Now I Live in Berlin

Guten tag! Dear reader, I’m happy and excited to announce that I’m writing this blog post to you from Berlin! I’ve been here for four weeks now, and I’m beginning to settle in. I found a flat, which was stressful, I set up my workstation, I’m exploring the city, and it feels good. The excitement and thrill of moving to a new city is upon me, and I am energized! I’m living in Kreuzberg, a lovely part of the city with lots of cute hipsters and good coffee.

Those of you who follow me closely on social media will know that the diary of Franz Schmidt, Nuremberg’s executioner from 1578 - 1617, has been a huge influence on the setting and aesthetic of my game, so it feels good to be here in Germany working on it. At some point soon I will make a field trip/pilgrimage to Nuremberg to visit Henker Haus (Hangman’s House) myself. After immersing myself so fully in the world of Franz Schmidt and reading two books about him, I feel oddly connected to this reluctant early-modern dealer of death and physician on-the-side. For those of you interested I highly recommend reading ‘The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century’, by Joel F. Harrington.
 

Speaking of pilgrimages, let’s talk about my family connection with Berlin. My Grandfather was a Jew born here 1925, in the well-off district of Charlottenburg. To be blunt, it was a bad time to be a Jew in Germany. During the 30’s, the increasing hostility that resulted from the propaganda war waged by the Nazi government against the Jews was catastrophic for the family. His Grandparents, who owned 5 shops selling ladies hats in the city, were forced out of business and, unable to find asylum in another country, committed suicide. His father became sick with Tuberculosis and was unable to leave the country to seek medical aid, and died at age 36. 

As many Jews were beginning to be taken away to concentration camps, being left without a father gave my Grandfather, who was 11, and his younger brother priority to leave the country on the famous Kindertransport, which was a train organised by the Jewish authorities to get children out of the country. In 1936 my father went to a foster home in the lake district in England, and the rest, as they say, is history. His mother eventually escaped too, but was not reunited with her children until later.

I’ve always wanted to reconnect with that side of my families history, and my first stop on that journey was a visit to Katharinenstraße, the street where my Grandfather grew up. Today, all the buildings from that era were gone, replaced with modern architecture, but it was still interesting to try and imagine the street as it once was. Next, I’ll attempt to find the grave of my Great-Grandfather, which will be much harder as nobody living remembers where it’s located, or even which cemetery it’s located in. Wish me luck.
 

The introduction to this post, as if you couldn’t tell from the fact it was typed in Courier New, is the beginning of the first ‘Sentenced’ script. Writing is now fully underway. Since I now have space to set up my Vive once more, I’ve also been back into the game engine, testing and improving. I’ve updated the character physics a little to make interactions less ridiculous, and figured out a way to make bloody slashes appear on a model if struck with the sword. This game is horrible.
 

I also modelled this young townswoman for the crowd!

It’s full steam ahead from now on (apart from in October when I travel to Japan for the month), so as usual, watch this space and social media for all the latest.

Auf Wiedersehn!
Keep it weird,
Samuel Gordon
 

There and Back Again

I write this from my parent’s house in Buckinghamshire, England. I’m back in the country after almost a year in New Zealand. It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon, my third summer in a row thanks to my hemisphere-hopping antics, and the birds in the garden are tweeting up a storm. Life is good. 

First, allow me to apologise for the extended silence here on the Phantom Magazine blog. When I work in VFX, I have to sign a strict NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), which prevents me from talking about or showing work from anything I’m working on professionally. In addition, I’ve been working for Weta Digital, (The Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes), a company with a 50 hour standard work week, which often rises to 60 during crunch time.

Some snaps from NZ

This lead to a situation where I spent the vast majority of my time doing something I can’t legally talk about, which is not a great recipe for social media output. It’s a source of frustration for me, as I love to share the things I’m doing with people, however, in the corporate world of filmmaking, the profit is master and we must obey. It also left me little time to work on my game.

However, all that is changing as of right now! My contract at Weta is up, and I’ve saved up a fat stack o’ cash, hopefully enough to support myself until I finish development on my pride and joy, Sentenced. I’ve already resumed work on the game, and re-assessing some of the work I did last year and bringing it up to standard.

An updated version of the Magistrate. New style!

Heraldry for the Port city of Sentenced.

I’m going to be staying with my parents up until the end of July while I catch up with friends and family in London, after which I’ll be moving back into a place of my own, most likely in Berlin. I’m also currently in the process of applying for German citizenship, so it seems like a good time to go the country and learn the language. Also, I hear that’s where the cool kids are at. Maybe the coolness will rub off on me? Is that how it works?

Anyway, it’s all go go go again on the Phantom Magazine front, so follow me here on the blog and also on Twitter and Instagram for all the regular updates!

Keep it weird,

Sam

Week 6 - The Gunge of Damocles

The big news is that I’ve decided to accept a VFX job at Weta studios, the company who made The Lord of the Rings, a film series which influenced my life more than any other during my formative years. Therefore, at the beginning of July I’ll be flying out to New Zealand for about 10 and a half months. It’s an important step, because after analysing my budgeting for my time here in Budapest (more detail further down), I realised that if I took another well-paid job then I'd be able to theoretically support myself like this for an entire year on my savings. Good news in the long-term for the Phantom Magazine, and of course, I’ll continue working like the below donkey to get Sentenced finished in my spare time.

This also gives me another full month to work on Sentenced, so we can silence that ‘time’s up’ Klaxon for now. Does anyone remember Pat Sharp’s Fun House, where they would get covered in a bucket of gunge when time ran out? That’s how I feel, gunge bucket hanging above me like a ‘90’s version of the Sword of Damocles. Anyway, I’ve decided to take a flat in London for June, because I have a few commitments there that I need to take care of, such as voting in the general election and getting my tattoo finished.

So back to the budgeting. My biggest expenses have been tools for the game and rent. I’ve spent a reasonable amount of money in the Unity Asset store, about £250. I’m planning on writing a blog post detailing these tools soon, in case it’s useful or interesting for anyone. Food and drink here are very cheap, so I’ve been saving a lot of money that way. Overall, I’m realising what a bogglingly expensive place to live London really was for me, and in reality I could live like this for much longer before I run out of money.

In terms of Sentenced, it’s been another week of art. I put a fair bit of time into figuring out the best way to paint texture variation into my environments. I found a great vertex painting tool in the Unity Asset store, ‘Vertex Tools Pro’, which, combined with the tileable textures I’ve been generating in Substance Designer, give me a great way of painting variation into the large continuous surfaces in the game such as the ground and castle walls. I also tackled the first of the main characters in the game, the Executioner’s sword.

Texture variation on the ground and castle walls.

The executioner's sword

According to my historical source and bible, ‘The Faithful Executioner’, by Joel F. Harrington, Executioner’s swords were traditionally decorative and bore a unique inscription. ‘The Lords prosecute, I execute’, is a direct translation of a Germanic inscription from the early-modern period. A few other examples I found include ‘Through justice will the land prosper and thrive; in lawlessness it will not survive’, ‘Guard thyself from evil deeds, else thy path to the gallows leads’, and ‘Ich Schone Niemand (I Spare No-one’). I chose ‘The Lords prosecute, I execute’, because I felt that it was a good fit thematically - remember, you’re the executioner, not the judge. All you need to do is keep following orders.

Keep it weird,
Sam