AAAnd, if I’m going to have Kitty in a bikini, I had to agree to take her to the beach… “You know, it’s a great start and all, but this cloak does weird things when you lay down.” – Kitty Yeah, I know – but that’s inherent in any cloak mod I’m afraid. But NORMAL in game poses should be fine for the most part.
“Well, good job BD. Come here and let me give you a hug!” – Kitty Really? SURE!
“YOU WISH! Keep dreamin’ dweeb. We’ll talk when you get me into some decent clothes.” – Kitty Sigh. Well, next I’ve got to start doing some transparency-scissors work and get these trimmed to be shaped more like the Cloak of Gray Tomorrow. “You’re going to take MORE cloth away from me?!!” – Kitty
Having some troubles with the FHD mod I’m afraid. I mashed the two together, but for some reason the Dustcloak isn’t showing up. I tried it two ways – first, I tried copying the cloak to the dustcloak. Only cloak shows up. Then tried copying the dustcloak to the cloak mesh instead. Again, only the cloak shows up. Something odd going on with the dustcloak obviously.
Here are both in a single .nif so you can see I DID manage to join them, but no joy in Skyrim. I’ll figure it out, just may take a while. Kitty’s not happy with my progress. In my defense I DID find a body that eliminates the breast-poke-thru:
Kitty’s not happy that the outfit for this body is a bikini though. She thinks I’m a pervert. She’s even less happy about her tail being removed though:
I think I’d better fix that first before I get turned into a newt…
I’ve not been idle dear followers! But it is awfully important for me to pick the right starting place for the Cloak of Gray Tomorrow – or, as I’ve decided to call it officially, the Festive Holiday Disaster outfit (which is also better because it describes the whole outfit, not just the cloak).
Ok, so when last I left FHD, I was trying to decide on what to start the base with. I wasn’t happy with Cloaks of Skyrim though, primarily because that mod didn’t really wrap around the front much and, from most views, the front is the most important part. Well, guess what I found? Check it out:
Just the top blue part here – known as the Dust Cloak by Calyps. Not the underlying outfit. But of course it has no cape. But what if I can combine it with a cape from Cloaks of Skyrim? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12092/?
Fortunately, even without modding, I can already start putting pieces together, which I’ve done on this lovely Khajiit (shying away from the Katia Managan model now. I honestly think this is prettier even if she doesn’t look much like Katia) Let’s call her Kitty. Yeah, I’m not very imaginative today. Here’s Kitty with the Dust Cloak and Investigator outfit in a green tone:
Now, this mod uses the base body UNP/UNPB. I’m not personally a big fan of UNP If nothing else, her waist is just TOO thin for me. This will be important to note in a moment.
Enjoy it while you can – now it begins to go downhill – but not too badly to be redeemed by mod work I don’t think. So, now let’s add a green Cloak from Cloaks of Skyrim:
Definitely potential here. Granted there’s some clipping around the shoulders. That may not be fix-able much, but if they were both the exact shade and texture, it may not be all that bad.
Imagine, if you will, the front of the cloak cut with my transparency-scissors a bit below the clasp and curving downward across the shoulders to join with the cloak in the back. It’s so crazy it Just Might Work. Now though, let’s throw a standard Redguard outfit underneath instead of the Investigator outfit (that’s made for the UNP body while this Redguard outfit is using the CHSBHC body):
Yeah – clipping just got nasty. Granted CHSBHC does have big boobs. Yet the waist is reasonable. And to make matters worse, she is at MINIMUM weight here. On the plus side, if I take my transparency scissors and cut away most of the front for the Festive Holiday Disaster curve, MOST of the clipping goes away anyway as there’s no material there anyway. Plus, I don’t NEED to keep the CHSBHC body anyway. I can revert to a more normally-curved one.
Perceptive followers may also be asking, “Uh… dude. Tail?” Yeah, there’s that too. Cloaks of Skyrim by default remove the tails when worn by Argonians and Khajiits. But fortunately there’s a fix for that. Plus using transparency-scissors I can cut the back “vent” up to tail level so it doesn’t appear to be poking out of a perfectly placed hole (clipping really).
SO! I think I’ve got a good base here at LEAST for the actual Cloak. Now, one downside. Calyps, author of the Dust Cloak and Investigator mods, isn’t terribly keen on allowing mashup mods like mine to use his stuff. I can do whatever I want with it personally, but he would have to approve it’s use to be made public. No need to sweat that now, but before I could allow others to use the end result mod, I’ll need to get his approval. Maybe I can organize a write in campaign to overwhelm him with requests to let me use it though! But at very worst, I can still use it personally and do screenshots. I think it’s worth the risk – that front is just PERFECT.
Ok, I know this was long. Next up, trying to mash together the Dust Cloak and a Cloak of Skyrim into a single piece. Hope I remember how!
So, a couple days ago I began to see a lot of hits from 8ch.net. I had to go see why. Now granted I know a thing or two about anon boards by now. To cut to the chase, they didn’t much like KM. But, as Kaz says, you can learn a lot from anons. They don’t beat around the bush, that’s for sure!
What I did finally wrangle out of them was that they thought it was pretty shitty borrowing someone else’s character. Katherine may not be Katia, but it’s no secret she might as well be. Well, I don’t want to be That Guy who tries to steal someone else’s character. And after (not much) consideration, it does make sense.
I don’t regret having done KM, I learned TONS! But they’ve definitely got a valid point. I’m still no artist, nor do I plan to ever become one. But if WHEN I venture into the Webcomic arena again, I’ll come armed with my own characters rather than borrow others’. So the Epilogue is off – I did some screenshots, but it was really just setup for the next arc. I’ve ended it pretty well though, I think.
Gave it a good shot, but it was flawed from the outset. Much as I like Prequel and Katia, I shouldn’t use them as the foundation of my own work or it will never be anything beyond a fanfic of a fanfic. I toyed around a bit with the thought of making a yellow-ish Skyrim khajiit rather than the Katia model and call HER Katherine. But, that would really be painting over the underlying problem of benevolent plagiarism. Best to start over from scratch with a solid foundation.
So my immediate focus will finally be on that Cloak of Grey Tomorrow mod that I’ve been promising. Thanks for the readers tho! I’ll make more, just not of KM – i’ve got the itch to tell more stories and take closeups of more Khajiit tails!
Yes, it’s that time again. Time to begin a new Skyrim mod based on Prequel. This time, Cloak of Grey Gray Tomorrow. (Stay Cannon! GRAY not GREY!)
This one’s gonna be tough I fear. First, let’s reiterate one thing – I can’t do mods from scratch – I’m just not good enough for mesh editing (though I did do some VERY slight mesh editing on Arena armor). So it’s critical I first find some existing mods to work with.
But even before that, I need to figure some things out. First, going as canon as possible, I’ve only got 2 images to work with right now:
So this first one has the cloak on but not the underneath outfit. So… should the cloak be separate? I think so. Also, here the hood is down so THAT should really be separate too. (or a version with cloak hood up and another with it down – either way). So we’re really looking at 3 separate items here. 1-hood, 2-cloak,
3-undergarment. The cloak is the most important of those though.
And here we have the undergarment with it. There’s a .gif where she pulls the hood up, but it’s so short we don’t really get much of a look at the hood. Fortunately the original designer gave enough of that here:
(bottom right) so when it’s time to start creating the texture file for that, we’ve something to go by.
Ok – now back to the cloak itself. It has some features that are going to be hard as hell to imitate. First, it covers a significant chest area. Almost (if not all) the existing cloak/cape mods I’ve found mostly just cover the back like a cape and nearly nothing over the shoulders. Here’s some I’m looking at:
Velvet Robes and Cloaks
Not much in front, but beautiful cloak. Problem is it would not reflect the swooping curve from the front to back. But all have problems, this may be the least!
Winter is Coming
Has the advantage of much more in the front, but all Furry and quite mounded over the shoulders. Plus, there’s still no way to make that swooping curve from front to back.
Cloaks of Skyrim
This one has me interested. I’ve yet to see a good front-view of it though, but it does appear to carry around quite well around the shoulders from this view – plus it has a split in the back that is canon. the tatters around the bottom may not be an issue either as it needn’t be quite this long and I’ve proven I can “erase” with no problem using the texture file.
So I’ll probably at least try first with that Dragon Priest cloak from Cloaks of Skyrim mod – if the front isn’t just too “off”.
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:
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.
I managed to get KM moved over to katherinemanagan.tumblr.com successfully last night. I was worried – I’d deleted everything here and wasn’t sure I could recreate the text and pick the right images. (I have them all – but I have more that weren’t part of the series). I’m not a very religious guy, but when I got home from work, I found that my home PC still had the original page up and all the text and images were still cached there. So damn lucky!
I even had time to do some shots for the next one. And I think maybe I have a plan for the ongoing style of KM now. If not a full fledged plot, at least a good idea for how to keep it “different”. At some point I’ll want to promote it, but I feel I have to have a pretty good backlog of posts before I do that.
Using the SWC (Simple Web Comic) theme. I was concerned at first since mine doesn’t use a single image but multiple ones. However, turns out it works just fine. It’s a bit staid in it’s presentation right now, but those are just tweaks I can work on.
And then Prequel updates! Woohoo! ALWAYS a good day! Is it just me though, or does everyone think like I do:
“GREAT – AN UPDATE!”
(read, read, read)
COOL!
(reread, reread, reread).
(slight depression sets in…)
When’s the next one coming out?
Must just be human nature. Never satisfied for more than 5 minutes.
bdprequel 