David and I could hardly contain our excitement this morning when TheBruce, linked us to this article in The Guardian in which Keith Stuart writes:

But in some ways the really avant-garde work has been going on elsewhere – in the realm of the ARG, or alternative reality game*. Here, proponents like 42 Entertainment and Darklight Interactive create interactive experiences by placing information around the internet, on faked websites, forums and Wikipedia entries, encouraging players to work together to decipher the clues.

Maybe it is partially all the coffee I just consumed, but my heart is racing!  Our relatively small company has just been recognized on the international scene.  And in the same breath as one of the largest companies in the ARG industry.  We are extremely proud and frankly more than a bit surprised.

In the meantime, despite unfortunate distractions of our real lives — I continue to battle a chronic illness (which I write about in my other blog Novel Patient) and David has had to find a new job on short notice — we continue to move forward on Rachel’s Walk.  We’ve been working on all aspects of the game, but in particular Owen has been putting in a lot of hard work on writing copy for activities players will be able to do within the Dream Engine.

Much to my CPU’s dismay, I continue to render and render and render some more.  And in honor of occasion, I’d like to leave you with another small taste of what I’ve been working on.  Another “screenshot” from the game if you will.  This is one of my personal favorites, and I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Fairy River

When we first began creating the visuals for the world of Rachel’s Walk, we looked to stock photography.  I picked out literally hundreds of images for David to download.  But they all had varying “looks”, and we quickly realized we would have to do something to make them all match if the world was going to have a unified appearance.

Around this time I was starting a new role playing game campaign with some online friends and was looking to make a portrait of my character.  I was looking around for free 3D rendering programs to use for this purpose and stumbled across Daz 3D.  I was so pleased with my render of my character and the power of the program that it occurred to me that we could make the whole world of Rachel’s Walk in this fashion.  Instead of being confined to what I could find on stock photography sites, I could custom render each “scene” to our specifications.

I presented the idea to David and he loved the render of my character and the idea.  But we realized that we would need more than just the free DazStudio software and few free models.  So I made up a proposal of all we would need to complete the game world.  We devised a plan with phases of purchases and a budget.  And then I got to work.

Though the basics of the software were easy to master, some of the more advanced features had a higher learning curve.  Frankly my initial renders didn’t look like much.  But with practice I improved.  As I improved I realized the need for more advanced software to complete the game world.  So we purchased Bryce and most recently Carrara.

The process has been (and continues to be) extremely time consuming and extremely rewarding as I slowly piece the world of Rachel’s Walk together.  And today I am pleased to present you with a sneak peak of 3 “scenes” from the game world in the form of wallpapers for your desktop.  They can be found in various sizes in the new Media section.  I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I’ve enjoyed making them.