LightSage - Where Dark becomes light

10th July 2006.
Women cry out in the night for the loved praying for even the faintest reply, lonely bricks tumble down cement hills trying to find another home, hungry animals whimper for a tasty morsel and a single harddisk whines itself down into a slow death. Yes, disaster has struck! The city of Leo's computer crumbles as its heart suffers a fatal attack, some believe it was the lightning that took the life of this poor gentle creature, others are sure it was rabid lepricauns, but this teary eyed writer believes it was just its time to go.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, let us start with the facts, on the day of Wednesday on the 5th of July my hard drive containing all of my BartonCC files gave up and began producing errors left, right and centre which will not be name here due to the doctor and harddrive privacy doctrine of 2010. After much thought and persuasion I was still unable to get the beast to awaken from its turbulent slumber and the knowing that the information within its tiny mind was lost.
The next day the sky was a cloudy blue, an echo of lightning strikes that had battered the land a few days ago, revenge spurred within my veins and felt an unstopping lust to wage war against the skies with my toothbrush, but even though I said my revenge was unstoppable I was able to calm it after leaping at the clouds with my soggy toothbrush held high as they laughed back down at me. Later that day I embarked on a journey with my harddrive to BartonComputaCentre to find out if the Prophet of Computers, John Catarni, could reanimate the corpse of my harddrive and recover the files lost in the wells of its mind.
The day after that and...Success! I came to BartonComputaCentre on horseback and found my harddisk leaping and dancing on its tiny plastic legs and picking daisies in the fields rather than pushing them up. And so we embraced for what seem like years but was infact seconds because of an electric shock that rendered me unconscious. I also found out that not only was my harddrive alive and kicking but my BartonCC film data had also been recovered, which along with my backups maent that everything was honky dory! At the end of the day me and my newly enriched harddrive friend went skipping back to our home.
Now a couple of days later I write this to say that everything is running as smoothly as freshly waxed harddrive leg and should do so for a while to come. Thus ends the tale of how my harddrive came close to death.
And now! BartonCC! After the harddrive failure I have only lost 4 or so days which is better than losing a year or two of work which I would have had to start on again. I have been worked rather hard on this still and I only have a couple more scenes to do of Chap3. Yes! Chapter 3! After that it will be time to attack the beast that is only known as...Chapter 4. Oooh-err, I have also got everything for Chap2 complete except for some sounds, but all the visuals for it are complete and I have begun rendering out scenes for Chap3.
Not much else to report except from what I have already said, thats it folks. Oh yes, the release date. August the 18th, the day i turn 20. I was hoping for the film to be complete by then but I am now almost certain that I will not achieve that deadline which is a shame, but if i try to aim for I will just rush through this film which is not what I want to do. I want to put time and effort into each and every shot now matter how small. I will update the date as I get close to the release.

27th May 2006
Bum bum bum, update alert! The animation for the WorldWar2 section of BartonCC (Chap2) is complete and all I have to do is render and composite together the mothers. And so I have begun working on the models for Chap3 such as the Farmland and MrA's body to the Krugs and Skeletons.
The Farmland and MrA's body are complete and they look spankydooshlous(tm) so I have posted an image of MrA in the gallery but an image of the farmland will be put up later when I get some free time. Free time!? Hah! I'm working about 18 hours a day on this thing, every waking moment of my life literally to try and get this thing done in time. Still once it is done i'm betting that it will look absolutely euphoria inducing.

8th May 2006.
Steaming along like a train full of rockets i'm working as hard and as fast as my body and mind can take to keep to schedule within my mind, 18th August seems far off but its disguised itself around the corner ready to pounce when the time comes.
Luckily though i'm confident that i'll be finished by the release date unless something drastic goes wrong such as technical problems or I get a heart attack.
To ease the weightload of rendering on my computer I am now able to utilize a PC at BartonComputaCentre to help render 24 hours a day. A BartonCC computer rendering out a BartonCC film, take that time paradox's!
Whilst working on Chap2 of the film I have also been drawing up concepts images for models I will have to make for the other 2 chapters such as krugs, skeletons, defense robots and elite squad bodies, which look rather tasty to me and will help a great deal when i'm trying to create these models on time.
Work on Chap2 is proceeding rather well, I would say I am about 3 quarters of the way through animating the scenes leaving just the task of rendering and comping them together.
I suppose I had better get back to work then, see ya.

21st April 2006.
Well I have decided to update this website since it seems to look rushed and crappy, once its done you will tell me your thoughts of it wont you? Thats a good laddy or missy. Now, lets see, all the main actors' shots have almost been cut out except for a few of Mr B's which should be done by tonight, this leaves me with gathering a few extras to be Nazi soldiers getting killed in some crazy form or another. Thats about it for the moment, everything is chugging along smoothly, lets hope it stays that way.

5th April 2006.
I have been working my entire anus to the bone by cutting the actors out from greenscreen and I think I might be mad by the end of this. On the 15th of February I was able to film Alex Miles who plays the Elite Squad Captain and finally being able to get Alex into a serious role really filled my jam donut with jam. Strawberry. Possibly being the best actor i've filmed so far. On the saturday (18th Feb) I was able to film yet another actor this time in the form of James Naughton for his role as the General which went well, then the evening of that day I was able to film my younger brother Dominic for his hollywood busting role as Mcfly. On the first day of March I was able to film the beautiful Becky Ferguson for her role as the sexy Shadowbeast, which went great. Almost 4 months have gone by since the first greenscreen shot was filmed and I still haven't finished cutting out the shots, but im getting there, Rick's, John's, James, and some of Alex's shots have been completed with just Dom's, Becky's and Tom's shots to be cut out plus a few more extras who will need to be shot.

25th January 2006.
In the month of December 2005 the first day of production footage began (can't remember the date), Wahay! Four or so saturdays later and all of the scenes for Chapter 1 had been shot plus the few scenes of Chapter 5 also, thus leaving only the scenes for Chapter 2,3 and 4 to be shot. Woo! Break open the champagne! But don't drink up too much because theres still a lot of work to do.
On the 4th of January the first greenscreen shots for Chapter 2 were filmed involving Rick Huggins playing the part of Bob (for more information on actors and characters scroll down) which was extremely fun to shoot.
Then came the 12th of January where I shot Tom Haskell as MrB against greenscreen which went succulantly well.
And on the 16th of January I was able to film not 1, not 2, but 3 actors against greenscreen! One of them was John Catarni who plays MrA in the film, another was Tozzy Hughes who just plays a Nazi soldier extra and Steve Roseman who also plays a Nazi soldier extra.
Now all I have to do apply these actors' faces onto 3d models and shabang, i've also got to film other actors for different parts in the story.

After some serious moments of thought where I stroked my chin until it was bleeding I came up with an idea that I should have some sort of information written by me on a regular basis so that everybody knows what has been going on and how far I am progressing. Well here it is in all its golden glory, enjoy.
-Leo