Quest For Cyrus This project was done in DAZ Studio 3 Advanced with Animate plug-in A Jpeg series was generated and made into WMVs with Picasa. I used Paintshop Pro X3 Ultimate to create muzzle flash and create blurs on fast moving parts of figures. I used Magix Music Maker 12 Deluxe and Nero Wave editor for the sound. Nero was used only because it was the only program I had that would edit the .amr phone voice recorder files emailed by the female actor. The music is original from Magix loops and MIDI editing. It was all stitched together in Serif MoviePlus X3. I've been buying sound effects loops from various places for 10 years. Interestingly, when I tried to include a gory sound along with the metal impact of the first shot, the gore cancels out the clink and I had to remove it. My inspiration for the movie is actually a short story I wrote and never finished about scientists trying to create super soldiers using vampire DNA. It struck me years ago that zombies and vampires were very similar. They both feed on humans and they reproduce by infection. The vampire is just more environmentally friendly. So I approached the zombie as a mutated form of vampire. Naturally, being able to vaporize our enemies with missiles isn't enough. We must also win all hand to hand combat, so we need super soldiers. So we sent in an undercover agent, Alea, to pretend to be a familiar and steal some vampire saliva and skin from a known urban vampire, Cyrus. She's successful but wounds Cyrus emotionally. He hadn't killed a human in a century, but nearly killed her when it was clear she used him. But he loves her and she does manipulate him. She's cold, cruel to zombies and people, but does find his old fashioned love amusing. She tells herself her feelings for him are nothing. Just her staying in character for too long. The fruits of her betrayal go awry. Instead of the soldiers gaining the strength and speed of vampires, they gained a hunger for blood and flesh – and it's very contagious. Like vampires, they grow stronger as they get older, but these become stronger by the day. After a month, young vampires can't take them down alone. Luckily for vampires, zombies prefer human flesh. The zombie outbreak threatens many species – humans and those underground species prey on humans. When the last human is turned into an inedible zombie, the supernatural races face war and extinction. The story is about a band of old and young vampires, elves and human soldiers, both normal and augmented, who seek out and destroy the zombies during the day then they tend to hide. The normal soldiers that there mainly as a willing food source for the vampires. Cyrus can find them all because they all came from him. He can feel them all, and it's a strain. Cyrus has a suspicion that killing himself may cause them all to revert to human but can't be sure. He will leave that option open only if success seems unlikely. Still, he wonders, why is Alea immune? This took a week to do. I actually rendered much more – but there was that 60 second limit. She's not wasting her bullets in the alley. She simply knew he was watching and would save her. It got edited out. I had to actually change Cyrus' diatribe, and edit out the deal they made. But it was very fun to do.