Author: bluedraggyxtumblr

Katherine Managan #20 delay

I didn’t mean to have such a delay.  But life.  And Fathers day.  And a new game.  Yeah, that too.  I will finish this, but I probably won’t do any more.  I guess it’s a bit of “If you build it, they will come” not happening.  Yeah, I need the ego boost of some decent amount of people actually reading it to stay focused.  For those who are, I sincerely thank you and I WILL finish it.  And it has been fun too, but without some feedback I just feel like I’m pissing into the wind.

Oh well, like I said at first, it was just an experiment.  Not all succeed – if they did, well, they would be pointless.

But I AM still looking forward to the Cloak of Gray Tomorrow!  Hope Kaz is getting close to the next installment.  Even if he picks a winner (or combo of them) it’s not official till it hits prequeladventure.com directly.

Maybe I’ll even come up with some explanation of why Katherine’s armor isn’t all bloody!  🙂

Cloak of Gray Tomorrow entry

Well, I went ahead and posted my entry.  Frankly, it sucks.  I regret at least a little bit having taken the time to do it.  But now that it’s done, at least I can move on to other things.

image

I did use Nalim’s catsuit mod as, while it’s a catsuit, it’s a more believable one with seams and a leather-ish texture.  Made it gray and darkened the buckles in the front so they’d blend in better.  It’s based on the original Skyrim body which keeps the bust a reasonable size (appropriate for Katia)

The cloak itself is “grey linen” cloak from the other mod I’d mentioned. I actually based the color of the catsuit on it rather than the other way around.  If meant for stealth, grey would be the way to go after all.  Black is much easier to see than grey (gray?  whatever.)

It is equipped with a hood, though not really wear-able in Skyrim.  I left her without gloves/boots as 1. – I don’t think those would be included in the box and 2. – I didn’t have time to mod any existing ones to grey – they look cool in black but that sort of ruins the point for grey IMHO.

It’s got a neat effect you can’t see too well in screenshots when crouching, her face goes dark and swirly mystical smoke sort of curls around her.  Eye’s therefore become quite bright.  Pretty nifty and appropriate.  When the final CoGT outfit is chosen and I make a mod for it, I’ll want to include that.

Ok, enough of my failed attempt at a CoGT suggestion.  I know a good one from a bad one and, though in my mind it looked cool, in reality it does kinda suck.  Fortunately there’s a LOT of really good ones coming in now.  So this one can go in the Recycle Bin and I won’t feel too bad about it.  Just too bad I cant get those 2 hours back! 😉

Cloak of Grey Tomorrow & KM

image

http://katherinemanagan.tumblr.com

I may take a (SHORT!) hiatus from KM updates in the near future.  The
Cloak of Grey Tomorrow outfit in Prequel has me intrigued.  When the
winner is decided, I’m going to go full steam ahead to design a Skyrim
mod for it and may get a chance to use it in KM once done.  I’ve already
established that she’s left some “stuff” in the Whiterun inn.  That may
include the CoGT outfit if so.   Probably the enchantment may be worn
off so it might not DO anything, but it would be a great way to
introduce a new outfit to KM.  (and maybe work as pajamas – sleeping in Arena armor can’t be comfortable – and Skyrim doesn’t allow for blankets apparently.)

I also have my own idea of what it
should look like.  Since I can’t draw, I may try and create a mod and
screenshot that to the Fanart page as another entry.  Mine will include a
catsuit underneath, probably based on this existing mod but with modified coloring:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12013/?

and one of these cloaks:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12092/?

Because… catsuits are appropriate in every conceivable way.  🙂

Also,
I’m finally going to reveal H with the next update.  I need to NOT have
him offscreen all the time if he’s going to be a character.  Maiq has a
twin brother (or maybe it actually IS Maiq!  He must do SOMETHING
besides wandering around Skyrim all the time.)

If I can do this
next update as I intend, it will be the largest scene I’ve done yet so
it’s a bit intimidating.  But I think it will work out OK.

KM11 delay

One of the things I really had intended was that I could pump this thing out pretty quickly doing it with screenshots – and mostly I’ve been able to.  But I’ve hit a snag with this update.  Just Real Life stuff though.  Last night I got at least 3 or 4 “sets” of screenshots that I’ll use, but I’d like to get another few in first.  Even got one for KM12 since it will use almost the same scene as some of these do.  KM11 could be a bit controversial, but isn’t that the point sorta?  Besides, I wimped out and made it much less so on KM12. It will make sense when I get them out.

KM10 stuff

I guess I’ve pretty much come to post a comment on all the KM posts I do, and this one is no different.  But I’ve got Disqus set up on the site itself, so I think I’ll post there to try and get at least some feedback on KM.  So, if you’re interested in my comments, open the Comments at the bottom of the post and I’d REALLY REALLY like to hear from anyone reading it!

KM9 stuff

And now we’re rolling…  Next scene is going to be not all that crucial to the plot, but the most complex posing I’ve ever tried to set up with all the major characters in one place at the same time.   Well, it’s a challenge and that’s what makes it fun – right?

I thought about yoyos and pineapples, but na – I can’t imagine Skyrim having handy pineapples around and I doubt even Katherine has a clue what a yoyo is, let alone what her ancestor did with one.

I’m getting better at using the various console commands.  There’s a lot of them!   For anyone interested, here’s essentially what I do to set up a scene for screenshots:

1 – Move characters into place roughly.

2 – Make sure they’re wearing the right things and remove bows and arrows (for some reason they seem to love to equip those)

3 – Set poses with Halo’s Poser mod.

4 – Set individual expressions

5 – Set mouth “phoneme”

6 – Set eye modifiers (blink, up,down,left, right)

7 – tweak positioning with either tc or setpos commands

8 – disable ai (to keep them from moving anymore)

9 – disable user interface (to keep display clean of any UI stuff)

10 – Screenshot at a lot of different angles.

11 – Wash, Rinse, Repeat as needed

Oh, and somewhere in there remember to tweak ENB settings for more color saturation (Skyrim is too “grey” for my taste).

So, hopefully I’ll have #10 out in another few days.  I never know when I’ll get time to work on it, but this is definitely my major passion the last few weeks and I do want to get the story complete.

Mod credits for KM

I should have posted this already.  I’m heavily indebted to the following Mods and their authors for the screenshot webcomic thingy so I should credit them here.

UndergroundBathhouse by Andragon at Nexus http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27361/?
Katia Race – FancyPants – http://www.mediafire.com/download/3m41cnsb1r5hqqq/Katia+Race+2.1.2.zip
Marriable female argonian followers – Jermu73 – http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23585/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D23585%26preview%3D&pUp=1
Marriable female khajiit followers – Jermu73 – http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/3401560/?tb=mods&pUp=1
PrettyKhajiit – tktk – http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17040/?
Sweet&Sexy Lingerie – Nikitaa – http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25389/?
DIMclothes1 – Dimon99 – DIMONIZED UNP clothing resources
Edhildils – Latex collection (can’t find the URL now)
Shiny Catsuits – mxwqtkl – http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25389/?
SkimpyAssassins – http://modtype.doorblog.jp/archives/17421748.html
SuccubusCBBEGiftByNausicaa
TS_FetishWardrobe – TurboSnowy – http://www.loverslab.com/topic/6874-turbosnowys-fetish-wardrobe-new-optional-body-mods-pcnpc/
SJs_InvHelms_eng_Main_AHead
PinupPoser – Halo – http://www.loverslab.com/topic/6874-turbosnowys-fetish-wardrobe-new-optional-body-mods-pcnpc/

Not all of them are actually seen (at least not yet) in the comic – but they may.

HiRes Katherine Managan

So, you want HiRes?  I give you HiRes.

Well, kinda.  I found out something kinda wonderful and something else kinda dreadful about Tumblr today.  When you upload a hires picture into a TEXT type post, it resizes it to either 500 or 540px wide.  So all my KM posts are kinda lowres.  But darned if they don’t ACTUALLY create multiple images of it at OTHER resolutions too.  They just don’t SHOW them. 

For instance, in the HTML source code for KM7 there’s this URL which is the URL for one of the 540px images:

https://40.media.tumblr.com/9a08d3ac91c047beb0176e5dd77fb780/tumblr_inline_no8rjkZEN61sn6wro_540.png

But at THIS url, there’s another at 1280px wide:

https://40.media.tumblr.com/9a08d3ac91c047beb0176e5dd77fb780/tumblr_inline_no8rjkZEN61sn6wro_1280.png

just sitting there uselessly, waiting to be seen in it’s full 1280 glory (though my originals are actually in 1600 width, but still, that’s over twice as hi res anyway)

So… what to do.  Well, the 500px images in the post aren’t linked to anything – clicking on them does nothing.  But that’s the natural expectation – clicking a image is traditionally how you view a higher res version.

So I took the HTML from that post, added the links, and it worked fine!

So now, in KM7 ALL the posts, if you click an image link, it will open a new window with the 1280px wide version.  HURRAH.  It will take some extra work to do that for EVERY post so I may only do it for future ones (unless requested otherwise), but at least I know how to do it now!

I went ahead and updated them all.  So hires now available for all posts. Give it a shot – should work.  http://katherinemanagan.tumblr.com

I think I’ll ask the designer of the theme if he can make this change if possible so it can happen automagically.

More KM stuff mostly

http://katherinemanagan.tumblr.com

I got through most of the major character introductions needed.  I’d like to throw some more in before the plot really gets moving, but I’m afraid they’d be tedious to shove them all in back to back, so I’ll forgo that and work them in after things get going.

Plot should become apparent after the next 2 updates, and perhaps then I’ll feel I’ve got enough going to hold an audience beyond “oh look, more furry ass and scaly tits!”.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to promote this thing?  It’s a bit tricky with the Adult nature, but I do wish I could get some people to take a look at the thing.

I had the “Ask a question” turned on for a bit, but I didn’t realize it would post directly to the blog, and I don’t want them there.   I also got Disqus working, but it wouldn’t hurt to make it more prominent.

So, I’m up to 7 characters now.  A couple still mandatory to introduce to make the plot work, but they can come after it gets moving:

Katherine Managan – protagonist and only real connection to Prequel. H – Lord of the Manor and owner of “Tails of the …” monthly mags.  Sabhira, mentor to Katherine.  Udaran, friend of Sabhira.  Milahme, bitchy argonian model. Red/Muz-Ra outspoken and oversexed Argonian model.  Ubergard, giant Argonian guard.

Still to come, Lydia – the only human model and recent addition to modelling staff.  Unnamed (as yet) human guard.  Unnamed (as yet) khajiit. 

And I have one small bit of plot I’ve yet to figure out exactly how to do.  I need to see if I can call a Dragon on command.  Guess I’ll find out if I can do that when I get there!

Oh, this IS fun.  I just hope I can figure out some not-too-spammy way of promoting it.  Oh, and KillerfishSG, I totally understand about not wanting to reblog it.  It would take a certain kind of blogger to do that.  But awfully glad to have you guys at least along for the ride!