Spring Update 2022

 It has been a couple of months since the release of Experience. I've been fairly quiet since that time. I wanted to use this opportunity to briefly recap on what I've been up to the past three months. The past three months were dedicated to research, more research, webdesign, pre-production for upcoming projects, work and entrepreneurship.

ARCTIC LIME AUDIOVISUAL

 I have been working on my own post-production company since august of last year, called ARCTIC LIME AudioVisual. Besides all of the required administrative matters and preparation, there was one thing that hogged up all my time significantly: the actual website. Having no money to spend for luxurious website designer packages that allow you to drag and drop or to even pay a web designer, I was left to my own devices to find out how in the world I was going to actually build a decent looking and responsive website. I had prior WordPress experience, but that was by far not enough to build my own website. I also did not want to be limited in any way or form. I have spent the past six months learning HTML and CSS through various courses, and by just building the damn thing, cursing at my screen, troubleshooting, debugging, drinking coffee, moving on, having insights, being shocked about the fact that my insight actually worked in code, and repeat. For me personally I could have saved a lot of time using a CSS template such as bootstrap or tailwind, but to be honest I did not manage to figure out properly how to use them. The website will be going live within now and 2 weeks at arcticlimeaudiovisual.com

Everything on the website has been coded by hand. Every single line. So if you see some errors (which is probably bound to happen), that is because of my stubbornness and inexperience. I had an interest in webdesign for a long time, but never managed to pull it off the ground as I thought it would've been too difficult for me. But here it is! It's an awesome feeling. Currently I'm doing a few final tests on a staging host to see whether there are some last minutes bug to fix, but it is finally going out into the world soon. feels good man.

 

The actual homepage of ARCTIC LIME AudioVisual in the staging environment

 

This is the screen I've been spending hundreds of hours in during the past 7 months.

 

 

The actual mockup I've made last august in Photoshop. Aside from a few minor differences, such as the difference in colors used in the background animations at the terms-conditions page, the website is almost a one to one carbon copy; something I'd never dream of actually being able to create since I was a first-time web designer.

Coming soon page on the staging environment

Staging environment on smartphone

A PIXELATED POINT OF VIEW'S WEBSITE

At the moment I find my online presence fairly fragmented. I have a blog, a twitter account I never use, a filmfreeway account, a behance account, vimeo, youtube etc. But I do not have a dedicated website. Now that the website for ARCTIC LIME is finished, I am already working on a design for a website for A Pixelated Point of View. It will be a huge undertaking as it is supposed to host all of my work, information, research, and other relevant information, including a self-coded CMS for news and projects. I hope to finish the website somewhere this year, but it could very well be postponed to 2023 as I place higher emphasis on my machinima work at the moment.

The idea is that the website is a one-stop collection of all my work: both client-based and machinima-based, a curriculum vitae page, blog, about, filmography and links to YouTube, Vimeo and FilmFreeway. Because of the website, the behance page, twitter and blog are most likely to cease to exist once the website is completely finished as the work featured on Behance can be found on the site, and the blog will be fully migrated over to the news page on the website. More updates regarding the website will be posted in the future. A scribble/thought regarding how one of the website's pages is supposed to look like can be found underneath.

 

A rough scribble of one of the website's pages

 

 UPCOMING PROJECTS AND EXTENDED RUNTIME

With all this commotion you would almost forget that there are machinima projects in the works. At the moment I am working on multiple projects simultaneously. What I can share regarding the projects so far is that they will increase significantly in runtime. One will be full-feature film length (90 minutes). The rest will be between 20-60 minutes long. One project was announced already last december: which was Regression IV. The film will take place in Grand Theft Auto IV and the project is currently in late pre-production. I experienced a few setbacks regarding non-working mods and game crashes, but hopefully I have fixed those issues within now and a couple of days. Once the issues are fixed, production will start; which leads me to recording every inch of the massive Liberty City map from many different perspectives. I'm looking forward to this. 

Some of the other projects I am working on will be created for example within Quake III Arena (ID Software, 1999) and Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve, 2009) with the aid of the source engine. There's still more in the works, even console-based projects, but for now that's all to share. Until the next update!

Screenshot of what I'm currently working on in Quake III Arena