T-1000 Project: Escape from Chaldea

I'm definitely around and active, and quite a lot of developments have been going on! As always, if I'm not posting so much, it's likely that I'm crafting like mad, and these past months have been extremely busy.

I can honestly say that I didn't even touch a computer for almost a month and a half, which is an insane record for me since I've been on one at least once a day since I was about ten (that includes weekends, evacutations for *cough* California fire season *cough* and the one time I broke out in 

hives and I couldn't go to school for about a week)  

That being said, I'm definitely hoping to be more active and to gain a better balance on updates and work in progress so I'm not totally radio silent all the time.

I'm excited to share my months and months worth of work in this post, along with discussing some really fun upcoming plans for the rest of the year and early next. This year had some great progress, but also some setbacks, but all in all it's a good starting point for even better things to come.

In my previous post, I mentioned a project we called T-1000, and my plans for how to develop this project's video background to tell our ideal story for an upcoming skit. 

While I don't intend to go in depth as to why we didn't perform this skit for our original deadline, I'm excited to showcase my progress on what would have been our World Cosplay Summit 2019 entry: Escape from Chaldea. 

Our skit, Escape from Chaldea, was accepted earlier this year as our entry for the World Cosplay Summit USA Finals, which was held at Anime Expo 2019 this past July. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, my partner was able to compete, and our team was unable to perform our skit.

However, the work we had put into this skit, from cosplays to storyline and visual effects, still lives on, and while there's no telling quite yet if we will have to chance to showcase our skit in the future, I am extremely happy to share my leg of work on this project. There's lots of wonderful (and hectic) memories while developing this skit, as it was one of the most ambitious projects that I've ever worked on. I challenged myself to create something new and customized exactly for our skit, and since 2017 after coming in the WCS USA Finals with our Sorcerer's Apprentice skit, I knew exactly what type of background and skit I wanted to next create. 

I'm excited to share some of my workflow and visuals from the unreleased video background, as even though I may in the future showcase it in another way, I'm more than happy now to be able to enthuse about this project and revisit it in the future while developing future projects.

Sorry ahead for it being so image heavy! 

ESCAPE FROM CHALDEA

As mentioned in the previous post, our skit was heavily inspired by not only the main prologue from Fate Grand Order's Lostbelt storyline, but various theme park attractions such as Terminator 2-3D: Battle Across Time, Star Tours, The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman, Transformers: The Ride, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout. I also studied other various attractions at Star Tours, Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando, Alton Towers, Efteling, and the Disney parks.

My intention was to tell a story that married our choreography, cosplays, and interactive performance with our customized video background. Our characters, Mashu Kyrielight and Leonardo Da Vinci, would traverse through the Chaldea Organization to stop Kotomine Kirei from usurping the organization. 

I spent months developing floorplans and sketches for our Chaldea Organization, which was inspired by the original building, yet to also differtiate it from actual footage from the game (which to my knowledge, isn't allowed), I designed my own version of various rooms and the design of the CHALDEAS itself. It also gave me the freedom to develop my own color palettes and mood lighting to suit our skit.

This video was created primarily using Unreal Engine 4 for its main environments, with a majority of the post-production completed on Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

The following software was used:

• Unreal Engine 4 - main environmental design, material editor, FPS level design, programmed features
• Adobe After Effects CC - Additional animation for the elevator, additional particle effects
• Adobe Photoshop CC - Illustrator edits, elevator design, textures, and color edits
• Adobe Premiere Pro CC - post-production, video editing, audio embedding, particle effects, and color edits
• Blender - Asset modeling and adjustments 
• Sony Vegas Pro - my initial video edits until it got ported to Adobe Premiere Pro, additional particle effect editing 
• Audacity - Audio mixing, channel editing, and voice recording 
• Quicktime Player - Realtime screen recording (for in-game play) 

The Escape from Chaldea 

Our skit was first storyboarded to work like a level in an FPS game, and throughout the process, it maintained most of its core ideas, even more than I initially thought I was going to be able to execute. 

In the end, our final project embodies dozens of our original concepts and details we hoped to achieve for this skit: 

GROUND LEVEL - While Da Vinci introduces the state of the Chaldea Organization, the alarms sound off, which also alerts Mashu to stand on guard for a new intruder in the building. 

ENEMY ROOM 1 - Da Vinci and Mashu begin their adventure in this room. The audience doesn't know what's yet to come, much like the closed doors on Star Tours. Tension builds as they struggle to escape to the Chaldeas to stabilize it and keep it away from a mysterious new enemy. 

ENEMY ROOM 2 - An unknown servant has also broken into the room, and now the building is being encased in ice. Da Vinci urges Mashu to keep calm and alert as they make their way down the halls. 

ENEMY ROOM 3 - Mashu struggles to keep the enemies away, so Da Vinci steps in and blasts them right in time for them to escape via the elevator (I do love that elevator scene in Terminator 2-3D)

FINAL BOSS ROOM - The final boss awaits them in this room, where the Chaldeas is stored. As Da Vinci attempts to stabilize it, the mysterious intruder comes to stop them, and to taunt Mashu for her lack of powers. Da Vinci defends her comrade, only to pay the ultimate price. 

FINALE - Now faced with a decision, Mashu decides to avenge her servant mentor's fate and protects her own by rediscovering her inner strength. Mashu channels a new kind of energy, which gives her one last chance to survive. 

BACK WHERE WE BEGAN, BUT NOW STRONGER (than yesterday~🎶) 

The UE Research Process 

The process to make this background honestly took months to make, from storyboarding and developing an initial floor plan. 

The research process was ongoing for about roughly a year, considering how after our WCS 2017 experience, we immediately knew that we wanted to try again but this time explore the possibility of utilizing the video background even more than we had with the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

For that skit, I initially took a static background and layered various particle effects over it. Most of my work included properly resizing the particles, timing them to the audio, layering them properly (so they looked presentable and discernible) and adding some coloring and inversion effects for the Dark Card. 

For this skit, I wanted to create a custom dynamic background to play with space and dimension in our story. My initial question was, "Wouldn't it be cool if it looked like we were running and fighting through these halls and rooms together?"

A few years back, I began learning the basics of Unreal Engine, Unity, and other game development softwares to create my own games. I had created some environments during that time, which became starting points for learning how to create a room, throw in some models, texture them, and run around them. 

This project took some of those basics, yet it challenged me to think of how each detail pertained to the skit even in the most miniscule of ways. 

For starters, I began searching more on how to model my own assets, and how to develop new textures and materials for them. Even though not even detail might be properly seen in the final version (such as the embedded globe on the Chaldeas), I took the time to research how to create that material.

I also researched online on Youtube, the UE4 forums, and fiddled on my own (with lots of insane mistakes along the way) to create lighting effects, colors, and programed motions on various assets, particularly the Chaldeas and the door cinematics. 

I reccommend (and forever thank) the following YouTube Channels for having some of the best tutorials to refer to (especially while crying about collapsing rings):

• WorldofLevelDesign 
• Virtus Learning Hub (their sliding doors tutorial was godsent)
• Frame Talks 
• Unreal Engine
• CG Cookie
• dancetech 
• Game Dev Academy
• The Rendering Essentials 
• SpeedTutor
• Dean Ashford 

It's difficult to say how long this process took since honestly, it was just months of coming home from work and juggling a hectic school schedule and just sitting into the wee hours of the night till dawn fiddling with nodes, retexturing assets, and crying over the fact that the rings on the Chaldeas kept falling off it.

There were some pretty awesome nights of progress, especially as I began to notice the progression from an empty little wasteland of a grey room to an actual environment. 

I'm a believer in independent learning, and I'm definitely no expert, but I really do reccommend for anybody interested in creating their own media projects to consider YouTube and Lynda.com resources, or to check out the UE4 resources, their marketplaces, or just play around with the program as much as you can. 

I never got to a point where something was totally broken, but that was also in part because I intensely save my project after a fair amount of changes to avoid large issues. 

For this environment, I didn't choose to create in-game enemy spawns, but it might be worthwhile to fiddle with that in the future since I've developed enemies in the past for other projects. In this case, the enemies were added into the post-production.

Asset and Material Development

I'm definitely in the process of learning how to model more, so I developed some of my own models for this project, which were created on Blender or on Unreal Engine itself, and then were converted into static meshes for editing (which works for less complex objects, but not to detailed ones). 

At the same time, I also searched along for some free-to-download models and textures featured on Sketchfab, which I credit here:

• Pedram Ashoori 
• d800
• jennag
• Andremo
• Robin Butler
• Fred Beckhusen
• Aender Lara
• James Butchr
• Michal Orzelek 

None of these models were used for commercial purposes for this project.

Some of the textures to develop for materials for various assets, particularly my Chaldeas and the ice room were acquired for free use through Textures.com. 

It's really awesome that the site also allows users to pay with credits for actual pre-made materials, but I lacked the funds to buy these so I had to make my own through UE4's Material Editor.

It was also fun to learn, since I previously was so intimidated to use it years back when I was taking an environmental game art course. 

I also relied on some of the basic flooring and wall materials since the main hallways weren't meant to be made of any unusual materials. To help differentiate the room from the original Chaldea Organization (so nobody suspected me of ripping of the game lol), I used a gray and blue color scheme in contrast to the teal and white. At the same time, the halls and futuristic doorways and textures should be enough for the audience to infer that they're in a lab/fancy high tech building of some kind. 

Several of the assets were textured with materials with specific colorings, although some of them were also purposely colored or textured a particular way so an additional color could merge with it when the lighting systems were added. I love the red lighting on the blue Chaldeas in particular, or the union of texture and lighting in the Chaldeas room. 

The Prototype

The walls changed colors at this time, so it was Chaldea Organization: Raver Edition 

Once I designed a floor plan and had a working storyboard, I started with a super basic prototype environment on UE4. This was literally just walls and some ceilings. The original environment also had the Chaldeas room attached to it, but I later created a totally separate environment for that in a new file. 

I threw in some basic materials to adjust some of the initial lighting, but most of this process was ensuring that each room and hallway was sized correctly to match the pacing of the story. This part and programming the doors were the most important processes because they needed to match perfectly to drive the story. 

Some of the inital rooms were either too big, too narrow, or too much. I spent most of my time here and resting using the preview editor and the audio on to traverse through each room. Since the FPS camera and gun feature shoots out tennis balls as its default function, I timed each tennis ball bullet to the audio as well, so I knew exactly how long I needed to be in each room before moving onto the next. 

Meanwhile, this was around the time I was also concurrently creating the additional models on Blender and acquiring the others on Sketchfab. 

The prototype wasn't heavily textured, and it helped me to also realize early along the process that I shouldn't have additional objects and assets inside the rooms themselves, hence why there's no furniture or additional details. There was a plan for a control computer, but it didn't pertain to the skit. The audio is so fast-paced, so it leaves the audience only a small window of time to capture every detail. 

Likewise, running around the halls and rooms gets the point across pretty decently. 

The Chaldeas prototype was super simple, but it also relied on creating perspective. The room needed to look large yet proportioned enough to look as if Da Vinci and Mashu would be inside that room before the Chaldeas. 

For Lord Camelot, I didn't exactly use a prototype since the models organically fell into place, and I had less of a strict concept for it. I'm well aware of how the original in-game version looks like, but to once again differentiate from it and put my own spin on it, I went with a more obvious castle, removed some of the additional details to streamline it, and focused on amping up the scene with lots of lighting and dynamic particle effects.

Doors, Doors, Doors

As mentioned, doors were another crucial part of this environment. 

The plan from the beginning was to have the doors part open to reveal each room, thereby increasing tension and the element of surprise. I wanted the constant feeling of escalation, so by the time the most ominous of doors open, you knew that something was going to go down. 

The doors aren't super complex in terms of programming, yet it uses in-engine cinematic features and trigger boxes. As I said before, I'm definitely no expert on this engine and I'm sure someone out these finds this rudimentary, but for a beginner like myself, this was such an eye-opening experience. 

The cinematic feature enabled me to control the speed and timing of the door, so they're also programmed to close after a matter of seconds, and open within a specific distance via the trigger boxes. Once the player crosses into the trigger box, the door is triggered to open and remain open until a preprogrammed amount of seconds (which if I remember was about 3). 

This also allowed for me during the development process to complete the level, then return to the beginning by going back through each door. Every door had to be manually programmed since (and I'm sure someone's laughing at me), I had to specify these cinematic properties for each door. I do think I remember by the time I got to one the last doors, I realized that I could copy and edit the functions on the blueprint, which helped a lot in future blueprint editing moments. 

I forget how many doors there actually are, but I think there's about seven or eight in total. I have a newfound fascination now of parting doors. 

In-game Particle Effects

For several of the rooms, particle effects were added so there was constantly a threat of some kind. Part of this was because at the time when the rooms were being developed, I was banking on a very basic knowledge of Sony Vegas Pro to create some of my enemy and post-production effects like those found in the Sorcerer's Apprentice. 

In fear of leaving those rooms bare and boring, I included some particle effects in the main Organization room, including a really awesome snow particle effect in the ice room to create a blizzard effect.

Luckily however, in post-prooduction, I was able to add additional particle effects so the rooms had a good blend of imagery to suit the scene. 

Other particle effects can be found during the Lord Camelot scene and on the Chaldeas, since I wanted the Lord Camelot moment to feel large, grand, and threatening since this was Mashu's comeback. The background in the sequence is a large particle effect with color-changing clouds and beams of light. 

Lighting Systems

Lighting was one of my favorite and most challenging parts of this project. I probably spent a good 30-40% of my hours on lighting, primarily because it affects how we see the final product.

Overall, I was super new to lighting but I managed to get my environment to bear the correct amount of light for each scene. This took me hours also out of figuring out how the sunlight and reflection features influence the lighting direction and intensity in an environment. It all makes logical sense, but I was baffled for a while until it started to become a little more intuitive on my end. 

The hallways and rooms were intentionally designed to be well-lit because I knew the audience would have a difficult time otherwise. It was important for the audience to see clearly the pathway from rooms to hallways to understand the narrative of the story and our choreography. 

The ice room was fitted with lots of vibrant blue lights to cast some cool designs onto the ice textures. 

The room where Da Vinci uses her Noble Phantasm also was fitted with vibrant neon lights, which were later heightened in post-production. 

The Chaldeas room was one of my favorite and a pain to work with since I initially had some lighting issues with some of the models. Since my environment is intended to be static, I was able to find a workaround, but I highly doubt that my solution could work for someone intending to make the level playable without bugs. 

Since the Chaldeas room was also created on a totally different file, I was able to fiddle with the sunlight and reflective features without ruining the settings for my Organization building. I knew without a doubt that I wanted electric blue lighting for the room as an homage to not only the blue from the game imagery itself, but to some of my favorite films and their penchant for crisp blues - Prometheus, Terminator 2-3D, James Cameron's Avatar (I don't like that film but I love the effects and color stories). I'll even throw Titanic into the mix. 

I also wanted the color to correlate with space and dimension for the Chaldeas, and most importantly, the Lord Camelot scene. This particular scene is fitted with several neon pink, cyan, and violet lights, some of which are angled from bottom to top so the lights form a gradient on the castle walls. This was a majority of the scene's coloring as well, since the main buildings were all made of a beige stone. 

Screen Capturing 

Once the level was complete, probably the worst part of the process was actually recording the playthrough in realtime to have actual footage to edit. 

I got super lucky that it only took about a night for me to do it, but that was also partly due to the fact that throughout the level designing process, I probably replayed my level (no joke) hundreds of times to properly time everything, check for space, bugs, textures, particles, etc. 

I also had to replay these environments to the audio, so it was super important that by the time I had gotten to this step, I knew how and where I wanted the camera to move and for how long. 

I had to remove my FPS gun feature, so I was tennis ball-less by this point and had to rely on my own inner sense of timing. 

The worst part of all this was that using both my mouse and my own computer scrolling pad (lol) both weren't super smooth, so I definitely had to rerecord the playthrough several times. Both the Chaldeas and Lord Camelot scenes were fairly easily, but the main building scene was the worst since I had to keep my camera centered as much as possible, I had to stop at the right moments to allow for the particle effects to be embedded in post, and it needed to be perfectly synchronized to the audio.

One (good) surprise that came of this happened while filming the Chaldeas model portion. I hadn't realized until filming day that my programming for my spiraling rings actually increased in speed after so much time, so while reviewing the footage, I realized that they had gone from super slow to fast. I was able to take my footage from the middle point, so the audience could see a progression throughout the scene. 

The derpy part of this process was that I probably cumulatively collected a half hour of usable footage (and another half of garbage of me running into doors), only for about thirty seconds or less to be included in the final video. 

The Lord Camelot scene exists for probably less than five seconds, but it took weeks to develop, but it was all for the art. 😭

On the upside, it was a great learning experience since halfway while making the level on the engine, it hadn't occurred to me that I actually had Quicktime to screen capture everything (aka my ambition lacking boundaries at that point). Out of sheer luck, my brother happened to be working on a project for school, and a teacher had reccommended him to use the screen capture function to record his presentation. I was eternally grateful. 

Graphic Design 

Some additional graphics were created for the skit on Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. 

I sketched out the Chaldea Organization logo, then rendered it on Adobe Illustrator to later embed in our doors and elevators, which were also created on Photoshop. The parting door features were added in post-production on Premiere, but before I realized that the program included transitions, I made half pieces of each of the doors that were later replaced with this effect. 

The enemy crypters were also made on Illustrator. I sketched them out, rendered them, then colored them using the new CC gradient effects to add some dimension to them and allow for post-production to add more transitions and effect layers. 

The elevator was made rendering an existing Textures.com free texture of an elevator, then re-tinted and photo edited, and finally embedded with a Chaldean logo. It's also quite long, since I later put it through After Effects to create an elevator animation for it. 

Post-Production

The big yikes of this whole process. Mostly good, some bad, and some ugly. 

I preface by admitting that before that moment, I'd never touched Premiere Pro. My poor student behind could never really afford Premiere back in the day, but I was lucky enough to purchase Sony Vegas Pro back when I was making the Sorcerer Apprentice skit. Prior to that, I did all my other backgrounds on...Windows Movie Maker 7.0. Yes, even after 2007. 

So honestly, I'm humbled by how lucky I was to manuver through Premiere. At the same time, I reccommend learning Photoshop or another Adobe program ahead of time as well, since some of the more intuitive features of these softwares tend to roll over between each other. 

I did watch quite a few starter videos on YouTube to get my feet wet:

• Cinecom.net
• Benjamin Wayra
• Adobe in a Minute
• PremiereProTips
• Max's Tech 
• Justin Odisho 
• Cross Effects Tutorial
• BakkersCommunityTuts
• Pav Guliani 

And honestly, googling Premiere Pro tutorials on YouTube yields a goldmine of talented videographers and editors with lots of knowledge to share, and I'm so thankful for them. 

I'm certain that there's so much more I could even do at this stage in spite of how busy all the particle effects turned out to be, but I'm honestly satisfied with the final result. 

The particle effects were also collected from various free resources, including:

• Amitai Angor AA VFX
• The Zeitgeist 
• Nissin Farin

And by generally messing around with my own basic knowledge of Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro.

This was also a crucial point where I had to ensure that all my particle effects could be properly timed with the intended audio and each scene. The toughest scenes were hands down the first enemy battle, where an enormous chunk of our choreography would go to, on Lord Camelot, since Mashu had to be properly positioned on center stage for the castle background to stand tall and mighty, and the particles would indicate a powerup and a release of energy, and last but not least:

Kotomine's hand of doom.

I got massively lucky and found free footage of a green screen hand, although I was also prepared to record my own hand. Without revealing the ending, that hand specifically had to be properly timed and positioned to help execute one of the most important gimmicks and the climax of the skit. I learned a lot on the way on manipulating green screen footage on Premiere, and I was sooooo forunate that the footage maintained its quality and seamlessly materialized in the skit at the exact time that I needed. 

Dozens of particle effects were included throughout the entirety of the skit. My computer was totally new to the experience so I had some trouble previewing the skit at times, so I had to rely on luck and a careful sense of timing to ensure that everything transitioned properly. This took hours upon hours to complete since exporting it in the correct quality settings was super important. 

Audio Mixing and Voice Recording 

I don't really talk about this part of the process with skits, but it's ironic considering that's a huge chunk of the skit process. I have never had a decent experience where the choreography saved a bad piece of audio. If it's bad audio, unfortunately your skit tends to be remembered for bad audio, even if the performance was good (just my opinion, though obviously if your performance has excellent choreography, all my praise for you 💖 

I think I have a screenshot somewhere, but the audio layering was kind of nuts and far more intense than my normal skits. Part of this was due to dialogue, which I don't really like to use in our normal group skits, which is also partly due to the fact that for our very first group skit back in 2012, we recorded our skit on my terribad microphone, only to have the AX masquerade staff ask us to re-record the entire thing at the con. OTL

However, there was no way that we would be able to tell our skit's story without some kind of minimal dialogue, so we developed a working script. 

Initially our plan was to record our skit in Japanese, since I felt more comfortable with pronounciation and voice inflection and expression than in English. In all honesty, I don't really watch anime or play games in English, and the whole time, I envisioned the original script in Japanese.

So at the time, we wrote out a script in English (so my partner and I could develop it together), which I then translated into Japanese to rework some of the phrases, yet by that time, we were strongly advised not to do it in English since WCS now adds subtitles to their skits at the championship and prefer for the skits to be presented in their original country's language if applicable. Also, we could risk creating a disadvantage if we had subtitles for a skit for the US finals, where likely all of the judges would be expecting it in English. 

We then considered searching for voice actors, but eventually at the time, our search didn't yield too many options due to availability, budget, and distance, since my hope was to be present at least to help coach the voice actors and give any necessary info out to them to portray Mashu, Da Vinci, and Kotomine to suit our skit.

I'm so super thankful that my friends stepped in to lend their voices, and we unexpectedly had a super fun time trying out a new experience together. 

When I initially created the audio prototype, I recorded myself voicing all of the characters, just in different pitches. While editing them, I realized that some of my higher pitched recordings made for a decent child-like voice for Mashu, so I wound up playing Mashu for the final recording of the skit. I initially thought I'd end up portraying Da Vinci or Kotomine, so I was genuinely surprised and I'm happy that I also got to embody her in some way. 

My friend Shii portrayed Da Vinci, and she had a great time recording various portions, particularly during her Noble Phantasm scene. She was also super awesome to give us the space to record at her house. 

My friend Kureno portrayed the role of Kotomine, replacing a previous friend who had been unable to record the role due to scheduling changes. He's a huge fan of the Fate series, and had been supporting my progress on this project since its conception, so he practiced in less than a day to be ready to record by that evening. His laugh in particular was our key piece to shaping Kotomine's scene and menancing presence, which is super important in the skit despite him not being featured. 

My other friend Frye contributed additional voices and sound effects for the skit, particularly the crypters, and the microphone was graciously lent to me from my friend Dakota. 

After the recording process, I took all the clips and collected sound effects (which was a whole other process), and began clipping, cutting, editing, and mixing into the main audio, which had been cut for about a year prior to developing the core parts of the skit. At the time, we'd known that we wanted to use the audio for our next WCS project after trying to previously develop it for another skit that we replaced with another.

This took a whole other block of time in the process, since it specifically had to be mixed after the post-production was complete to properly synchronize and account for every single effect in the final video edit. 

This time, I had the completed visuals done on Premiere, so I would replay the footage and best sync it to the audio. It was difficult especially during the beginning, when there was no actual audio checkpoint to go off from in the footage. I basically had to assume and account for missed seconds if I pressed the play button, etc. I didn't like this part at first. 

By the end of the skit, it was way easier since I had scenes like Kotomine's hand as easy reference points to use. Most of this however was a pure nightmare, and while I don't actually know the entire mixing and editing process used in films, if it's anything like what I experienced, I have so much ridiculous respect for these artists.

Finally once I was done, I took the completed audio and replaced the placeholder version with the new one, and it was finally time to export it and email it to our beloved organizers. 

The End...Or is it?

As mentioned before, I regret to say that in spite of the hundreds of hours placed to develop this video, along with the hundreds of additional cosplay and skit development work hours, we unfortunately had to withdraw this year from the finals. 

As the project stands, my Da Vinci cosplay is completed, and the video is completed, along with the original choreography and additional sets made for the on-stage portion. However, it's unknown right now whether we'll get to showcase this skit on stage soon. There currently is talks of us performing this skit sometime next year, although I personally feel that at this point, I would prefer to retry for WCS with an entirely new concept and background since this one reflects a completely different reference point in my life and experiences as an artist and cosplayer.

This background was a monster of a project, but I managed to wrangle it by the horns, and I completed it at a point where in spite of the missed chance to compete this year, I can create even more varied and experimental backgrounds for the next cosplay seasons to come. 

One of the draws to compete in WCS was the inclusion of a video background to aid how we tell stories on stage, so I do hope in the future to tell another exciting adventure of a story with an even better background and cosplays. As of right now, I'm also intending to assist my friends on their WCS for the next coming year with a custom background of their own, since I honestly love the idea of sharing my passion for visual storytelling with others. 

Unfortunately there's not a lot of conventions near me that utilize a video background, but if something crops up, I'd love to get the chance to do even more. I intend to start working on my next set of backgrounds for a few upcoming skits, including one for some other contests or projects. Honestly, I'm probably going to get into the habit of making accompanying videos for most of my skits just to have something fun to tie them in with. 

That being said, Escape from Chaldea is so incredibly special to me and will always be a hallmark in my life. It bears a lot of my values and aesthetics as an artist, designer, and cosplayer, and I would gladly do it all over again (even the derp screen capturing and audio to video syncing). Honestly, I might! I'm also invigorated to explore new avenues in visual media, game design, and skit development, and more than anything, it embodies my own personal spirit as someone who simply wanted a fun background that could take the audience along for the ride.