Titanium Templar’s 2018
In 2018, writing and concept-work for Cyberscape Neo, known as Cyberscape Neo: Exodus back then, started in early July. It was, for me, an unbelievably ambitious and terrifying thing to attempt to undertake. Fortunately, I had help. Help in the form of @Vincent_Fallow, who cheered me on from the moment he read my early draft scripts for the first few episodes. Along the way, I met @ArthurTAudio and coaxed him into being the primary audio engineer and mixer for the series. Amazingly talented.
After a solid month of writing, I posted a meager casting call to try to get at least the first episode produced, as a sort of teaser for the series while I continued writing. It was in hopes to find out whether or not the series was even worth making. I’m sure some of you other writers can relate…
As it turned out, I ended up casting the roles of Roland and Myra to two people who auditioned just after the technical deadlines! Hah! But to tell the truth, they’re both amazing. 10/10
Along the way while working on the intro track (Breathing Machine) with Arthur/@ArthurTAudio, we picked up Sensy/@SensysMixing, Arthur’s teacher, as our Sound Director. Things were looking up, as we had someone to officially master the audio. This in turn led to us making it to the finals of the Audioverse Awards in the category of Audio Engineering! Still hyped about that, since all we had on display for it was a single episode upon submission.
Had a much more rough go of it for episode 2’s casting call. I was figuring out the complexity of characters I was looking for. The specific voice I wanted each one to have. There was so much I had to learn as a writer and especially as a director to obtain what the series really needed by way of character voice and personality. Fortunately, we came out on top here as well.
By the time we had finished producing episode 2, I hit my next big wall, which happened to be my own naivete. If you read the different between the transcripts of Episode 1, 2, and then 3, you will start to see that a lot more care was placed into SFX cues, descriptive action not only for the cast to use as a script, but for an audience to use as a narrative guide. Because at that point, I had been writing ahead, I’ll admit that the first episode to get the full and brutal force of this epiphany of writing qualities was Episode 5’s script. You’ll be able to tell for sure.
As for Episode 3? This was when the errors of and shortcomings of the past came to haunt us on the production end. My lack of SFX cues, as well as having narrative gaps where things didn’t open well for a scene, really started adding a lot of work in post-production that we weren’t expecting. Fortunately, we managed to pull through and finish the episode just in time, much to the exhaustion of our audio crew.
To wrap up the year, we produced a Holiday Special, which released this last Sunday, titled: Episode 3.5: The Best Time of Year. While the events of the episode aren’t canon (except for one small part, but I won’t reveal which one), it had great reception and warmed a lot of people’s hearts, especially mine.
Wow, and to think that that wasn’t even everything we accomplished this year. We still have to talk about the currently unnamed Discord Bot Game that @Xathien is coding and I am designing as a companion game to the Cyberscape Neo series. It exists! It’s on our Discord server right now! Check it out! It’s still in its early version numbers, but who else wants a piece of the Innkeeper’s Door, or other assorted enemies we have in there currently?
Well, that was 2018. What about 2019?
Since we’re releasing episodes monthly, we should be done with Arc 1, having released Episode 10 of Cyberscape Neo, in July. That’d be Titanium Templar’s first anniversary. Couldn’t have planned it better.
I’m absolutely addicted to the prospect of designing and building up our Discord Bot game, so that’s going to be iterated on throughout the next year, for sure. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the Discord game will be having parallel mechanics to the game of the series. Immersion stays intact under my watch!
What else? And what happens after Arc 1 is complete? For sure, I’ll be outlining and writing Arc 2, but I also have a Prequel Arc that is begging to be worked on as well as, and might be released in tandem with, Arc 2’s episodes instead of delaying their release.
Knowing just how much work goes into a single episode’s script now, it may take more than just a few months for me to be prepared to start recording for and producing content after Arc 1. One major change is that we are going to try to get some production done ahead of time instead of recording for and producing an episode that needs to be released that next month. It puts a lot of strain on our audio team, while also stressing me out, as I’m busy managing a team while honestly just wanting to sit down and write out another episode, or you know, relax?
But worry not. I wouldn’t leave our listeners without any content to fill the gap. It’s likely that in that time, aside from the game we’re making, we may release some assorted side-content. I won’t go into too much detail, as honestly, I don’t know where my head will be at that time. All I can say is — you might be able to expect Arc 2’s first episode to not be the first content produced for the sake of Arc 2.
~~ Dev out.
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