Older News from 2009
Here's the conclusion of the last update with the upload of the clips from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. This update also introduce a new format for the site.
From now on, all clips will be uploaded in either 2 formats. The classic AVI with a MPEG-4 Part 2 video Codec / MP3 Audio Codec and the new MP4 with a MPEG-4 Part 10 / Advanced Audio Codec (AAC). If you're having difficulties playing this new format, I suggest you try installing ffdshow-tryout Link and Media Player Classic Home Cinema Link
On the other hand, I have some thoughts about work since last week. I can classify works in two categories: handling and service. Handling are jobs that have someone build or construct something, like a miners collect coal, welders crate structure, artists create drawing, fishers bring fish. In the other hand, you have accountants, lawyers, archivists, librarians, etc, which don't produce good but provide services. The site fits more the service type, while artists fit the product one. But over the time, I've felt the handling one has always looked from above the service one. Especially when, after I asked for birthday presents I've been told no one deserve it, but an artist doing the same thing a week after get a total opposite reply.
And sadly it suck. During last weeks updates, I had to struggle to finish them. The last week-end was a rainy one, so my plan to work outside were ruined. I decided I may as well work on the update. But as I was filling the excel forms, the task was getting more and more excruciating. The routine of pick clip, look for character, paste character, look for category, paste category, get description, open file, get picture, make 3 thumbnails, rinse, repeat was getting too much. I barely was able to finish it.
The task of updating the site is getting boring. When someone draw, that person gets something new each time take the pencil. They even improve (well, most artist anyway) each time they draw something, they learn. But it's the same boring routine each week with the site. A routine that give no satisfaction at all, no reward of any kind, personal or from other. At least, when I'm coding, I get a satisfaction of making something, of solving problems, of learning new things. And I've been having a lot more fun working on the Deviantart download utility Link and the DragoniadeClipUI helping tools Link than the updates themselves.
I've been told by a few friends "if the site gets more a job than an hobby, you should stop". And I've decided just that. I'm taking a break, an hiatus, for the next 2 months. After that, who knows. Since I've just spend 130$ in Fighting Fantasy books for contents, I may as well roll 2 dices and if I roll over 6, update new info. And if I roll over 9, I'll upload the clips along. Ok. More seriously, I'll probably go for a monthly and not fixed update. It seem sites with 'unscheduled' or monthly updates get more notices and feedback. In the meanwhile, I probably will continue coding: finish the search engine, add browser support to it, refine the book section and probably tweak some sections and probably give velocity a try on the site. This is what I've been enjoying more lately. So, tada until January.
Another weekly update. I added Legion of Super Heroes, Lilo and Stitch and I should be adding Fullmetal Alchemist Broterhood tomorrow.
I've also made some change to the code, pushing the 3.0.15 up. Nothing serious just the basic for 2 future project.
- An independent download log, so I can get better stats.
- The core for a transformation map system. This would take a Google map, and put marker on country / city where transformation people are located, with the number of person. Maybe there's more people in your area who are TF fan.
I've also raised the quota for the free accounts and donating accounts. The free account went from 5 files to 50 files and with a bandwidth going from 50 to 500 megs. This should make some people happy.
That's mostly it for the site. Ahead is a rant about it. If you don't want to know about my current thought about the site and the community, you can stop reading. Link to the rant in the forum
I posted a new message regarding some books I'm looking for the site. Actually, it's for the 'book' section that need to be filled with some content.
More details on the forum thread here.
Link
Last Wednesday, the site celebrated its 10th anniversary unheralded.
And now, time for vacation/hunting. I'm heading out and should be back in 2-3 weeks in time for Fur fright. So site updates are on hold until then.
See you back then.
10th anniversary
The site is approaching it's 10th anniversary. Yes, it has been 10 years since we've brought transformation clips to the community.
For the occasion, I wrote a list of the historical events that happened through those 10 years. I can be accessed in the new site history section, under, of course, the Site menu. Or here, the site history.
Ok everyone,
I have asked that the video posted here not be reposted on other video site, like You Tube. For that reason, I watermarked my clips.
I guess the message wasn't clear enough. I just noticed that account: Thief
That person has been posting the latest update in his section. Of course, leecher are defending that person Leechers defender
Is it too much to ask to have a bit of respect to those who contribute content? Why do people have to steal all the work of others and try to cash on it. That person sure didn't go through the work of recording the TV broadcast, capturing it to his PC, trimming the video down, encoding it then put it on a website of his own.
He just took the clip away and lazily uploaded it on You Tube. No mention to the original contributor, nðo link the site. And while I do all the work, leech like him simply get all the positive feedback.
If you notice any transformation video having my watermark, PLEASE, remind the person that this clip was not made by him and he should, at least credit the source and link back to it or otherwise, delete it. If that person is stubborn, then be stubborn back too. It's people like him that bring back the "Is TF dead" once in a while. It's people like him that make people quit. And it's leech like those who defend him that make everyone keep their work for themselves.
It's going to be a 3 days week-end. I was planning to do extra work on the site, but I think I'll just take those day off instead. I'm getting feed up to having constantly defend my work and getting nothing back in return.
Only a small update this week with 4 shows from the 'R' section: Ratchet & Clank, Rupert, Rosewell Conspiracies and Repligator.
However, there's something new. People who have followed the site know that this is the 3rd formats we went through since the site started.
The first one was a plain HTML where everything was static and had to manually be updated in notepad or any basic HTML editor. The second one was made in PHP with a database backend in order to simplify the update, sorting and categorization. The third, and current one, now use Java on Tomcat with a database backend for a more persisted format and a more interactive service.
Some of the features were removed or added from one version to another. And the nostalgic were wondering what happened to those feature and the other site. Well, after getting a few demands about the old site and the old gallery, and since everything back then was all static, I decided to code a small servlet that would feed a website from a big ZIP archive. And thus, Shadowlord 1.0, which I branded "Legacy", with its 62709 files, fita in a 800Mb zip file.
The nostalgic and those wanting to see what the site looked back between 1999 and 2003 can now access it at http://legacy.shadowlordinc.com/ It contain some old stuff that is now long gone and were first hosted on Shadowlord back then.
Enjoy and feedback is appreciated. Forum/
This latest update mark a big progress in the upload.
With this update, I have officially started uploading my contents and new contents. In this case, the new content was Soul Eater and Batman the Brave and the Bold.
What is different? Up until now, all the clips I had uploaded were the one Stonegate contributed. Since the site started, both of us were putting our clips together, one have having access to clips the other didn't and vice versa. As of now, all the *shows* that Stonegate was the only contributor has been upload.
All the future update will be of either new shows not yet displayed on the site, or my own clips from show we both contributed to or where I had the exclusivity.
How much has been uploaded so far? About 26 GB and 4673 videos, excluding the preview files. And there's still about 65 GB to go through. That's a lot, but as they saying gows, slow and steady win the race.
So, bare with me as I keep updating and put new content online. Support is appreciated too.
How can you support? There's many way. First, you can donate by following the link in the footer. Second, you can donate arts. I'm a sucker for self transformation, as my previous transformation commissions and contest demonstrated. So any TF of me Link would also be welcomed.
What are the plan for the future? Other than uploading new contents, I'm working in my hiatus period on the search engine for the site. On a more longer term, I plan to redo the layout, ditching the black and grey 'Stonegate' style for a more light theme. I may also start a livejournal page for the site, to announce downtime and such.
Also, Kyreeth has fixed a big problem that was causing a lot fo slowdown on both this site and others furvect site. Thanks a lot Kyreeth. All is much faster. Keep up the good work.
Discussion and feedback can be posted in the forum link
When the old site was getting to big for the old server, namely Furvect, its owner bought another machine as a replacement. I sort of discussed with him what we would be needed for the site, and that new machine was sort of the answer. A few weeks before the site was ready, he setup the new servers to which the site is currently running on.
So yes, Process retards, we did move to another server. Just because I'm still working with the Furvect ADMIN doesn't mean I'm on the old Furvect server, bunch of retards.
Which doesn't mean Furvect was out of the loop. The machine was aging BADLY. Even before we moved we could experience various downtime, which were affecting all of Furvect hosted sites (Foxx, Doc, etc). Soon after that we moved, the old Furvect was shut down and the content put into a virtual machine. The reason was to give the current site owners, some of which haven't been heard of in ages, the time to contact the Furvect's administrator in order to give the go to the move and give the new access information.
However, the setup of all those virtual machines left some bugs. One of those bug hit 2 weeks ago and in order to fix thing, require the manual intervention of the server administrator. However, 2 days before, he had to leave out of the country for his work. That left a bunch of people out of the loop has what had happening. No feedback, no on-line presence in over a week (my Trillian is running 24/24 for a reason)... some people started to worries and think of the worse.
But early last week, he got back. We talked about the issue and put the server back on-line. I've been helping him locate the problem with his setup. Hopefully, what was causing the machines not to reboot successfully is now fixed rather than patched.
As for the rest of Furvect, after discussing the issue with him, we may try to migrate all the sites at once and await the feedback from theirs owners, rather than the opposite. This should help put the last nail in the coffin of the old Furvect server, which is sort of nothing more than a zombie right now. And it's sort of difficult to get a sign when there's no response from the site itself, which contains possible contact information.
Discussions here in the forum.
The contest is over.
I've added the latest entries. I should have the winners sometime this week and my retrospective on this contest and an announcement about the website updates.
Thanks to 10 persons who have contributed. Details
As this goes, I'm more likely to drop one of the 3 prizes categories for drawings. There just aren't enough entries.
The contest end next week, unless otherwise requested. Feel free to send your entries, if any.
New entries were added to the forum. Check them up. Link
More updates on the way too. I'm starting to upload my new clips along the older ones now.
I am extending the contest... again. Someone asked for it to be extended, since it was so close to the holiday.
And lets face it, it seem not to be attracting much people this time around. Come on! Lets support the community and those who help it. I personally can't imagine that an update every 2 weeks is considered 'barely' updating in the community! Help by showing some support to me and the site.
So, this said, and with me returning home tomorrow, I'm extending it to February Friday the 13th 2009. Hey, I'm giving an idea suggestion just by picking that date héhé.
Transformation contest - Site reopening
With the site reopening (see below), I considered the occasion as an opportunity to announce the 2008 edition of the Dragoniade Transformation Contest. Last year, the contest has been held in Deviant Art and went pretty smoothly. But with the site's new gallery opening, this year, it will be held here.
Once again, I will be the happy/surprised/unhappy (victim?) of a transformation. The transformed will be me, and the transformation must be either into a animal or creatures featured in any media, a character specie featured in any media, an alteration to match a character or specie from any media, or through a trigger from any media. So this isn't just restricted to animal transformation. Body alteration (growth, extra arms, muscle, etc) are accepted too, as long it respect the mentioned rule. Mind you, human to human TF without an alteration doesn't count.
Need some examples?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Media: Comics, TV series, Movies
- Possible Trigger: Mutagen, Magic
- Possible Transformation: Any creature using the mutagen or magic trigger, or a anthro crocodile (leatherhead), asian dragon (drako, Ninja Tribunal), rat (Splinter), rhino (Rocksteady), turtle (D'uh)
- Media: TV series
- Possible Trigger: Dinovolving
- Possible Transformation: Any dinosaurs based on the characters (i.e. Allo is an allosaur) or through a dinovolution.
- Media: TV Series, Movies
- Possible Trigger: Genie
- Possible Transformation: Anything by the genies, Shark, Naga (Aladdin got turned into those during the series), Parrot (Iago is a parrot), Tiger (Rajah is one), etc.
- Media: Books, Derived movie
- Possible Trigger: Magic
- Possible Transformation: Dragon, wolf, selkie.
- Media: Movies, TV Series
- Trigger: None
- Possible Transformation: Orca (Willy is an Orca)
- Media: Movie, TV Series, Comics, Game
- Trigger: Nuclear Radiation, alien experiment
- Possible Transformation: Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, any monster appearing in the franchise.
- Media: TV Series, Movie, Comic
- Trigger: Magic sword, magic
- Possible Transformation: Muscle Inflation, Body alteration, Saber-tooth tiger (Cringer), Dragons (various dragon characters).
- Media: Movie (2)
- Trigger: None
- Possible Transformation: Stallion
And so on. As you can see, the transformation concept isn't necessarily in the media in question, as long as the character isn't human (Free Willy, Black Stallion). If you can find a media featuring a non-human character or a trigger for a transformation and then you're set. It can be any media, from Lilo & Stitch's experiment to any Final Fantasy monster; from the Spider-man Comic to the Choose Your Own Adventures books. The choices are yours.
Simply submit your choice as described above, with the media name and trigger chosen.
This time, prize will involve money alongside site content:
- 1st place: 35$, 4 DVD of various content from the site and a subscription.
- 2nd place: 20$, 3 DVD of various content from the site and a subscription.
- 3rd place: 10$, 2 DVD of various content from the site and a subscription.
- 4th place: 2 DVD and a subscription
- 5th place: 1 DVD and a subscription
- Favorite: The transformations I like the most
- Originality: The triggers or creature we don't see often, unexpected or with a twist
- Quality: The best TF in quality and effort.
- Stories and other media: Stories or non arts related entries go there.
References:
- Human: Philippe
- Dragoniade: on Deviant Art, Here, Gallery
If you have any question, feel free to post them in the forum.