Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Discuss your creative projects: game development, writing, film making or any thing else, fantasy related or otherwise! Talk about art you like, display your own artwork or stories, or offer help and insight.
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Ameena
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Post by Ameena »

I tried making several dungeons, years back, but they all kind of fizzled out 'cause I'd get stuck trying to do certain mechanics, or just couldn't be arsed, or ended up doing other stuff. I'm fine with coming up with a million ideas for a really cool dungeon - I'm just not much good at actually building the bloody thing ;).
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Post by Chaos-Shaman »

yup, same here, but it's a steady accumulation of knowledge and info and has been a slow and difficult climb, these goat legs have kept sure footed and the top is right there, just a wee bit higher to go. not much oxygen up here. the easiest way to get to the top is to work with someone.

it will be fun when i check out the older incomplete dungeons, heh, and have a look at ealier attempts and for sure to get a laugh. it just might spark up a new idea, who knows. did you work with others, or was it a climb on your own Ameena?
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Post by Ameena »

I was doing it by myself - I think most dungeon designers are the same. I'm just not much good with editors once they get slightly complicated - I was using the RTC editor and just couldn't work out how to do some stuff, and was too lazy to look into it in any more detail than that. Mind you, when I first started creating dungeons, the proper editor didn't even exist and everything had to be done in text files! Then the graphical editor was created and things became easier but I still kept messing up the mechanics I was trying to make. But it's okay - I've helped other people with their dungeons, a bit. Well, sort of - I wrote the backstory for a couple of dungeons (though I don't think they were ever finished), and I also wrote all the hints for the latest version of Conflux :).
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Post by Chaos-Shaman »

wow, you're still plugging away at it. i am not that great of a story writter so i'd be the kinda person to be looking for that assistance. you did work on ConfluxIII, whoa, that's one hell of a dungeon! i didn't find working with the text that fun, so i never even got off the ground with that. the picture was a lot more clearer with the gui. a few years mucking around with it and then one day it just came to me as a vision. i think it may have been all those hours staring at the editor, who knows. i believe that's what will happen to anyone if they look at it long enough, it might be just around the corner for you. i do it because i simple love DM, always have, you could say i am hooked on it. i still believe it can become once again a great game for some. it depends on the person. i do not playing online against others, too many cheats and sore losers, i prefer to play a dungeon designed for one person only, being all the enjoyment of the game instead of who joins with who and how many credits you have and buying the way to the top, that's no fun. i'm not going to spend my GOR coin on that. awesome work Ameena. i may come to you in the future for some suggestions :)
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Post by Ameena »

Hehe well, I do like writing - that's certainly a fact. If I can somehow manage to make a permanent job out of it so I can ditch my current, crappy job that'd be absolutely fantastic. So far I've done a bit of online freelancing and have started up my own website (I made a post about the latter in the Creative Endeavour section about a week ago) but the hoped-for, idealistic conclusion is pretty much an "oh, it would be good if that would happen but pfft, probably not likely" thing.
I agree on not liking multiplayer competitive stuff. I do enjoy co-operative stuff, though. I played EQ for a few years back in the early 2000s before it went all crappy. Mostly I play stuff online with my partner, like Minecraft (we have our own server), which is fun :). My Internet connection isn't entirely reliable, though, so it's kind of frustrating when we try to play stuff and I keep lagging out :P. The ideal situation will be that either or both of us gets a new job so we can finally get our own place and have our computers in the same room on a wired connection (currently I'm wireless) and just play stuff all the time :D
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Post by Seriously Unserious »

Chaos-Shaman wrote:i think it may have been all those hours staring at the editor, who knows. i believe that's what will happen to anyone if they look at it long enough
I totally agree with you on that. Looking is the key to anything. It's so important, yet so underrated and it's all too common for people to not be doing this one simple little thing.
Ameena wrote:I do like writing - that's certainly a fact. If I can somehow manage to make a permanent job out of it so I can ditch my current, crappy job that'd be absolutely fantastic.
If you want to write, then write. Every chance you get, write, write for the personal enjoyment, write because you love doing it, and if someone thinks it good enough to pay you for it, great, if not, at least you're doing something you enjoy doing anyways, so you lose nothing. If you are not getting the change to write, then make the chance to write. Take control of writing and own it.

If you want to be a writer, then be a writer, do lots of writing, and have your writing and all that goes with it.

If you follow your dreams, take the actions necessary to achieve them, and have what you want to have, then go for it, you can do anything if you put your mind to it and do the steps it take to achieve it.

It all comes down to 3 simple words: be, do, have.

So just write, Ameena. I know you can do this. The question is, do you know you can do this?

BTW, if you ever start getting that self-doubting voice in your head telling you "I can't do this" or anything to that affect, just ignore it, that is not you thinking it, it's just fear thinking it, and fear is not you, you are you. :wink:
Last edited by Seriously Unserious on Tue Jun 04, 2013 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ameena »

Hmm, SU, you appear to have misattributed that first quote in your post - that was Chaos Shaman, not me ;).
And I'm sure that I'm capable of writing stuff. I'd love to be able to earn a living from it - that's the problem. I'm not earning anywhere near enough to get my own place right now - I'm spending half my wages just getting to work (£11 a day on train fare :P) and haven't yet (after over a year of properly looking) managed to find anything else. I started doing the freelance writing (through a site called Elance which I happened upon after having the brainwave of "duh why don't I see if there are writing jobs available since that's what I want to do" - a quick Google later and there it was) to see what I could get from that, but of course it's not reliable enough for me to ditch my current job. I don't have an Elance job on the go at the moment, but one of the people I've worked for should have something else for me soon (he seems to own about a million websites and has a number of other writers doing stuff for him, though I don't know how many).
But it would be so cool if I could end up writing the backstory for an RPG or something like that, or generally coming up with fluff details. I've always loved doing that kind of thing. That and writing guides for people to tell them how to do stuff. Gaming stuff, obviously ;). I came up with a whole world (well, more a country, really) and its rulers and a map and stuff for the Skype-based DnD game I was running for Wuffy a year or two ago. Wow, was it really that long ago...and I still know what the story was (roughly) gonna be. Just the main biggy plot points/Big Bad - in that kind of RPG you can't plan too closely because you don't know what the players are gonna do. Okay so I only had one player but the point still stands ;).
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

That was weird :o , I used the automatic quote feature, I'm not sure how it would have attributed a chaos-shaman quote to you :? , but I've fixed it.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Chaos-Shaman »

Ameena, i think you'll find what you want in time, everything takes some time. you could do one job that pays you well and still do the writting just for fun as a hobby, then if time allows you'll be able to do it as a job. i say follow your passion but don't count on it for money. do it for you, not for someone else. i grow vegetables for me and flowers for everyone else say as an example. you can always write stories for everyone here at the forum if you feel like being a super hero :) do i have first dibs...
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Post by Ameena »

If I could actually find a better-paying job, that'd be a start :P.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

is anyone hiring Murafu Makers? If so, you could always find work doing that. :P

Seriously though, a better paying job would definitely help, of course. Especially if it's also something you enjoy doing anyways, so that it doesn't really feel like work.
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Post by Ameena »

Yeah, that's the problem - I've been looking for a year and a half or thereabouts and I still haven't found anything. The area in which I live is pretty crap for jobs. Or at least, jobs that I think I can do/am vaguely interested in. And the ones I've applied for I've never got anywhere with because most people seem to just want people who have previous experience, and the only way I'm gonna get that is to have a job. But no-one will give me a job because I don't have any experience - it's the exact same problem I had trying to find a job in the first place. The only reason I got this job is because I'd been put on a course thing at the Job Centre, and part of that involved getting a work placement. Because one of my given interests was "books", they put me on the book department at a shop...and then it was about nine weeks of people telling me I was really good at it, etc (it's not exactly difficult, anyway :P), so basically I got a job without having to apply for it or really trying hard to be good at it. Now if only that would happen with my writing ;).
Basically, any job is gonna be better than the one I've got (for so many reasons)...well, I mean, as long as I vaguely enjoy it. I get maybe £350-ish a month, spend £11 a day, three days a week, on train fare (so roughly £110 a month), and give my parents £75 rent. That leaves, what, £100-ish for myself? If I had my own place there is no way I'd be able to afford living expenses or anything like that.
The freelancing stuff is cool but unfortunately it's hardly a guaranteed regular income - that's basically the only reason I'm still in my current job. I'm basically fed up with it, otherwise.
Hmm that probably looks like a bit of a rant, there, doesn't it? Well, it is kind of frustrating. I never wanted to work in a shop but the fact I'm in the Books department of this one at least makes it not so bad. Well, I shall just have to carry on writing stuff online and see if something happens, I suppose - I don't really know how else to go about getting such a job :P.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Ameena wrote:most people seem to just want people who have previous experience, and the only way I'm gonna get that is to have a job. But no-one will give me a job because I don't have any experience
I've been in that treadmill myself, so I can completely understand it. If you want to work professionally as a writer, a good starting place may be to go to a local college and study various writing techniques, from creative writing to professional business writing. You can to it part time at most colleges, at least in the Vancouver area most have part time options available so I'm assuming the ones in your area should too. There may also be financial aid options available to you as well, and you should ask about that and part time options at local colleges/universities in your area. You may also have a program where you get an internship placement part way through your program and that's one way to get some experience as well, since any company hiring for a student internship knows they're getting someone with little or no experience and accepts that.
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Post by Ameena »

The jobs I've been looking for locally aren't writing-based. That's just something I thought of and decided to go for online - there doesn't seem to be any call for writers (at least, not on any job site I've been checking on) in my area - I've been looking at basic office work and stuff like that.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Still, the college education will help with that. Plus, if the colleges where you like (in England?) have some form of student internships program like their Canadian counterparts do, then you should be able to go there, part time at first, while you keep your current job, and when it's time for your internship, you can then quit your current job or an office job and when you're done you should have both a diploma/degree and some experience, which may just give you the edge you need to get those good jobs that no one will even look at your for right now.
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Post by Ameena »

There are part-time courses and stuff that don't involve going to college. But the thing with college and stuff is that it costs a fair bit of money. And as mentioned, I'm not really earning a huge amount of that stuff right now ;).
In my experience, qualifications don't seem to mean much anyway - people just take on those who have past experience, ie those who've been working in that kind of thing before. Presumably they can't be arsed/can't afford to train up new people or something. It's kind of frustrating anyway :P.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by beowuuf »

I think it's just a case of exposure. Keep up trying to find writing gigs, even small ones that don't pan out as long as they aren't costing you more time/effort than they are worth, because who knows the sorts of contacts or opportunities you can get going forwards.

Also the 'doing backstories/stories' stuff is always good to build a body of work to point top later. You can also try to get in to writing for RPG stuff, or even just offering to playtest RPG stuff, though I'm not sure how difficult that is. You are certainly placed at least tangentially close to trying to find ways in there. And I guess just keep writing :) And editing - you produce a heck of a lot of text, I think it's also important to develop the ability to get some smaller, compelling chunks out in the internet. Your DM pieces are very in depth - a summary guide might be the hook you can shop around for your site.
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Post by Ameena »

Hehe yeah, I do write a lot, don't I? ;) Well, I tried to include a sort of summary-ish thing in the first post, giving a brief description of the idea behind the game - I think it was something along the lines of "you control a party of up to four characters going around the dungeon fighting monsters and stuff", but I might go back and have a look through and see if anything can be modified a bit. I think I was intending to start talking about each game with a brief description of what it's about, and then go into a sort of "mini newbie guide" thingy talking through how the gameplay works and stuff, just for the very beginning of the game so people unfamiliar with it can get an idea from the description and screenshots.
I've also got some other online writing stuff out there in the form of a couple of the Elance jobs I've done, though they're only about Minecraft. One is a newbie guide (though given the amount of even basic detail available in that game, it covers quite a number of posts ;)), while the other is just a complilation of world seeds. Hopefully I should be doing some more stuff soon but I dunno what'll be on offer just yet.
I've tried Googling for further creative-writing-related stuff but never seem to turn up anything new so I probably need to work out exactly what it is I need to search for in order to find something like that.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Zyx »

Ameena, sorry for not reading all the thread, but have you considered writing for webisodes (ie, The Guild?)
The industry is still young enough for you to have a chance to contact the people behind such stuff directly - try several channels and be persistent -... You know well the references and the niche, and there is some money and some demand there... Can you present a writing project in a structured way that allow to understand and judge it quickly ? (if not, learn to do it! ^ ^)
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Post by Ameena »

I've never heard of "webisodes" before. I'm guessing it's some kind of ongoing, online story of some kind where you post up a chapter a day or whatever. I'll have to look it up later when I have a bit more time :).
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by beowuuf »

It's literally just shows on the web. You have major studios release content web only mini-content for short burst in the run up to shows (Doctor Who will do this, as did BSG and Lost in the past), some stars make their own TV shows online too for creative control, but basically just anyone can do shows.

Funnily, I'm just listening to the podcast of a canadian comedy troop called LoadingReadyRun (.com) who do a varienty of web shows, who have just finished saying they don't mind fan contributions.


Speaking of web poeple, actually you might find that web comics are an interesting area too. While some people have cool writing ideas and want people to make art, surprisingly you also find that there are artists who love doing strips but struggle with the grind of the strip writing itself.

I watch a web reality show called strip search, and on the panel about four or five of the artists - when asked what they would want someone to do - was do the writing. And these were people with established comics!

So there is always that idea that if you are prolific in ideas yet can also edit down to a comic format (and you yourself started doing that ages ago with DM characters and that comic) you might find an artist.


It really is lucking on the niches, hanging on in there, and just persevering if you are driven to do it.
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Post by Ameena »

Ah cool...I think it's just a matter of knowing what to Google in order to find these kinds of things - I'm sure you've noticed I can churn out a whole load of ideas given just one or two little things to start with (eg the Dungeon Dwellers thread) ;). I jut don't tend to do much with said ideas once I have them. I think it's like a pet cat who catches a mouse - they'll have fun chasing it and then catch it, but then the fun's over once that's done so they might bat it around a bit but then go off and do something else (like find another mouse). I can't normally be arsed to actually create a thing...I mean, do a load of art (which I'm not really amazingly good at anyway) or build a game level or whatever. For me the fun is in generating a load of ideas - if someone else then makes something really cool out of those ideas, that's cool :). Well, I mean, as long as they don't try and steal the credit for coming up with said ideas in the first place.
I might have a poke around on Google or something in a bit to see what I can find. If I can turn up something good, like someone wanting a person who can come up with ideas, I don't think I'll need to put any pretense into sounding enthusiastic about wanting to do something like that for them ;).
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by beowuuf »

Ideas are, indeed, wonderfully shiny. Being an ideas machine is cool and necessary, but lost of creative people have enough to be going on with. It's both the ability to come up with a ton of ideas but also be able to knuckle down and do something with them that is valuable.

You just need to find someone who needs a ton of small ideas for their big ideas and some support, or more likely you need to tighten up your realisation skills, knowing you can more than hold your own with creative input to a project. After all, a lot of collaboration and editing is not being so wedded to one idea, but being able to move on quickly and come up with new/different ideas if something isn't working.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Beowuuf, you present some good ideas for getting one's foot in the door, so to speak.
Ameena wrote:There are part-time courses and stuff that don't involve going to college. But the thing with college and stuff is that it costs a fair bit of money. And as mentioned, I'm not really earning a huge amount of that stuff right now ;).
I can totally understand that. I was in a similar position back in 2004, in and out of work, and when I was working, it was as a labourer for a temp labour company, for minimum wage, and when I was out of work, it was because of an injury. I wanted to go to college but was afraid I would fail, and had no money, so I thought I would never be able to afford it. The 2nd problem was resolve when I found out what financial aid options were available to me to get me through college, and the first was resolved when I just took that leap and enrolled in 3 college courses in January of 2005. My final grades killed off any fears of failure, emphatically. they were A+, A and A-, about the highest grades you can get.

If you really do want to advance your education, you can start with talking to people at your local college(s) and find out what financial aid options are available to you. Then find out what types of student internship programs they have so you can also get experience. Finally, once you have gotten that nailed down, so you know you can fund your education, and can pick up some valuable experience, enroll in a class, apply yourself to it, and, since I know you are a smart person, you will do well in it if you really want to and are willing to put the effort into it.

Same goes for the ideas Beowuuf presented to you. If you are willing to put in the effort, do your research and find out who needs what, then do some samples of the type of work you can do, you know, build up a portfolio, you can certainly make it. You just need to believe in yourself, do the work you need to do to make happen what you want to happen, and overall, find ways to make it work. It's your life, Ameena, own it, and make it what you want it to be. Don't accept mediocrity or failure. Certainly learn from them, but use them to grow stronger and better, and as stepping stones on your way to getting what you want.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Ameena »

Well, I'll certainly be keeping on with my website, and doing more Elance jobs and stuff. Hopefully I'll eventually manage to attract some kind of attention and someone will hire me on a more permanent basis. I might stick a load of my already-existing writing up on my site, to expand my visible work and stuff. And meanwhile I'll keep looking around and see what I can find and stuff :).
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

I'll be rooting for you.

When you want something to happen, the best way to get it to happen is to make it happen. ;)
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Chaos-Shaman »

Ameena wrote:There are part-time courses and stuff that don't involve going to college. But the thing with college and stuff is that it costs a fair bit of money. And as mentioned, I'm not really earning a huge amount of that stuff right now ;).
In my experience, qualifications don't seem to mean much anyway - people just take on those who have past experience, ie those who've been working in that kind of thing before. Presumably they can't be arsed/can't afford to train up new people or something. It's kind of frustrating anyway :P.
some people just make up a history, get the job using a little white lie, yeah, more than some do it, but do not do it unless you are that good, so we don't always need our grade 12 is what i'm saying, just tell them you're good at it, writing or what have you
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Ameena »

I'm not entirely sure what you mean there, CS - I have absolutely no intention of lying about myself (or anything else, for that matter) to get a job. I was saying that qualifications never seem to come up in job adverts - so even if I had a degree or something, as far as I can tell it doesn't seem to make much (if any) difference because everywhere seems to only look at past experience and if you don't have any, they're not interested. Catch-22 :P.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Seriously Unserious »

I do see a lot of that, looking for past experience, but I also see most employee seekers also posting minimum education requirements and/or a set of skills requirements in addition to experience requirements. If you do your homework, you should be able to find someone who's hiring and who's posting they experience is not needed.

If you see something like 2 - 4 years experience an asset, that that really means is we'd prefer to hire someone with between 2 and 4 years of experience but will still consider applicants who don't have that much experience too. So in that case, even if you don't meet their experience requirements you still have a shot at it. In fact, in many cases when someone's hiring, they'll list the requirements of the ideal candidate, but don't necessarily expect to get the ideal candidate so may still consider you if your education and skills match what they're looking for better then those with some experience but don't meet the skills. Also, if you can show better soft skills, the interpersonal skills and ethics, you can actually be seen as a more attractive candidate who has experience but does not have those "soft skills." Maybe the person's rude, or has a history of lying or cheating or something.

Unfortunately many employers don't always know the difference between advertising a requirement as being essential to doing the job or one that would be nice to have but we could do without. Another thing to consider, if a job posing as excessively strict requirements, the employer may find him/herself getting a shortage of applicants, so it can still be worthwhile sending in an application anyways, if they're not getting many applicants, they may have to consider less then ideal candidates from what they do have available and hope there's a "diamond in the rough" among these candidates.
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Re: Creative Projects for Pleasure & Profit

Post by Ameena »

Hehe, unfortunately there is a bit of a general unemployment problem in the UK as far as I'm aware - I don't think anywhere is short of applicants, as far as I can tell :P. And most people who're asking for previous experience (ie, pretty much everyone I seem to look at) tend to list it as something that's "required". There's not really masses of stuff available in my area, anyway - I have a few job sites I check regularly and it's always the same kind of stuff coming up. This is the problem I had before, when I was signed on. Then I (eventually, after a year) got put on the course which led to my getting my current job, which I didn't have to apply for or anything. I'd never planned or intended to work in retail - it's just 'cause I listed "books" as one of my areas of interest that they put me in the book department of a shop.
I think it's just a matter of keeping at it, with the job searches and with the online stuff, and eventually (hopefully) something will happen.
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