Sorry it’s been a minute…

I finally completed a draft of the Candle Arc animation script (~15 pages). I’m talking to a voice actor, which is very exciting! Here’s hoping my budget holds up; this is a student project and I’m funding this myself, which has the benefit of creating certain constraints and removing others, creatively.

I tossed the previous draft script because it was blowing up to feature length, which is not realistic for a single person DIYing animation while also doing a graduate program in not-animation! Instead, I reverted to a version that’s much closer to the published version of “The Battle of Candle Arc” (Clarkesworld October 2012) except slightly snarkier. :)

I’m hoping to resume production this month: I need locked dialogue for timing but there are parts I can work on in the animatic in the interim. Also discussing sound design considerations with people in my program. I’m currently an MFA candidate in media composition & orchestration at ThinkSpace Education. It’s likely that I’ll end up working with a sound designer rather than attempting to figure it out myself: I find it fascinating and extremely cool, but it’s not my area of expertise.

A sound designer told me that he felt that sound design shaped the audience’s perception of a video game much more, in many cases, than the music. Perhaps heretically (as someone on the composition end), I agree! I love video game music and I’m the dork who played Space Quest III’s theme on recorder for my uni’s tabletop board games club, but the feel of a game is often defined for me by the footstep and door opening/closing sounds (Wolfenstein 3D), the weapons (UAC20 in Mechwarrior: Living Legends and the footfalls of a Shadowcat A), the interface and kaboom noises (M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault and eXploration, or for something more recent, Dispatch VN - alongside its fabulous voiceover work! - and the Playdate handheld console’s Binary Dungeon).

Why the hiatus? Ongoing health stuff, partly, and working on a fake trailer summative for my music program, which I handed in recently. You can listen to “Stella Gloria v.2” here (it’s fine to download the mp3 if you so choose; an earlier version was available as part of my earlier digital album Trailures and Other Fiascoes on Bandcamp). Relevant-ish since I plan, down the line, to do an orchestral score in more or less this style, but probably with more modulation.

I’m excited to return to work, though, as I slowly clear outside obligations off my desk!

Yours in calendrical heresy,
Yoon Ha Lee [yoon@yoonhalee.com]
Candle Arc - big space battles, small atrocities