Hi! here is something different form the usual short story posts. This is a render I created of the planet Tenal.

Why renders, all of a sudden? It boils down to time, and intention.

I don’t have enough time, and my intention has always been to bring the Nol Galaxy to life through stories and art.

I love writing stories, but it takes a lot of time to write a story, edit, edit, edit, and finally post it. For a while, I fell into the idea that I had to keep writing as much as possible, as fast as possible. I wanted to post a new story every week, and when that didn’t work out, every two weeks, and then once a month, but even that was difficult.

It’s not easy to write stories that I am fully satisfied with under such a time crunch, and then added on to the fact that I work a full time job as well. The speed and consistency required for such strict turn around times, is just not feasible for me right now. I have even less time to create the illustrations.

In addition, I never felt like I was truly bringing Nol to life. I was proud of my illustrations, but they felt flat. I kept feeling like I was missing something, until finally I went back to my roots with working in 3D.

Working with 3D software like Blender was something I did through out high school and college. I was passionate about it, until other things began to take up more of my time. My computer also kept crashing every time I opened the software, so I kind of gave up on any 3D work for like two years. Then all of a sudden, the thought arose in my mind: ‘what better way to make Nol real, than to actually make it.’ And so I decided to challenge myself with making this no name planet (now Tenal).

I got help fixing my computer (it was apparently faulty RAM Sticks), and I found some great resources on Blendermarket.com. All that combined with some more PC upgrades, and I was ready to dive right into it. This video was the result, and more are coming.

It’s not been easy, my skills are rusty to say the least, but the process has been fun, and I feel less pressure to force myself to write. Oddly enough, that has made the writing easier. I’m now going to be writing shorter Flash Fiction pieces, while taking the time to really flesh out and craft my other longer stories.

As we enter into the new year, I look forward to this new direction I’m taking. I don’t have a have an audience, nor any consistent readers, but I grateful to anyone who may have stumbled upon this and read all the way to here. Thank you!