Talea Studios Update 07/15/2017: A VR Game!!

It's been a very long time since I've done one of these updates.  Enough waiting!

My brothers and I-- with the help of my sister-in-laws, and encouragement from the nieces, nephew, and our parents--we're putting together a VR game, and we're making pretty good progress.  I'm the music supervisor/person thingy.  I should come up with a fancy title . . . nah.

I've been working on the music, and it's been a fun journey thus far.  The last song I started working on the family didn't like, and it got scrapped.  Really, it wasn't worth saving, and back to the drawing board I went.  Today the family is coming over for a meeting, and I'll play for them what I've been cooking up thus far to get yays or nays.  So far the people who've heard this have really liked it, so right direction, hopefully.  And now I'm going through sounds to layer and shape the song.

And that's all I'll say for now!!

The door just opened and I hear nieces and the nephew!  Must go say hi and show the kiddies the board game I bought to play with them.  They love board games.

Love those kids!

Until next time!!!

Cerulean Jade Update: March 14, 2013

 We've ran into some issues with the "Done With Gravity" music video, in terms of the effects in the scenes, and my relationship to them.  We wanted to zoom in and circle around the ship, only thing is we never video taped myself performing at those angles.  Steven's solution?  3D model!  So Steven made a 3D model of me to put in the ship.  Really cool :0)

 As Steven and Robbie finish scenes, they take the story board they did a video too, and import the finished scene into the mix of unfinished segments.  Watching where it's at now is very interesting; fully fleshed movement mixed with stagnant simple line drawings.  The finished aspects of the video are amazing!  Far better then I even imagined.  And the world Steven modeled is So Cool!  We've got to use it again in another project.

 Robbie working on some scenes.

 My brothers will be the true stars when the video is finished.  What they're putting together is amazing.

Cerulean Jade Update: March 4, 2013

 

The filming portion of the music video, Done With Gravity, is now officially finished!  I was quite nervous about it, but it all went nicely.  I didn't even get the outfit until last weekend, when we finished shooting the video.  Since there is a space theme/futuristic aspect to the world we've created, we didn't want anything too modern, and yet too alien, for the shoot.  Luckily the top I found we got at Papaya for a super reasonable price; that was the first place we looked, and knew we couldn't find anything better.  The earrings, which my Aunt Tam found in the same store, was only $2 and matched perfectly.  Super, super lucky.

 Our fearless leader!  Robbie the director after the shoot.

All we got left are a couple more special effect scenes and getting the song polished in the mastering stage.  So close!

Cerulean Jade Update: 2/25/2013

We are so close to finishing the music video to "Done With Gravity"!  I'm biting at the bit to see it finished.  Pictured above is what the cockpit to the spaceship looks like.  It's a little Tron-esq.  I haven't seen what it will look like when I'm placed inside.  Robbie's working on it.  I just hope it works out!  When he was directing me during the filming he told me where to place my hands, and I had to imagine the spot.  A little nervous to see this bit come together.  Fingers crossed!

Below is an example of what the pit looks like in computer model form.

 

Not nearly as exciting, but it shows the process.

 On February 10th I stumbled upon my Chinese Zodiac, and had a little bit of a laugh over it. It said:

"One of your dearest projects will be delayed. Don't blame the whole world for it. Remain patient and, above all, refrain from spreading yourself too thin; everything will come in time. Water down your conversations if you want to improve your social or family relationships. Your temperament will push you to committing food excesses; this may result in some nervous tensions or an increase in weight. If you want to be loved, just love -- sincerely and wholeheartedly."

Of course that was the week of Valentines, and the whole "committing food excesses" totally happened . . . discovering a fantastic new cupcake place doesn't help.  

We have a goal date in mind when we want to release the music video with an MP3 of Done With Gravity, which will be available for download.  The date is really soon, but I'm not ready to announce it quite yet :0)

Sarah

 

Cerulean Jade Update 01-24-2013

 I haven't had an update for a while!

 Our next song and music video, Done With Gravity, is coming along nicely.  We've done our first set of videotaping, and Robbie's been working with the video recordings in one of those fancy computer programs of his.  For the record all computer programs are fancy . . .

 Steven's been modeling a working 3D digital city, which looks amazing.  He's got some texturing left, but this stage is almost finished.  I can't wait to see how this works into the music video.  What's even cooler is that he can move around the buildings, zooming in and out at different angles.

I'm getting more and more excited about sharing this video with everyone.

Cerulean Jade Update 12-17-2012

(Robbie story-boarding the latest Cerulean Jade Music Video, 

and showing off some mad art skills.)

So the music video has just blown up . . . as in, it just got super complex.

We were sitting at our planning table, Robbie, Steven and I, talking about the video and what needs to be done.  They were discussing shots and effects, and I was sitting there wide-eyed.  "I don't think we should do the jet-pack, it will be too complex.  Let's stick with the spaceship." "No, I think the jet-pack will work." "I think the spaceship is better." "But I really like the jet-pack." Meanwhile I was sitting there, trying to figure out how either effect would work, and coming up with nothing.  A little later, "You know that shot where the buildings are chasing her, I think that has to go." Wait, did I hear that right?

Robbie has been working on the storyboards, listening to the song on loop, and drawing pictures of what he imagines.  He scanned the pictures, digitally cut them up, and in after-effects he created a story-board music video, so I was able to visually watch what my brothers are planning.  Let's just say if they can pull it off, it's going to be Awesome!!  Of course I have my doubts, and I expressed that to Robbie.  All he said was, "Trust me, we can do this."  His optimism is great.  This morning I saw Steven working on the 3D model for the spaceship, and it's looking nice.

On another note, completely unrelated to C-Jade, I discovered something new about blogger.  I've been uploading pictures from my phone to Google+, which is where blogger stores the pictures even if you upload from the computer.  The folder my phone pics were going into got full, so I deleted some images.  Well, turns out if you delete a photo off Google+ that's tied to the blog, that photo on the blog gets deleted as well.  So now I have 11 blog posts with photos to dig up and fix.  Ahhh!!!  And I've used one gig out of five free gigs, which means it would be wise if I lower the image resolution of my pictures, so they don't take up so much space.  Learning the hard way!!  At least I didn't erase large albums.  That would have really messed me up!

I hope I'm still getting that jet-pack . . .

Cerulean Jade Update 12-10-2012

I need to find some way to refer to the songs I'm working on, so that it's not so confusing, especially when two or three songs are being worked on at the same time, and I haven't announced the songs name yet.  "This song or That song" can only go so far, so I've come up with a system.

OCJS stands for Original Cerulean Jade Song.  OCJS #1 is actually Dream Maze, which came out earlier this year.  The current electronic/synth/VSTI song we're working on will go by OCJS #2, until that songs title is revealed.  Can't give it away yet!  What's the fun in that? And OCJS #3 is a more acoustic guitalele/drums/piano in a more jazz pop style.  I have a few jazz songs I've written, but the other songs must have a full on jazz band with good ol' swinging style, but OCJS #3 can lend itself to simplicity.  Confused yet?

On Cyber Monday we picked up a drum VSTI kit!  We've been needing good drum sounds, and it's been fun playing around with it.  Sweetwater.com had great sales that day, so we picked up the Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 by Crossgrade EZdrummer.  We've been quite pleased with it, and Sweet Water's customer service has been impressive. 

(Steven playing with the drum pad we also picked up on Cyber Monday)

I'm a little nervous about OCJS #2, in that we're taking some risks musically.  There's some real quirk there!  I think it's fun, and I'm loving the songs direction.  But honestly, Steven and I can't quite figure out it's genre.  It's not Imogen Heap, Lights, or Owl City, which is good.  And I really like the songs message.  This ain't no love song!  I really don't like writing love songs, though OCJS #3 might be considered one . . .

(Edit 12-10-2012 12:16 pm MST.  Steven and I were working on the song just now, figuring out timing issues, adding and taking away instruments, etc, and it's sounding really cool.  My excitement is just growing and growing.)

And talking about OCJS #3, the original goal was to try and get that song out by the end of the month with #2, but with trying to do a full Music Video, it would be wise to wait till January.  We've decided to release a new original vocal song each month next year, along with instrumentals that will accompany the single releases here or there.  And by the end of next year we hope to have enough songs to make a full album compilation!

We're still experimenting and playing around with sounds, but we're having a lot of fun in the process.

Now to go and work on some music!

Sarah  

Cerulean Jade Update 11-12-2012

(What I'm using to practice the cover song "Living in the Moment")

"The Greatest Barrier to Success is the Fear of Failure"

~ Sven Goran Eriksson

I don't think this is the first time I'm admitting this, but I'm the type of person who is held back from fear.  It suffocates and overwhelms me sometimes.  And it really shook me last week when Steven said, "You've got to stop being afraid of everything!"  And I am afraid of everything.  The dementors in life dement. 

It's embarrassing to admit these things, but I am so far from perfect it's ridiculous, but this life wouldn't be worth living if we were perfect.  It would get pretty boring fast.

The song I've been working on with Steven gets into this a little, and I've been switching in and out lyrics.  It's making the song better, and we're enjoying the process.  And I've seen some of the stuff Steven and Robbie are working on with the music video.  It's super fun and creative with the way they're playing with effects.  And Steven had me pick out a spaceship outline.  That was fun!  It will be exciting to see all this come together.  

And this whole fear thing, I'm working on it.  Overcoming weaknesses is a process of patience, understanding, and love.  It's not something that happens overnight, but it gets better each day that passes.

Sarah

Cerulean Jade Update 11-05-2012

(Doing some Green Screen testing for the music video)

The major piece of news is that Steven, my brother Robbie, and I are working on a music video for an original song Steven and I are writing; the song is in the fun electric pop style we've used in "Payphone" and "Someone Like you."  We're still developing music video ideas, but we've been experimenting, and the effects we're working on are really cool.  Naturally I'm a little biased :0)  But I'm excited with what we're working on.  Green screen = many fun opportunities.  Our goal is to have the song released on an EP (with another original song, karaoke tracks, and a couple instrumental songs) no later then the middle of next month.  So much to do in such a short amount of time!!  But it's exciting.

And I'm still working on the Jason Mraz song, "Living in the Moment," on the guitalele.  That's coming soon.

Steven and I learned a lot this week along with my brother Robbie.  We were going to do a movie review series.  We did a trial run with the Tinker Bell movie, and were working on doing Wreck-It Ralph.  The problem was that in order for us to produce a quality Youtube video series, it would take 3-4 days out of the week to put it together; it was taking time away from what was most important to us.  Music and the possibility of making cool videos.  So after a week going down the wrong path, we turned ourselves around.  There's still a possibility of having a movie review show in the future, but at this time it's not right.  Ah!  At least we lost only a week and not more.  But now we're focused and enjoying the work.

Sarah

Cerulean Jade Update 10-23-2012

(An old picture of Steven working on Dream Maze)

I hope everyone has had a chance to hear Steven and my cover song "Someone Like You" on Youtube; we're so close to getting 200 views.  I can't remember how fast it took "Payphone" to hit that mark, but Payphone is inching closer to 1,000.  That's exciting!

We've decided that our next major song is going to be original, complete with a snazzy music video.  We're hoping to have two original songs out by the end of the year.  The first, an Electric Pop style song, is a definite.  The second is a more jazz/pop like song I wrote a little while back that just happens to be my Grandma's favorite song I've written.  The second is going to be interesting, because even though there's a jazz influence, we're going to have the base of the arrangement be the guitalele/ukalele.  Thing is, these are new instruments to the both of us!  So I'm working through the chords now.

And to help me get comfortable with the guitalele I'm doing a Jason Mraz cover song to "Living in the Moment."  I picked that song for two reasons: one, it helps me learn the instrument, and two, the lyrics are helping me stay focused!  It's a great song.

Also, Steven, Robbie (my brother who just got home from his mission), and I are going to start a movie review web series!  We're all obsessed with going to, and then analyzing, movies.  My brother Robbie is getting his degree in Digital Media: T.V. and Film from UVU.  Steven got his degree in Digital Media: Gaming and Animation.  So movies are something we're all passionate about.  It's going to be a lot of fun.  

Sarah

Cerulean Jade Update: 10-06-2012

(Image Info)

As the Cover song "Someone Like You" from Adele goes, the plan is to record it this Monday.  During the progress of the Studio my family has been working on, the music room suddenly got switched up as well.  Needless to say, we're putting it back together again, but the new layout is more efficient.  The end is near!!!  What should have taken a month has taken two, because of unforseen things that have popped up, and so forth, but it's all coming together :0)

Yesterday we picked up a Guitalele from layaway at Bert Murdock Music.  What is a Guitalele?  It's 1/4 the size of a guitar (they're so small when you compare the sizes) and is a cross between and guitar and a Ukalele.  A Guitalele is played with nylon strings, so it's more similar to a classical guitar then a steal, and sounds similar to a lute.  I love it!  

Yamaha invented it back in 1997, so it's a really new instrument.  The sound and tone of the Guitalele GL-1 is really nice.  You have to rethink the chords (it's a Perfect 4th up from the Guitar, as if you're playing the guitar on the 5th fret, but it's not that bad).  And it's perfect for my small hands . . . and it's only $100.  Super great price for a great instrument.  

A video of a Guitalele being played.

A video of what a lute sounds like.

Not the same, of course, but it's fun.

Have a great day!!     

Sarah

Cerulean Jade Update: 09-29-2012

I took the above picture a couple weeks ago.  It's of the Payphone cover song Steven and I did, and I still find this hilarious.  666 views with 13 likes?  Crazy.

Our next cover song "Someone like you" from Adele is on track.  Steven's finished arranging the chorus and verses, and has the bridge left, which is super close.  Our goal is to record early next week, which means the song will be online by the end of the week, at the latest!!  We've decided the video is going to be super simple, as in I'm going to sing the song in one take with myself singing to the camera.  Good ol' non-complicated cover style.  The effect will be an emotionally raw video, which works well with the song . . . and the fact that it will help us get the song up sooner is a plus!

Steven and I have also discussed putting up the instrumental/karaoke videos of the songs we do.  So we'll soon be getting the instrumentals of our original song "Dream Maze," and cover songs "Payphone" and "Someone like you" up as well, so you can hear Steven's amazing arrangements :0)

More fun stuff in the works!  And our studio is soooooooooo close to finishing!!  Carpet in, electrical almost done, etc.  I can't wait to play with the green screen.

Sarah