History
This is a short history about my work with Black Rose and basically everything I have created with Source Filmmaker.
Before Black Rose, in the summer of 2012, I had an idea to make a film about different characters from different Valve games who are brought together. This was inspired by Garry's Mod, which I found to be interesting because of its fluent use of different characters and environments from different games, especially from Valve titles. The title for the project was "The Source of All Evil", which was the main point in the story: the characters were supposed to cooperate together to find out who was behind all the strange portals which had appeared in various game universes and caused chaos. In other words, their mission was to find out who was The Source of All Evil.
In July, the Source Filmmaker was released to public and I thought that now would be my chance to actually create the entire film. However, soon I found out that SFM seemed to have many compatibility problems with other Source games than Team Fortress 2, so I decided to create only the TF2-part of the film. I was still far from being used to SFM, and it can be seen in the animations and camera work:
I still continued to create the film as I had managed to get content from other Source-games, such as Left 4 Dead and Day of Defeat. I created few short scenes and decided to make a trailer, which I released in December of 2012:
The trailer was my first video on the channel and also my first attempt to gain some attention, because I had realized that I wouldn't be able to create the film without any support. However, for the entire month, I didn't get any attention. I posted a short post in the main Source Filmmaker -forum, and actually got a few positive reactions. Unfortunately they weren't really a big help for me in the situation where I was very unsure should I continue the project. Then I found the Facepunch-forum, where the discussion in the SFM-section seemed to be very active. I found there many similar ambitious projects, but they all seemed to get very negative responses, apparently because they didn't have any scripts or videos made yet. I still decided to make a little post, and I got a response that the project might be too amibitious. I hadn't told anything about the script or the animations I already had made, but I still decided to give up and wrote a promise that I would make shorter and simplier videos from now on.
And so Black Rose was born. The main idea was to concentrate on the TF2-part of The Source of All Evil. The original story of the part was that a small group of BLU, Scout, Medic, Heavy & Engineer, were supposed to infiltrate a Red base and find out who is in the control. The main antagonist was a RED Heavy and his minions, RED Engineer and RED Medic. Heavy's plan was to create a new nation, Red Union (or Heavy Union at the time). However, his plans were foiled by the group.
In Black Rose, the story was heavily changed: the main character was a BLU Scout, who's father, a BLU Spy, had been kidnapped. This started his and his friends, BLU Heavy's and BLU Femscout's, dangerous journey to find a secret Red base and find out who was behind it. The main antagonist was still the RED Heavy, now being in the lead of the entire RED team. The series was supposed to be four videos long, and it was also supposed to have a bit darker tone than the TF2-universe has, such as having some of the main characters to actually die. It was also the tagline: "No one is safe in Black Rose".
I created two videos: one in end of the December, while I was still doing the script for the series, and one later in January. The first one was a trailer and the second one was a short scene where Scout & Heavy travel through the Mexico:
However, I realized that the project had again become quite ambitious and too large for one person to make, so I decided to make two shorter projects. One was "The Meaning of Class", inspired by a music piece "Oregon" by Jacob De Haan (which I nearly got to actually play). The idea was to show all the classes of TF2 from my perspective, showing their abilities in a battle. The video was to be about 9 minutes long, as was the music. However, I found it very difficult to create battle scenes. I've never been good at making action scenes, so I decided to create a few minutes long preview, which I released on Youtube in March of 2013:
It became the most popular video on my channel, and it was probably my best work created with SFM at that time. My other video was "The Forgotten Hope". It was based on the Left 4 Dead -part of The Source of All Evil. In the original script, the helicopter rescue ends differently on the rooftop of Mercy Hospital and the survivors find themselves being guided by a mysterious person who is contacting them via radios. I decided to make an experimental video, edited to look like a trailer:
In lately, for some reason, it has become very popular, currently having over 200 000 views. Still, I decided to continue on Black Rose, which soon became my biggest project, being larger and more complex than The Source of All Evil. My original goal was to keep the series as strictly as possible in the TF2-universe. However, I decided to change the entire concept: The root of the series was in the TF2-universe, but it shares more events with the real word and also has its own universe. In short, it has many characters from the TF2-universe, many of them being heavily altered, and it has also many new characters. Originally it was supposed to consist of five episodes. I call this the second version of Black Rose. I created (once again) a trailer for it for the Open Source Filmmaker's Trailer Week at the end of March of 2013:
I was pretty satisfied with the result, and that was when I got interested in the time periods of 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, when some of the biggest changes in the world happened. This was also when I created the third version of Black Rose, now consisting of 15 episodes. While the original story concentrated on the war between the BLU organization and the RED team and even the Red Union, leaded by the mysterious Red Heavy, this version also contained other subjects, such as a secret organization of SCEPTRE, relationships between the Blue Scout and his family, and even Spycrabs, mysterious creatures that have been originally created by the TF2-community. I also gave actual names to the characters, Scout being now Nathan Ceveille, Femscout being Julie Lakeside etc.
I thought that the story was close to being complete in the summer of 2013. However, in the autumn, I started a video series "Scenes from Black Rose", where I animated various short scenes from the story. Then I started to work with the fourth version of Black Rose, this time consisting the "modest" amount of 34 episodes plus a few bonus episodes. From now on, Black Rose was basically standing on its own feet. Whilst all the pictures and videos were of course based on the actual TF2 engine, most of the characters, environments and the story had little if any connection to it anymore. This was also when I again became hugely unsure about the future of the project. In its current scale, it seemed to be impossible to be anymore released in a video-format. However, I found a new possibitily: comics. Especially SFM-created web-comics. After a few test comics, I came to conclusion that it would be the easiest way to actually release the series. Some kind of book-format could also be a possibility but it would take a long time, considering English isn't my native language.
When I thought that the series wouldn't become any more complex than it was now, I got an idea that the series would also take place in the next two decades, thus I divided the series in three seasons: first being the original Black Rose, taking place in 1967-1969. Next season would take place in the 1972-1975 and the last season would be in the 1980's. even though I have created the main plot for the two other seasons, their future is still very vague.
This being the fifth version, and, at least for the moment, the latest version, I renamed the series "The Adventure of Times", based on the three decades of change. The seasons are named after roses, which are the symbols of the series: Black Rose, Red Rose and White Rose.
Whilst the AoT is easily the most developed project, I have also returned to the Forgotten Hope. I have created the main plot for the series, consisting, like AoT, of three seasons, featuring the survivors from both L4D-games and some new characters too.
A smaller project is "C14", which is based on the City 17 -section of The Source of All Evil. Currently its story is still very vague.
I have many other smaller projects, but at the moment, I haven't concentrated on them.
So, this was the short history of Black Rose. Unfortunately, the entire project is currently in low priority, because of my current studies. I am also just as unsure as I was two years ago when I started to develop Black Rose because of the lack of feedback. For some reason, my posts about the series in the forums seem to get very little attention.