Golden Kill
Golden Kill
Visual artists do sketches... I'll sometimes sketch scenes. This is just a rough something I came up with today...
A pair of cool blue dots lit up on the bracelet about her wrist, mirroring the pair of lights just above the trigger on the gun. Just as she’d ordered it… the weapon recognized her touch. Only her touch, as it were. She could almost feel the life beneath her finger, coursing through the palm of her hand, urging her to squeeze the trigger. If anyone else tried to wield the heavy-automatic rifle, the chamber feed would seize, effectively locking all function of the gun until an authorized user attempted to use it. But for her…
Carefully, she set it back on the table, and both pairs of lights were extinguished. The bracelet was just a bracelet again, and the gun was now little better than a heavy club. For a moment, she considered how effective the vastly expensive hunk of metal would be as a simple blunt force weapon.
She looked up and across the table. “You do impressive work… for a doctor, that is.”
“You are pleased, then?”
Her silence was as much confirmation as if she’d actually spoken. If she’d been displeased, she would have been sure to let him know, and in none-too-eloquent of language.
Yes, silence was good.
“About payment, then…” he began.
She held up a bullet, one that glimmered in the dim light like gold. In fact, it was gold, solid all the way through. “Do you know how much this is worth?” she asked. She tossed it to him, allowing him to weigh it speculatively in his hands.
“Maybe ten-thousand? At the shiest mark, at least… it could be even more.”
“Exactly,” she said. “That’s more than half your fare.”
“What about the…?”
Before he had even able to finish, she had whipped a small, silenced pistol from the small of her back, and fired a second bullet straight through the man’s forehead. “There’s the other half,” she growled. “Plus a little extra.” As he slumped forward over the table, blood leaking down between his eyes, she stood to leave. “Keep the change,” she tossed over her shoulder.
The lights on her personalized rifle were already lit as she exited the back room of the bar, the live weapon nestled in the crook of her arm.
Maybe silence wasn't so good after all.
More Posts from Artificelux and Others
IT’S ALIVE!
(Still feeling the spooky Halloween vibes apparently.)
But for real though, this book I’ve been working on for years and the soundtrack that goes along with it are finally available on Kickstarter. I couldn’t be more excited... also terrified. But also excited. Haha.
I always tried to take part in NaNoWriMo back in the day, and always stalled out after a few days. (Now I understand that that ultra-concentrated format just doesn’t mesh with my process.) Maybe this year, though, I can turn that around and do a NaNoPubMo.
If you’re interested, here’s the link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artificelux/color-of-a-mirror-dark-science-fiction-novel-and-soundtrack
Come experience my dark future version of the moon!
A. So... Slightly different. On the on the carbon-copy side of the two-ply printer paper, so I decided to start a font system. Obviously start at the beginning...
About a year ago now is when Josh McCausland and I first wrapped production of the Color of a Mirror soundtrack, and sent it off for pressing! (The above photo is an abstract shot of the first test pressing sleeve.)
After the post the other day about the Full Moon Bundle (containing the limited vinyl release) I wanted to take a moment of special mention for this soundtrack and what it means to me.
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One of my biggest loves (and frustrations) of a show or video game is the music. When it’s done right, it’s one of those things that gives you chills, and you can’t wait to return to that universe, can’t wait to hear that title card music at the start of the next episode. (Like launching the original Mass Effect and hearing that menu music.) On the flip side, it can derail the whole experience for me… or at least make it far less memorable, because music often sets the scene for me.
This extends to when I’m writing, as well. Depending on the mood or the emotion, I’ll find different songs that fit that character or scene. And then lots of times, I’ll have that selection on repeat for a few days. Haha.
So being able to collaborate with a composer on the sound of this dark cyberpunk universe I’d been writing for a handful of years, trying to pull on all those ambient/sci-fi/industrial influences but also create something that felt new, something that could be listened to while you’re reading or on its own… it was really an amazing experience, and I couldn’t be prouder of what we came up with!
It all started with just two images that I sent to Josh; I said, “This is the vibe.” (He hadn’t read the book at that point, and I was thinking he was just going to make a single promo song for me.) When he came back to me with about ten different options, making it super difficult to choose, I knew the project had to be a full album. Iterating back and forth with him and seeing his process, taking some of those initial hooks and tying them together… so much fun!
The title track “Color of a Mirror” was one of those original concepts that I just couldn’t get enough of. The sound for the rest of the album was really born there, I think.
All in all, it’s such an honor to see my vision of this novel through someone else’s skill and expertise in an entirely different discipline. Such a pleasure, and I cannot wait to work on Vol. 2 together!
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Check out the soundtrack on Bandcamp to give Josh some love:
(Also available on major streaming platforms.)
And if you want to check out the book as well, head over to my website.
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Thanks for reading!
-Daniel
Cassette. Inspired by retro forms of music.
The Waves’ Revealing
-N7 Day 2022-
As mentioned yesterday, here’s my new minimalist Mass Effect title card!
I’m a big fan of title sequences (and main menus in games) as the choice of art and music really sets the tone for the whole experience from that initial moment. This is one of the many things Mass Effect does so successfully, and I love playing with these moments as it allows me to do fanart of a favorite series, while still hanging out in my typography/graphic design happy place.
For this year, I wanted to explore a more alien design, maybe a strange new world we could visit in a new Mass Effect. I love doing minimal, restricted color palettes with different textures providing the details and variations. This idea was born from the classic N7 red for the text, which then spread to the planetary surface in the background.
And then these mysterious obsidian orbs hovering over these impact craters. Or maybe scorch marks... One of my favorite things in ME1 was discovering those weird ruins on random worlds, often with the single chrome sphere hovering over the surface. I wanted these orbs to hearken back to those moments, but also be different.
That’s all I’ve got. Thanks as always to Bioware for creating these games, and I look forward to new adventures in the future!
For now, though, I should go.
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artificelux reblogged this · 12 years ago
