Who Watches the Watchmen?
Hurm.
Went to the midnight showing of Watchmen. My thoughts: (1) The fight scenes were WAY overdone. I thought that the point of the movie was that these people weren’t superheroes and yet whenever they got down to business, people started flying through the air with the greatest of ease. (2) Excessive gore. I l like blood and guts as much as the next guy but some of the stuff in this movie was BRUTAL. I thought Doc Manhattan vaporized people, not turned them inside out and strung their organs across the ceiling. Or if you want to establish that Dan and Laurie have still got their superhero chops, enough to take down a large group of muggers, show them doing their karate and stuff but I don’t need to see them stabbing people in the neck and crippling their limbs. (3) WTF music. A lot of the songs seemed kinda fitting but the way they were tossed into the film, which was basically just to blast the song at full volume with no concern for background sounds or even if the song was appropriate for the scene, was ridiculous.
Now reading this, you might assume that I didn’t actually enjoy the movie and that is because you couldn’t see the rapture written across my face as I sat there for almost three hours watching one of my favorite comic series come to life on the big screen. Sure it wasn’t a perfect adaptation of the original but I know better than to look for that in a comic book movie. Despite all of its shortcomings, Watchmen was an experience to see and I count it as an overall success.
An adventurer is me!
I added a Kingdom of Loathing gallery to the Artwork page. I spent quite a few years as an undergrad playing and became very involved in their fanart community, which is supported through their forums and encouraged through a number of fan-made contests. If you’ve never heard of it, I suggest you check it out. KoL is sort of a text-based RPG, except that it has has pictures too (if you count stick figures). Though it primarily is a game that makes fun of all roleplaying games of the past, it also makes fun of just about everything else. It doesn’t take much time to get into and is great fun.
Bar doodles
Just getting back from the Darkhorse with some new scribbles. Tonight I was very much influenced by the pen drawings of Ty Dunitz that were posted over at the Sketch Tavern. He’s got some incredible skill and is quite an inspiration.
Just added the Artwork page
I’ve finally added in a gallery plugin so I can start uploading my artwork. For now, I created galleries for doodles and some of the 3D stuff that I have been getting into recently. Now I just need to dig into my old archives of scanned documents and pull out the rest of the pieces… This ought to be fun.
Misc. Thought #2
(Another thought from that same proposal defense. This was a fertile session.)
In my own opinion, one of the biggest difficulties in research (particularly in my own kind of research which amounts to “Oh wow that’s interesting I want to look at that”) is breaking into that really important group of people who are doing what it is that you want to study and are doing it well. It’s tough to know that these people are out there doing what it is you’re interested in but have no way to get involved with it. Contrary to popular [research] beliefs, many people don’t care about research. What’s in it for them? Enrichment of the field? No thank you. Even having done my own masters thesis, I’m not sure I would sit through a 30-45 minute survey and followup interview solely to help out that research area.
Misc. Thoughts #1
(From time to time, I’ll have a thought occur to me that is too much to scribble onto a piece of paper or enter as a note in my phone. Most often these thoughts have a short lifetime, approximately as long as it takes me to become distracted by television, games, or food. In an attempt to economize on my limited brain power, I will be tossing these thoughts up here as a discussion point or bit of commentary. The following struck me while sitting in on a PhD proposal defense today.)
When discussing online communities, many times researchers point out that there is no need for physical or previously-existing community interactions between members. While in a pure sense of the term ‘virtual’, I can see this being true, what I wonder is how these existing physical or “real world” relationships affect the virtual spaces. What I am imagining are RL friends who join forum communities together or play MMO games with each other primarily because of their previously existant relationship. Is this something that virtual spaces need? Does it enhance the development of a virtual community by providing an anchor of sociability that need not be formed in an environment that, according to numerous researchers of virtual spaces, has a good deal of trouble letting people interact in a deep and natural way?
New things!
So as you can see, I’ve finally made a layout that is Teapot Robot-ish. I’m pretty satisfied with it for now so my next step is to throw some content up here. What I need most is a script or Wordpress plugin that will let me organize and display images (photographs and artwork). If anyone has suggestions, leave a comment.
The end is nigh
I’m rapidly approaching the so-called “end” of my masters thesis and, oddly enough, it reminds me of how it all began. Once I finally managed to choose a research area, my first step towards a degree was to immerse myself completely in any academic literature that could possibly relate to my thesis. You’d be surprised how enlightening that can be. If you can manage to fill your head with the vast range of research topics and concerns that are centered on virtual communities, fan culture, and gaming (and I would say that I only managed to cram maybe a third of it into my noggin before risking full mental failure), the possibilities for research can seem endless. So, yes, it’s all very enlightening… which only serves to make it even more intimidating. I mean, when faced with the scope of what has already been researched and then being expected to come up with something that is new, interesting and, above all, important, what is a person to do? Well if one were to go by my own experiences the answer would be to play a lot of World of Warcraft, go out drinking on a regular basis, take up a sport for the first time since middle school, and generally do things that don’t advance a degree for as long as possible until confronted with a “Do this or perish” ultimatum by one’s very indulgent but ultimately scary-when-provoked advisor.
And this is a good thing! Though my inital reason for writing this has long since escaped me, I wanted to say that as I slowly finish writing my thesis I’ve found myself back in that place where I get to see all of academia spread out before me, a big wide landscape of possibilities, directions, and futures. It’s still intimidating on the best of days (and you don’t want to see me on the worst) but…
I think I like it.
Bar doodles…
Some doodles done last night at the Darkhorse… As you can see, I’m on a bit of a robot kick lately.
Upcoming changes
So I’ve been messing around with some different Wordpress themes, which is why the site design has been fluctuating recently. I’m trying to find one that I can eventually modify into the final Teapot Robot layout but nothing has caught my eye yet.
Also, I’m just getting back from a fun-filled weekend of drinking, debauchery, and marriage and I’ve got quite a few new ideas/doodles/designs kicking around in this noggin of mine. Let’s see what I can toss up here, all the while staying on target with my thesis schedule…