A Whole ‘Nother Year

Wow. Okay. I guess it’s 2024 now. Well, this is embarrassing.

This past year (plus one month) has been quite a ride, to say the least. I got a puppy, settled into Vancouver, and I had the opportunity to work on a slew of… let’s call them ‘eventful’ films. Plus there were the strikes and all that. And in terms of my own projects, I’ve put more hours into them than any other year ever. And yet, as of this writing, I still don’t have anything physical to show for it — hence the lack of updates. But if 2023 was an incredibly exciting year, then 2024 is looking to be even more so. There’s lots to discuss, but for now, let’s talk about the short film and what I’ve been up to with that.

After wrapping up the final episode of the short film in September of 2022, my goal was to finally edit the entire thing together and throw it at some film festivals. And in 2023, I did just that. Overall, I think the festival circuit went pretty well! I wasn’t able to send it absolutely everywhere, as its shockingly expensive, but I was fortunate enough to have been selected for a few festivals, and I somehow ended up winning some awards from a couple! I’m so grateful for my work to have been featured alongside so many incredible other films and artists, and I only wish I had the time and funds to have been able to attend more of them. But now that it’s all said and done, the short is finally finished and released on YouTube in full. So far, the response I’ve gotten has been simply staggering. The support people have given me has exceeded my wildest expectations, and I want to express how truly grateful I am for every single person who took the time to watch my work. I have a lot of fun ideas lined up for the future, and I can’t wait to show everyone what I have coming next!

Film wise, I’ve been doing a lot of experiments and drawing up my next idea. Right now I have an outline for something much shorter, but just as big and kinetic as the first film. I’m hoping to really aim high for this next one, incorporating more voice acting and hopefully bringing on some additional hands for art and animation. But for now it’s just me, and so far most of the work has been relegated to asset prep, as well as doing some experiments in Unreal. I was thinking of trying to manipulate the metahuman system to my bidding by taking those models and warping them into something more stylized. I do love the metahuman tools, and the rigs they come with are so much fun to work with, but at this moment it’s looking like I’m going to have to make a bunch of characters from scratch if I really want to get the most appeal out of an art style. While I tinker away on that, I’ve also been preparing some vehicle rigs, a preview of which you can find in the header image. My big goal is to really showcase the other aspects of the Forlorn world beyond what was shown in the first film, as that was such a small slice of the bigger picture.

That’s all mostly been background work, though, as my main focus throughout the past year has been writing. In my previous year-end post, I announced that I was turning Forlorn into a novel, and that has progressed steadily since then. As tends to happen with me, my original, already over-ambitious idea has turned into something much more completely insane. Since autumn of 2022, what started out as one book has evolved into an entire series — a grand, serialized adventure story broken up into six short parts. As of this post, the rough draft has been finished for a while, and I have a proper first draft in place for the first five and a half volumes. While working on the final few chapters, the rest of the series is in various states of writing, with many of the chapters in the second and third draft phase. In addition to that, I’ve sent out the early chapters to people for feedback, and I’ve been working closely with an amazing editor to really make it all come to life. As of now, the first volume of the series is mostly “finished”, barring one last polish pass (or two), and the rest is coming along nicely. And while it’s certainly a lot, I want to make sure that everything about it is polished to a mirror shine before putting it out there. But based on how things are going, that might not be too long now. As soon as there’s news, I’ll share it.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you’ll continue to join me on this crazy endeavor, and I can’t wait to share the continued story of Forlorn. Until then, I have a lot more words to write.

Alex