... 

aand a cliff hangar... dang it...  great work alternative!

Just wondering if the castle/manor you are using is finished or released?

11 hours ago, Jayomms said:

... 

6 hours ago, xGHoSTx said:

aand a cliff hangar... dang it...  great work alternative!

Thank you!

59 minutes ago, lordrahl said:

Just wondering if the castle/manor you are using is finished or released?

Yeah, almost ready. I'll release it inbetween Chapter 7 and 8. So in about 3 weeks or so.

This is it. This is your best entry yet. Those shots in the second spoiler? Holy fuck. Incredible lighting and angles. The way you varied the sizing and aspect ratios also made the story flow in a different way. The tension too is perfect. I was not expecting Nora to betray her, especially after expressing so much anxiety in the beginning. I'm expecting this not to end well and that excites me!

My eyes were wide the entirety of the second spoiler. Fantastic work!

My "wow" moment of this episode: The very awesome close-up shots when Nora and Diana were embracing. And this especially exciting ending... Truly anxious for the next!

11 hours ago, Collygon said:

This is it. This is your best entry yet. Those shots in the second spoiler? Holy fuck. Incredible lighting and angles. The way you varied the sizing and aspect ratios also made the story flow in a different way. The tension too is perfect. I was not expecting Nora to betray her, especially after expressing so much anxiety in the beginning. I'm expecting this not to end well and that excites me!

 

My eyes were wide the entirety of the second spoiler. Fantastic work!

Wow! Thank you Collygon! Glad you liked it. Especially the second spoiler that was done very recently, as you know, and represents my 'state of the art' storytelling compared to the first spoiler which has parts that are as old as end of 2017.

Thanks.

2 hours ago, Rattlesnark said:

My "wow" moment of this episode: The very awesome close-up shots when Nora and Diana were embracing. And this especially exciting ending... Truly anxious for the next!

Thank you!

I like the ending as well with the nosebleed, it has something beautiful sad about it and we don't see Nora often in such a weak position relying on the help of others, especially mortals.

Lucky you are on Twitter now, otherwise I might not have discovered your great work on Flickr and LL. I am curious about your announced castle mod. I use CLW-ressources with "daylight" in SE - but I like to learn from the master. I admire how the Victorian interior fits in with your story. Respect for the use of pose mods.

Well, if you're to be doing a castle mod, this is one hell of a showcase  ! I'm working on shots captured one year ago, doing what I can to photoshop my way out of poorly lighted cave shots... and when I see the quality of your lighting, background and angles in the bedroom and library, it's just astounding in comparison ! Even pure background shots are to be watched for a good moment to be fully appreciated.

But that's not the only aspect remarkable in that entry, as you staged very well the threat of the duchess, making her intimidating even to Nora. Even her ignoring humans was enforcing the character, who thrived on threats and domination before the main twist. I also noticed a bit of creativity in the layout, you don't wanna do a comic, but you're still getting closer and closer from their image sequences.

On the (minor) drawbacks however, the 90° rotated shot (Nora's vision when waking up I guess) felt a bit destabilizing, and so were the repeated quotation marks when a same character speaks (I think the most common convention is to only repeat them when the interlocutor changes, and sometimes even less frequently ?). 

Yet it was nice to have the scenario take the first place again : so many questions unanswered, so much stakes ! Excellent work !

Malicia : « So the meany blonde lady got a very great room and ended in a tiny dark closet. Serves her right, uh

                I hope Amelie is very alright though.  »

Superb.

Your interiors are really unique. It's brillant. Luxury, style and gorgeous furnitures. There is a bit of classisim in your interiors.

As you probably know, i watch every details, and your scenes have details. I really like that.

Excellent work on the lighting too.

This article is a bit special for me...and you know the reason

I appreciate the elegance, the delicacy and the refinement. All what i like!!

The enb you use is not my style, but you make a good use of yours. That's the most important. An enb where you are confident and confortable.

However, your enb matches very well to your content and your stories.

Well, technicaly the set is very high and i appreciate the effort of course.

It's the first part.....and i'm waiting the second part impatiently.

Thank you

Unholy Molag Bal and cookies! What a chapter!! This is the second vampire that we heard of in your stories that doesn't drink human blood (or only drinks the bare minimum), but what a difference in behavior! Eric was polite, kind and reserved while the duchess is so cold and distant, I'm surprised there isn't a trail of ice following in her footsteps. I wonder whether Duchess' decision to avoid human blood has anything to do with the members of her bloodline going missing as well as with her inability to feel anything. ? And consumption of just a few drops turned her into an almost feral animal. This is incredibly intriguing. ?

Nora's reputation for being able to instill emotions (lust, fear, pleasure/pain) is a rather clever idea and I have to admit - it really fits her personality well. Out of all the characters that we met, she is the one that is perfect for the job. The fact that her regular approach (a.k.a. seduction) didn't work is fascinating. But now we have one of the most powerful figures among vampires locked in Nora's dungeon. The guard that was accompanying her will most likely demand an explanation. Baroness Karlov will need copious amounts of blood to even get up from the bed. Amelie is suspiciously missing and Stan is getting quite the workout by carrying gorgeous women around the castle! I think I'll just set up camp in your blog section checking every few hours (days...weeks, whichever) for continuation. This is just too good and I need to know more! ? Seriously though, this was incredibly well-staged and well-written.  The screenshots alone are a work of art, but combined with the narrative this is turning into quite the vampire thriller. My sincerest compliments. ?

15 hours ago, innaNyx said:

Lucky you are on Twitter now, otherwise I might not have discovered your great work on Flickr and LL. I am curious about your announced castle mod. I use CLW-ressources with "daylight" in SE - but I like to learn from the master. I admire how the Victorian interior fits in with your story. Respect for the use of pose mods.

Thank you! So the castle you see is custom build with the use of some of the clockwork textures, mostly the wooden ones, but the place itself is not clockwork. The interiors itself don't strike me as particularly victorian. I know clockwork is and people may associate some of the textures with that mod, but I was trying to go for a vampire version of a baroque manor/estate. 

In order to get the daylight I reworked parts of my already existing cells with new lightning.

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

I'm working on shots captured one year ago, doing what I can to photoshop my way out of poorly lighted cave shots...

Yeah this is how I feel every time I post an entry. Most of the stuff of chapter 7 was done in the first half of 2018 and all the time I'm like..."omg this looks absolutely terrible". It's of a sign of improvement. Every time I look at some of my older stuff, even things that were done just a couple of month ago I find details that I could have done/shot better. I can't find something in the second spoiler as it was done very recently, but I can tell you in December.

Anyway I may have some time to update the tutorial soon and add some of the things I learn over the last year.

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

 

and when I see the quality of your lighting, background and angles in the bedroom and library, it's just astounding in comparison ! Even pure background shots are to be watched for a good moment to be fully appreciated.

  Reveal hidden contents

Thank you!

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

But that's not the only aspect remarkable in that entry, as you staged very well the threat of the duchess, making her intimidating even to Nora. Even her ignoring humans was enforcing the character, who thrived on threats and domination before the main twist. I also noticed a bit of creativity in the layout, you don't wanna do a comic, but you're still getting closer and closer from their image sequences.

I just figured out that multiple small images are a good way to show a lot of information at once. Like in the scene when Nora calls for Stan. I have to make clear where Stan is and he randomly happens to be around and that he's surprised and uncomfortable by her call. That takes like 5-6 images in the way I do my stories and none of these images are particularly interesting or moving the plot along. So a collage is the right tool I think instead of having the reader scroll through all these boring images. 

Also when doing vertical images you're kind of forced to half some smaller stuff like reaction shots or so on the side. 

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

On the (minor) drawbacks however, the 90° rotated shot (Nora's vision when waking up I guess) felt a bit destabilizing.

Amelie: "I hope you didn't fall of your chair and broke your arm, due to being destabilized, Mr. Tirloque. Hope you're all right."

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

 and so were the repeated quotation marks when a same character speaks (I think the most common convention is to only repeat them when the interlocutor changes, and sometimes even less frequently ?). 

I was getting really sloppy on these. It's probably the only thing that decreased in quality over the lifetime of my blog. In the beginning I was paying really close attention to every quotation mark and within the last year I was getting lazy and just made sure every sentence has quotation marks somewhere. If the same character has another line after that there might be multiple quotation marks in a raw. 

It's sloppy, but I didn't think of this as a big deal. It mostly happens during slight changes. Technically I should get rid of the quotation marks all together. They don't serve a purpose in any way in my story as there is no narrator text from which I need to distinguish my dialogue. 

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Yet it was nice to have the scenario take the first place again : so many questions unanswered, so much stakes ! Excellent work !

Thank you!

9 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Malicia : « So the meany blonde lady got a very great room and ended in a tiny dark closet. Serves her right, uh

                I hope Amelie is very alright though.  »

Amelie: "I'm fine, I was in my room sleeping the whole time. Mistress didn't want me to see the mean lady in the first place."

6 hours ago, marmotte said:

Superb.

Your interiors are really unique. It's brillant. Luxury, style and gorgeous furnitures. There is a bit of classisim in your interiors.

As you probably know, i watch every details, and your scenes have details. I really like that.

Excellent work on the lighting too.

Thank you very much, a compliment like this from you means a lot to me. 

6 hours ago, marmotte said:

The enb you use is not my style, but you make a good use of yours. That's the most important. An enb where you are confident and confortable.

However, your enb matches very well to your content and your stories.

The ENB is Grim and Somber Hircine. I get what you're saying with your comment and I tend to agree. The ENB itself is dated and most people use snapdragon and other ENBs like your recently published Patrician ENB, (which looks superb btw.).

There are two angels to why I stick to this ENB for now:

First is a stylistic one, my story basically only takes place during night time in interiors. Most ENBs are not optimized for that and rather focus on your happy GomaPero Land shots with sun and grass and what not.

Grim and Somber does have a focus on that and but looks kind of bad during daylight.  I tried different ENBs in the past but never really liked their interior look, especially when it comes to warm lightning in a dark place.

It also causes very strict contrasts between dark shadowy areas and bright areas which I like for a vampire like story. 

The second reason is a "production reason". I don't work on entries in a consecutive order. For example the last spoiler was shot a year after the rest and replaced an older version of the story. I still have a couple of missing scenes in chapter 9, while I already have some stuff in chapter 10 ready for shipping. 

If I change ENBs I get a stylistic break inbetween entries or even inbetween scenes. It's not the end of the world, but unless I have a really good ENB that I'm really in love with I stick for the old one for consistency reasons. 

I also don't have the most powerful machine, an all right one, but not very good. I want to buy a new machine soon and plan to try more ENBs with it, maybe I find something that I really like and that does fit my story. Also I'm too inexperienced with ENBs to tweak an existing one to my liking... it might be something I'll done when I have my new machine.

6 hours ago, marmotte said:

Well, technicaly the set is very high and i appreciate the effort of course.

It's the first part.....and i'm waiting the second part impatiently.

 

 

I know this differs quite a bit of your version of Diana and I had her to be extra mean and cold here in order to see a change after drinking blood again . 

Thank you for your comment, much appreciated it.

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

Unholy Molag Bal and cookies! What a chapter!! This is the second vampire that we heard of in your stories that doesn't drink human blood (or only drinks the bare minimum), but what a difference in behavior! Eric was polite, kind and reserved while the duchess is so cold and distant, I'm surprised there isn't a trail of ice following in her footsteps. I wonder whether Duchess' decision to avoid human blood has anything to do with the members of her bloodline going missing as well as with her inability to feel anything. ? And consumption of just a few drops turned her into an almost feral animal. This is incredibly intriguing. ?

She completely avoids blood and only drinks vampire blood for virtues/race/elitist reasons, while Eric tried to minimize the amount of blood to drink in order to hurt nobody unnecessarily. 

Most vampires in my world overfeed themselves and they could, in theory get along with much less blood, which is what Eric did. 

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

Nora's reputation for being able to instill emotions (lust, fear, pleasure/pain) is a rather clever idea and I have to admit - it really fits her personality well.

Mostly the erotic arts. Even though all vampires have there typical erotic seductive aura too them, Nora is special in that regard, even for vampires in my world. It's kind of "her thing", which happens to be a good coincidence for the story I want to tell .

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

The guard that was accompanying her will most likely demand an explanation.

Well... that guard is more a puppet to carry her stuff around. In a real combat scenario she's perfectly reasonable to defend herself as she is one of the oldest and thus most powerful vampires of my world. He, on the other hand, is just a fairly young vampire compared to her that serves as a guard for representative reasons. 

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

Baroness Karlov will need copious amounts of blood to even get up from the bed. Amelie is suspiciously missing and Stan is getting quite the workout by carrying gorgeous women around the castle! I think I'll just set up camp in your blog section checking every few hours (days...weeks, whichever) for continuation. This is just too good and I need to know more! ? Seriously though, this was incredibly well-staged and well-written.  The screenshots alone are a work of art, but combined with the narrative this is turning into quite the vampire thriller. My sincerest compliments. ?

Thank you Devianna!

1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

Yeah this is how I feel every time I post an entry. Most of the stuff of chapter 7 was done in the first half of 2018 and all the time I'm like..."omg this looks absolutely terrible". It's of a sign of improvement. Every time I look at some of my older stuff, even things that were done just a couple of month ago I find details that I could have done/shot better. I can't find something in the second spoiler as it was done very recently, but I can tell you in December.

Anyway I may have some time to update the tutorial soon and add some of the things I learn over the last year.

Great news !

1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

I just figured out that multiple small images are a good way to show a lot of information at once. Like in the scene when Nora calls for Stan. I have to make clear where Stan is and he randomly happens to be around and that he's surprised and uncomfortable by her call. That takes like 5-6 images in the way I do my stories and none of these images are particularly interesting or moving the plot along. So a collage is the right tool I think instead of having the reader scroll through all these boring images. 

Also when doing vertical images you're kind of forced to half some smaller stuff like reaction shots or so on the side.

1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

Amelie: "I hope you didn't fall of your chair and broke your arm, due to being destabilized, Mr. Tirloque. Hope you're all right."

?

Maybe I did, Amelie ; but I know Alter is financially low due to FlickR cost, so I'm waiting for him to get famous before suing him.

1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

I was getting really sloppy on these. It's probably the only thing that decreased in quality over the lifetime of my blog. In the beginning I was paying really close attention to every quotation mark and within the last year I was getting lazy and just made sure every sentence has quotation marks somewhere. If the same character has another line after that there might be multiple quotation marks in a raw. 

It's sloppy, but I didn't think of this as a big deal. It mostly happens during slight changes. Technically I should get rid of the quotation marks all together. They don't serve a purpose in any way in my story as there is no narrator text from which I need to distinguish my dialogue.

Which would mean a space gain, not to be neglected when doing subtitles. Anyway, it's nothing major, rather me becoming  picky on smaller details as global quality increases.

1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

Amelie: "I'm fine, I was in my room sleeping the whole time. Mistress didn't want me to see the mean lady in the first place."

Malicia : « You didn't miss anything, no : the meany lady drank too much, and so she behaved very silly and then she fell into coma, uh.  »

6 hours ago, Devianna said:

I wonder whether Duchess' decision to avoid human blood has anything to do with the members of her bloodline going missing as well as with her inability to feel anything. ?

Well, if all those of her clan have the same digestive issues, then it sounds much less surprising indeed. ^^

Drinking other vampire's blood is a theme sometimes met in vampire lores btw. In Vampires The Masquerade it's called Brugeria (spanish word for sorcery), as it allows the user to gain the powers of the targed he vampirized. In others fictions, it's an interrogation tool to extract memories. Now we have Alter's take on it.

Seems the Duchess has a vibe of Nora's taste in girls, blonde/white hair, she is a bit similar to girls Nora taken interest. ?

Oh damn, Justiciar is just to hot to die like this

And she's suspiciously look alike Tex's Milena. Well imo.

Great job and great shots, Alter Native! ^_^

4 hours ago, Resdayn said:

Seems the Duchess has a vibe of Nora's taste in girls, blonde/white hair, she is a bit similar to girls Nora taken interest. ?

Well she's not really Nora's weight class in terms of social status. Also Nora's terrified of her. But who knows  

4 hours ago, Crw said:

Oh damn, Justiciar is just to hot to die like this

And she's suspiciously look alike Tex's Milena. Well imo.

Great job and great shots, Alter Native! ^_^

Diana is a follower by Marmotte, for some reason the vampire version got recently pulled from the nexus, but her face present and normal follower are still available. I think the hair is the only thing that resembles Milena. 

Thank you Crw!

6 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Drinking other vampire's blood is a theme sometimes met in vampire lores btw. In Vampires The Masquerade it's called Brugeria (spanish word for sorcery), as it allows the user to gain the powers of the targed he vampirized. In others fictions, it's an interrogation tool to extract memories. Now we have Alter's take on it.

For the most part it's completely harmless and has little effect on my vampires. It keeps you alive but little else. The lack of emotion and empathy of the Duchess is due to the lack of human blood, less due to the vampire blood. 

They also sometimes just drink form each other during sex, as seen in the remake of Chapter 1 Section 1, so it's also something fairly intimate and a sign of trust if another vampire allows that.

If there was internet in my vampire world there'd probably be a sites dedicated to that fetish, but there's little else to it and no actual power connected with it.