GodFall Studios

Because you have to have fun once in a while….

Yes we are still here, no real updates in a while but we are working very hard on a website re design, we will also be launching our web store soon too. So thank you to anyone out there that gives a damn, and stay tuned for the re launch later this week!

So my second post and I have something to show you! Before anyone gets carried away this is NOT a new franchise. Not at present anyway. It is merely a ‘test’ page I did a while ago and thought some of you may like to see it. Sorry its not very big, click the image and again you will go to my deviantART account, and be able to view the intended size there.

This is the front cover and 1st page, if you can call it that, and as I said was a test of what we could do and what time frame it would take to knock this stuff out. It is a fairly generic zombie apocalypse (zombies are cool!) story with the main character Xander Grey surviving a zombie outbreak in a small town.

The military has shut down the area and plan to nuke the town. Xander is unaffected by the virus, which has become airborne after an explosion at a secret base on the other side of town. Told you it was fairly generic. Andrew has actually wrote a story for this, I couldn’t stop him. He’s like Pringles. Once he pops he NEVER stops.

So, how did Xander not get infected? He decided to stay and stop the spread, kill all the zombies because to be fair, he had nothing better to that day. Will he learn of the military’s plans to blow up the town? Will he get out in time? Will he uncover the mystery as to what happened here? I guess we’ll never know…

OK, so here’s the point to this. This IS what Devolution will look like. Kind of. The style will be similar anyway. Now you can see we do work around here and stuff is getting done. I would have loved to have posted up some pages of the Devolution stuff but apparently ‘they’ would have me killed if I did that. Sorry guys.

I can however promise some Devolution concepts very soon, ones done by me and close to the final stuff. Andrew is also gathering his concepts together to post in the ‘Influences – Art’ post very soon. But I didn’t tell you that.

It’s been a while. No I’m not gonna start spouting Nickleback lyrics, not yet anyway. I’ll leave that for another day. Anyways, I’m back and this time things are gonna be a little different…

I aim to do 3 things:

1) I’m gonna do my best to tell you about the projects I am currently incubating. I’m gonna keep my personal life to a minimum in these posts (unless you guys tell me otherwise that is) and keep you up to date on the shit the matters.

2) I’m gonna kick some fricken ass and get this shit done. It’s been a loooooooong time coming but the day of reckoning is nearly upon us. Oh yes.

3) I forget… Oh yeah, I’m gonna keep stuff as relevant as possible as I said, but also get stuff up as quick as demonically possible. You guys are what matter to me. Both of you – lol

So here goes.

As the main (but no longer the only) creator of Devolution and the other projects I thought it would be nice to give you all a taste of where I draw influences from and hopefully, an insight into my personal creative process.

I’m not saying all my ideas are completely revolutionary or unique but at the same time many hours (probably years) of research has gone into Devolution. Its not a case of I like that idea lets stick it in there. Mainly because that would seem disjointed and make the world seem… detached.

Its not just various mediums that I get inspiration from but all personal life experiences. One example is a loans company I used to work for (back in my financial days) I was taking details from a prospective lender when the name Waltham Cross came up. I thought that was the guys name, he laughed and said it was where he lived. Yeah but that would be such a cool name I said, thus about a year later when searching for a name for an ex terrorist/desert pirate Waltham Cross was born.

I have had many experiences like this over the years, many of which I have forgotten about sadly but many have stuck. Siro Bar Devlin and Eddie frequent is actually an anagram of Rios, a club I used to go to with friends before it shut down. Siro was kind of a futuristic name and it stuck. The people that know me love finding these Easter eggs (another video game idea I wanted to incorporate where the designers of a game place things sometimes in jokes such as their children’s names into the video game. There are many things for people to find, even those that don’t know me. I think it adds a personal touch and rewards the reader in a great way.

Want another? OK not to give to much away but one of the ships that will feature in an up and coming storyline is called the Empress. Nothing too weird there but that is taken from one of my favorite pubs, sadly it too is no longer there, but it will live on in my book.

Those are just a couple of eggs and many more are in there. It’s kinda hard to piece together all the influences so I’m going to split it into sections. The vast majority of influences are things I like, I have done hours of research and its either dropped or tweaked to fit. One of the biggest tasks was the creation of the Shandin language. Inspired by lord of the rings I wondered if it was easier to create a language than learn one. In many ways the sad truth is no. It’s all got to fit together and pretty soon you run out of fricken words! To start I began working out how it would fit together. I speak a little French and Spanish among other languages and when these are directly translated are often backwards and mixed up. Try googling a Spanish website then clicking translate in the listings to see what I mean. It’s actually a sad little hobby of mine and can lead to some very funny results.

Anyway I decided to keep it simple just direct variants of English words, I through some words that have no English translation in there for good measure. It started with a few phrases and I eventually started on a dictionary I will probably release one day. I created it mainly as a guide for myself than anything else. along with the Devolution dictionary. I saw some cool Star Trek and Star Wars books that have characters, vehicles, weapons and other things in there. Wanna see a diagram of a particle accelerator? Or a snow speeder? That’s what these books have, very detailed guides. Again when something is created no matter how small it is put in the dictionary so I can keep track of it, and I also figured it would also help in the aid of creating a movie or game if it were to ever come to light.

The dictionary’s, languages, research it all may seem a little extreme but its part of my hobby and personality. I’m not one to say yeah that’s cool, I like it, but I like it but why do I like it? What if it were this way? Then I make it my own. Devolution has been such a long process, and with past material being released I have seen many of my ideas come to light in other forms. I wont go into detail, some ideas no one else has ever known about so its not a case of people stealing my ideas but its kinda hard to take to begin with. In the end I figure they are doing my research for me, I like to look at there take on something I have in my story too. I just dread the day someone says I did it second and that I steal ideas. I guess I’m prepeared for that and I have taken other peoples ideas too. I know what I have created and as long as I’m happy with it no one else has to like it. I guess that hardest thing is when someone creates something so painstakingly similar to mine and get tons of praise and credit. Then I’ll come along and boom. I ripped it. Maybe no one will care, maybe I will get no where but the way my mind works is I think the worst. At the end of the day there is so much to Devolution its impossible I could have ripped anyone off. The amount of thought and texture to it make it unique and to me, that’s what makes it perfect. 10 years is a fricken long time!! 

Stay tuned over the next few days for the rest of these post. Music, Art and other good stuff I get a kick out of. Complete with linkage.

I like Celldweller. So much so I decided to do some artwork whilst listening to some. Celldweller that is. OK that’s not strictly true, it happened to come on my playlist whilst I was Photoshopping and this is what came out.

I titled it Birthright after the song that was playing when I did it. Kinda summed up my mood, I don’t think it is a visual representation of the music itself but I like it all the same. You can view a bigger version by clicking the image itself, it will take you to my DeviantART account.

So this is my first post since becoming a GodFall Studios artist. What that like? It sucks! Only kidding, it’s pretty cool but very demanding at the same time. I got a lot of artwork to do for the Devolution Shorts, plus a web comic that will be on here soon(er or later). Take solace in the fact I AM working hard, so hard my fingers are bleeding. That’s how I got the red so… um red.

When I’m not blinding myself with spray paint (yeah, I had some trouble with the wind changing direction, and my face stayed like that) doing damage to myself in other creative ways. I promise not to hospitalize myself, or even die, before finishing the Devolution stuff. I already get hate mail (fishnish da artwerks naaaaaaw! was one such email) so I’ll do my best to keep you guys happy. I’m good enough at doing myself in without any help from the haters out there.

Sorry I don’t have more to tell you, I plan on posting some tuts, youtube vids and such, I also have the GodFall Q&A thing to do, so until next time. I’m outta here.