City of Heroes: Shining Stars is looking for crew members

The City of Heroes: Shining Stars is a fan driven project to produce an ongoing machinima series based around the Shining Stars super group collection of characters. We are in the process of producing a mini-promotional episode. However, to produce the full series in a timely manner we will require more resources then we presently have. Those resources are people.

Under the name “Raging Bull Productions,” we are working to produce this series. However, at present the entire staff of Raging Bull Products amounts to myself, Torroes Prime, and my lead writer, Lady Libby. As you can see, that creates a bit of a bottle neck in terms of work ability compared to work load.

One of the things I want to do is keep this fan-based project from developing a job mentality. This is a project we are undertaking in our free time because we want to and it’s fun. I want to try and keep that mentality as much as possible. To that end, I don’t want to overload anyone who joins us and thus we need to have more manpower to spread the work load around a bit. Instead of having one person spend 20 hours a week doing demo editing, we would like to have 10 people spend 2 hours a week to accomplish the same thing. Or even better, 20 people spending 1 hour each. There are several positions available and I will describe them below.

No matter what job you decide to take on, there is no limit about providing creative suggestions and ideas to the writer(s). Trust me, we’re not going to say ‘no’ to an idea. At the absolute worst, we’ll make a note of it for examination in a later story line. So if you have an idea for a story, a scene, a cameo character, or just a one-liner you are totally encouraged to toss an email to myself or the writers.

Storyboard Artists
The Storyboard artists job will be to take the scripts, developed by the writers, and build a set of story boards to explain scene settings and changes to the demo editors. Using whatever method the artists wishes (Hand sketches, in-game screen captures, digital drawing, whatever), they will take the script and produce the story boards in a form that can be handed over to the demo editors as a guide to creating the visuals of the series.


Example:
They would take this passage from the script:



And produce a story board to show its set up. Such as this:


Now I will admit, in this example I cheated and took screen captures from the actual demo I’m building for the promo episode itself, except for the countdown timer in panel 4. But it gets the general idea across. The story board should be clear and concise enough that it can be handed over to the demo editor(s) who will be able to read it and understand what it is that they need to make in the demo file.

Demo Editors

Demo editing is probably the single largest part of this entire process. For those of you who have tinkered with Demo editing before, you understand how much of a time sink it can be. Now of course the big catch with demo editing is… well, we kinda can’t make the series at all without it. We’re not saying it’s more important than the Writing, the voice acting, or the sound designer, but without the demo editing, we sort of wouldn’t have anything to show. So, this is where we can really use extra manpower.

I’m not going to go in to a lot of detail about what demo editing actually is here, but I will provide the basic idea for those that don’t already know.
City of Heroes includes a ‘Demo Record’ command which when activated records everything that is occurring on the current map the player that activated the command is on. When the record completes, either through exiting the map or using the “Demostop” command, the record of everything that occurred from the start to the end is compiled into a list that is a demo file. In the demo file is a listed order of events based on a time code. Literally each line of a demo code reads “X milliseconds after the previous event, entity Y performs executes argument Z with parameters 1,2 and 3.” That file can then be used to instruct the City of Heroes Game engine to re-render what it recorded. The cool thing about this is the fact that the demo file is little more than a basic text file so we can edit it and change what was recorded and thus make the game render something different on playback. Now, we cannot use demo editing to change the way the game works merely what it rendered. Basically, if you see it happen it game, you can make it happen with Demo editing.

There is already a great library of information and guides about demo editing out there and if you want to know more about demo editing I highly recommend you check them out. The best place to check is the Paragon Wiki pages on Demo editing. I have included links below for those:

Demo Editing- How To
Demo Editing/Demo Problems and FAQs
Demo editing/Additional Information

If you want to help us by being a demo editor, I will provide some instructional help in learning demo editing and some of the tricks I’ve developed over the years I’ve toyed with it.

Production Team

This is kind of the first half of the demo editing. While I can certainly make the demo files totally from scratch, that takes time. And a lot of it. Far more then would be worth it if City of Heroes: Shining Stars is to be a regular production. So, to help expedite the efforts I would like to put together a team of 6-8 people to be the production team. What they will do is go on the test server and demo record the placements of the characters and cameras for the demo editors.


For instance, in the promo episode there is a scene where TwinShot sees a Hero beat a group of Hellions with an AOE attack, walks up and talks to him. So what the production team will do is stand around in the position of where the Camera, the hero, the hellions, and TwinShot will be, and demo record it and then send the demo file to the Demo editors so they can get started on that particular scene. In this case, one player would stand where the Hero would be, 4 others would surround him so they would be in the position of the hellions before the hero attacks them, while the 6th player would stand were TwinShot would be. Player 7 would stand where the camera needs to be to frame everything. Player 7 will take note of what toon is standing in for what character, demo record for 4-5 seconds, and then the players representing the hellions will move to where the hellions would be after the AOE attack. Player 7 demo records the new data and then sends the files to the demo editor.

With that information provided, the demo editor simply needs to modify it to be what we need it to be on camera. The player toons are replaced by the NPCs, in-game effects added as needed, and set any animations that are needed. The demo editors would not need to deal with the positional data.


Writers

It takes time to write a script. Weekly shows will often have a different writer for each episode (witness Star Trek: The Original Series). Episodes usually have a main writer who handles the overall story. For this series, we want writers who are flexible enough to come up with ideas themselves (after all, that’s the fun part of writing) but who are also able to accept ideas from others that can enhance the story ideas they come up with. Having writers that will also accept input from the voice actors about the characters they are voicing is an added plus.

Script Writers

These are the guys who will take the story written by the writers and put the story into a script format. The writer will come up with this:
And the script writers will change it into something like this:



Editor
While it generally isn’t considered to be part of writing, editing is very important. Once the script is written, it needs to be checked for grammar, spelling as well as overall consistency. The voice actors will need to be able to understand what the script is asking of them. Typos and bad grammar make for confusions and that makes for mistakes and delays. An editor also checks make sure that all the writers are giving Flambeaux lines that are consistent with her air-head, self-centered personality, that Dillo is just barely understood, etc. Say, for example, a writer gives Flambeaux lines that aren’t narcissistic or self-centered in some way, the editor is the one who points that out and asks the writer to re-do the line. The editor does not re-write the line in this case, but just lets the writer know there’s a consistency issue and allows the writer to correct the dialogue.

Sound Designer
This is kind of the tech-side of voice acting. We need sounds for the series. Gun shots, screams, burning effects, body thumps, door opening, Dillo’s “HOORB.” All of those are sound effects and chances are we’re going to need a lot more than those. I have some knowledge about Sound design (i.e.: I watch a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ shows about movies and TV) but in truth, I’m stumbling around in the dark when it comes to anything that isn’t pre-recorded and needs to be modified in some fashion.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about what I really need in the way of sound designers here, the easiest way to explain it is to tell you to check out the X-men, Spider-man, Batman, and Justice League Cartoons and pay attention to any sound that isn’t music or the characters talking. That’s the sort of sound design I’m looking at.

But if you would like to help us out in any of these positions, please PM me here on the forums.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Can't promise where we'll be at that point but keep an eye on the forums. Hopefully we'll still be producing the series at that point.

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Since the majority of characters are the ones appearing in the game, we haven't assembled a series bible. It seemed to be somewhat redundant since it would just be the same info that's on the Paragon Wiki.

As for the question about arcs, yes. We want to follow the in-game arcs, but at the same time we will be expanding out from those arcs a bit and filling in story between missions/arcs, and prior to the first arc. We're still fleshing out the first season, but here's the basic break down:

Season 1
Episode 1: The newly formed Shining Star work on getting a base, a project that is more involved then it sounds considering some of the available locations.

Episode 2: The shivan invasion in the Tutorial of the game and the Shining Stars efforts in the story at this point.

Episode 3: Escape from Galaxy City (Part II of the previous episode. Will probably have a big fight against the Giant Shivan).

Episode 4: [unknown presently. We've talked about an episode where the Shining Stars do the sewers trial.]

Episode 5: [unknown presently. We've talked about an episode where the Shining Stars work with the Galaxy relief efforts in some form.]

Episode 6: Shining Stars man power becomes an issue so TwinShot looks for new members. Introduction of Grym and the character that would be the Player in the game itself. Shining Stars are attacked by 'Arachnos'

Episode 7-11: [not yet planned but will comprise the first in-game arc.]

Episode 12: End of the first in-game arc where its' revealed that Manticore has been helping Shining Stars along.

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actually it is kind of is needed since it's a different shot.

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