Thursday, October 21, 2010

Mass Effect 1 and 2 are evil games

Wow it's been a while since I did something on here. A lot's happened since the last post, but maybe I can try to update a little more regularly from now on.

***

My Shepard in Mass Effect is generally a decent person, but every now and then she gets downright evil... where in the world does she get that from..?



... It's pretty hard to choose between Kaidan and Garrus. Garrus has that cute awkwardness about him, something I feel that would evolve and grow if allowed in ME3. Kaidan, on the other hand, is very stable, and very smoky and a lot more sure of what he wants. :3 All right, so maybe I'm a bit more partial to Kaidan (especially because of his voice), but I know I'm going to have savegames picking both guys for when ME3 comes out. :p

Sunday, December 6, 2009

TF2: the Anime, part 1

There was a great forum thread on a site I visit that experimented with making fake screenshots, as if Team Fortress 2 had been made into a cartoon, or more specifically an anime. I was having a slow weekend, so I thought I'd try one.

Of course, an anime isn't complete without subtitles. It was fun though, so I think I'll mess around with some more relatively soon, hence the "part 1" in the title.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Sky Pirates!

Well, just because I'm not feeling well today doesn't mean I can't be a little productive, so I gave myself a random topic and went with it...
so I ended up with two extremes, the eager goofy fix-it sky pirate pilot, and the refined sky pirate queen. What the hell does a sky pirate look like? I have no idea (aside from vaguely remembering FFXII and Skies of Arcadia) but I like the topic just because you can really make any combination of clothes and it's not "wrong" since there is no "right." I may end up adding to this later on.


Monday, March 30, 2009

Scout Update, even slower than Valve Time!

It's been a while since the Scout Update was released for Team Fortress 2, so I figured I'd pull a Valve and make some late sketches of the Scout.

I think the class I'm the worst at is the Scout... even more so than Spy, and I'm pretty bad with Spy. Scout's just so spastic and demands a computer better than mine to move around effectively and without a crapload of lag.
He's such a bizarre character and sometimes I liken him to a ballerina, especially the way his legs flop all over the place... so here's some bendy Scout:

And a couple silly expressions for good measure... I think the naughty smirk is a bit more Spy-like, but oh well. ... oh, and his buck teeth amuse me. :3

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Fun with character re-designs

I love Team Fortress 2 (I'm sure some people are thinking "DUH!"). I also love the Medic, and I was in a drawy mood and was watching Batman: TAS, so I thought I'd try sketching out the Medic with a subtle Bruce Timm taste to it.



Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Bad Sense of Direction...?



"Can you help me find Relationship Ridge? I think someone gave me a bum map."


Just a whimsical/silly visual I had randomly gotten in my head during work. Oh, and I HAAAATE COLORING... why is it that it takes at least twice as long to color than to draw. Or am I just slow? Maybe, lol. T___T

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Today's episode: "Wow, the Clone Wars era is annoying", or: "Why Lucas, WHY?"

I just got back from a screening of the upcoming Clone Wars animated movie, and man.... was it a pointless endeavor. It's pretty obvious from the start that the movie was really an afterthought on Lucas's part to try and draw in more money, since the overall quality doesn't really match today's higher standards for animated flicks. I will say one thing that I enjoyed: I love how Clone troopers look. I know they ripped off the stylized versions of the 2D cartoon, but damn I loved those designs. The faces underneath, are another thing, though.

On the negative side, there were several things bugging me throughout the movie:

- First off (and this is a geeky complaint), no text crawl at the beginning?! This is a Star Wars staple, and it is completely omitted, instead utilizing some announcer/narrator that sounds like they came from several decades ago when TV was still black and white. What the hell, I mean really. Didn't work for me at all.

- The animation was very ehhhh. Granted, I know this is supposed to be a TV series, but as a movie I expected a lot more. So many of the walk/run cycles of the characters look so awkward, particularly Anakin's padawan Ahsoka. Her walk/trot almost looked stuttered or something, and they all feel like they're moving on stilts.
In general, a lot of the movements characters do are too abrupt; it'll be a sudden motion and then will stop suddenly. There's way too little follow-through with their motions, and it makes most of the movie look stilted. Plus, all most characters do while they talk is wave a hand in a few variations, which doesn't looks natural at all. I guess Lucas actually succeeded in making his animated characters even more wooden than his live ones. It's too bad too, since you would hope that an animated feature could really exaggerate features and movement; the faces are surprisingly stiff and the mouths barely move much when they talk, except for a sneer or a smirk here or there, but some characters (no matter their mood) seem to be in perpetual frowns. Overall, it reminded me of a really long videogame cutscene.

- Also, whoever had the "bright" idea to make Obi-Wan do this obnoxious pose

several times during the movie should be shot. I'm sure they thought it was very cool looking, but when you see it in action, it just looks fucking ridiculous.
Speaking of Obi-Wan, he's horrifically arrogant in so much of the movie. There's a particular saber battle he has where, if it weren't for the fact that they're wielding blades, you'd think he was bapping the other person on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and treating them like a spoiled child. This doesn't bode well for how he'll be acting later in the series, I'm sure.

- Ahsoka can easily match the annoy-o-meter rating that Anakin does. It's pretty hard to be sympathetic with her character... the moment she's humbled and I start to think that she's learning from her experiences, then she lets loose a wiseass comment or a little jackass action, and it's back to me hating her again. (Plus, on a geek level, it doesn't make much sense that she tends to fight with her saber in a reverse form, blade going inwards like this:

You'd think it'd be a lot more effort and pretty impractical for a learning padawan.)
She also has a very forced bonding period with Anakin. The way they butt heads with each other over the slightest things doesn't really feel as close as they want you to feel; they seem competitive more than anything, and they bicker in some weird (platonic) Han and Leia way, but unfortunately without the charm, and as if they were both Hans.

The BIGGEST problem for me ultimately, however... Is the ENTIRE POINT OF THE MOVIE/SERIES ITSELF. Why, why are you introducing a spunky young padawan arrogant bitch-kid that you know is supposed to be important in this story? Does anyone else see the pure futility in it all? I mean, it's not like it's a spoiler: there is a jedi purge during Episode 3 onwards, and, surprise surprise, you never hear about Ahsoka later, so obviously she will die. All this bonding with Anakin is pointless, because, c'mon, the dude killed an entire room of defenseless toddlers; he's not going to bat an eye killing her. Well, either that or she gets turned Sith as well (which I could see, seeing how much of a little bitch she already is in the movie), but even then I imagine there's a high chance she'd get whacked that way too. Why should we care about her character, when we know she has no impact on the story as a whole? She certainly doesn't improve Anakin at all, and definitely not in the long run.

I'm not really sure why Lucas has this gigantic hard-on for the prequel / clone wars time period, because honestly there's only so much you can shoehorn into there; it's not exactly a lengthy time period, especially as far as Star Wars sagas go. What would've made more sense to me is if he had made an animated series based off of events that happened right after Return of the Jedi. You want a padawan kid that children can latch onto? Have Luke restart the Jedi Order and do it that way. You want wiseass antics that are actually funny? You've got Han Solo. They didn't use Hayden or Ewan's voices in this one, so they could've easily gotten sound-alikes (plus Mark Hamill) for a post-ROTJ animated series.

I think Lucas really dropped the ball... but then again, he's been steeped in the dark side for a long time now. I remember old interviews with him, hot off the heels of his original trilogy success, when he had told people that it was good, that he had established himself and now that he had accomplished that, he could "really start making the movies he wanted to make." Back then, it sounded like he meant non-Star Wars movies, branching out and trying new things. But leeching the life out of Star Wars, making spinoffs and toys and rereleases, he fell into the greed trap, he took the "quick and easy path." And he made this movie, which will lead to a series that's planned to have "at least 100 episodes." Great, 100 episodes of stories that mean nothing.

I'm really fearful of things that Lucas is excited about these days. Excited about reviving Star Wars? Greedo shoots first. Excited about prequels? Emo kid Vader, and 90% green-screened movies. Excited about Indy 4? CG prarie dogs, surviving nukes in a fridge, and more CG up the yin-yang. ... ugh... I'm actually pretty damn scared about the future of Indiana Jones, but that's a rant for another blog post.