Some good news recently as I have been able to join the MMX aka Might and Magic 10 game team. This currently is a fan based project, but the opportunity is quite awesome! Lots of good people on the team and so much to learn. As a side note most all of the artwork I was going to finish (aka the portrait) has been put on the back burner. Lots and lots of drawing going on but nothing to put up yet as I don’t want to give anything away

I am working from an photograph from online to try and understand the planes of the face more as well as get down color better….this is rough atm…but hopefully will have it finished by the end of this week.

Occasionally I have the honor of doing some type of tattoo design for one of my buds. This is the result of one such example.

I am really enjoying using vector based programs for some time now. I especially would recommend inkscape seeing as it is free (you can donate to them as well).

I also recently (within the past month or so) picked up the Uncharted: Dual Pack for Ps3. While I am somewhat digging the first game there are a lot of naggling things about it that drive me absolutely nuts. First off, why does everyone in the game have laser robot aim? I mean common! You turn a corner and are shot before you can even see the guys face…even if he is 6 miles away with a shotgun that shoots super charged pellets that heat seek your face! Nowadays it seems programmers are getting lazy and putting in code that exists in other games…like hmm this same thing happened in Far Cry, all Battlefield shooters, InFamous, and several other games. I wouldn’t think that it would be that hard to create stupid moronic AI that screws up every once and a while

My second qualm with this game is HOW DID THEY GET THERE?! I am talking yet again about the villains. Cause apparently hobo thug #4 has a jet pack to get to the very top of some obscure ruin that took me thirty minutes just to get there while dangling precariously from several ledges. Seriously, how did this pack of 6 men get to this part of the jungle temple that is blocked off from vehicle access? It makes no sense. Don’t just put enemies in there so we can have some action. Put them there because they serve a purpose! If we look back to the original Tomb Raider on PS1, the thing that made that game so great was the feeling of being the first person in hundreds of years to find these grand temples. Yes once and a while you had to fight some random tiger or bat or whatever, but most of the time was spent ALONE in a large cavernous temple or ruin trying to figure out what to do and how to survive before you wrecked yourself on some spike sticking out of the floor.

Oh and as long as we are on the Qualms-roll I would lastly like to add the kevlar t-shirts that enemy AI is wearing. Perhaps it is some sort of fecking invisi-forcefield that they are wearing that prevents my point blank shotgun blast from rupturing their organs. Or maybe I am just firing paintballs out of my guns. Please don’t have your enemies wear t-shirts if they take more than 3 shots to take them down via the body.

Qualm-off

Over the weekend I was gifted with a copy of Skyrim, the latest Elder Scrolls game from Bethesda Softworks. I didn’t anticipate this even happening so soon as I thought I might pick it up more towards the end of the month, but hot damn I am glad I was wrong about that! To even express the game’s breadth and atmosphere in a handful of paragraphs would be near impossible, but I will attempt to do so anyways.

Well what’s kewl about the game? Pretty much near everything! Even boring and menial tasks like smithing and cooking have been done in such a way that you just “like” to do them. Coming from a game like FFXI where you take 16 hours to skillup one craft above level 10 it’s quite refreshing! As a side note – I haven’t upped my char above level 12 in clothcraft for FFXI, and that was from 3 years ago -_-;

Anyways, getting on with the review. Check out the screenie above. The detail in just that one picture can tell you what pretty much all of Skyrim is like. In fact, upon starting the first main quest (after you escape the something and then travel to the someplace with that someone dude) where you climb to the top of the mountain, my eyes were watering from all the awesomeness that was presented to them! The snowstorm you encounter is just fecking jaw dropping! But then you get into the cave and more awesomeness slaps your face off!

Yes, this is the first game I think that I have played in a long time that actually combines art, depth and function near seamlessly. Granted there are graphical glitches and things that do odd things once and a while – I’m talking to you, Mr. Hyperactive book on table that beat like a bass drum concert! Yet, these things can be forgiven easily when you consider the mental health of all the programmers that worked on this game. I still don’t know how they did it. But getting back to the depth thing. There is really an atmosphere in the art direction (which includes both audio and visual) that keeps it all cohesively together like a real world. You can almost feel the bitter cold of the mountains or smell the venison steak as you are cooking it in the pot. And the music is just….gorgeous, lush, and inspiring! The description really can’t get any better than that.

Gameplay wise it will feel very much like Oblivion to some extent, but a more refined Oblivion. Instead of sifting through tons and tons of inventory to find what you need and how to use it, this time you have a simplified webpage-ish inventory screen. There are four main categories – Magic, Skills, Map and Items. And from each of these categories they branch off into other sub-categories much like a well designed web page would do. There isn’t really much mucking about trying to find your shite. I like this..I like this A LOT!

Wielding weapons feels more satisfactory as well, especially the NON QUICKTIME death blows – Something which has been plaguing modern games since God of War (which did it right). War hammers feel heavy. Short swords feel semi-light. And best of all shields are fun and useful this time around – they actually work! You can block like usual but you can time your blocks appropriately and “shield bash” foes to create openings.

At this point in the game I am about 12 hours in and level 10? I put a ? there because the last time I was playing I had thought I played only 2-3 hours. But reality showed me on my save game that I had played 6 hours-_-; I have not played a game in close to 10 years that has captured me this much. Honorable mentions would be Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time (where my sense of time was messed up for realz), Balders Gate II and Dungeon Master (oldy but goodie). Would I recommend this game? A resounding Fek Yeah! comes to mind.  So much more could be written, but then you would be wasting precious time you could be using to run out and dive into this masterfully created world – so get to it!

-TeT-

The images below are from a painting I have been working on forever…only during the past um….6 months have I been working on this little by little. It is from a photograph taken in Vietnam by my wife. Hopefully I can get this done faster than Leondardo was able to finish most of his paintings ;P

Trying to get my life drawing skills down a bit better…and a bit more simple I guess. Have to do more nature sketches to get me comfortable with this type of drawing (free flow design).

Recently we were able to obtain the blu ray edition of LOTR. And having recently finished the books I was very pleased with how the movie was presented. I have seen all three movies before, but there seemed some disjointed parts in each iteration.Upon watching Fellowship of the Ring the second time I could see Boromir’s character more fleshed out…which I was very pleased with. I actually found it disheartening in the original movie how they basically portrayed him more as a greedy selfish human being. In the book this is hardly so. He is very proud of his people and will stand by them until his death to protect them. He is also tortured by the fact that his help might not make a difference at all. His people have been fighting Mordor forces forever long. And this is his last chance in desperation to protect them for good. I am happy that this version gave him a more fleshed out personality, which in turn helped me to like him more. Either that or I am biased because he is one of my favorite characters in the book.

Anyways, the point being that everyone near the Ring (in the books) could be influenced by it…so to fault poor Boromir for wanting it and making him out to be a bad guy would be wrong. In the end he fought valiantly for Pippen and Merry proving his worth as a great warrior.

Recently I was able to see the latest Harry Potter movie (DH p2) and was quite taken aback by just how many commercials were slung at the audience during the “pre-movie” show. I counted around 20 or more…it was infuriating! I do not go to a movie so that I can get hammered with commercials for me to go buy stupid crap! We as a society have enough crap and need in fact to downsize rather than upsize. What really laid down the last straw that broke the camels back in this onslaught of commercials…an ending that stated “Go big or not at all.” As in watch this on the big screen only and not on your computer screen cause it is too small (and therefor inferring that you are pirating). Frankly, I would rather not put up with stupid people, incessant cell phone banter, 20+ commercials, highly overpriced concession stand items, and sticky floors. I would rather sit at home. If they ever force you to watch commercials on your DVD/bluray discs to the point where you can’t even skip ahead I will stop watching TV/movies altogether. This is why movies studios are failing in my eyes. We as an audience no longer have the ability to go into a movie just to see a movie…instead we are paying to be advertised to. BUY BUY BUY! I say NO NO NO!

I hope that I am not the only one sitting in the theater going ” I paid for this?!?!” If more and more people become disgusted with this crap, maybe just maybe they will start focusing more on movies again and less on what brand of socks you need to buy to make your teeth whiter…..

Many people think that artists have this magical ability to conjure images, words, or music out of their rear. This cannot be further from the truth of things. Perhaps it’s because the artist is rarely portrayed in a positive spotlight by educational institutions (aka art is a back burner activity). We are seen as a waste of money in most instances by the government. Sure those higher ups LOVE to come and watch, listen or read our work…but do they really ever think about the merits or even the time it took to create such work? Rarely.

As an example for those of you that do not know – a single image such as a painting done professionally can take up to 40+ hours of work alone. Now couple that with the fact that an artist has to create multiple pieces of work in order to make a living and you can see the overtime involved! In fact rarely will an artist’s mind ever STOP working (damn you brain)! We are constantly researching, pondering, visualizing, creating…even if it is not in concrete form yet. Our craft demands that we do so.

In closing, please take a look or listen at the world around you and try to realize just how much of it was created by an artist. And if you have the chance to meet one, thank them for their hard work!