Dragon Ninja!

Halloween this year was good fun! I was really impressed with the costumes this year, some people went all out and that's always fun when people make an effort :)

I went as a ninja, it was a last minute costume (as usual) but it came out all right. Also, I didn't have to talk much to people, coz like...that wouldn't be ninja-like.

John came as a pretty cool pirate! Although for some reason he kept reminding me of Tim Minchin.


Lawrences doctor costume was also really rad, because he managed to snag one of the actual surgical gowns from CWM Hospital. That my friends, is authen-fucking-ticity.

And now that the photos are all up and I've drank about twelve bottles of orange juice I think it's time for a well deserved nap.

Stay Spooky!

Meet my treacherous friend.

Consider it my emo drawing of the month. (Emo-nth?) Anyway, Halloween is coming up! I have to start working on my costume.

Coloring Between the Lines

Sometimes it's fun to take a break from coloring your own work. I'm serious. When you put together pencils and inks and then have to color, shade and texture them it can be a bit daunting. So when I saw that our very own Lawrence Cass had put up a few lines on his blog, I thought I'd do some coloring today.

I'm way more happy with how the Rock ones turned out than the Soul Reaver one, but I will still give them equal love in my heart.

So if you're of the arty persuasion, have a go at coloring someone elses art, or even find someone to trade lines with!

Forsaken

Work in progress of MJ's Forsaken Warrior, Numskull. Still want to go through, texture it, fix up the shadows and glows and then add a cool background.

But this took a while, so here's what I've done so far :P

FOREVER ALONE

My apologies for the crappy art. But it had to be done.

Big Red

Today I made this! If you want to get technical, I have had the sketch since wednesday, but I got to sit down and color it today.

That's the sketch there, and below, I've posted a progression sorta thing. Because those are fun.

If you click this, it will embiggen!

I really should clean this up

Those Screens!

I remembered them today! Here are a few screenshots of my short (yet awesome) time in Minecraft. A pretty early shot of my base at night. I spawned right next to a lake sort of thing, so I got in a boat and did some...boating around. (While of course, playing Lonely Islands "I'm on a Boat")

One of my first projects was to construct a skylight in my mine. It has the advantage of letting me know what time it is before I reach the first floor, and also burnin' up any skeletons or zombies that might follow me. If I run out of arrows or swords...

And this is one of the latest iterations of the base. The upper fortress is pretty cosmetic at this point, but is still a nice place to chill at night. And the tower is for sniping creepers for their gunpowder. Also, ch-ch-check the Diamond items maaaan!

Pretty Happy with This

/Movie Trailer voice on
One Man...must survive...the wilderness.

But he doesn't know...that at night...danger awaits him.

Echoes from Underground

The Unfriendlies by ~Turnthephage

Right, so I've had a decent go at Minecraft (but forgot to bring the screenshots I took to work, d'oh) and I had a few thoughts I wanted to write down. First off, if you want some extra reading on what exactly Minecraft is, here are a few links.

Right, so first off, the graphics are not the best in the world. They do however, do the job. What that means is that rock looks like rock, you can tell that that brown thing with the green stuff on top of it is a tree and that that pink thing jumping around is supposed to be a piggy. Eventually you stop noticing how blocky everything is, and some of the randomly generated landscapes are quite impressive.

Minecraft reminds me of when I was a little lad playing in my room with my legos. I'd build castles and towers and space stations and then have the little yellow dudes play out their adventures. Often, smashing some of it for dramatic effect. The game is kind of like lego, but you play the perspective of the lego men. Well, a lego man.

That's another thing, apart from the animals and monsters, you are all alone. There are no friendly humanoid non player characters, and anything that vaguely resembles a man is either going to shoot arrows at your head or try and give you the zombie death hug. I really get the feeling when I'm playing, that the world is out to get me, and the only way I can survive is to rely on myself.

Conan the Mineventurer by ~Shinedog

So you build defences, you never venture out at night (unless you are feeling brave) and you learn to listen out for the telltale sounds of a zombies moan or a skeletons bones rattling in the distance. And spiders...don't get me started on the fucking spiders.

And then there is the mining. Why would you even bother, right? If there are things that want to kill you down there? Well, that's where minerals are. Coal for your torches, Iron for better tools, and of course the elusive azure glow of Diamonds. Sometimes it gets downright tense, especially when you stumble upon a natural cavern underground. You'll creep along, putting torches on the wall, your fingers ready to switch to your sword or bow. Sure, you could play the game on peaceful mode, but I feel like the game would get a bit boring that way.

Anyway, I don't want this to turn into a TLDR wall of text, so I'll leave it at that, and get those screenshots up later.

Awesome art by Michael Corrigan

Ssssssss

Sad creepers are sad.

That's sound they make right before they explode and make you DIE. I have been exploring the game of Minecraft for the last couple of nights. It's a game where you...mine. And also Craft. Completely randomly generated worlds with no goal except to survive against the creatures that come out at night.

The first time I actually met a I didn't even see the bastard. I was outside at night cleaning up the dirt to make a proper wall for my little shelter. The resulting explosion did clear the dirt pretty quickly though.

Anyway, I will probably post a few pictures of my progress with Minecraft, as well as some more thoughts once I put a few more hours in.

Also, here is wallpaper version of Creeper!

It is left aligned because my desktop is. So there!