this was first published on the now-defunct omegaCarotene.posterous.com back in early 2o11~ >[:)
Monthly Archives: June 2013
the forgotten Journey
Ah, it has been many months since i’d last played Journey , an experience that was beautifully sublime the first time through (i have completed it twice to date, and currently have a 57% trophy completion rate). Since it’s release via PSN digital download on the ps3 over a year ago (mar13th2o13 in North America), there have been countless fan-art created and blogs written about the game, with some reading religious themes within its wordless tale. I personally see the entire experience of that game as an allegory for life and reincarnation, the latter of which is a concept that i find fascinating to read about, but am uncertain about when it comes to belief. I consider myself agnostic, and i feel it’s more truthful to say that i want to believe—rather than do believe—in something greater than our tangible human experience…whatever that means.
With its unspoken philosophy that has been deliberately left open to various interpretations, Journey stands a shining paragon of video games as an art form, and a fine contemporary example of how the story of a game can be told through visuals and music, rather than through text or recorded speech. And my, are the atmospheric visuals truly something to behold.
As for the music, the game surrounds one with a layered, epic score as varied in tone and mood as the environments that one will traverse throughout the quest.
The image at the beginning of this post is one that i’d created for my sackiCon series in adobe illustrator (i love vector art!), with the look for this particular sackiCon based on the Journey Costume in littleBigPlanet . >[:)
say “Cheese,” burger, cuz you’re on a blog
in-N-out Double-Double: animal style (with pickles and onions grilled in mustard)~
Sometimes, nothin’ else quite satisfies you like a nice, juicy cheeseburger. It’s not exactly the ideal gaming food, and definitely not something you’ll want to eat while driving, unless having greasy morsels of beef and bits of lettuce falling in your lap is your idea of enjoying a meal; in my opinion, any good burger is one that will inevitably get messy while you eat it.
If one is truly hell-bent on mixing gaming and gastronomic activities (and i’m not talking about wall chicken*, either), one solution includes using a fork + knife + plate. But that’s no way to really dig into a sauce-dripping, succulent burger, as many games require two hands to be played properly, and those that ones that can be operated by waggling a single Wiimote…almost don’t qualify as games. At least not ones really worth my personal time. When it comes to gaming & snacking, one could also consider options like eating sliced fruit or chopped meats (i love dry salami and coppa!) with a fork, or even potato chips with chopsticks. Yes, i’ve done that before. ‘Cause greasy controllers are just…wrong.
But, back to the picture-related topic: in my mind, a good burger should always contain some crisp lettuce and sliced tomatoes sandwiched between the [ideally] lightly toasted buns along with the melted cheese and savory beef patties. The veggie & fruit help balance out the flavors, providing a cool & crisp contrast to the salty greasiness of the ground beef…not to mention that they add to one’s diet some small amounts of dietary fiber and lycopene. Aesthetically, the edible flora also add some delightful reds and greens to usual meaty textured-browns and shiny yellows. While cheeseburgers are quite a different animal from the dishes in Taiwanese cuisine, i believe the concept of “色,香,味” (literally color, fragrance, flavor ) also apply, with “color” referring to the visual aesthetic appeal of a dish. Btw, while writing this, i’d not only salivated profusely (something which my keyboard can attest to), but also found a cool lil’ blog with some tasty burger tips (amongst other food-themed wordery).
Though it’s often mildly—if temporarily—torturous on one’s stomach, there’s this strange satisfaction to be had from taking macro photos of food prior to consumption. Click! nom nom nom…
In-N-Out Burger joints are available in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Texas.
* Fans of the pre-Symphony of the Night Castlevania games are likely familiar with this gravelly and inexplicably situated, yet oddly nutritious HP-replenishing item.
Mastication is good! For a somewhat different (and less carnivorous) perspective on food & nerdery from a different spot on the globe, check out Put-Putt’s Blog~ >[:)
the Room of game-Geekery
when games collide no.o2 – dec2oo9 ~
here we have what is essentially a geekified version of my room, modeled in Maya and mapped with 128×128 textures (think Nintendo 64 era graphics). while i do (irl) have a habit of making my bed everyday, the bed is admittedly a bit spartan. i think all of my cast shadow are way on the light side, too; the whole thing could certainly benefit from some ambient occlusion baked-in. and the rug design is too light to read as any intelligible image. the shelves on the wall need some cast shadows. there’s some oddness to the grass around the base of the Moai in the corner…it could use a couple mounds of dirt around there—and speaking of the Moai Ester Isle head, there’s no friggin’ way that the architectural structure of an average Spanish-style house in the Bay area could support that kind of weight on the second floor… sweet mother of—someone hand me a Gravity Hammer, now! we’re tearing this puppy down!
how many game/geekery characters or icons can you spot in the room above?
Live + learn + play~!! >[:)
WYREwork: antler
Δntler : the prince of the Forest of Alveria (WYREwork no.15 – adorned version) – jan.2oo9 ~
WYREwork is about creating spacial forms from metallic lines, finding the balance between structure and flexibility. this piece is about 3inches tall from the tip of its antlers to the hooves of its forefeet.
sometimes, it’s good to be twisted~! more in omegaCarotene’s WYREworks gallery … >[:)
心 heart plant
A while back, there was this girl—who i’ll just refer to as “J” here for the sake of whatevers—that i’d met online and then hit up a coupla cafés with, and we talked about stuff and such. I think it was around that time that i’d drawn my first ball-point and then vector versions of my current signature character, the mad cyborg-bunny telcihc. I’d found her attractive; meanwhile, perhaps i’d seen a heart anatomy-illustration somewhere online, with all the ventricles Continue reading
Telc Blast: dev-Journal entry no.002
Telcihc (T-βeta13) versus grunt Daucus n01: the prelude to leporine violence
This isn’t quite that bunny-on-carrot violence that i’d alluded to in a previous entry, but rather the prelude to it: the calm before the storm, if you will. Is this a finished piece of work? Certainly not. note the way the Daucus’ leafy-plume is cut off in a simple straight line. I shall blab about this…perhaps tomorrow, when our yellow star shines its golden rays upon the North American continent~
For the meantime, interpretations, anyone? (feel free to comment!) >[:)
cyborg-bunny pixelation~ >[:)
pixelated “self-portraits“: a standard and a darkside version. enough said~ >[:)
Telc Blast: dev-Journal entry no.001
So…here we start off my Development Journal for my w-i-p flash game Telc Blast . Okay, so it’s kind of a lame name that doesn’t quite sum up my concept of the game (a 2D action-adventure platformer), but it’s a a working title.
The above dialogue box refers to the events of what starts off the story of the “evil” cyborg-bunny dr. julius “oC” telcihc‘s (pronounced tell-sik ) adventure: our protagonist’s trusty space ship, the Lepus Graviticus , has crash landed on a alien planet covered with vast, lush jungles and inhabited by the Daucus, a warrior race of carrot-like creatures. telcihc must traverse the terrain to find several of the Graviticus ‘ parts (which had broken off during its fiery descent), in order to repair his damaged ship and return in time for dinner and maybe an episode of the show LOST …wait, does this overall plot sound familiar to you? being stranded on an alien planet, a broken ship and missing part, carrot-like natives?
Did someone say Pikmin, Nintendo’s delightfully charming take on the RTS (real time strategy) genre? Right you are! Well, it’s like they say, if you’re gonna crib something, at least crib from the best. And i’ve been following Nintendo since i first started slaying Dracula’s hellish minions in Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge at the age of 12. Okay, so that was Konami-developed, but it was exclusive to the original gray-brick of a GameBoy, with Christopher Belmont and the beautifully detailed backgrounds displayed in all the glory that 4 shades of gray could muster on that cabbage-green, 160×144 pixel resolution LCD screen. In retrospect, that thing was so heavy with 4 AA batteries that it probably would’ve broken the floor if one had dropped it. Yet, regardless of Nintendo fandom and all, i still have yet to acquire me a WiiU…hmmm… that needs to be rectified soon… like maybe when the next Zelda comes out… But what were we talking about again?
Telc Blast, right. There’s that old saying, that there’s nothing new under the sun. So i shall revel in my cribby-ness. Yet, as i am building this as a 2D platformer in Flash, there is already that distinction. And unlike the tiny Pikimin, who make up the protagonist Olimar’s army of cute-but-deadly head-bangers, the Daucus are the enemies in Telc Blast …or so they seem. Suffice it to say that there will be bunny-on-carrot violence, albeit in a cartoony way. Really, as if the gameplay in Pikmin isn’t violent: similar to an army of colorful ants, your floral legions of Pikmin swarm the local fauna and beat them into submission with their cute, leafy/flowery heads, all while slave-driver Olimar stands at a safe distance, whistling battle commands…but, then, that’s part of why i like the series so much (does that make me a bad person?). One could argue that the relationship between the stranded astronaut and his flowery followers is a symbiotic one, but that’s a discussion for another day (or feel free to comment! ^-^ ). So, back to actually creating my Telcihc game, rather than all this blogging!
As you might have noticed from the title above, this is dev-Journal entry no.001, so thank you those who have actually read this far, and stay tuned! >[:)