Kingdom of Skol

Kingdom of Skol

The Kingdom of Skol is a story centered around a world of anthropomorphic dragons.

The Kingdom of Skol (sometimes called KoS by Swythe for shorthand) is an anthro dragon story and now series of, what best can be described as, multimedia project created in 2007 and had two chapters published on SoFurry by Swythe Quirksettle. Originally a fur-erotica, it is being revised for a more general audience. It centers around series political crisis in a world ruled exclusively by anthro dragons.

The story has been under development by Swythe exclusively, and will be solidified with the publishing of three novels in coming years.

Animations

In 2009, Swythe had an affair with Blender 3D, this resulted in the creation of a series of animated GIFs leading up to a walk cycle and the prototype of Selay Quirksettle. This launched into a complete mess of animation that calculated into commitment to production.

The first two episodes centered around a blue female dragon named Selay Quirksettle stealing a staff. The staff itself is shown to represent power, and is referenced in backdrops and concept art.

The first episode was approached as a learning exorcise, and had a release of 4 revisions, with the third one looking like something moderately professional. It is possible, once done, for the first episode to be undergo one last remake to overcome the failures in production Swythe had.

The second episode was released Aug 1st 2016, and undergone many delays due to quality control issues. However it is a complete project with more complexity then the first episode.

Around this are a series of Demo Reels, testing new ways of designing objects, the most notable one being the 2013 Demo Reel featuring a 400+ anthro dragon army and a carefully designed production kit.

The animations are created exclusively using GNU software. Gimp, Blender 3D, VLC and Audacity being the main tools used. each animation lists the tools used to create it and attributes free resource sites used at the end.

Writings and future novels

Originally, the Kingdom of Skol was published on SoFurry in early 2007. Three chapters were written, with two uploaded. After 800 views, and a 4.5/5 star rating Swythe quietly removed the story from the site to save it for when he was felt he was ready to give it absolute focus.

In the future, a trilogy of novels will be written telling the story of Kingdom of Skol. Published through Draconian Enterprises.

Due to the massive amount of reading and research required to make a politically centered story as a first novel. The Kingdom of Skol books are on continuous delays.

Currently a revised draft, first and second chapter, are published on Swyhte's DeviantArt. You must have mature access to read them.

Video Games

For fun, Swythe made a few game prototypes in Blender 3D, and recycled the characters into the Blender Game Engine. Most notable game is Anthro-Dragon Fighters. Most are demoed prototypes on YouTube.

Future game prototypes are planned, in both the Unreal Engine and Blender Game Engine a future demo reel in Unreal's cut-scene tools may be released after Episode 2, in order to introduce basic AI pathing into the process to further speed up production.

Other

Swythe intended to create a series of comics from the Kingdom of Skol. But he canceled it because of the sheer difficulty in making just the animations alone.

In the future, storyboards for the animations may become the equivalent of a comic.

Characters

Production Kit

In order to produce Kingdom of Skol's animations, with their landscapes and complex scenery, the first few episodes are a series of production kits created to speed up future work and discover how to organize the model data efficiently. The file organization between each published video is completely different then the previous. This has extended work time to years longer then expected, but has paved the way for exceptionally low cost future projects with very dynamic scenery.

For example, in Episode 1, creating a dragon would take a week. The entire model and costume was stored and modeled over that time in a single file with the head and body as one mesh and costume made of different pieces ranging about 50-200. But after the 2013 demo reel, characters are split into multiple models and files with simpler mesh topographies and less then 15 separate pieces a character. Now creating a new dragon can take under 20 minutes. The process is as simple as copying a head, and sculpting. A costume for that character may take a day or two, but there are a wide array of costume pieces to test with prior to that.

Swythe will release a style-guide for the production kit sometime soon.

External Links

Swythe's Youtube with the Kingdom of Skol Videos

Images