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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Circle Step Card


                                         Round Side Step Card


Butterflies and fairies not included. I'm sure you have some. Mine were from my fairy_cuts font I sell. Or decorate in you own way.


Tutorial on circle card

Another side step dresser card with a mirror, shoes, panties and bra instead of baby items. It will look like a ladies bedroom instead.




..I didn't make this one because my Cricut isn't with me.

Writing Advice 7 — The Why, the Engines of a Story

 
 

In lesson number four, I explained the Who, the What, and the Where, but I left out the Why.  As you might recall, Who equals characterization, Where equals setting, and What equals plot...so what then is the Why?

When creating a character a very important, and often overlooked aspect, is their motivation as this dictates much of their characterization and how they fit in the story. Most main characters have clear motivations because the story is usually about what they want and how they go about obtaining it. The problem is, sometimes writers stop there.

I once played a computer game back in the early nineties. It was a role playing game and known for having a huge world, with many towns that you could interact with, only they were all the same. Auto generated, the towns all looked alike and the people were all generic copies. It was like some disturbing Twilight Zone episode. It was also boring. Books can be that way too if the only person in the book with motivation is the main character.

In the original movie version (not so much the extended one) of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, I couldn’t understand why Pippin and Merry joined Frodo and Sam. They appeared to be strangers who bumped into each other on the road and decided to give up their lives, friends, homes, and responsibilities to wander off the map with apparently total strangers. This wasn’t Tolkien’s fault, he provided all the motivations and back stories in his books, they just never made it to the movie’s original release. Yet many novelist make the same mistake of skipping the motivation for supporting characters as non-essential—and then of course there’s the antagonist.

Evil for evil’s sake—it is an common theme in fantasy, but also pops up in other genres, most notably horror and occasionally thrillers.  Fantasy has been around for a long time and in ages past I suspect world perceptions were simpler. How else could nations justify wholesale slaughter of peoples merely because they were barbarians, or savages, or—evil. This black and white attitude lingers but not so much in the modern world of fantasy novels. Readers are showing a greater interest in more complex character motivation, particularly in their bad guys. They are no longer satisfied with a Sauron or Voldemort who are evil and motivated only by power and domination. They want to know…why. (Although oddly enough old Voldemort did surprisingly well for himself.)

When you take the time to consider why the evil menace wants to destroy the world, you realize that destroying the world is a pretty stupid thing in the first place, because it holds no advantage to the destroyer who would presumably die along with everyone else. Enslaving all of mankind? Okay, but why? Is it just an inferiority complex? They want to be the most important? Okay, but why? What made them this way?

The more times you ask yourself “why” the deeper the character becomes, and the more interesting. Also you manage to weed out all the false values, things that don’t make sense like wanting to destroy the world. Most people have better motivations than a three-year-old in the midst of a tantrum. The extra work often results in far more interesting plot elements that open whole new ideas that are not only more sensible, but far more interesting, fun, and sometimes even original.

While coming up with motivations aren’t all that hard, aligning the motivations so that they interconnect the way they need to in order to make an interesting novel, is. And if you are doing a good job then absolutely every character in a novel, no matter how insignificant, has a motivation. The direction they want to go and the things they want to do extend like dotted lines out into the future in a straight line. You alter them so that they intersect with the dotted lines of other characters and where they meet they often change, skew and shift their angle to head off in a different direction, otherwise known as growth or character arcs. The resulting pattern of dotted lines is the story. It is what drives the characters, and the characters drive the reader. Motivations are the little engines that you wind up and let go. Without them, characters appear false. They become one more prop, like a chair or a table.

Motivations are also logic lines. They should prevent you from doing stupid things. Everyone has read a book or seen a movie where you say, “no one would do that.” Usually this is the result of the character’s motivation being in conflict with the way the writer wants the story to go. You’ve likely heard writers say their characters take the story places they didn’t expect. This is what they mean. You can either force a story to be what you want, or let the characters follow their motivations and see where that leads. The former always feels contrived and your audience will find it unbelievable. It is almost always best to listen to the characters and let them be the people you made them into. I once had a group of characters who had been traveling through the snow by horse all day and were supposed to leave the road and head into the wilds. That's what the outline called for, only as it happened, there was a town just a few miles ahead and it was late in the day. Almost all my characters wanted to get a nice warm room in the town rather than sleep out in the ice and snow. I didn't want to write a whole chapter concerning their adventures in the town, which I would be forced to do, but no amount of coaxing would change their minds. Why? Because every time I imagined myself in their shoes, there was just no way I would pass up a warm bed. The scene played out that the characters actually had an argument in the middle of the road, and decided to sleep in town. To force the issue would have contrived the plot. In the end, I used the unexpected, added chapter to further develop the characters and the book was richer for it.

Something to keep in mind is that as motivations are the desires of characters based on the information they have at the time, it should invariably lead to characters making the wrong assumptions about others and about the outcome of events and their own plans. All too often I have read stories where the characters always anticipate what will happen perfectly. A good popular example of this is the 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. The film makes use of an interesting flash-forward technique, where Holmes, using his keen skills can anticipate in a fight what will happen and plans out his course of action accordingly. You see the event, and then the scene is replayed and it always occurs precisely as he planned it. Not only did I find this unlikely, and a bit repetitious, I felt it was a waste of potential. For once the technique is established, the sheer drama of this flash-forward failing would be great. We would see what Holmes planned to do, only to have something unexpected occur, giving us two stories rather than a dull rerun.

While this problem can come from sheer laziness, I think all too often it is the result of writers being unable to detach themselves from their characters. When the author is the character, it is a bit like god inhabiting the body of a person. They can’t be wrong. Characters should usually be wrong, most people are, or at least only partially right. Otherwise, as soon as a character suggests what might happen, the reader knows it will and you’ve just provided a spoiler that will steal all the drama from the upcoming scene. However, if the writer can block out all they know and really be just that one character, locked in ignorance, bound by their fears, and driven by their personal desires, their world colored by their past, then it is usually a simple thing to guess at their next move, and their expectations. These will likely not be what is about to happen. The result is a more dynamic and exciting plot that keeps the reader turning pages and surprising them.

There is however a difference between a character making a logical mistake based on what they don't know, and a character being stupid. Sometimes writers cause their characters to make ridiculous decisions, or draw insane conclusions  in order to advance the plot the way they want it to go. This is a cheat, and readers know this. To guide characters in the right directions, merely adjust the world around them so that it alters their motivation and then let them go. And if you can't alter the world to accommodate the motivational change, then you'll just have to accept that the story is about to change in an unexpected way.

So you can see how important motivations are. Once set, they can completely alter what it was you expected you were going to write. But having them breathes life into otherwise dead characters and helps prevent stupid mistakes. Let’s face it, no one would ever stalk a vampire at night, or even a cloudy day, unless they had an extremely good reason. No one would go back into a wall-bleeding, haunted house unless they had to. Motivations comprise the story that is flavored by characterization and accented by unexpected challenges.

It also needs to be understood that characters don’t have just one motivation. Sure Frodo wants to destroy the ring, sure Harry wants to defeat Voldemort, but before that, they both want to eat breakfast. And just as motivation drives the big picture, motivations drive the mini-stories that move the plot forward.

That’s the bell. Next week we’ll look at Mini-Stories. Remember, no running in the halls

TOKAP with Bullet: Mirror physics

Update to my previous post, just to show that the scene remains fully customizable at runtime:





480p video rendered on 8600M GT:

Executable for "Tokap Sphere Stack with Bullet Physics Release" at http://code.google.com/p/tokap-the-once-known-as-pong/downloads/list (this version is the release version and should run without needing the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable package for x86)

I'm really hooked on this path tracer, the photorealistic quality is so damn awesome.

Coming up next:




Praise the Lord

***********For this week's post, I have shared some songs. To listen to them, scroll to the bottom and pause or turn of radio worship.********


Psalm 148:7-10
Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds.

That is the wonderful scripture that my Sister in Christ, Peggysue picked for this week. Just because my name wasn't specifically mentioned, doesn't mean that I'm not included, and the same goes for you. We ALL must Praise the Lord. In good times and in bad times! Last week my boys and I were having to work outside in one of our trailers, cleaning up a mess. It was extremely hot and boring work. To get their minds off of the "Trouble" I started singing praise songs at the top of my lungs. This song was one that I was having fun singing:





The funny thing about singing praises, it not only lifted our spirits, but it made the work go faster.

This song came to my mind this week as I was studying this scripture. (I really like how David Crowder does this song.)







This scripture in Luke 19:38-40 also came to my mind.

“BLESSED IS THE KING WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD;
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!”

This song goes along with the second scripture:




Peggysue's challenge to the Stampin' Sisters in Christ this week was to make a card with a creature on it. It could be as SMALL as an ant or as LARGE as a whale. I went with ants. This adorable ant digi is from Doodle Pantry, this week's sponsor.













These digi's of the falling ants made me think of this old song.





















Check out what my Stampin' Sisters in Christ have created.



Several of the Design Team Sisters are taking a short break. While they are gone, we have Teresa and Traci to fill in as guest Designers.



Saturday, July 30, 2011

Bullet Physics demo 3: Collapsing stack of balls + EXE





Yesterday I got a new idea for a real-time path traced Bullet physics animation: a collapsing stack of spheres. The plan:



I've implemented the scene and physics in both the tokaspt and the Simplex Paternitas path tracers to see the difference in framerate and realism.

Picture from Tokap (some circular artefacts which look kinda cool :) :


Picture from the Futuristic Buildings (Simplex Paternitas) path tracer:


All videos below were rendered in real-time on my poor little 8600M GT, probably one of the weakest CUDA-enabled cards in existence. Every animation below should run smoothly and at much higher quality on a GTX 260 or higher:

Tokap with Bullet 4 spp:


Futuristic Buildings with Bullet 12 spp:


Futuristic Buildings with Bullet 24 spp:


Futuristic Buildings with Bullet 4 spp, Eagle's view:











Download the executable for "TOKAP Bullet Sphere Stack" at http://code.google.com/p/tokap-the-once-known-as-pong/downloads/list


UPDATE: Some people have reported that the Bullet demos don't work on their systems, receiving the following message:

"Activation context generation failed for "programme name".

Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT, processorArchitecture="x86", publicKeyToken = "1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b", type="win32", version="9.0.21022.8" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis."


This error is due to the fact that the demos were compiled with the Bullet library in debug mode and are dependent on the Visual C++ 2008 runtime library. Downloading the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29 should solve the issue.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Bullet Physics in Simplex Paternitas path tracer



Someone on youtube suggested to make a version of the physics animation from my previous post where the scene is only lit by the small white ball on top. For this purpose I've incorporated the Bullet library to the Simplex Paternitas path tracer of Jacco Bikker. The results are pretty wicked:



This video was rendered on a 8600M GT, 12 spp, 480x360 resolution:



Without caustic noise (only reflective and diffuse balls, 12 spp, 640x480 resolution on 8600M GT):


The new executable and source code are available at http://code.google.com/p/tokap-the-once-known-as-pong/downloads/list

Damn this stuff is really addictive!

Challenge 77 Bling It Up


Thank you to everyone who joined in with our One for the Boys challenge last week, your cards were all fabulous! Before we get to this week's challenge, we have the winner and Top 3 to announce.

The winner, chosen my Random org is....106


Congratulations, if you could email me (Mel X at melissajaynecross@googlemail.com) that would be great. I'll sort you out with your fabulous prize from Charmed Cards and Crafts. Don't forget to take your winner's banner from the side bar.

We always have a hard time choosing our Top 3,
but here they are, in no particular order.


Congratulations ladies, please take your Top 3 badge,
from the side bar.

*************************************************

Our challenge this week is set by our wonderful Anne and she has a theme you cannot fail to have fun with!! This week we want you to....

BLING IT UP

That's right, we want to see all things sparkly, shiny and glittery on your creations.

We have a double sponsor this time for one lucky winner.....


whose prize is....


and our second sponsor....


Stamp Fairy officially launched on November 5th 2010. Gerda, artist and owner, creates cute and whimsical digital images for the young and old, inspired by her life, love and 4 cute cats. You will find adorable teddies bears, young boys and girls to fuzzy little bunnies and whimsical critters.
Stamp Fairy has new releases along with a free image every Friday, a weekly challenge on Mondays and Guest Designers each month on their challenge blog. Please visit the store and browse StampFairy’s wonderful images.
The awesome prize from Stamp Fairy is...

So now you know whats on offer, here's some fab inspiration from our lovely DT.

Just click on their names to visit their blogs


















So there you have it girls, we do hope you'll play along this week and it would be lovely if you would leave a comment after linking your entry.
Good luck

Thursday, July 28, 2011

New minecraft mob

I saw in twitter and in google pluz thsi new mob. According to Notch it will be peaceful, but if you look straigth to it, it becomes angry. He said it is very creepy too. Here is a image of it:
He also can teleport!

New minecraft mob

I saw in twitter and in google pluz thsi new mob. According to Notch it will be peaceful, but if you look straigth to it, it becomes angry. He said it is very creepy too. Here is a image of it:
He also can teleport!

Free Circus Font

Now why didn't I think of looking for one before!
Here is a link to download a circus font.
http://moorstation.org/typoasis/designers/klein05/pic/circus.htm

These look great and like they should cut pretty well.

Circus Svg Files








I don't know why I decided to do more circus files, but it just came to me while I was surfing. I had some earlier too, so if you are looking to scrap a circus, do a search of my blog. I have the barnum and bailey sign for example.

TOKAP with Bullet demo 2



While working on the car physics for the Futuristic Buildings demo, I've decided to first finish something that I wanted to do for a long time: a real-time version of a Bullet Physics animation created by Chiaroscuro (Phymec on Youtube) which was rendered off-line with SmallptGPU (OpenCL path tracing) and can be seen at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33rU1axSKhQ

I've recreated the scene in TOKAP, added physical properties to the balls with Bullet Physics et voilà:


The above video was rendered on a ultra-low end GPU (8600M GT). The animation should run at 60 fps on a GTX 580 at 8spp at default resolution. Physically accurate lighting + physics in real-time!!!

Caustics:


Download the executable at:


Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Baby Dresser Side Step Card

I came across this pretty card today and thought I would try and make one on the Cricut. I'm not too keen about following all those measurements. Also I'm in a hotel room, so I don't have much to work with such as stamps or other decorations. I say again, it wasn't my idea, but I got it from the tuturial below. She made dresser cards for older kids too.


Side step dresser Tutorial


Sorry this photo is rotated. It came from my iphone and looks right in explorer, but when it imports it is rotated..lol


I had fun decorating my nursery. I made 3 of each drawer and glued them together to make the dresser doors stand out. The holes are already in the middle of the drawers, making it easy to poke a brad through. I used buttons for the dresser knobs on the girls room.  Assemble your mobile and attach to the crib arm. Add paper strips to the base of the right side and to make wallpaper behind the crib. I added a small "mattress" strip of paper in the crib. I made a hanger for the clothing hanging on the crib in the boys room from a paper clip I had laying around. The card should fit in a standard card envelope. 


The file is layed out for 12x24 mat. One mat of "white" stuff. I cut that first on 12x12 mat, moving it over to right a little.  Then I move whole design to the left. Then other mat full of cuts is to the right and I center it at 6,6 in middle. Then put your four other colors around the middle of mat.

Latest version of Futuristic Buildings with AABB


I've implemented tight fitting AABB hitboxes around the car and the two buildings, which gives a nice performance boost of about 50-200%, depending on the viewpoint. Since the car can be moved (with the I, J, K, L keys), the AABB around the car is moving with it and its position is updated every frame.

Download the executables and the source code for "Futuristic Buildings v2.9 with AABB" from http://code.google.com/p/tokap-the-once-known-as-pong/downloads/list

Real car physics are coming up next. After those are in, OBBs (oriented bounding boxes) or oriented cylinders (depending on which one's cheaper to intersect) are on the todo list for some crazy real-time path traced physics simulations.

Guest Post — Jon Sprunk

Years a ago there was a Saturday morning cartoon called Scooby-Do, Where Are You? You might have heard of it. I was a huge fan when it originally aired, I am guessing sometime in the late 60’s early seventies. It lasted longer than most of the new cartoons, but I could tell when the writers were running out of ideas when they started doing crossovers. The “jumping the shark” moment came when Sabrina the Teenage Witch—(a cartoon spin off of the Archies cartoon, an episode that included the famous song Sugar, Sugar)—who was getting her own show appeared on Scooby-do as a promotional gimmick. In the years that followed there were more crossovers, from less reputable cartoons as writers struggled and things spiraled downward.

I’m not sure what that says about my blog as today I am, for the first time ever, hosting a guest blogger. I would like to think it means my reputation, and fame has grown to the point where celebrities are interested in stopping by, rather than a cheap gimmick to keep viewers interested in a flagging series. I suppose that’s for you to decide.


Jon Sprunk is the author of Shadow’s Son  and the more recently released, Shadow’s Lure published through Pyr Books. His books are about an assassin with unusual mystical talents and sort of an imaginary friend whose latest job is a setup. There are some obvious similarities between his books and mine, which is no doubt why the universe contrived to bring us together at the recent Balticon convention.The two of us are visiting each other's blogs and meeting for drinks at Dragoncon in Atlanta, at least I hope we are, I hate drinking alone.

So now, without further adieu, I give you Jon Sprunk…



Hello. I’m Jon Sprunk, author of the Shadow saga from Pyr Books, and I’d like to thank Michael for having me over to his place to chat about books and writing.

I get asked a lot why I write fantasy and I was never quite sure how to answer it. Then I heard famed author Robert Sawyer talk at Confluence this year. Robert has a ton of interesting things to say about writing and speculative fiction, but one statement really struck home with me. He said (and I’m paraphrasing, so any inaccuracy is my own fault) that science fiction is the fiction of ideas, of philosophy. In fact, he offered that the field should be renamed “Philosophy Fiction,” or Phi-Fi.

I thought about that a lot over the course of the day as I attended panel discussions and talked with other writers. If sci-fi is indeed the genre of ideas and philosophy, then perhaps fantasy is the genre of emotional states. I have always felt in my gut that there is a link between fantasy and heavy metal music, but thinking about them both in light of Robert Sawyer’s declaration, both fantasy lit and the harder rock subcategories work from a primal (and oftentimes violent) emotional core. Rage, love, passion. These are the driving forces of many fantasy stories.

For instance, the protagonist of my books (I hesitate to call him the ‘hero’), strives to attain the emotionless state required by a professional assassin, but at every turn he struggles against the wellspring of deep emotions bubbling under the surface of his hard exterior. Why did I create him like this? Because I wanted him to have realistic experiences and realistic reactions, and real people feel. We’re constantly ruled by our emotions, for better or worse. I think some genres of literature downplay emotion, or treat it as an afterthought, but my favorite stories have always been those that featured emotionally-charged characters.

But (he said with a portentous pause) it’s not enough to simply report a character’s emotions. “John was sad that his puppy died” or “Sally loved John precisely for that reason” are not significant until the characters actually act on their emotional state. John has to go after the evil neighbor who poisoned his pooch. Sally has to make a desperate attempt to keep John from harm because she can’t bear to see him go to prison for murder. Emotions drive action and reaction in our everyday lives, and the same should happen in our fiction.

Take George Martin’s epic A Game of Thrones as an example. It has battles and (some) magic and a feisty dwarf, but I would submit that its popularity comes from the fact that all the characters, great and small, are ruled by their emotional states. Just about every action taken in the book is predicated on emotional stimuli; some internal to the character, and others from outside pressures.

But we can go back to older fantasy and see the same elements (if presently a little differently). Robert E. Howard’s Conan, and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. were given to drink and battle excessively to combat their constant ennui. Elric was a passionate brooder; indeed, it was his possession of human emotions that set him apart from his race. Frodo and Sam – don’t me started.

Whether about dragons or magic swords or assassins who wield shadow magic, emotions play a pivotal role in the fantasy realm. Our characters ooze angst and snort rage-kindled fires, they love deeply and oftentimes tragically. And that’s why I write fantasy.

Jon Sprunk is the author of Shadow’s Son and Shadow’s Lure from Pyr Books. He lives passionately in central Pennsylvania with his family.

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