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     PITCHERBLACKER.COM NEWS ARCHIVES
October to December 2006

     December 12th, 2006
Eurogamer revisits BUTCHER BAY
Ah, it's Steal News From VX Day again... my favorite! JSVineyard over on the forums spotted this article on Eurogamer (scroll down to #3) where a few of their staff discuss how BUTCHER BAY fares today compared to back when it first came out.
How well has it aged?
Given how new some of the techniques Starbreeze used at the time, very well. Buzzwords like 'Normal Mapping' are now well and truly part of the gaming lexicon, and as a result the environments still look fantastic, with excellent lighting and some decent character modeling going on. It's a real shame we can't see it in its full glory on 360 yet, but we'd happily play through it again once Microsoft's BC boys work their magic.
That would be cool if MS added 360 compatibility. One thing... the article comments that the game didn't do well, but I'm not sure I believe that this is accurate. Anyway, gg once again, Starbreeze.

     December 11th, 2006
Kyra Pistol Replica on Ebay
Here's an auction for an interesting looking prop replica of the pistol Kyra uses during the Crematoria escape. This is by the same replica prop maker who has put up replicas of Kyra's scissor knife and Riddick's Crematoria bootknife before, and I've heard good things from people that have bought his stuff. Take a close look at the pics and see if this is the replica for you.



     December 10th, 2006
Got $1600?
Then you can have a nicely framed set of stunt swingblades from the movie. The Propstore strikes again!



Site-related stuff
Well, it's Sunday night and my PC time is over. I've got quite a bit of great news to post, including ANOTHER fan film that I had never heard of, that has a very long trailer available. Got a few emails from people over the weekend that I need to answer too, plus a lot more stills from the latest Fernando Dominguez film. Stay tuned, I'll get it all up this week come hell or high water.

     December 7th, 2006
Fernan-snow Dominguez photo
Currently too lame/busy for a full post, but check this... here's a Butcher Bay Memories costume test photo. Sweet!



     December 3rd, 2006
Fernando Dominguez' Butcher Bay short film has a name
Got the word from the man that Butcher Bay Memories is in preproduction. In fact, here's all the words:
I´ve sculpted new goggles, the screen correct grips for the blades, the breather that Riddick wears on the back in Crematoria, I´m at this moment with the Costume that he wears at the intro sequence of BB in the snow before he kills the Urzo monster.

New pics of all the props coming soon, promise!
And I'll be posting the prop pics I already have but haven't gotten up soon, promise!

Official RIDDICK'S REDEMPTION site
Fernando Dominguez has put together a great personal site to house "his shows, exhibitions, shortfilms, pictures." There you can get information and pics on his fitness competitions, comment on individual updates, and download RIDDICK's REDEMPTION directly (40 MB avi).

What's new with the Starbreeze guys
Spotted some activity on the blogs and personal sites of the various game developers from Starbreeze, the company that made BUTCHER BAY and is working on THE DARKNESS now, so I figured I'd do a roundup: Back on track
Another Grand Canyon hike out of the way, so I can ease back on my training a bit and hopefully be online working more now. Sorry for the downtime... plenty of content to come, it's just a matter of time and focus.
     November 21st, 2006
Riddick's Redemption on YouTube!
It's out! Click here. More soon.


     November 17th, 2006
Russian Riddick DVD set
There's a new Russian DVD release of TCOR/ Pitchblack. Make sure you download the Ruski-dubbed MP3s of the dialogue. In some cases you can hear the original actors underneath! It's even funkier than some of the dubs done for Das Boot.

Update by Peter
     November 14th, 2006
Cool props on Ebay, but $800?
Well, I guess I shouldn't think that's all that relevant since people have been buying up multi-thousand dollar costumers for years now. But anyway, there's a single lot of TCOR props up in this auction on Ebay that includes a Crematoria maulstick, business cards, a parking pass, and some other odds and ends from the production company that are a little hard to make out.



Update: I talked with the seller who says the auction also includes a Riddick bottle opener, that was a gift from the production manager. Hah!

     November 13th, 2006
Patrick Tatopoulos Concept art
A few years back I had posted about some Riddick concept art done for the film by Patrick Tatopoulos, a famed designer who has worked on some pretty cool stuff (STARGATE) and some pretty dire ones too (VAN HELSING). While perusing the his revamped sites I noticed that he has put up a few new images, including an unused Necromonger design and a concept for the boneyard in PITCH BLACK. Hit the site for larger versions (click the link, click on the top image with the house, wait for the intro to play, then click PROJECTS, CONCEPTUAL DESIGN, and RIDDICK, or CREATURE DESIGN and PITCH BLACK).



     November 11th, 2006
TCOR Concept art
Found some pretty sweet character concept art of Dame and Lord Vaako (or 'The Vaakos', as I call them when I introduce them at cocktail parties) done for TCOR by a guy named Anthony Francisco, who must have been hired as a freelance designer during preproduction. You can see a bunch of samples of his work here (select Anthony from the dropdown menu then click GO), and the Riddick specific shots are as follows: Dame 1 - Dame 2 - Lord.



     October 31st, 2006
RIDDICK'S REDEMPTION almost done!
Got some great news from Fernando Dominguez, Riddick replica/filmmaker/VX forum board taunter... his Riddick movie is almost done. Here are the words from the man himself:
Just a few lines to tell you that the final cut is nearly finished , It took longer than excpected because my buddy and co-editor Wilson had some bodybuilding events and he has all the material at home I depend on him , so I had to wait. Now we`re back again and working hard! Next step is to create own website so everybody can download directly from there !
I'm really looking forward to his movie being done, and not only because he's planning on doing a Butcher Bay related one next, heh.



     October 28th, 2006
New pics, plus large old ones, from RIDDICK'S REDEMPTION
Man, I'm lame. I've had some cool new shots from Fernando Dominguez's upcoming Riddick short film Riddick's Redemption for a long time now and am only getting around to posting them now. Anyway, here are some shots showing the effects coloring that they're adding to give the appearance of an alien planet's atmosphere. Click the links for larger images.



Oh, and since I'm now the Dark God of Bandwidth, I can upload some of the older shots in their original huge-rez glory. Here's a couple:



Fall fund drive at vinXperience
Those of you who can't live without your Vin news served fresh and often should note that premiere Vin Diesel fansite VinXperience is having a donation drive to round up funds to continue to operate that monster of a messageboard, with it's entire internet's worth of animated smileys and massive sig images. Help keep the cyberdrool flowing, donate!

Butcher Bay writer comments on Gears of War
Spotted a new entry in Mikael Säker's blog, this one commenting about the writing in two recent Gears of War trailers. Considering that this title will be the biggest launch for the Xbox360 and maybe even for the original Xbox, it's safe to say that Microsoft funded death squads are en route to Sweden as we speak.
Jeeeeeeziz! Here they cross every single line of decency. In a few seconds, the trailer tips over from "just tasteless" to "sickenly hilarious"... And it tips bigtime... Titanic-style!
Also kind of interesting is that John Wallin Liberto, who worked on Butcher Bay, also worked on Gears of War.

More DragonCon Necromonger pics
As I was idly surfing Flickr the other day for new Industrial Decay photos, I spotted a bunch more pics from DragonCon of guys in Necromonger costumes posting for photos. Pretty fun stuff.



In addition to Necro v Blade and Necro v Beaker, there are some Necro v Schoolgirl and Necro v Girl in Stormtroopers Outfit that are worth checking out too. Here are a bunch of links.



     October 19th, 2006
Another BUTCHER BAY 2 hint?
So, one of the Starbreeze artists named Mattias Snygg has personal site, which has a wide variety of his fantastic artwork. Maybe it's just me, but this is the only place I've seen that indicates that Starbreeze has anything other than The Darkness under development... take a look at this quote:
Employed by video game developer Starbreeze AB as concept artist. Currently working on a video game adaptation of the Top Cow comic book "The Darkness" (publisher 2K Games). Also working on concepts for a new title to be published by Vivendi Universal Games.
Vivendi published BUTCHER BAY. Starbreeze developed it. 2+2. We'll see.

TCOR HD-DVD review at DVDFile
Interesting... DVD File has a review of the HD version of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, and it appears that Universal finally put the extras from the Best Buy bonus disk on an official movie DVD. Nice. Anyway, the disk looks and sounds great. Try not to crap yourself in amazement.
On one level, The Chronicles of Riddick is a tad absurd, but it doesn’t make the mistake of aspiring to self-importance. The cast and filmmakers know that this is intended to be a snack-munching movie that dazzles with visuals and sounds and should be enjoyed strictly as entertainment. It sports a wonderful high definition transfer, a thunderously aggressive audio track, and the supplements are not bad either. This is a disk that you can enjoy and then use as a great HD demo disc for friends and family who are still making due with standard definition. Recommended.
     October 17th, 2006
Farewell to Kriszta at VinXperience
Kriszta, the driving force behind the astonishingly well-done series of sites centered around VinXperience, has decide d to hang up her keyboard (I'm assuming here that she'll continue the use of her fingers, but maybe it's the other way around) and head off to the Real World. Not the TV show, I mean she got a job. Anyway, you can check out her farewell message and say goodbye yourself in the forum thread here.

The site will continue under the auspices of 'new webmissy' Janine, so presumably I'll still be able to steal the best news items I am able to post on PitcherBlacker from her. Hurrah!

BUTCHER BAY machinima... it exists!
To celebrate Kriszta's leaving, I'm of course going to steal another news item off her site. Annie, one of the VX forum moderators, posted this thread that points to the website for Vin's game company Tigon Studios. Click GAMES, then RIDDICK, and up will come an interface with a box off to the right that says ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY: The Movie.



Select a chapter and one of three shockwave flash movies at 234x136 resolution will play wherein the most relevant pieces of the game are stitched together to form a cohesive, start to finish narrarative that will take you through the story and main setpieces. This is, of course, TOTALLY SWEET.



The movie was put together from game footage by one of the game's developers, Jens Larsson, and looks really great. He used developer codes to move the camera away from the first-person perspective and positioned it more like a movie camera, so you see Riddick doing his thing the entire time rather than look out from his eyes.

As far as I can tell, this does not exist in any larger or more easily downloadable format anywhere. If you want something like that, then pester the Starbreeze (fans@starbreeze.com) and Tigon people (tigon@tigonstudios.com) and see what they say!

Updates to Mikael Säker's blog
ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY writer Mikael Säker has a few new items up on his blog for those of you (any of you?) into gaming-related topics... 50 Books For Everyone In the Game Industry and Blame the gamers. These are small updates, rather than the usual article length entries, but interesting nonetheless.

So, why hasn't PitcherBlacker been updated much recently?
The Real World, of course (not the TV show, dammit!) and if you ever wonder what the hell I'm up to then you can see all the gory details in my blog.

     October 8th, 2006
Getting up to date with BUTCHER BAY editing history
A poster going by the handle Covu (heh) on the VUG boards in one fell swoop put together something that was on my To Do list, which is a complete to-date rundown of everything related to editing of and for ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY, including a few player-made maps. His full post is here, but I'm going to snake the entire thing below. Whoever you are, Covu, thanks!

3 maps :
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=143
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=94

Normal Mapping Technology Overview video :
http://www.riddickgame.com/us/trailers.jsp?trailer=3

Leveleditor and Multitool :
http://www.starbreeze.com/ogier.jsp

Development Forum :
http://forum.starbreeze.com/index.php

Various How-Tos & Documentation :
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=118
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=68
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=66
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=62
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=59
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=51
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=49
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=47
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=46
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=45
http://forum.starbreeze.com/viewtopic.php?t=38

Update :
The Starbreeze forum may or may not be down at present (hence some of the above links might not work), so I am providing direct links to the maps. There are a total of 4 maps I've seen for TCoR: EfBB, but one of them was created simply to help illustrate a tutorial (if the Starbreeze forum is up, check some of the aforementioned links under "Various How-Tos & Documentation" and many of them should contain a link to the map).

Here is a direct link to the tutorial map:
http://www.dnadns.de/testmap.zip

And the direct links to the other 3 maps:
paintitred
http://www.duds.org/vim/mod/paintitred.rar
Pitch Black 0.2
http://sparrowhawk.no-ip.info/downloads/PitchBlack.0.2.zip
Duel In the Dark 0.7
http://sparrowhawk.no-ip.info/downloads/Duelinthedark0.7.zip

Note: These maps are unofficial works created by modders and are not released by or affiliated with Sierra or any of its subsidiaries or Starbreeze Studios. In other words, use at your own risk.

     October 3rd, 2006
Writing in a "maturing" industry - Mikael Säker
ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY writer Mikael Säker has posted up a new article on his blog entitled Writing in a "maturing" industry, with the industry under discussion being the game industry. The article for the most part discusses process and integration, with subsections "Writing tools", "Storytelling versus Cinematics", and "Game scripts and Walkthroughs".
When designing games, you need to be able to describe gameplay properly. For that, you can write "Walkthrough" documents. These are descriptions of what the player encounters and is supposed to do. They could contain some level of detail regarding the level layout and they could describe NPC interactions. In parallel to that, the story is often laid out as a series of background documents (written in Word, for example) with story synopsis, character bios and whatnot. The actual story, if told by a series of cinematics, is written in Final Draft or Word.


     October 2nd, 2006
Crew member site: Ugo Serrano
I had Googled up this article a while back about Ugo Serrano, who had created some items for TCOR, so I went and found his personal site. There's not much meat on there about Riddick except for the following two shots, one showing a piece of armor which I don't recognize and the other showing a design for a knife that was never used.


Site slowdown
Real world responsibilities have been hunting me like a gang of Mercs, so things have been slow on PitcherBlacker recently. There's actually a lot in the works, I just gotta get to it. This week I'll be busy as usual, so things will again be slow. Look for an attempt to get back up to speed next weekend.



PitcherBlacker.com Copyright 2007 BruceL
Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick Copyright Universal Pictures