And I don’t mean that in a bad way.  I wrote a while back that I thought it would keep me from getting things done and I was completely right.  Every chance I find I have a chance to play it, I do!  It is an excellent old school CRPG in the vein of Baldur’s Gate or even the old D&D Gold Box games if you remember those.

The battles are challenging, especially on a console due to the way you pause it, and the third person view makes tactics problematic, if I had it to do over again, I would have purchased the PC version so I’d get the old school top down 3/4 view, but I hate to reboot my mac into Windows to play games so when I can, if it’s on a console, I buy the console version, just to keep my computer for work only.  Anyway, besides that one drawback, the game is excellent, I’m still in the early portions of the game but I’m enjoying it and I want to play more everyday, which is good and bad.  Good for the game since it means the developers did their job well, bad for me because it means I’m not getting any work done.

This years E3 has come and gone and after watching all the videos and the coverage on G4 here are the things that are coming out that I’m excited about:

• Assassin’s Creed II: If they truly have cleaned up some of the repetitive game play, I will be losing some productivity time to it, definitely looks cool; plus who doesn’t want to traipse around renaissance Italy?
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow:  I loved the original Castlevania all those many years ago when it came out.  This game looks fantastic, if it can deliver, I might just love it as much as the first.  Plus, hello, Patrick Stewart doing voice work!
• Brutal Legend: Jack Black and a bevy of metal gods… ’nuff said.
• Dragon Age Origins:  I love me the BioWare guys and I don’t know about this spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate but if they get me fun gameplay, they can call it whatever the hell they want.

Now you say, what about Mass Effect II, or Left 4 Dead 2 or Halo ODST?… yes, they look cool, but I never played the first ones. shocking, I know, but I have limited time and budget… I’m not some lazy bones 20 something with nothing to do and their parents money to blow, and if I’m going to blow my money and time, it’s gotta buy me dinner and tell me I’m pretty!  I’m also looking forward to how Natal develops but I’m remaining skeptical until I see an actual game I want to play that uses it as a control mechanism.

Now, did Sony come out with anything that would make me buy a PS3 for something other than being an overpowered BluRay player?  God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 were the only things to really catch my eye… enough to make me buy a PS3?, only if they drop the damn price.

That leaves Nintendo.  Oh big N, you only had Super Mario Wii and that isn’t going to make me drop one cent for your console.

I’m not usually one to give a crap when some Hollywood celeb dies tragically.  It’s not that I don’t care that a life has ended but it’s more that I just don’t form personal connections to celebrity, I just have trouble being a rabid fan of anyone or anything.  I was never really a huge admirer of David Carradine’s other works, the Kill Bill movies being an exception, but I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Kung Fu tv show, due mainly to it’s connection with my childhood.

When I was young, read grade school age, in the summer my brother and I would spend the mornings at my grandparents house, watching cartoons in the morning while we had our coffee (milk with a splash of coffee and a lot of sugar) and then things like Bonanza and Kung Fu until grandma’s soaps came on.  It’s hard to find that kind of programming anymore without sitting on TVLand, but that’s a different rant.

So you see, I associate David Carradine with a very happy time of my life and for that, I will miss him, and every cheesy Kung Fu typecast, martial arts related piece of poo he has done since.  With that I say, rest in peace grasshopper, thanks for the good times.

In the process of planning out the comic I’ve been working on, I have been trying to commit to a medium to actually produce the comic in.  When I first thought of doing a comic, I wanted to do it all in traditional media, Bristol, pencils, inks, etc.  Then, after reading about so many artists digital workflows I thought, “hey, lets try to do it digital”, at least for the inks.  So I whipped out Photoshop, scanned in some pencils I had done for character designs and started doing some tests, with less than stellar results.  I think some of those early failures was simply me not having the experience necessary to “ink” in Photoshop.

I didn’t realize it then, so I went to something else and tried “inking” in Illustrator.  I got better results mostly because Illustrator smoothed out my shaky lines.  I thought “great, I can ink in Illustrator and I’ll have easy to scale line art!”.  Only problem is, Illustrator is the most artist unfriendly piece of software on the planet.  It’s interface just doesn’t make sense (don’t believe me, without looking in the manual or using the help, or Googling, find the toggle that will make a brush stroke maintain it’s transparency setting, go ahead, I’ll wait). Plus the more I worked with it, the more I realized it made my stuff too clean.  I did get to the point where I was even sketching in Illustrator, but I just wasn’t happy with the final product.

I thought about going completely traditional again.  Then I gave Photoshop another chance just the other day.  I started just doing some pencils in it, using some of the lessons I learned from Illustrator (zooming in close is your best friend).  Wonder of wonders, I was enjoying myself and more importantly, getting results I like.  I haven’t tried inking yet but I think I’ll have better luck this time.  I’m even thinking of doing the comic in a more painterly style rather than the traditional black lines and shiny color.

Then again… maybe I’ll just draw it all on bristol and ink it with a brush.

Pardon my dust.  Rebooting the website with a new design, content, thoughts and musings.  A few things will likely be changing as I get time to add content, ads, tweak the design etc.  The Cafepress store will be remaining for a little while at least, but I will probably be removing some products and revamping the ones that remain.

I’ll be adding sketchbook stuff back, along with thoughts on art in general and if I can get around to it, maybe a few tutorials.

My interest in painting miniatures has flared up quite a bit lately, so I might be posting about that process, with photos of finished models and possibly works in progress (of which there are too many to count).  For those interested I mainly paint minis from Privateer Press’ line for Warmachine and Hordes but I pick up other figures if I think they are cool.

Finally, I haven’t given up on the comic I mentioned writing before this reboot.  That process is still ongoing, I’m just slow at getting it done, day job, life distractions, too many projects and all that.  Anyway, I’m hoping for great things to be coming in the (hopefully) near future!  Stay tuned.