out (and saying ‘Sexy, sexy space dragons’ many times.) High-level patrons get entry to attend a con with me for a whole day, helping or hanging out or looking at the show.

I didn’t have much of a chance to take any photos at either convention, because I was so busy talking to people about my books (I have barely any voice now). But it was wonderful to share my stories and the special edition of ‘Serpent Princess’.

I’ve sold completely out of copies of ‘White Tiger’ and I’ll need to order some more! And I only have two copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ in the foiled edition left as well, so time to do a big stocktake and work out what I need to order.

Animation/Game with TAFE Qld/ University of Canberra

Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey from here and from the conventions. Debby Lo-Dean from the production company came along to Melbourne to help out and take surveys so that I could concentrate on selling books.

We’ve visited the TAFE Qld campus at South Bank in Brisbane, where second-year game development students in a course run by the University of Canberra will be doing an assignment to produce a ‘three minute vertical slice’ of a video game of their choice of style based on the Dark Heavens Universe. They have all sorts of terrific equipment including the greenscreen room pictured above where we will be able to do motion capture – and we already have some fine martial arts practitioners lined up to do the motion capture for us.

And yes, I will share whatever they come up with if I’m able so you can see!

I’ll be visiting the campus once a week during second semester to help the students. The the game sample, combined with the results of the survey, will be part of a grant application to Arts Council Australia or Screen Queensland to get further funding for either an animation or a game based on the ‘Dark Heavens’ universe. If you haven’t filled in the survey (but most of you have already) here it is:

The Survey!

Feel free to share, because the higher the number of responses we receive, the more likely we are to receive the grant to proceed.

My next Oz Comic-Cons are Brisbane and Sydney in September, and until then I’ll be working on the sequel to ‘Serpent Princess’ which I’ve tentatively titled ‘Queen of Hell’, the sequel to ‘Minds of Sand and Light’ which is titled ‘Bodies of Stone and Water’ (and nearly finished), and the Emma out-takes (which the Patreon patrons have already read) into a novella probably called ‘Serpent Empress’.

I’m also mentoring through the Queensland Writers Centre and helping people self-publish their books through my side business, Essential Self-Publishing.

Busy busy!