I don’t have much in the way of hockey experience so my involvement in the project has been to draw things for the web site, t-shirts, logos, and miscellaneous doodles. It’s been quite a bit of fun so far and feels like a practice run for my dream of being a graphic designer for a brewery. I don’t know how often I’ll be a guest but I sat in for their second episode, which covered NHL agitators (A.K.A. douchebags and griefers) and three offerings from Sierra Nevada (their Torpedo IPA, Celebration Ale, and Kellerweis Hefewiezen). Apparently I have much to learn about the zen of using Skype, because my mic was very quiet and I kept dropping out at random intervals. I still think I managed to ruin things a bit, to my own standards at least, and having a justifiable reason to try three new beers over the course of a couple hours was greatly appreciated. I had fun with it and it sounds like Dyke and Yannik are too so if you want to check them out, head to their site or look them up on iTunes.

Ah, I almost forgot to to include a wallpaper that I made for the podcast. It’s available in two resolutions, 1920×1080 (widescreen) and 1600×1200 (fullscreen). As I mentioned, tooling around with this sort of imagery has been great, so expect to see more of my H&H stuff both up here and on their main site.

I got myself involved in three games that night: Betrayal at House on the Hill, Monty Python Fluxx, and Citadels. I’ll be discussing each of these games but in the interest of keeping the blog posts relatively brief, I’ll cover the other two at another time. Betrayal at House on the Hill is a survival horror game that plays out very much like an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! I had a lot of fun with it, donning the hat of Ox Bellows who was a less-than-intelligent, athletically-inclined individual. Once I figured out that you can increase the intelligence of your character through certain artifacts I was determined to help Ox reach a 3.0 GPA and get into a college based on something more than being able to knock over people on the football field. Alas, it was not to be, as an unfortunate series of events started up The Haunting. (These events included a burning and screaming specter, a room seemingly constructed out of fresh roast beef, a mysteriously smoky outdoor patio area, and the heart-warming adoption of a small child who was separated from her parents but not from the volumes of paperwork needed to make it all a legally binding affair. Now if that doesn’t qualify the house as already experiencing something of a haunting, I don’t know what does.) So there we all were, watching in horror as our evil doppelgangers (complete with jet-black Snidely Whiplash mustaches, regardless of gender or previously existing facial hair) stepped out of the shadows and began hunting us. Always one to make the best of a bad situation, Ox got stuck in a room with his double and they alternated knocking each other around until one of them would pass out, which is actually how Ox spent most of his weekends with the other football jocks. So it was great fun… that is until one of the other players ruined everything by thrusting a Crystal Ball into Ox’s hands which triggered some sort of magic crystal allergy in the evil twin and killed him. It was very sad but I suppose it was all for the best. The doppelganger’s body was left in the roast beef room, which is what I think he would have wanted.

*Spoiler alert! I don’t think anything here will ruin the movie for you (honestly, if you’ve seen Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai, you can figure this movie out), but for the surprise-sticklers out there, beware the following ramblings.*

The Downs

• Some parts were drawn out excessively. I mean, how much longer do you need to build up the “going to war” scene? I actually fell asleep because it was so generic!
• The big tree falling over is bad. We get it. There was an awful lot of buildup in the beginning describing how important it is. Watching so many subsequent scenes of crying and rending of garments was boring.
• The natives can shoot arrows through what was assumedly bulletproof windows? Sure they were some big arrows but I think the military force needs to reallocate their money on windshields that aren’t made of sugar glass. It just wasn’t believable that the Na’vi could take on such a heavily armed force of soldiers. Even the best intentions do not make good armor.

The Ups

• MY GOD, THE VISUALS. Absolutely awe inspiring! Everything glows, glistens, and glimmers. The alien environments are lush and verdant, and really take advantage of the 3D effects to pull the audience right into them.
• Colonel. Miles. Quaritch. This guy is like the Energizer Bunny of armed, unarmed, and mechanized combat. He is so ridiculous and over-the-top, it’s simply astounding. He’s a capital badass and that’s all there is to it.

So the bottom line is that if you like science fiction or fun action movies or even just bright colors, check out Avatar. I don’t know if “movies are never going to be the same” as the advertisements keep insisting, (in fact, the plot makes me think that “movies will always be the same”) but it is truly an experience. I can’t speak as to how it plays out in an Imax theater but I would strongly recommend it in 3D. The application of that technology is very well done and really enhances the movie.

So let’s take a look at what I’ve been up to! In the first set of tutorials, I made a man (complete with ridiculous hat) and then I made a mountain.

Then I put him on top of the mountain and even gave him a nice little sky in the background.

I made a volcano but don’t worry, I didn’t put the man inside of it.

Next I moved on to a tutorial to make a set of dice which are, without a doubt, the coolest looking things so far and I definitely plan to reuse them as often as possible in future scenes, no matter how little they fit in.

I also fiddled with trying to make some glass-type things which, while slick, I don’t fully under how I made them. The intricacies of multi-source lighting and various levels of refraction and reflection are still beyond me.

My last experiment was trying to create an insect-like leg. It was actually inspired by some of the creatures in the game Borderlands. I wanted to see if it was easier to create a more complex and interesting model or to simply texture something to look cool (thus far they both seem equally difficult, for the record). I didn’t get too far because I’m still having difficulty sculpting the shapes as I please but, at the insistence of my room mate, I have turned it into something far more… insidious.

Fear the Barrel Monster! (And stay tuned for more 3D adventures.)

I couldn’t help but notice that I beat the game as I was falling asleep last night and this morning I feel better than I have all week. Could there be something to the medicinal effects of a good triumph-over-all-and-win-the-game adventure? Even if there isn’t, it’s a hell of a way to waste 30-50 hours when you can’t get out of bed.

Here are some of my latest doodles:

First things first, I’d immediately spiral into a deep deep depression. Then after months of attempting to look at the bright side (No more expensive prescription glasses! Ugly people hold no power over me! I’ll look directly into the sun any damned time that I want to, mom!) I would begin to draw again. I’m sure that none of it would be very good but I would sucker people in to giving me compliments by saying things like, “Hey, look at this sketch! Pretty good for a blind guy, eh?” And then if they were stupid and asked me what it was supposed to be, then I’d make them feel bad by saying something like, “Oh it’s a picture of what I remember dogs looking like… you know, BEFORE I LOST MY EYESIGHT, JERK.”

I know that some of you are thinking, “Why go through all of that trouble when you can just get bionic eyes with lasers and stuff?” I think it’s pretty obvious that I’d be getting laser eyes, even if they didn’t help me see any better.

People: “Argh! Stop burning us with your lasers!”
Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t see where I’m shooting them.”

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.