Cafe Insomniac - from Moviestorm animation to novel

 

Cafe Insomniac - from animation to novel

A popular Moviestorm animation titled Café Insomniac has now been officially released as a novel that is available for download on Amazon, Kobo and the iBookstore. This is the brief story of its journey from Moviestorm animation to novel by its creator Mark Capell.

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Discovering Moviestorm

"I remember coming across Moviestorm just after I'd finished directing a TV series. I needed a fresh creative outlet and thought about making a live-action short film, but I didn't want to have to deal with the logistics.

Then I came across Moviestorm — animation software that didn't require traditional animation skills. I could just concentrate on making the most of my directing skills. I couldn't believe my luck.

The journey

I started with a couple of short films. After that, I started thinking of ideas for series. That's when I came up with the idea for Café Insomniac. I wasn't sure how it would develop, but I was enthralled by the mystery of the original premise — an insomniac gets lost in the space between dreams and reality.

In the spirt of experimentation, I didn't plan anything. I wanted to make the series as surreal as possible. No idea was too wild. And I was lucky to find some great voice actors among the Moviestorm community.

The response from people who watched it was overwhelming.

A couple of years on from the last episode of Café Insomniac, I wrote a novel, a thriller, that shot past The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo to reach the top of the Amazon crime and thriller charts. I was committed to writing.

And after finishing a couple more books, I rooted around for my next idea. A little voice suggested that Café Insomniac wasn't finished, that I'd only touched on the surface of Justin's strange world. Café Insomniac became my next novel. 

Story development

Has Café Insomniac changed since those experimental days? Well, yes, quite a lot. The storyline is different. There are new characters. In some ways it is stranger than the original series but also makes more sense. If you read it, you'll see what I mean.

And in the novel, the story of Café Insomniac is told entirely from Justin's point of view. This allows the reader to get inside his mind, to feel his fear and confusion, as events unfold and become ever more strange.

Why Moviestorm?

But the guiding slogan from those Moviestorm days has remained the same: "I don't know what's real and what isn't. And which is most dangerous."

Without the Moviestorm version of Café Insomniac, I don't think I would have had the courage to attempt a full-length story with such an outlandish premise. It was thanks to the software and the positive reaction from the Moviestorm community that I could embark on writing the novel, thinking, hey, this might just work."

Cafe Insomniac is now available for download from Amazon, Kobo, and the iBookstore. There is a special promotion on Amazon for the first few days at 99p.

Further links

More about Mark Capell

Official website

Buy Cafe Insomniac

Other books by Mark Capell

Moviestorm 1.5.3 nearly ready

We're currently finalizing the release of Moviestorm 1.5.3.  If all goes well, it'll be ready by the end of this week. Here are the highlights of what we're hoping it will include (note that some items may not ship if they fail final QA):

New features

• Look At now has a customizer which allows you to change the duration of the look at blend, where on the target the character is looking, and to do the look at with just the head, just the eyes, or both the head and eyes
• Switching between the Cutting Room and the Camera View or Director's View keeps the timeline position, if the Cutting Room is showing a view of the scene.
• Ceilings now cast shadows, provided Interior lighting is disabled.
• The Script Editor now has a 'clear timeline' option when right clicking on the current scene, which removes all activities in that scene.
• The prop customizer in the set workshop now has an option to stop a prop casting shadows. This will also stop it reducing shadowmap quality, which can otherwise happen for props near the edges of your scene.
• The 'Home' key now centers the view.

Bug fixes

• The 'Dead' mood now prevents any automatic look at activities, or any improvisation.
• Very long (eg over 6 min) clips now display correctly on the Cutting Room timeline.
• The say record buttons are now play/stop buttons rather than having a separate stop.
• Loading a multi-scene movie that was saved in the Cutting Room will go straight to the Cutting Room rather than asking which scene to go to then going to the Cutting Room.
• Having a broken video in your movie no longer stops it from loading.
• When changing the duration of a walk, it should move later activities along to provide space.
• When using the image browser, images over 4 megapixels now warn the user to resize them, rather than risking breaking Moviestorm.
• Remove mark now works on marks that do not have an associated walk.
• When taking screenshots in the Camera View with the snapshot button, the resulting images now include depth of field.
• The cel-shading tick box on the lighting settings no longer overrides the movie cel-shading tick box on the script settings unless you tell it to.
• Memory leak fix: Moviestorm no longer holds onto copies of videos that were used as previews, or that were used on the Cutting Room timeline, or that were deleted.
• Modders workshop: changed the 'Move to' menu so that you can scroll through the list of addons.
• Modders workshop: fixed the 'Browse' button so that it works for props that have spaces in their folder names.

After iPad, what next?

As you've probably seen, we've just released our Moviestorm iPad app. It's an important step for the company, which we hope will bring movie-making to a whole new generation of people.

We've had a few questions from people about where this will lead next, so we figured we'd take a few minutes to reply.

Will there be an Android version?
We're certainly planning on it. There are some technical issues we need to sort out, since we haven't developed for Android before and it's not quite the same as iPad, even though using Unity means we're already most of the way there. We're currently trying to decide whether to do it all in-house, bring someone into the team, or contract it out. 

Will there be an iPad 1 version?
We were hoping to have an iPad 1 version from the get-go. However, it turned out that the iPad 1 wasn't really up to the job, so we're having to create a different, lighter version for that platform. We'll probably have to go with more cartoony characters, and make some other changes to the art. Once we've figured out exactly what we need to do to run on the iPad 1, we can see whether already we've got everything we need to put an iPad 1 app together quickly, or whether it's going to take more than that.

Is that it for the iPad?
Not at all. We wanted to start with something very straightforward just to prove to ourselves we could do it. There were a lot of features we wanted to put into this first version that were left out because of time, or because we were still getting used to the limitations of the platform and finding out how to make the best of it.  For example, you can't add in a music track or use pre-recorded audio. We're already thinking about what will get put into it next - it'll depend on what's easiest and quickest.

Are you still supporting the PC & Mac versions?
Of course! We're working on a new update to Moviestorm right now, which includes some performance enhancements and bug fixes.

The iPad app and the desktop app are two very different products, even though they're based on the same principles and technology. The iPad app is designed for quick, easy movie-making, or doing stuff when mobile, but it has its limitations. Moviestorm itself is for people who want to spend longer on their movies, or who want to do more complex things. We're hoping that some of the people who use the iPad app will want to do more with their movies, and will see what they can do with the desktop version: conversely, some of the people who found Moviestorm too complex will find that the iPad app does all they need, and for a much lower price.

What's coming out next?
A good question. That's a lot of different projects for a small team. We're currently reviewing all our options, and then we'll decide how to proceed. (And we're moving into a new office next week, so things are even more chaotic than usual.) Right now, the answer is we're not really sure yet. 

Hope that answers some of your questions. We'll keep you posted.

Swordfighting preview

It's been a long time in the works, involving a whole load of rewritten code in areas we didn't expect, and a complete new version of Moviestorm, but finally the sword fighting pack is ready for release. We're currently in the process of wrapping everything up, sending it to the server, and checking the download, and we'll have it for you some time next week, priced 2000 MSP.

The pack includes two characters, the swordsman and swordswoman, a collection of swords and shields, and a huge collection of animations. And, to recreate that authentic Ren Faire atmosphere, there's a medieval tent and flagpoles.

Here's a first look at what you can do and how to use it.



For best effect, combine it with the medieval packs from Moddingstorm, which include more costumes, hairstyles, beards, horses and a castle. They're available together as the Medieval Addon Collection, which saves you 25% over buying them individually.

Moviestorm 1.5.2 coming soon!

Over the next week, we’re hoping to bring you a new upgrade to Moviestorm called 1.5.2, which has a host of fixes and features that we hope will enhance your Moviestorm experience.
Firstly, we have found and fixed a few performance issues, which means that Moviestorm can be used harder and for longer. These improvements have affected the entire program, right from loading your movies to set design, right through directing, camerawork, the cutting room and publishing.
We’ve also added some extra functionality to the shadows, so that you can specify a 2048 shadow map or even a 4096 map (up from the original 1024), meaning sharper, more accurate shadows for those of you with supporting hardware. Also, there are a few user interface tweaks, that will help you find and edit your commands with greater ease.
Most notably, new characters don’t appear in the Dressing Room in their underwear anymore. While we originally thought that this was the ideal starting point when defining a character, we’ve had a few disapproving comments made about how inappropriate this was for our younger users. These costumes are still available, but the user has to consciously select them – default characters now appear in jeans and t-shirts.
Another little “tweak” that has been added is a “Centre View” command, so that if you get lost navigating around the virtual environment, you can quickly return to the centre of the stage. For seasoned Moviestormer’s we know this isn’t that great an issue, but we really think it will help users that are new to the program.
All in all, 1.5.2 will be more stable, more user friendly, and more robust than the previous version – and did I mention that the update will be coming next week?! Keep your eyes and ears peeled for a new message of the day in your launcher, and please let us know how you get on with 1.5.2!

Instant stills

Whenever we tell you about an upcoming release, there's always a small flurry of people who tell us they're putting their current projects on hold until the new version's out.  This time, it happened to me.

I was planning to shoot all the illustrations for the next volume of my series of filmmaking books this week. That usually involves taking about 150 images, of which maybe 60 or 70 get used. I generally do this by taking a full-screen screenshot of Moviestorm's camera view, then pasting it into Photoshop, and cropping out the area I need. It's a laborious task: even if each one only takes a few minutes, and even using macros, it all adds up. I generally allow 2-3 days to do it all.

Moviestorm 1.5 includes a new feature that's going to make a real difference to this process. In the camera view, there's now a screenshot button that exports a still. No more PRT-SCRN - flip to Photoshop - paste - save - flip back to Moviestorm every time I want an image. Just click, and the job's done. Even better, I won't have to suffer my PC running out of memory once I'm dealing with Photoshop files that have vast numbers of layers of high-def images. I reckon it's going to save me at least a day's work.

Climb every mountain

The latest news on the 1.5 is that it's now in the process of final checking.  We made some fixes over the weekend, and we're just giving those a last check. Assuming all's well, we'll have it wrapped up and shipped out to you guys by the end of the week.

Among the list of new features is the terrain editor, so you're no longer constrained to flat sets.  Here's a couple of very quick examples of what you can do with it.

Mac users lose control

If you're a Mac user, you'll like this. In the new release of 1.5 (which should be out very, very soon now) hotkeys now use the Command key instead of Control.

Copy CMD-C
Paste CMD-V
Undo CMD-Z
Redo CMD-Y
Save CMD-S

Windows users still use CTRL, of course.

Bombay taxi

If you've ever been to India, you'll instantly recognise this style of vehicle. Indian taxis are quite fun once you get used to the sheer terror of being driven around at high speed in heavy traffic, dodging potholes, overloaded motorcycles, pedestrians, buses, trucks, cows and elephants...  Another shot from the upcoming Indian pack.

Indian market

Here's a first look at the upcoming India pack.

New packs for 1.5

A very harried Amos told me earlier today that testing on 1.5 is going well, and we're aiming for a release date "very early in December".  He wouldn't commit himself any further than that, and there's only so much threatening I can do on your behalf from 5000 miles away.

He did, however, let slip that the long awaited sword fighting pack will be released "in time for Christmas", and that before that, there will be an "Indian pack" that's been ready to go for a while, just waiting on some code that's in the new release.  That will include some interior and exterior sets, plus a few costumes - acha hai!

I'll try to get the guys to snap a couple of screenshots of the new stuff when they're not so busy, and we'll post them for you here.

New content pack coming soon: 1AD

Here's an interesting new content pack that you'll find very useful for your historical projects, Middle Eastern re-enactments, or even a desert scene on a planet far, far away...

The pack contains a selection of earthenware style pots, a useful market stall that you can fill with your Moviestorm wares, plus a costume for both the male and female characters as you can see in the following video. Keep your eyes peeled for the release of 1AD over the next week.

Sniper rifle now released!

As promised in yesterday's blog post, we have just launched the new sniper rifle (plus variants and animations) which you can access through the Marketplace on the main site (here).

We're hoping to update the Bonus Content pack fairly regularly, as it gives us the opportunity to publish small items that may be a little too out-of-the-ordinary to warrant a full pack release.
If you already have a license for the previous object (the smart phone) then your AddOn will automatically update the next time that you start Moviestorm.

Lastly, these items are only available to paying subscribers, so please consider upgrading if you're using an obsolete version or if you're still on your trial!

Valentine's Day mayhem, continued

On Friday, we told you we were releasing the Valentine's Day pack in two stages.

"Unfortunately Ben, who's the mastermind for the patches, was taken ill and had to go home early before he could complete the patch creation process. Rather than have someone else take over part-way through, and risk screwing up what he'd already done, we opted to put the tested standalone version in the marketplace today, and let Ben complete the patching on Monday when he's recovered."

Of course, we assumed that Ben would be back on Monday. He's still unwell, so we're having to delay the release of the patch a little longer. In the meantime, you can still get the pack from the Marketplace.

Valentine's Day mayhem

We released the Valentine's pack today. Normally we don't release on Fridays, but since Valentine's Day is only ten days away, we figured we shouldn't wait till Monday.

You'll notice from the announcement on Moviestorm News that you can only get it from the Marketplace until Monday. if you fire up Moviestorm and hit Get More Content, it won't appear. This is because of the way we package the addons. We have to make two versions of each addon pack. One's a standalone version that goes into the marketplace so you can download the pack from the Web site. This was ready yesterday as planned.

Then we make a second version of the pack which is a patch update, so you can get this directly from Moviestorm without going to the Web site to purchase it. Unlike code updates, these get flagged as optional updates, so you only get them once you've got a license to the pack. The patch then has to get tested separately to make sure it shows up in the Moviestorm launcher and installs properly. We didn't manage to get to this bit yesterday, and were planning to do it today.

Unfortunately Ben, who's the mastermind for the patches, was taken ill and had to go home early before he could complete the patch creation process. Rather than have someone else take over part-way through, and risk screwing up what he'd already done, we opted to put the tested standalone version in the marketplace today, and let Ben complete the patching on Monday when he's recovered.

Sorry for the inconvenience & any confusion - however, this way at least you can get the pack now instead of waiting.

School days

The next pack in the works is a small pack of school uniforms and a few other classroom bits and pieces. We've recently been getting quite a lot of interest from schools wanting to use Moviestorm for a variety of reasons, and this is something that both teachers and students have asked for. (Note that we're not making child characters at this stage - it's more sixth form / 11th grade age.)

We're aiming to get this out in January.

Let's not fight about this...

A couple of weeks ago, we were planning to ship you the new swords pack in time for Christmas. Sadly, that's not going to happen. We're just in the process of wrapping up the 1.4.1.2 release, and the sword-fighting code didn't pass muster. There are a few bug fixes in 1.4.1.2 that we really want to get out as soon as we can, as they're causing some people real headaches. So, rather than delay everything else for that pack, we decided to ship 1.4.1.2 without the sword-fighting code, and we'll get it out to you after the holidays.

It's nearly there, though, and looking good. We've got a bunch of swords, a whole heap of fighting animations, and Chris made a couple of new swashbuckly costumes.

Julian's psychedelic sniperscope

Jules is a master of many puppets (or is that a pastor of many muppets?), and one of his minions is the Moviestorm post-processing filter system. When he gets a spare moment (ahahaha), he might actually have a rummage around and see what's missing in this rather awesome toolkit of image processing, and implement it. So here, from him to you, is an entirely new set of visual functions to apply to your movie, hardware allowing. In no particular order (ie alphabetical):

• Autotoon. Like Cel Shading, only as a post-process. It's not quite as crisp'n'dry as the real thing, but if you only want one or two clips rendered 'toon-stylee, this will help.
• Binoculars. Wow! It's like looking through binoculars. Sort of.
• Binoculars (night). As above, but with fancy and gratuitously expensive night-vision goggles, and Moviestorm gives you it for free!
• Distort. Like looking through an old window. Or alternatively the effect that piece of out-of-date blue cheese that was left in the fridge had on you.
• Emboss. Grey. With lines. Kinda like you saw in Photoshop, but probably utterly not quite similar.
• Fisheye. View the scene as if it were on either the inside or the outside of a sphere (choose via the presets). Is this how a fish sees the world? Ask Spongebob!
• Frost. Brrr! It's frosty here in the U of K. And this filter... well it's more like pressing your face up onto a piece of frosted glass. Though it might depend on which flavour of frosting you were thinking of.
• Gradient tint. Adds a coloured tint from the top of the screen down, which is all but gone by the half-way point. Could be good for dramatic skies or alien worlds. Three different flavours to sink your synaesthetic teeth into.
• Overexposed. Replaces your screen with a static image of Justin Bieber. No! Seriously, before you ask for your money back, I'm kidding. Zealously boosts the contrast. Like looking at the heart of a star with a telescope. Three different types of blinding supplied, retinal implants not included.
• Psychedelia. Can't quite classify this and it gets varying results. But there's quite a bit of black and a lot of coloured lines that are rather pleasing on the eye (presuming you have any left after checking out "overexposed").
• Radial blur. Like your scene was a watercolour and you span it whilst still drying. You wouldn't catch Cezanne doing that, mind, but perhaps that's all the more reason to try.
• Sniper. Indulge your fantasy of assassinating Justin Bieber by combining a sniper filter and an overexposed filter. What's that you say? Nasty Jules won't let you combine filters? And there is no Justin Bieber filter anyway? Feel free to make a movie about shooting Jules then.
• Sniper (night). As above, but with less chance of getting shot back, but much colder too. Let's face it, sniping should be a summer activity.

All of these images are 100% Moviestorm. No other programs or post-processing effects were used to create these screenshots.

So that's filters03 for you. A whopping 13 new effects to help you make the movie you always wanted to, and you can get your hands on them very, very soon. This week, if Father Jules thinks you've been good enough.

Halloween horror, 2010

We've done a Halloween pack for the last couple of years, mainly because Chris just loves all that kind of stuff. In 2008 we gave you a bunch of traditional trick or treat goodies, and in 2009 we gave you a huge selection of monsters.

This year, we're knocking the Photostorm Bones stuff into shape, updating it slightly, and adding in a couple of new bits, and we're going to get that out to you some time this week. If you've already got Bones, we've added Graveyard Grass, some silhouettes, and a less complicated animation for getting your characters to start in the grave, so that they can do the "rise from grave" thing properly.

Happy screaming!

The Moviestorm night shift

We're pulling out all the stops to get Moviestorm 1.4.1 to you as fast as possible. It definitely won't be today now but we're hoping that our super-secret stealth dev team will finish the job overnight so we can release it tomorrow morning.

Here they are in action, captured on our security cameras. I know we've never told you about them before, but apparently they just signed a kiss-and-tell book deal with HarperCollins so we're going to have to fire them anyway.