The first drop of ink has hit the page for my tract. I've put down a tight framework for a story and have started putting together the artwork around it. I decided that since the tract will have about 24 panels of artwork, I wanted to be very clear in advance what was going to be on it. If I just tackled the project in a loose manner, I'd probably end up making more artwork than I'd use. Sure, it's good practice for learning perspectives and helps the creative process along, but I get bored easily. Not only that, but the immediate gratification aspect would be lost. I want a tract RIGHT NOW!
But first I have to put some effort into it, and that's what I've been working on today. The story will center around the human condition and some aliens. Gotta love aliens. The setting will be similar to Victorville, for no other reason that it will be much easier to draw. I could set the story in Boston and then spend the next year and a half drawing building, but I'll pass.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
More Cards
I'm taking a break from formatting cards in Photoshop to put a few online and give my CPU a chance to cool off. The images that I'm working with are so large and have so many layers that the computer struggles to keep up. It's particularly obvious when I'm bouncing between two or three large graphic files. Everything will seem to go well, and then the processor fan will start screaming like a banshee.
Here is an image of more Double Fanucci cards. The only suit that I don't like is the one for Zurfs. It looks alright, but I know that it could have been so much better. Ah well.
Friday, August 28, 2009
First look at cards
Here's the first look at my Double Fanucci Deck. Not bad! It's still incomplete because I haven't finished the face cards yet, but there are only nine of those so I should have them done before too long. All the suits are completed and I'm pleased with the results.
I still need to modify the images because the cards should have rounded corners similar to any poker deck, but again, that should be easy to do.
For this project I sketched out the images I wanted to use and then scanned them into Photoshop. After putting some color and texture on the cards I put them over a colorful background to make them stand out. The background was really the fun part. For that I painted a standard parchment layout on canvas and then scanned the image. When the two images are combined, both are improved!
But even so, what a deck! There are so many cards that a complete deck will be about two inches thick. Wow. But for what is inarguably the greatest card game ever created, it's only fitting that it commands a deck of intimidating size.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Avatar takes shape
Avatar image is pretty much done. This is the standard image that I'll use for other sites to sign my posts. What I like about this image is that it will allow itself to be modified in a variety of neat ways depending on what page I'll put it on. So this is the 'standard', with no frills.
-Ted Puffer
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Take Two
If there is one standard characteristic that Congress will have throughout time, it's the speed at which is passes new legislation. They are painfully slow. This ensures that any measures which are enacted into law have been given ample opportunity to have become watered down and inoffensive versions of themselves by the time a vote is taken, coupled with the additional benefit of giving whatever issue instigated the bill time to resolve itself. Under most cases the original problem which caused the glacial bill to start proceeding through the houses will either stop being a problem, or will have changed enough to make the proposed solution ineffective.
I think of it as a chronological insulation that protects people from their government.
But Health Care Reform is a different animal. It's a problem which isn't going to resolve itself, and time wasted in passing its bill has a serious detrimental effect on all Americans. I'm not going to go into too much detail on this because I'm pretty much sick of the issue by now. After seeing the torturious protestations well meaning (and ill meaning) citizens have put themselves through on this issue, it's time for action. Either kill the thing or pass it.
But I did want to take a moment to add that I shouldn't have been so dismissive in wishing that this generation pass away so that others can take up the cause and hopefully pass laws which reflect well on them. Yes, people are refusing to pass laws which will extend their lives. Yes, they are determined to shovel as many resources to insurance companies as they can. But in all of this, I shouldn't have spoken too roughly about them. Their blindness hurts themselves.
So I'll make a point of wishing them better, and commiserating with their pain. Hopefully they will have the beginnings of wisdom shine on them before it's too late in the season for Congress. Their second eternal characteristic is that Congress is lazy. If they haven't passed a law by May, it isn't going to happen that year.
I think of it as a chronological insulation that protects people from their government.
But Health Care Reform is a different animal. It's a problem which isn't going to resolve itself, and time wasted in passing its bill has a serious detrimental effect on all Americans. I'm not going to go into too much detail on this because I'm pretty much sick of the issue by now. After seeing the torturious protestations well meaning (and ill meaning) citizens have put themselves through on this issue, it's time for action. Either kill the thing or pass it.
But I did want to take a moment to add that I shouldn't have been so dismissive in wishing that this generation pass away so that others can take up the cause and hopefully pass laws which reflect well on them. Yes, people are refusing to pass laws which will extend their lives. Yes, they are determined to shovel as many resources to insurance companies as they can. But in all of this, I shouldn't have spoken too roughly about them. Their blindness hurts themselves.
So I'll make a point of wishing them better, and commiserating with their pain. Hopefully they will have the beginnings of wisdom shine on them before it's too late in the season for Congress. Their second eternal characteristic is that Congress is lazy. If they haven't passed a law by May, it isn't going to happen that year.
Icons
Against all odds, I'm back online and ready to do some posting. Finally. This place has been bare-bones long enough. It's time to put some art on the walls and move in officially.
One of the first things that I'm going to have to put together is a logo. Yeah. A logo. And let me head off any preconceptions about such an endeavor by saying that it's not just for business purposes but for artistic ones as well. The sites that I'm planning on doing the majority of my posting on have places for avatars. Not that posting anonymously is a bad thing, but if you don't have an avatar handy than they quickly assign one for you. THAT'S where the real problem is! I don't mind being know by name only, but when it's accompanied by a generic stick figure or hazy silhouette, then I'm spurred to action. I have to get something down.
I've been thinking of a few designs that will suit the purpose and have settled on two. I'll put the first one up tonight, if I can get my hands on a camera....
One of the first things that I'm going to have to put together is a logo. Yeah. A logo. And let me head off any preconceptions about such an endeavor by saying that it's not just for business purposes but for artistic ones as well. The sites that I'm planning on doing the majority of my posting on have places for avatars. Not that posting anonymously is a bad thing, but if you don't have an avatar handy than they quickly assign one for you. THAT'S where the real problem is! I don't mind being know by name only, but when it's accompanied by a generic stick figure or hazy silhouette, then I'm spurred to action. I have to get something down.
I've been thinking of a few designs that will suit the purpose and have settled on two. I'll put the first one up tonight, if I can get my hands on a camera....
Friday, August 14, 2009
Tract Project
There are two things to absolutely love about Jack Chick tracts. The artwork is always good, and even when it's obviously been rushed out the door on the way to the printer to become part of the millions strong opus of Chick works worldwide, it always retains a unique Chick touch to it. He's been creating these tracts for years, so you get to see how his artwork has progressed over time and it's genuinely interesting to see. Some tracts are almost lithographic in their detail, while others look scribbled at 3am.
The same goes for the stories. Some of them are simple, many bizarre and a handful completely incomprehensible in whatever of the scores of languages it happens to have been printed in. The characters are always bold stereotypes of good or evil, hand-wringing puppet masters and doey-eyed orphans in ghastly life situations.
Chick tracts may have been around from the 70s, but he's got a site and it's well done too. You can check it out here.
Years ago I stumbled across the site and started reading a tract or two. I was hooked, and have been so ever since. That's actually part of the stated purpose of the tracts, so it's no surprise. They are designed to grab someones attention, be brief enough to be read completely in a few moments, and then given away at the first opportunity. People who subscribe to Chick are encouraged to leave them along with tips at a restaurant, in libraries, public buildings and even (ahem) public facilities. Bathrooms.
While not condoning the last method of distribution, it looks like Chick is a founding father of guerrilla art. He makes something and then ambushes the public with it. Yeah, I look up to the guy.
Chick tract parodies have been around almost as long as the original tracts themselves. Usually with more racy plots and fair to good artwork.
That's another gem about these tracts, they leave themselves open to parody and imitation so well. All the artist needs to do is create a few panels of artwork, staple it in a little booklet with the distinctive black-box cover and the project is done.
I want to make one.
I want to have fun with the storylines of the original tracts. Usually they are blunt little homilies which end up with one or two people being dropped into Hell. Occasionally a main character gets into Heaven, but only by the grace of God.
My tract will start out simply, but the story will meander strangely and then end abruptly.
Yeah, it's a vanity project.
The same goes for the stories. Some of them are simple, many bizarre and a handful completely incomprehensible in whatever of the scores of languages it happens to have been printed in. The characters are always bold stereotypes of good or evil, hand-wringing puppet masters and doey-eyed orphans in ghastly life situations.
Chick tracts may have been around from the 70s, but he's got a site and it's well done too. You can check it out here.
Years ago I stumbled across the site and started reading a tract or two. I was hooked, and have been so ever since. That's actually part of the stated purpose of the tracts, so it's no surprise. They are designed to grab someones attention, be brief enough to be read completely in a few moments, and then given away at the first opportunity. People who subscribe to Chick are encouraged to leave them along with tips at a restaurant, in libraries, public buildings and even (ahem) public facilities. Bathrooms.
While not condoning the last method of distribution, it looks like Chick is a founding father of guerrilla art. He makes something and then ambushes the public with it. Yeah, I look up to the guy.
Chick tract parodies have been around almost as long as the original tracts themselves. Usually with more racy plots and fair to good artwork.
That's another gem about these tracts, they leave themselves open to parody and imitation so well. All the artist needs to do is create a few panels of artwork, staple it in a little booklet with the distinctive black-box cover and the project is done.
I want to make one.
I want to have fun with the storylines of the original tracts. Usually they are blunt little homilies which end up with one or two people being dropped into Hell. Occasionally a main character gets into Heaven, but only by the grace of God.
My tract will start out simply, but the story will meander strangely and then end abruptly.
Yeah, it's a vanity project.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Art-o-Mat
I saw the greatest thing while hiking the Art Walk in Tacoma, and the more I check it out, the cooler it gets.
Almost all visitor centers around town have pamphlets advertising the Art Walk. This is a gentle reminder to folks visiting the city that there's more here than just Chihuly glassblowing. For goodness sake, there's a college right downtown, you know that small art galleries abound. The guidebook helps track them down.
What caught my eye right away was something called art-o-mat. The name is reminiscent of the automatic diners of the 40's which I've seen photos of, but have never visited. The description of what the art-o-mat actually was clinched it. It's an old cigarette vending machine that's been refirbished and redesigned to distribute art instead of smokes. Customers buy a $5 token which they then put into the machine and pull a lever to get the art object of their choice. It sounds bizarre and weird and I'm happy to say the machine lives up to it's description.
The machine has been completely redesigned so it bares little similarity to the cigarette machines I remember from the 80's. Those were bland slabs of chrome and glass with about a dozen long levers across the base. This machine features a neon sign in the face and 4 or 5 'brands' of art to choose from in the center of the unit. I did some online checking and found that the art-o-mat is one of many machines around the country. Their website can be found here.
Now let's take a moment to be completely honest with ourselves. How much art are you planning on buying in the next week? Or how about next month? Next year? Good Lord, when the heck are you planning on supporting your local art center guy, give me a break!
Anyway.
The art-o-matic solves this problem. Not only does it provide artwork for next to nothing, but it allows the customers to become part of the art experience as well. The second you buy a token and make your selection, you're participating in an event that is uncommon and unique. You're being part of a world where art is purchased through a vending machine. It's weird and strange, and unlike anything I've ever seen before. And what more could you ask from art.
Almost all visitor centers around town have pamphlets advertising the Art Walk. This is a gentle reminder to folks visiting the city that there's more here than just Chihuly glassblowing. For goodness sake, there's a college right downtown, you know that small art galleries abound. The guidebook helps track them down.
What caught my eye right away was something called art-o-mat. The name is reminiscent of the automatic diners of the 40's which I've seen photos of, but have never visited. The description of what the art-o-mat actually was clinched it. It's an old cigarette vending machine that's been refirbished and redesigned to distribute art instead of smokes. Customers buy a $5 token which they then put into the machine and pull a lever to get the art object of their choice. It sounds bizarre and weird and I'm happy to say the machine lives up to it's description.
The machine has been completely redesigned so it bares little similarity to the cigarette machines I remember from the 80's. Those were bland slabs of chrome and glass with about a dozen long levers across the base. This machine features a neon sign in the face and 4 or 5 'brands' of art to choose from in the center of the unit. I did some online checking and found that the art-o-mat is one of many machines around the country. Their website can be found here.
Now let's take a moment to be completely honest with ourselves. How much art are you planning on buying in the next week? Or how about next month? Next year? Good Lord, when the heck are you planning on supporting your local art center guy, give me a break!
Anyway.
The art-o-matic solves this problem. Not only does it provide artwork for next to nothing, but it allows the customers to become part of the art experience as well. The second you buy a token and make your selection, you're participating in an event that is uncommon and unique. You're being part of a world where art is purchased through a vending machine. It's weird and strange, and unlike anything I've ever seen before. And what more could you ask from art.
Warcraft Decks
World of Warcraft is huge, and has hundreds of drops for characters to pick up in their adventuring. I'm not going to write too much about it here because other sites are much more thorough and can be found everywhere. But I do want to focus on one type of drop which has some artistic potential. Cards.
Characters have a chance of picking up individual cards through the game. There are 16 suits of cards numbered 2-8 as well as an ace card. When someone gets a card they are given a message indicating its number and suit as well as a brief descriptive message "property of the Darkmoon Faire"
Once a character gathers all numbers in an individual suit it completes a deck which in turn gives a buff or special ability to that player.
The suits are:
Why this is interesting to me is because this just screams potential for an art project. First off, there is no preexisting artwork to go off of. So anything that I make becomes valid as far as what the 'real' card looks like. Also, just look at these suits! If we imagine that all cards have images on them, and not just a number that indicates their placement in the deck, than each deck will require 8 unique pieces of artwork. Just glancing at the suits, I can easily imagine 8 distinct images that would work, and that's without trying.
These cards are just begging to be created.
8 is a good number for pictures that share a common theme or layout. I made a tarot deck once, and quickly lost enthusiasm for the project after about 15 images. That wouldn't have been a problem if the average tarot deck only has 15 cards. It doesn't, it has more. Much more.
The "Darkmoon Faire" part should be cake as well. I'd imagine that such a label would probably be on the back of the card, out of the way of the main image. This gives me something to incorporate as a standard back, as well as an overall look. I'll sketch something out and post it later.
Characters have a chance of picking up individual cards through the game. There are 16 suits of cards numbered 2-8 as well as an ace card. When someone gets a card they are given a message indicating its number and suit as well as a brief descriptive message "property of the Darkmoon Faire"
Once a character gathers all numbers in an individual suit it completes a deck which in turn gives a buff or special ability to that player.
The suits are:
- Beasts
- Furies
- Chaos
- Elementals
- Storms
- Nobles
- Portals
- Blessings
- Prisms
- Warlords
- Lunacy
- Undeath
- Rogues
- Swords
- Mages
- Demons
Why this is interesting to me is because this just screams potential for an art project. First off, there is no preexisting artwork to go off of. So anything that I make becomes valid as far as what the 'real' card looks like. Also, just look at these suits! If we imagine that all cards have images on them, and not just a number that indicates their placement in the deck, than each deck will require 8 unique pieces of artwork. Just glancing at the suits, I can easily imagine 8 distinct images that would work, and that's without trying.
These cards are just begging to be created.
8 is a good number for pictures that share a common theme or layout. I made a tarot deck once, and quickly lost enthusiasm for the project after about 15 images. That wouldn't have been a problem if the average tarot deck only has 15 cards. It doesn't, it has more. Much more.
The "Darkmoon Faire" part should be cake as well. I'd imagine that such a label would probably be on the back of the card, out of the way of the main image. This gives me something to incorporate as a standard back, as well as an overall look. I'll sketch something out and post it later.
Zork Credit where it's due
Let me give credit where credit's due.
There are two guys are behind the wonderful artwork on the Double Fanucci cards found in Legends of Zork. They are:
Jim Zub (more on his work can be found here)
Greg Brown (his blog is located here)
The deck I'm designing will be completely mine. I'll be making all the artwork for it. But I'm relying on these guys in a very important way. Zork started out as an all text adventure, and it's subsequent iterations had rudimentary graphics at best. Two suits for the game were called 'zurfs' and 'fromps', with little squiggle pixel blocks as designations. What a zurf or fromp actually IS, is never revealed. When Legends of Zork came out, these guys had to take these amorphous blobs and turn them into actual art. Not an easy task, but the results are stunning.
So when I design my suits, I'll be relying on their interpretations of what a zurf and fromp is, and then coming up with my own artwork based on that.
Just thought I'd get that out of the way.
There are two guys are behind the wonderful artwork on the Double Fanucci cards found in Legends of Zork. They are:
Jim Zub (more on his work can be found here)
Greg Brown (his blog is located here)
The deck I'm designing will be completely mine. I'll be making all the artwork for it. But I'm relying on these guys in a very important way. Zork started out as an all text adventure, and it's subsequent iterations had rudimentary graphics at best. Two suits for the game were called 'zurfs' and 'fromps', with little squiggle pixel blocks as designations. What a zurf or fromp actually IS, is never revealed. When Legends of Zork came out, these guys had to take these amorphous blobs and turn them into actual art. Not an easy task, but the results are stunning.
So when I design my suits, I'll be relying on their interpretations of what a zurf and fromp is, and then coming up with my own artwork based on that.
Just thought I'd get that out of the way.
Health Care Changes
Let me put a little follow up here about my feelings on Health Care Reform and why it should be stopped. Specifically I think that if we enact universal health care in America, we change who we are as Americans, and I don't want that. Let me use our old friends the ancient Egyptians as an example.
Let's visit a typical ancient Egyptian city.
Here we are hovering over a vast desert striped with swaths of green where agricultural development is taking place using irrigation from a nearby river. Is the river the Nile? Probably, but at this height there's no way to tell for sure. We see building and houses, and what appears to be a bustling population working the fields and drifting through the streets. Going in for a closer look at the city we notice that the population is moving along the roads and byways. No one seems to be in a particular hurry and often stops to talk with neighbors and fellow travelers. Some of the buildings resolve themselves into shops and dining establishments and we notice what seems like the precursor of fast food restaurants. A hum of city life gains in strength as we approach, but it's still to far away to make out individual conversations clearly. This is just as well because neither you or I understand ancient Egyptian.
Going even closer we can make out individual people industriously going about their business, or just relaxing in the heat of the day. All seems calm but suddenly we notice... slaves! Yep, the more we look the more clearly we see signs this culture has a rigid cast system that incorporates a slave workforce. It's not pretty, but neither is it good or bad. It's just there.
So we have a choice. We can drift away and forward in time a few thousand years to see how they're doing now, or we can descend on these people and teach them equal rights. You and I are pretty persuasive speakers, and once we get the language down we should be able to establish a more moral ethical system of society on these guys. There are good reasons for doing this. Equal rights will benefit their city, encourage invention, prosper the economy and establish a better quality of life for all residents. Each ancient Egyptian here will enjoy greater efficiency in agricultural and economic development. Not a bad deal.
But if we do this, they stop being ancient Egyptians. They'll start being something else, call them enlightened Egyptians or progressive Egyptians or something. The point is, their cultural identity will change. Right now they see themselves as ancient Egyptians which by it's very nature means participating and supporting a caste system with slaves.
We've seen enough of these guys, let's get out of here and visit a place a little closer to home. Namely, home in modern America.
We are modern Americans. This means we participate and support a culture that allows the rich to live longer and the poor to die off sooner. Being a modern American means if you get really sick, you give up all your money until you're on your own. Once again, this is neither good or bad.
If we get universal health care, or to a smaller extent reform the current heath care system, then we cease to be modern Americans. We'd start being enlightened Americans or progressive Americans or some other such thing. The point is, we'd change who we are.
Looking at the town hall fiascoes and understanding the cloak and dagger politics behind the scenes which feature enough cynical manipulation and vested interest deception to fill a shelf of Mickey Spillane novels, I can't see us willing to change our cultural identity yet. Maybe in the next generation. Maybe. But for us to enact real health care reform, we'd have to be a people who not only want equality for all Americans, but also a society resistant to cynical political manipulation. I don't think we're quite ready to take that step.
Let's visit a typical ancient Egyptian city.
Here we are hovering over a vast desert striped with swaths of green where agricultural development is taking place using irrigation from a nearby river. Is the river the Nile? Probably, but at this height there's no way to tell for sure. We see building and houses, and what appears to be a bustling population working the fields and drifting through the streets. Going in for a closer look at the city we notice that the population is moving along the roads and byways. No one seems to be in a particular hurry and often stops to talk with neighbors and fellow travelers. Some of the buildings resolve themselves into shops and dining establishments and we notice what seems like the precursor of fast food restaurants. A hum of city life gains in strength as we approach, but it's still to far away to make out individual conversations clearly. This is just as well because neither you or I understand ancient Egyptian.
Going even closer we can make out individual people industriously going about their business, or just relaxing in the heat of the day. All seems calm but suddenly we notice... slaves! Yep, the more we look the more clearly we see signs this culture has a rigid cast system that incorporates a slave workforce. It's not pretty, but neither is it good or bad. It's just there.
So we have a choice. We can drift away and forward in time a few thousand years to see how they're doing now, or we can descend on these people and teach them equal rights. You and I are pretty persuasive speakers, and once we get the language down we should be able to establish a more moral ethical system of society on these guys. There are good reasons for doing this. Equal rights will benefit their city, encourage invention, prosper the economy and establish a better quality of life for all residents. Each ancient Egyptian here will enjoy greater efficiency in agricultural and economic development. Not a bad deal.
But if we do this, they stop being ancient Egyptians. They'll start being something else, call them enlightened Egyptians or progressive Egyptians or something. The point is, their cultural identity will change. Right now they see themselves as ancient Egyptians which by it's very nature means participating and supporting a caste system with slaves.
We've seen enough of these guys, let's get out of here and visit a place a little closer to home. Namely, home in modern America.
We are modern Americans. This means we participate and support a culture that allows the rich to live longer and the poor to die off sooner. Being a modern American means if you get really sick, you give up all your money until you're on your own. Once again, this is neither good or bad.
If we get universal health care, or to a smaller extent reform the current heath care system, then we cease to be modern Americans. We'd start being enlightened Americans or progressive Americans or some other such thing. The point is, we'd change who we are.
Looking at the town hall fiascoes and understanding the cloak and dagger politics behind the scenes which feature enough cynical manipulation and vested interest deception to fill a shelf of Mickey Spillane novels, I can't see us willing to change our cultural identity yet. Maybe in the next generation. Maybe. But for us to enact real health care reform, we'd have to be a people who not only want equality for all Americans, but also a society resistant to cynical political manipulation. I don't think we're quite ready to take that step.
Double Fanucci Project
In brief, Double Fanucci is a legendary card game that appears in various Zork games. I say in brief, because the legendary part of the game concerns the rules of play which are fantastically, comically, unbelievably long. In the Zork universe, the game deck is described as having 174 cards divided into 15 suits and 9 face cards. The suits are:
The face cards are:
The underlying joke of Double Fanucci is that it's never fully explained how to play the game. References to obscure and complex rules are found throughout Zork, going so far as to indicate that if all the play variations were written down, it would make a book too heavy to lift, much less read. Variations can range from certain cards having different values, to the entire game structure being dependent on the phase of the moon and the lineage of players at the table.
The online MMORPG Legends of Zork has a nice feature where cards are randomly dropped after fight encounters. Players can take these cards and arrange them into different Double Fanucci gambits in their inventory to unlock certain buffs or penalties on their character. True to the mysterious spirit of the game, no documentation can be found on what combinations trigger what effects, leaving it to the player to explore combinations to see what works and what doesn't.
This can only lead to one simple conclusion. I want my own deck.
The danger of knowing a little art coupled with a DIY attitude is that normal limits get stretched. Normally if I wanted my own Double Fanucci deck, I'd hop online and do some searching. If Amazon or eBay doesn't have a deck then I'd conclude that it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, than I'd have to drop it and leave my longing to fester into a perpetual ache that would never fully disappear.
But that's not the case, so we move on to phase two which is planning a project.
First, I need some artwork. The two guys who designed the beautiful deck in Legends of Zork do stellar work. But I don't want to do a cut-and-paste job for my deck. The suits are simple enough to make, so I'll start there. The face cards should be special, requiring more time and effort so I'll save those for later. This will give me some time to design a common theme to run through them. The deck is huge, and there are only a handful of face cards so I want to do something that makes them really stand out.
I'll start by sketching out the suits in pencil, then inking them in later. Once the images are inked, I'll scan them into Photoshop for color and texture. I want the suit numbers to be same across the deck, so I'll use a font in Photoshop for that.
I'll cheat on backgrounds. I say cheat because there are two ways I can create a background for the cards. I can paint a background on canvas and scan it, or create the background in Photoshop from scratch. Painting will take about 20 minutes, and Photoshop will take about 6 hours. There are some things I can do in Photoshop faster than I can paint, but backgrounds aren't one of them so this is going to be a job for old school paints.
- Mazes
- Books
- Rain
- Bugs
- Fromps
- Inkblots
- Scythes
- Plungers
- Faces
- Time
- Lamps
- Hives
- Ears
- Zurfs
- Tops
The face cards are:
- Granola
- Death
- Light
- Snail
- Beauty
- Time
- Grue
- Lobster
- Jester
The underlying joke of Double Fanucci is that it's never fully explained how to play the game. References to obscure and complex rules are found throughout Zork, going so far as to indicate that if all the play variations were written down, it would make a book too heavy to lift, much less read. Variations can range from certain cards having different values, to the entire game structure being dependent on the phase of the moon and the lineage of players at the table.
The online MMORPG Legends of Zork has a nice feature where cards are randomly dropped after fight encounters. Players can take these cards and arrange them into different Double Fanucci gambits in their inventory to unlock certain buffs or penalties on their character. True to the mysterious spirit of the game, no documentation can be found on what combinations trigger what effects, leaving it to the player to explore combinations to see what works and what doesn't.
This can only lead to one simple conclusion. I want my own deck.
The danger of knowing a little art coupled with a DIY attitude is that normal limits get stretched. Normally if I wanted my own Double Fanucci deck, I'd hop online and do some searching. If Amazon or eBay doesn't have a deck then I'd conclude that it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, than I'd have to drop it and leave my longing to fester into a perpetual ache that would never fully disappear.
But that's not the case, so we move on to phase two which is planning a project.
First, I need some artwork. The two guys who designed the beautiful deck in Legends of Zork do stellar work. But I don't want to do a cut-and-paste job for my deck. The suits are simple enough to make, so I'll start there. The face cards should be special, requiring more time and effort so I'll save those for later. This will give me some time to design a common theme to run through them. The deck is huge, and there are only a handful of face cards so I want to do something that makes them really stand out.
I'll start by sketching out the suits in pencil, then inking them in later. Once the images are inked, I'll scan them into Photoshop for color and texture. I want the suit numbers to be same across the deck, so I'll use a font in Photoshop for that.
I'll cheat on backgrounds. I say cheat because there are two ways I can create a background for the cards. I can paint a background on canvas and scan it, or create the background in Photoshop from scratch. Painting will take about 20 minutes, and Photoshop will take about 6 hours. There are some things I can do in Photoshop faster than I can paint, but backgrounds aren't one of them so this is going to be a job for old school paints.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
More Something from Nothing
As I've said, I've always been inspired by the idea of making something from nothing.
It started with Moby Dick. Early in the book, the protagonist enters an inn and encounters a painting on the wall. At first the painting seems to be a washed out gray emptiness. But when the man looks closer and allows his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the pub, details come into view. What first appear to be three dark parallel lines become the masts of a foundering ship, and a cloudy form hovering over the ship becomes a massive whale churning the deeps into a pasty froth. I loved the image and immediately wanted to see the painting for myself. I knew the work was complete fiction and the described painting didn't exist. So the next thought that occured to me was to create this painting myself. How hard could it be?
What really appealed to me was the idea of taking something that doesn't exist, and taking a part of it out, essentially recreating it into the real world. Why I like this I can't say. But in a way it provides a bridge into something invisible. Aside from music, there is nothing more invisible and unsubstantive than a story. A story doesn't exist. It's merely words on a page describing something that doesn't exist. Thin stuff.
But if you come face to face with a piece of that world. Something you can hold in your hands and touch, it links you to the story and makes it more real and powerful.
As a quick aside, you can see the same idea play out at any Trek convention. People avidly collect props and replicas of Star Trek, even though the world they inhabit doesn't exist. But when you hold a phaser or communicator, or talk to a Ferengi face to face, than your perception of the show changes. Suddenly the world of Star Trek exists. It may not be close in space or time, but it exists out there more fully in some form.
So I set out to paint this picture that was described in Melville's work. And I did it all wrong.
First off, I'd never painted anything before. So I went to the local craft store for supplies. Since I was living in an apartment at the time I knew that I wanted to start out small and with paints that could be cleaned up with water. A bit of research indicated that acrylics would be the best bet for my project. So I grabbed some colors, brushes and some small canvas squares and set to work.
The problems I encountered were self inflicted, but not unreasonable. I wanted to make this painting on the cheap, so I grabbed cheap paint. Instead of painters acrylics, I'd grabbed the equivalent of poster paint. Now there are many corners you can cut in art and painting is no exception. But the one thing you don't want to skimp on is quality paints. I say this because good paints can cover a lack of skill easily, but only focused talent can make poster paints look good on anything other than posters. The painting became a muddy mess, composed of swirls of muddy colors and accents of humility. I set it aside and vowed never to touch it again.
But I have the wonderful character trait of being a skinflint.
What was I to do with the supplies I'd already purchased? I decided to work on another project.
At the time I was playing Relentless: Twinsen's Odyssey. Incredible computer game. After a little thought, I decided I'd like a painting based on one of the scenes. This fit nicely with my idea of making something tangible from something invisible. I did a screen capture on a likely setting and then sketched out the picture on canvas. But again, I was using poster paints and my lack of experience was disheartening. Simple lines became blobby scrawls, and bright colors mutated into ugly browns. It was a mess.
So like all good efforts that fail, I put the paints aside and vowed never to take them up again.
And like all worthy things, I took them up later.
It started with Moby Dick. Early in the book, the protagonist enters an inn and encounters a painting on the wall. At first the painting seems to be a washed out gray emptiness. But when the man looks closer and allows his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the pub, details come into view. What first appear to be three dark parallel lines become the masts of a foundering ship, and a cloudy form hovering over the ship becomes a massive whale churning the deeps into a pasty froth. I loved the image and immediately wanted to see the painting for myself. I knew the work was complete fiction and the described painting didn't exist. So the next thought that occured to me was to create this painting myself. How hard could it be?
What really appealed to me was the idea of taking something that doesn't exist, and taking a part of it out, essentially recreating it into the real world. Why I like this I can't say. But in a way it provides a bridge into something invisible. Aside from music, there is nothing more invisible and unsubstantive than a story. A story doesn't exist. It's merely words on a page describing something that doesn't exist. Thin stuff.
But if you come face to face with a piece of that world. Something you can hold in your hands and touch, it links you to the story and makes it more real and powerful.
As a quick aside, you can see the same idea play out at any Trek convention. People avidly collect props and replicas of Star Trek, even though the world they inhabit doesn't exist. But when you hold a phaser or communicator, or talk to a Ferengi face to face, than your perception of the show changes. Suddenly the world of Star Trek exists. It may not be close in space or time, but it exists out there more fully in some form.
So I set out to paint this picture that was described in Melville's work. And I did it all wrong.
First off, I'd never painted anything before. So I went to the local craft store for supplies. Since I was living in an apartment at the time I knew that I wanted to start out small and with paints that could be cleaned up with water. A bit of research indicated that acrylics would be the best bet for my project. So I grabbed some colors, brushes and some small canvas squares and set to work.
The problems I encountered were self inflicted, but not unreasonable. I wanted to make this painting on the cheap, so I grabbed cheap paint. Instead of painters acrylics, I'd grabbed the equivalent of poster paint. Now there are many corners you can cut in art and painting is no exception. But the one thing you don't want to skimp on is quality paints. I say this because good paints can cover a lack of skill easily, but only focused talent can make poster paints look good on anything other than posters. The painting became a muddy mess, composed of swirls of muddy colors and accents of humility. I set it aside and vowed never to touch it again.
But I have the wonderful character trait of being a skinflint.
What was I to do with the supplies I'd already purchased? I decided to work on another project.
At the time I was playing Relentless: Twinsen's Odyssey. Incredible computer game. After a little thought, I decided I'd like a painting based on one of the scenes. This fit nicely with my idea of making something tangible from something invisible. I did a screen capture on a likely setting and then sketched out the picture on canvas. But again, I was using poster paints and my lack of experience was disheartening. Simple lines became blobby scrawls, and bright colors mutated into ugly browns. It was a mess.
So like all good efforts that fail, I put the paints aside and vowed never to take them up again.
And like all worthy things, I took them up later.
Something from Nothing
I've always liked art based on something else.
Now I'm not going to get all philosophical here because I don't want to write it and you don't want to read it. It should be one of the most interesting things in the world to read about how an artist became inspired to create something, or what caused them to take up art to begin with. But it isn't. At best it's tedious and dull, at worst it's overblown nonsense. And I think I know why.
Let's start with overblown nonsense because that's more fun and pretty easy to spot. When you hear an artist talk about the artistic process and the discussion quickly devolves into a spiritual quest for truth or finding meaning in chaos, then it's overblown nonsense. Art can be these things of course, heck, pretty much anything can. But this is likely a sign of an artist feeling like they have to justify what they do, and not being comfortable with the real answer. You see, art is fun. It's satisfying on a very basic level. When you look at something you've made and you like it, you get the same boost and happiness from any hard task completed and completed well. But that doesn't come off as a satisfying answer when someone asks you why you do art. Coming back with "because it's cool" doesn't elevate you or your art. It makes you look like an art monkey.
And why is that? Art is fun and enjoyable. And when it reveals something about human nature, the human condition, alternate perception or the human condition what's the problem with that? It's only natural that it does so. Anything enjoyable says something about people and beauty. It doesn't have to come from a tortured soul. Need an example? No problem. Go see 'Monster in Law' or 'Cheaper By the Dozen 2'. Both films are, because of their medium, art. Both films were made by tortured souls. Both films suck.
The second artistic answer, that of being tedious and dull, is probably due to an honest mistake on the artists part. What they are trying to do is break down the process of creating something into it's individual components, hoping to reveal the part that is blindingly creative. It doesn't work. Any activity broken down this way becomes a laundry list of mundane activities. The real miracle is that something artistic can arise from them.
Here's another example of this. I worked for a season at a Christmas tree farm. Loved the hell out of it. If you asked me what I did, I'd reply "I'd warm my hands around a fire in an old oil drum and wait for a customer to ask me to cut down a tree they'd selected. Then I'd grab a hack saw from a rack and follow the customer out to the site of thei tree. Once there, I'd climb under the thing, saw it down, carry it back to the parking lot, attach it to their car, collect a tip and then return to the fire." Not inspiring stuff at all. But at the same time I had a wonderful time and enjoyed every second. It was a blast I have a hard time putting into words.
Art is sort of the same way.
Now I'm not going to get all philosophical here because I don't want to write it and you don't want to read it. It should be one of the most interesting things in the world to read about how an artist became inspired to create something, or what caused them to take up art to begin with. But it isn't. At best it's tedious and dull, at worst it's overblown nonsense. And I think I know why.
Let's start with overblown nonsense because that's more fun and pretty easy to spot. When you hear an artist talk about the artistic process and the discussion quickly devolves into a spiritual quest for truth or finding meaning in chaos, then it's overblown nonsense. Art can be these things of course, heck, pretty much anything can. But this is likely a sign of an artist feeling like they have to justify what they do, and not being comfortable with the real answer. You see, art is fun. It's satisfying on a very basic level. When you look at something you've made and you like it, you get the same boost and happiness from any hard task completed and completed well. But that doesn't come off as a satisfying answer when someone asks you why you do art. Coming back with "because it's cool" doesn't elevate you or your art. It makes you look like an art monkey.
And why is that? Art is fun and enjoyable. And when it reveals something about human nature, the human condition, alternate perception or the human condition what's the problem with that? It's only natural that it does so. Anything enjoyable says something about people and beauty. It doesn't have to come from a tortured soul. Need an example? No problem. Go see 'Monster in Law' or 'Cheaper By the Dozen 2'. Both films are, because of their medium, art. Both films were made by tortured souls. Both films suck.
The second artistic answer, that of being tedious and dull, is probably due to an honest mistake on the artists part. What they are trying to do is break down the process of creating something into it's individual components, hoping to reveal the part that is blindingly creative. It doesn't work. Any activity broken down this way becomes a laundry list of mundane activities. The real miracle is that something artistic can arise from them.
Here's another example of this. I worked for a season at a Christmas tree farm. Loved the hell out of it. If you asked me what I did, I'd reply "I'd warm my hands around a fire in an old oil drum and wait for a customer to ask me to cut down a tree they'd selected. Then I'd grab a hack saw from a rack and follow the customer out to the site of thei tree. Once there, I'd climb under the thing, saw it down, carry it back to the parking lot, attach it to their car, collect a tip and then return to the fire." Not inspiring stuff at all. But at the same time I had a wonderful time and enjoyed every second. It was a blast I have a hard time putting into words.
Art is sort of the same way.
Movie Rating System
The movie rating system needs an update.
Back in the Roger and Ebert days, it was a simple thing to give a movie either a thumbs up, or thumbs down. This was quick shorthand to indicate if a movie was worth seeing or not. It works if you have a passive interest in film, if you get the urge to see a movie every now and then and want to know what is worth the price of admission.
But if your interest in movies goes beyond that, if you're more interested in how good a movie is then a sliding scale is needed. Most movie reviewers have adopted this, usually by rating a film between 0 and 5 stars.
This is sufficient if films are either bad or good. A bad film gets 0 stars and a good film gets 5. Easy enough, right? However, films are complex things and deserve more than this. Films can be bad on many levels, and excel in many ways sometimes despite their flaws. What this means for the star rating system is that medocre films get 3 stars which bestows it more worth than it's due. Let me give you an example.
Under the 5 star rating system, an unwatchable film (Mortal Combat 2) gets 0 stars, a passable film (Happy Gilmore) gets 3 and excellent film (Dave) gets five. But all films aren't worth the price of admission. Not really. Each of these films is flawed in vital ways and none will stand the test of time. Dave is a very good film, but not worth repeated viewings. It's good entertainment, but could easily be seen on DVD without missing anything.
Mr. Cranky takes a different approach to ratings which I've enjoyed before the site started going downhill. Mr. Cranky rated films on badness, from 1 to 4 bombs with a stick of dynamite for an abysmal film. This gives the reviewer plenty of opportunity to cover how a film has failed, what it's fumbled and how it has fallen short of being a good movie. The problem of course is that it rates every movie on badness alone, with great movies being given the best rating of one bomb.
I suggest a new system which rates movies between -5 to +5 stars.
Most movies can be charted on a bell curve with the majority of films falling in the middle. These are the movies that exist to make some money and provide a few hours of diversion, before being consigned to the DVD bargain bin at Hollywood Video and eventually consigned to a dusty shelf in the living room of the average film goer. These films can safely be given a 0 rating indicating their unworthiness of time or money.
The negative stars allow the reviewer to brand movies which to their shame fail to live up to even a mediocre label and in general lower the standards of the film genre worldwide. Take "You've Got Mail". Under normal standards this movie would get 2-3 stars. The acting is passable, the plot simple and film work adequate. But the new rating system gives it a -3 stars for squandering talent, creating a film centered around a product and wasting the movie goers time.
Examples:
Negative Stars
-Any Adam Sandler Film
-Any starlet vehicle
-Any film with Dana Carvey
-Any unfunny comedies (See above)
Zero Stars
-Any date movie
-Any Disney Movie (yeah, with one or two exceptions, but not many!)
-Any film where a major character works in the movie industry
-Any teen horror film
-Any awkward, stilted period films
Postive Stars
-Any Pixar movie
-Any film with no marketing tie-ins
-Any film rated R for content and not just nudity
-Any sci-fi film (And I'm not talking about near future films like The Day After or other such garbage. I want spaceships and lots of 'em!)
What's really great about this system is that it make it easy to spot the standouts in any category. Take The Ring. Horror film. Expectations for this genre are pretty low, so when it get a 4 star ratings it's obvious there's something special about this film. Upon viewing, they mystery is solved. The film has suspense and unease practically oozing through every eerie frame. It's internal logic is solid and powers of suspension of disbelief unchallenged. Great film!
Then look at Gladiator. Period piece. Again, expectations are low but not abysmal. During period pieces the audience is expected to watch the pretty background while the characters chew it. But when the movie appears with a -3 rating, eyebrows go up. One painful movie experience later and the cause is clear. Wasted lead, anachronistic sets and language and a directors contempt for the subject are on display throughout the film. Ouch.
Now if there were more spaceships in Gladiator, it would be a different story.
Back in the Roger and Ebert days, it was a simple thing to give a movie either a thumbs up, or thumbs down. This was quick shorthand to indicate if a movie was worth seeing or not. It works if you have a passive interest in film, if you get the urge to see a movie every now and then and want to know what is worth the price of admission.
But if your interest in movies goes beyond that, if you're more interested in how good a movie is then a sliding scale is needed. Most movie reviewers have adopted this, usually by rating a film between 0 and 5 stars.
This is sufficient if films are either bad or good. A bad film gets 0 stars and a good film gets 5. Easy enough, right? However, films are complex things and deserve more than this. Films can be bad on many levels, and excel in many ways sometimes despite their flaws. What this means for the star rating system is that medocre films get 3 stars which bestows it more worth than it's due. Let me give you an example.
Under the 5 star rating system, an unwatchable film (Mortal Combat 2) gets 0 stars, a passable film (Happy Gilmore) gets 3 and excellent film (Dave) gets five. But all films aren't worth the price of admission. Not really. Each of these films is flawed in vital ways and none will stand the test of time. Dave is a very good film, but not worth repeated viewings. It's good entertainment, but could easily be seen on DVD without missing anything.
Mr. Cranky takes a different approach to ratings which I've enjoyed before the site started going downhill. Mr. Cranky rated films on badness, from 1 to 4 bombs with a stick of dynamite for an abysmal film. This gives the reviewer plenty of opportunity to cover how a film has failed, what it's fumbled and how it has fallen short of being a good movie. The problem of course is that it rates every movie on badness alone, with great movies being given the best rating of one bomb.
I suggest a new system which rates movies between -5 to +5 stars.
Most movies can be charted on a bell curve with the majority of films falling in the middle. These are the movies that exist to make some money and provide a few hours of diversion, before being consigned to the DVD bargain bin at Hollywood Video and eventually consigned to a dusty shelf in the living room of the average film goer. These films can safely be given a 0 rating indicating their unworthiness of time or money.
The negative stars allow the reviewer to brand movies which to their shame fail to live up to even a mediocre label and in general lower the standards of the film genre worldwide. Take "You've Got Mail". Under normal standards this movie would get 2-3 stars. The acting is passable, the plot simple and film work adequate. But the new rating system gives it a -3 stars for squandering talent, creating a film centered around a product and wasting the movie goers time.
Examples:
Negative Stars
-Any Adam Sandler Film
-Any starlet vehicle
-Any film with Dana Carvey
-Any unfunny comedies (See above)
Zero Stars
-Any date movie
-Any Disney Movie (yeah, with one or two exceptions, but not many!)
-Any film where a major character works in the movie industry
-Any teen horror film
-Any awkward, stilted period films
Postive Stars
-Any Pixar movie
-Any film with no marketing tie-ins
-Any film rated R for content and not just nudity
-Any sci-fi film (And I'm not talking about near future films like The Day After or other such garbage. I want spaceships and lots of 'em!)
What's really great about this system is that it make it easy to spot the standouts in any category. Take The Ring. Horror film. Expectations for this genre are pretty low, so when it get a 4 star ratings it's obvious there's something special about this film. Upon viewing, they mystery is solved. The film has suspense and unease practically oozing through every eerie frame. It's internal logic is solid and powers of suspension of disbelief unchallenged. Great film!
Then look at Gladiator. Period piece. Again, expectations are low but not abysmal. During period pieces the audience is expected to watch the pretty background while the characters chew it. But when the movie appears with a -3 rating, eyebrows go up. One painful movie experience later and the cause is clear. Wasted lead, anachronistic sets and language and a directors contempt for the subject are on display throughout the film. Ouch.
Now if there were more spaceships in Gladiator, it would be a different story.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Kingdom of Loathing
Game: Kingdom of Loathing
Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow
Short review: I highly recommend this game, without being quite sure why.
Long review: This is going to be a bit tricky to describe, so hang with me here. Kingdom of Loathing (kol, for short) is a browser based MMORPG that allows people to create characters and send them out into the world to fight monsters, gather experience points and gold. Pretty simple, right? What makes this game ingenious, and I don't use that term lightly, is the execution. The layout of the kol interface screens and the world which the characters explore are so bizarre that it's little wonder kol is a cult favorite. To put it simply, it's very tongue-in-cheek, but beyond a limit that is unimaginable.
Let me explain it this way. You know how trends start out cool, get popular, get trendy and then get sad? Think about Spongebob Squarepants. Bizarre little cartoon. Starts out innocently enough. Here's Spongebob, he has some clever inside humor and inhabits a weird little world. Time goes on and he gets popular. His likeness appears on bath towels, toothbrushes and shaving cream. A little later he gets a full length movie and before you know it he's being quoted on C-Span. Very quickly he goes from inside cultural reference touchstone to someone thinking "oh God, is that show still on?" when encountering the new Spongebob cereal at the grocery story.
If Spongebob were created by kol, he'd appear on the cover of the latest Cannibal Corpse album while advertising "all natural male enhancement" on a late night infomercials.
KOL uses stick figures to represent not only the players character, but the world as well. Gold is ditched in favor of meat as the coin of the realm. DPS and tanks are replaced by pastamancers and saucerors. Battle equipment is less likely to be axes and plate armor, and more likely to rubber clown noses and grass skirts. I'm not making this up. Part of the draw to explore the kol world is to see how far out the programmers are willing to go for cheap laughs and bizarre sitations. As it turns out, they're willing to go further than anyone would think possible. The amount of loot items is staggering, as well as the list of possible items your character can create with meatsmithing (don't ask) or drink making (more on that later). The world is huge. The humor is at turns juvenile, pithy, bitingly sarcastic and hilarious.
Each player is granted 40 turns per day to interact with the environment. Extra turns can be gained by eating food with more turns given for special creations your character combines from loot drops. You can also get turns by mixing drinks. You see, loot drops can also be bottles of tequila, rum and vodka with the occasional lemon, orange and lime. So even if you don't get much entertainment out of kol, you'll be armed with a bartenders arsenal of drink concoctions when you're done. But my money is on having fun, which kol provides in spades.
Guilds are possible, but actual interactions with other players are limited. KOL has streaming radio and an active forum, so for the budding adventurer who wants to immerse themselves in a weird world, kol delivers the goods.
Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow
Short review: I highly recommend this game, without being quite sure why.
Long review: This is going to be a bit tricky to describe, so hang with me here. Kingdom of Loathing (kol, for short) is a browser based MMORPG that allows people to create characters and send them out into the world to fight monsters, gather experience points and gold. Pretty simple, right? What makes this game ingenious, and I don't use that term lightly, is the execution. The layout of the kol interface screens and the world which the characters explore are so bizarre that it's little wonder kol is a cult favorite. To put it simply, it's very tongue-in-cheek, but beyond a limit that is unimaginable.
Let me explain it this way. You know how trends start out cool, get popular, get trendy and then get sad? Think about Spongebob Squarepants. Bizarre little cartoon. Starts out innocently enough. Here's Spongebob, he has some clever inside humor and inhabits a weird little world. Time goes on and he gets popular. His likeness appears on bath towels, toothbrushes and shaving cream. A little later he gets a full length movie and before you know it he's being quoted on C-Span. Very quickly he goes from inside cultural reference touchstone to someone thinking "oh God, is that show still on?" when encountering the new Spongebob cereal at the grocery story.
If Spongebob were created by kol, he'd appear on the cover of the latest Cannibal Corpse album while advertising "all natural male enhancement" on a late night infomercials.
KOL uses stick figures to represent not only the players character, but the world as well. Gold is ditched in favor of meat as the coin of the realm. DPS and tanks are replaced by pastamancers and saucerors. Battle equipment is less likely to be axes and plate armor, and more likely to rubber clown noses and grass skirts. I'm not making this up. Part of the draw to explore the kol world is to see how far out the programmers are willing to go for cheap laughs and bizarre sitations. As it turns out, they're willing to go further than anyone would think possible. The amount of loot items is staggering, as well as the list of possible items your character can create with meatsmithing (don't ask) or drink making (more on that later). The world is huge. The humor is at turns juvenile, pithy, bitingly sarcastic and hilarious.
Each player is granted 40 turns per day to interact with the environment. Extra turns can be gained by eating food with more turns given for special creations your character combines from loot drops. You can also get turns by mixing drinks. You see, loot drops can also be bottles of tequila, rum and vodka with the occasional lemon, orange and lime. So even if you don't get much entertainment out of kol, you'll be armed with a bartenders arsenal of drink concoctions when you're done. But my money is on having fun, which kol provides in spades.
Guilds are possible, but actual interactions with other players are limited. KOL has streaming radio and an active forum, so for the budding adventurer who wants to immerse themselves in a weird world, kol delivers the goods.
Sryth
Game: Sryth
Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow, Suggoth
Short review: Excellent online game, with a catch. To experience the majority of content, there is a fee.
Long review: I'm going to repeat another online reviewer about this game. Sryth is more fun than it has any right to be. It's a text based game modeled in a D&D setting. If you've ever played a tabletop D&D game before, then you know the drill. You are presented verbally with a description of your character and the settings he or she finds themselves. You tell the GM what you want to happen, and roll dice when significant events happen. Sryth does this in phenomenally entertaining fashion.
First off, it's text based. You start the game by rolling a character and I don't mind saying that the first time I saw the character creation sheets I flashed back to the mid 80's so hard that I was seeing day-glo leg warmers and humming Michael Jackson before I knew it. There are plenty of stats to roll, and the virtual dice rolls make creating a character a snap. It's a good thing too, because the random dice rolls will likely make your first few characters poor choices for hacking things to death. You want something with enough magic to whip out DPS, but also some brawn to back it up. This becomes very important when that oh-so-awesome spell fails and leaves you stunned for a few combat turns.
When the character is finally rolled, you're dropped down on a forest road and thrust into combat. Now when I say 'dropped on a road', I mean to say the text on the screen tells you that you're on a road. You read that. And you better like it because there is a boat load of reading in this game and every description may or may not be important. If you're used to MMORPGs that give you a few paragraphs of quest text, with the last line being something like "...therefore brave adventurer, bring back 10 dragon scales to complete this quest." get ready for a rude shock. This game isn't about playing an errand boy. This game is about story telling, the old school D&D way.
What saves this game is that the text is a delight. It's well written, engaging and active. There is humor in the right spots, lots of mystery behind every word and plenty of descriptions of heads rolling and limbs flying off baddies. I love it. From what I can tell, there is no turn limits either. If you have a day to kill, you can start questing in the morning and still be going strong by midnight. And it's a good thing too because Sryth has an addictive streak which brings about that euphoric 'one more turn' feeling that games strive for but rarely achieve.
My grudging complaint is the limits on free play. As a free character you might wander into town and be told that 5 quest storylines can start there. Every storyline is fully realized and doubtlessly full of heroic deeds and breathless escapes. But only one storyline is available to free accounts. For a charge, you can upgrade your account and gain access to the other storylines as well as some equipment perks. This is a small complaint because the charge for an account upgrade is small and if ever there was a game that deserves support from an online community this would be it. But there is no shortage of free MMORPGs out there, so eventually it's your call.
Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow, Suggoth
Short review: Excellent online game, with a catch. To experience the majority of content, there is a fee.
Long review: I'm going to repeat another online reviewer about this game. Sryth is more fun than it has any right to be. It's a text based game modeled in a D&D setting. If you've ever played a tabletop D&D game before, then you know the drill. You are presented verbally with a description of your character and the settings he or she finds themselves. You tell the GM what you want to happen, and roll dice when significant events happen. Sryth does this in phenomenally entertaining fashion.
First off, it's text based. You start the game by rolling a character and I don't mind saying that the first time I saw the character creation sheets I flashed back to the mid 80's so hard that I was seeing day-glo leg warmers and humming Michael Jackson before I knew it. There are plenty of stats to roll, and the virtual dice rolls make creating a character a snap. It's a good thing too, because the random dice rolls will likely make your first few characters poor choices for hacking things to death. You want something with enough magic to whip out DPS, but also some brawn to back it up. This becomes very important when that oh-so-awesome spell fails and leaves you stunned for a few combat turns.
When the character is finally rolled, you're dropped down on a forest road and thrust into combat. Now when I say 'dropped on a road', I mean to say the text on the screen tells you that you're on a road. You read that. And you better like it because there is a boat load of reading in this game and every description may or may not be important. If you're used to MMORPGs that give you a few paragraphs of quest text, with the last line being something like "...therefore brave adventurer, bring back 10 dragon scales to complete this quest." get ready for a rude shock. This game isn't about playing an errand boy. This game is about story telling, the old school D&D way.
What saves this game is that the text is a delight. It's well written, engaging and active. There is humor in the right spots, lots of mystery behind every word and plenty of descriptions of heads rolling and limbs flying off baddies. I love it. From what I can tell, there is no turn limits either. If you have a day to kill, you can start questing in the morning and still be going strong by midnight. And it's a good thing too because Sryth has an addictive streak which brings about that euphoric 'one more turn' feeling that games strive for but rarely achieve.
My grudging complaint is the limits on free play. As a free character you might wander into town and be told that 5 quest storylines can start there. Every storyline is fully realized and doubtlessly full of heroic deeds and breathless escapes. But only one storyline is available to free accounts. For a charge, you can upgrade your account and gain access to the other storylines as well as some equipment perks. This is a small complaint because the charge for an account upgrade is small and if ever there was a game that deserves support from an online community this would be it. But there is no shortage of free MMORPGs out there, so eventually it's your call.
Legends of Zork
Game : Legends of Zork
Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow, Suggoth
Short Review: Entertaining, but impersonal. Excellent stylized graphics which are cartoonlike without being cute.
Long Review: This browser based MMORPG without the massively multiplayer aspect. True, there are many online players at any given time, but there is essentially no interaction with other players during play. When you start the game you create a character with some very broad characteristics. You can be a tank, rogue, DPS etc., but these designations have much less relevance than you might think. After making and naming a character, you are unleashed onto a world and given 40 turns to interact with the environment. If you run out of turns, you must wait until the next day to get more. Additional turns or equipment can be purchased through a shop for real cash. I've played this game for about two months now and havne't seen a real need to buy extra time. 40 turns is easily enough to poke around the world for a bit before going on to bigger and better adventures.
You start out as a level one player, and gain experience points through battle which allow you to beef up your characters stats. Through adventuring around the map, you can also gain gold (zorkmids) which are turned in for better gear. As an aside, you can also fight other players in a PVP arena and bet on the outcome of the fight. Fights are very hands-off. You are given a roster of other players along with their major stats. When you select a player to fight, you are taken to a betting board for wagering, and then the fight is tallied automatically.
Here is the rub, and the opportunity to exploit the game.
Lets say you start two characters at the same time. Call them fighter A and B. Fighter A start off in the wild world and tests his or her might against the local beasties. After one week of playing, A has amassed enough gold and XP to become a level 10 fighter with 100 strength points and 100 defense points.
Fighter B starts off a little differently. Fighter B spends exactly one day gathering gold and upgrades his or her equipment. At the end of day one, B is a level 2 fighter with 20 strength and 20 defense points. B immediately heads to the PVP area and starts picking fights with other characters of the same level. Now other level 2 players have likely not upgraded their armor or weapons yet, so B has an edge on them. B fights PVP battles, wagering the maximum amount and gathering XP from every fight. B does this for the rest of the week.
At the end of the week, B is a level 10 fighter, just like A, but B has amassed so much gold that he or she can buy armor and weapons to boost their stats to about 300 strength and 300 defense. Player B then goes on to glory, easily walking over all opponents for the next 30 levels or so. Player A muddles on cursing their ill luck while hacking and slashing the local hog, rat or puddle of slime.
As I'd mentioned, I've been playing Legends of Zork for awhile and enjoy it mostly for nostalgia sake. It's a quirky little game and only required about 15 minutes of play per day. The fights and quests are impersonal, you get the impression that the world would be the same weather you were out adventuring in it or not, but aside from that it makes for a good browser game. Beware of the constant Evony adds. Ug. They refresh after each turn and are an eyesore and a distraction. Computer generated heaving bosoms lose their appeal on the hundredth viewing.
Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow, Suggoth
Short Review: Entertaining, but impersonal. Excellent stylized graphics which are cartoonlike without being cute.
Long Review: This browser based MMORPG without the massively multiplayer aspect. True, there are many online players at any given time, but there is essentially no interaction with other players during play. When you start the game you create a character with some very broad characteristics. You can be a tank, rogue, DPS etc., but these designations have much less relevance than you might think. After making and naming a character, you are unleashed onto a world and given 40 turns to interact with the environment. If you run out of turns, you must wait until the next day to get more. Additional turns or equipment can be purchased through a shop for real cash. I've played this game for about two months now and havne't seen a real need to buy extra time. 40 turns is easily enough to poke around the world for a bit before going on to bigger and better adventures.
You start out as a level one player, and gain experience points through battle which allow you to beef up your characters stats. Through adventuring around the map, you can also gain gold (zorkmids) which are turned in for better gear. As an aside, you can also fight other players in a PVP arena and bet on the outcome of the fight. Fights are very hands-off. You are given a roster of other players along with their major stats. When you select a player to fight, you are taken to a betting board for wagering, and then the fight is tallied automatically.
Here is the rub, and the opportunity to exploit the game.
Lets say you start two characters at the same time. Call them fighter A and B. Fighter A start off in the wild world and tests his or her might against the local beasties. After one week of playing, A has amassed enough gold and XP to become a level 10 fighter with 100 strength points and 100 defense points.
Fighter B starts off a little differently. Fighter B spends exactly one day gathering gold and upgrades his or her equipment. At the end of day one, B is a level 2 fighter with 20 strength and 20 defense points. B immediately heads to the PVP area and starts picking fights with other characters of the same level. Now other level 2 players have likely not upgraded their armor or weapons yet, so B has an edge on them. B fights PVP battles, wagering the maximum amount and gathering XP from every fight. B does this for the rest of the week.
At the end of the week, B is a level 10 fighter, just like A, but B has amassed so much gold that he or she can buy armor and weapons to boost their stats to about 300 strength and 300 defense. Player B then goes on to glory, easily walking over all opponents for the next 30 levels or so. Player A muddles on cursing their ill luck while hacking and slashing the local hog, rat or puddle of slime.
As I'd mentioned, I've been playing Legends of Zork for awhile and enjoy it mostly for nostalgia sake. It's a quirky little game and only required about 15 minutes of play per day. The fights and quests are impersonal, you get the impression that the world would be the same weather you were out adventuring in it or not, but aside from that it makes for a good browser game. Beware of the constant Evony adds. Ug. They refresh after each turn and are an eyesore and a distraction. Computer generated heaving bosoms lose their appeal on the hundredth viewing.
Health Care Reform needs to stop
We (and by 'we' I'm using the Royal 'we'), need to stop the effort to reform the current Health Care system. Leaving aside the current arguments floating back and fourth between the insurance industry lobbyists and the poor souls looking for medical care, there is a true reason why we not only need to stop reform, but should embrace the current system.
Think of all the problems facing not only America, but the world at large. America has issues that need to be addressed. Vital issues that threaten the security of not only our country, but the planet as a whole. Make a list of the top 100 issues and I can assure you that none of them will be "Americans aren't living long enough". Make a list and check it out, you'll see that I'm right.
American longevity isn't a problem affecting our country. Quite the opposite in fact.
It's important to keep in mind that we, as Americans, get what we deserve. We get the freedoms we deserve, the form of government we deserve, and the health care we deserve. Right now we have a system of health care which insures that we'll die 6 years sooner than a citizen in a similarly developed country would. This is neither good or bad. Some people suggesting a universal health care initiative point to this figure as though it were a point of shame on our national character, and issue the challenge of meeting or exceeding other countries health care services in an effort to create the greatest health services on the planet.
I think this effort is a bit misguided. Can we actually look at ourselves and say that we deserve to live another 6 years? Look at the simultaneously bellowing and shrill pundants decrying any proposed changes to our health care system. Look at the ignorant rabble shutting down town hall meetings in an effort to cement the insurance lobby's stranglehold on health care. We truly deserve no better than what we have now.
Let this generation die off a little sooner and give a head start on the next one. Maybe they can enact universal health coverage for all citizens. They'll be able to do it, if they deserve it.
Think of all the problems facing not only America, but the world at large. America has issues that need to be addressed. Vital issues that threaten the security of not only our country, but the planet as a whole. Make a list of the top 100 issues and I can assure you that none of them will be "Americans aren't living long enough". Make a list and check it out, you'll see that I'm right.
American longevity isn't a problem affecting our country. Quite the opposite in fact.
It's important to keep in mind that we, as Americans, get what we deserve. We get the freedoms we deserve, the form of government we deserve, and the health care we deserve. Right now we have a system of health care which insures that we'll die 6 years sooner than a citizen in a similarly developed country would. This is neither good or bad. Some people suggesting a universal health care initiative point to this figure as though it were a point of shame on our national character, and issue the challenge of meeting or exceeding other countries health care services in an effort to create the greatest health services on the planet.
I think this effort is a bit misguided. Can we actually look at ourselves and say that we deserve to live another 6 years? Look at the simultaneously bellowing and shrill pundants decrying any proposed changes to our health care system. Look at the ignorant rabble shutting down town hall meetings in an effort to cement the insurance lobby's stranglehold on health care. We truly deserve no better than what we have now.
Let this generation die off a little sooner and give a head start on the next one. Maybe they can enact universal health coverage for all citizens. They'll be able to do it, if they deserve it.
Rules of Content
Blog content has a unique characteristic which I think is unappreciated. It's completely pointless and useless, but it's coupled with the beautiful attribute of being unread. Not many mediums can say that. When someone publishes a book, there is lots of effort involved and not just from the author. Copy editors, layout designer and publishers are forced through their various professions into the uncomfortable position of actually having to read what the author has put down. When their thankless task is done and the book is finally created, it gets passed into the hands of reviewers to browse, carefully or not, and then into the public at large. Even if the public shuns the book, which would be to their credit, copies of the work eventually fall into the hands of the authors friends an family doubtless straining the relationships of both.
But blog entries are purer than that. They are put into the atmosphere like a melody, but are destined for the void. Music finds ears, willing or otherwise. Shouting on a street corner is participated in unwillingly by all involved. Both music and shouting are ephemeral mediums, but they seek out any passerby. No one reads blogs. Blogs are the modern equivalent of the coffee table book. Everyone knows what they are, and the more trend conscious members of society are sure to have a scattering of them around their hard drive. But like coffee table books, they exist for show only. The bindings are tight and the edges crisp in pristine and unread condition. This blog is an example of that. No one will actually READ any of it, but that is not it's purpose. It's just here to be here.
Well, that's not exactly true.
There is another purpose to this blog. And as it gets flesh on its bare bones, the fuller purpose will become apparent.
But blog entries are purer than that. They are put into the atmosphere like a melody, but are destined for the void. Music finds ears, willing or otherwise. Shouting on a street corner is participated in unwillingly by all involved. Both music and shouting are ephemeral mediums, but they seek out any passerby. No one reads blogs. Blogs are the modern equivalent of the coffee table book. Everyone knows what they are, and the more trend conscious members of society are sure to have a scattering of them around their hard drive. But like coffee table books, they exist for show only. The bindings are tight and the edges crisp in pristine and unread condition. This blog is an example of that. No one will actually READ any of it, but that is not it's purpose. It's just here to be here.
Well, that's not exactly true.
There is another purpose to this blog. And as it gets flesh on its bare bones, the fuller purpose will become apparent.
Moving In
Not much here, no doubt about it. Looking around I see a few windows bordered by a scattering of mismatched chairs, obviously the cast off remnants of abandoned sites and blogs cast adrift by the original creators. A scattering of web debris and that's about it.
But there is actually potential here. Sure the space is limited. Bare walls and an empty background give the effect of more room than is actually present on any page, but there is space here. And in this space I'll create something special. A thing not seen on the web before. But while I put that desire in motion, there's the process of moving in to attend to. First of all, the color has to go. The generic template will serve it's intended purpose of shifting content in, but after that will have to be replaced. Pictures will need to be added and the particular feel I'm trying to achieve will be embossed on this most pedestrian of blog sites. Some of this will take time, but not too much time.
I'm fiery by nature.
But there is actually potential here. Sure the space is limited. Bare walls and an empty background give the effect of more room than is actually present on any page, but there is space here. And in this space I'll create something special. A thing not seen on the web before. But while I put that desire in motion, there's the process of moving in to attend to. First of all, the color has to go. The generic template will serve it's intended purpose of shifting content in, but after that will have to be replaced. Pictures will need to be added and the particular feel I'm trying to achieve will be embossed on this most pedestrian of blog sites. Some of this will take time, but not too much time.
I'm fiery by nature.
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