In this Issue
New Office
Vampire Gallery
Upgrades and Testing
Talk of the Forum
Picture Perfect
Notes from you
And don't forget
Tech Tips
"The flower blossoms through what seems to be a concrete surface"
~The Orb, Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld |
| This has been a laborious week for Qru Studios. Our major focus has been completing the comic for Adore-A-Pet. As many of the projects on the table are finishing up we are preparing to expand our office space and make a variety of upgrades to our server. We are also working on an advertising campaign and preparing for our next group of clients due to come in during the next few months. Keep in touch for future developments. |
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Top of the News
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Adore-A-Pet, Ltd. is currently in negotiations with Wal-Mart to bring their Xylatol products to shelves nationwide. Each package will include a copy of the comic strip illustrated by Tate Madler. This kind of mass marketing will bring national recognition to the name Adore-A-Pet as well as to Qru Studios. Our friends Wiggles and Dr. J will become the national spokes-animals for dental hygiene in pets. The exciting adventures of Wiggles and Dr. J continue as there are talks of 3D modeling the characters and perhaps animating them. Next step, Hollywood! |
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Featuring...
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The Vampire Gallery
In the four months since its posting, the Vampire Gallery has consistently given us half of the total hits on qru.com. Claiming an average of over 100 unique visitors and several hundred hits daily, this is the most popular section of all of our sites. With three genre-specific awards, it has received much acclaim and recognition throughout the Internet Vampire community. The Vampire Gallery is unique amongst sites of its genre in that it promotes art, literature, discussion amongst visitors, and high level design and programming. With reference to everything from Vampire the MasqueradeTM to serious thesis' on the history of Vampires throughout the world, every Vampire enthusiast or scholar can find a wealth of information in their area of interest. The actual gallery houses the works of three artists whose works underwent intense scrutiny for quality and artistry before selections were made. The feature point of the Vampire Gallery is the Enclave where creatures of the night can leave messages and get to know others of their kind. |
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On the LAN
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Upgrades
Following the acquisition of an additional 64 Megs of RAM for Beauty, our server, we have developed an upgrade plan that will bring her completely up to date. Our initial plans include obtaining a 2 to 4 gig SCSI hard drive which will enable faster disk access and a dedicated 128 kbps ISDN phone line and modem. This will grant us a constant connection with dedicated IP number as well as faster access to on-line resources. Once the server has these features there are a world of possibilities of what we could do. With these upgrades in place our server will be a real "Beauty." For those of you out there who are not on ISDN, don't worry about downloading our work in the future. We will continue to practice bandwidth conservation and have a 486 on a 28.8kbps modem for testing purposes. If all goes well we will even upgrade our office by the end of May. We need a larger one that will meet the needs of the current local members while leaving room for anticipated company growth.
Testing Continues
In our constant quest to bring greater capabilities to Qru Studios and ultimately to our clients, we have been testing several pieces of software this past week. Noah Simon, our Media Consultant is currently testing Gamma, a proprietary VRML CHAT that has yet to be released to the public. Tate Madler is checking out various programs that change the layout of the Windows environment. This will assist us in researching interface design for our sites and networking solutions.
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On the See
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The KnowMadz Forum
After a slow start the KnowMadz forum has found its niche in the Internet. A few dedicated people in Ireland as well as a small group across the United States who have a real interest in promoting understanding of cultures around the world as well as within their own societies have found this a wonderful way to communicate with others. Our hopes are to bring in people from around the world and those who have traveled to various places to discuss the beauty and diversity of our fellow world citizens. We look forward to growth of the forum as well as expansion of the ideas expressed in the coming weeks. |
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Client Side
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Pixel Perfect to Picture Perfect
We have completed the pictures for the Adore-A-Pet comic. The final phase of this project involved changing all of the pictures from a pixel based format to a vector based format enabling a smooth printing of the pictures. Each picture underwent a tracing of both sides of every line with the traced edges then being individually smoothed to perfection. This process is generally the domain of graphics designer making the software available for the PC a lot more primitive than that available for Macintosh. Unfortunately all drawing cannot be done in the vector based program as it does not provide for line weight which would give all of the pictures an unsophisticated look.
We have also begun work on the upgrade of the Adore-A-Pet web site. Their new site will include order forms for a variety of hard to find products for pets, tips and facts on pet care, and a whole new section on Xylatol, a dental care product.
Finishing Touches
After a week of review, Fiduciary sent their approval of their new site with just a few modifications to make. We have completed the modifications and the site will go up as soon as they give the word. |
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Notes From You
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"I just went to the Inner Outpost and you guys are doing a great job with it! Keep it up;)"
~Joseph Reynolds, Network Administrator
"Looks great!"
~Vice President of New Business, Fiduciary Trust Company International in response to their site.
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