drainowl

[drainowl]

I cant stop playing bloodborne but I'm still gonna come through with a clutch tumblr post, here's what I drew on gartic phone in the last minute...

might update this post as a bloodborne review later, little writers note.

[drainowl]

I've run out of sketch work I feel somewhat proud of posting, looks like I'm actually gonna have to get to work if I wanna have something worth presenting.

Sadly I have no grand revelations or thoughts to share as I spent most of the week indulging myself and playing video games, particularly Dark Souls 2. One small notable thing I did was open Godot game engine and program a first person character controller, of course its rather primitive and doesn't feel good to control, so I still have a long way to go before I have anything close to a game but I'm still gonna use this as a dump for design notes based on my opinion of Dark Souls 2 for future reference. Not that I'm even making a game akin to Dark Souls in anyway.

So starting off Dark Souls 2 feels like a fan game that missed the point of the original mechanics and narrative and just went overboard. The main progression of the game has many obscure and arbitrary objectives that practically require a guide to find. The first game also had this problem when it came to some of its deeper mechanics and optional content but not along its main progression path, completely blocking players not in the know as well as destroying the pacing and flow when you inevitably have to stop and look up a guide.

The UI on item pickups only shows the name and category icon rather than the small preview of the first game. Together with the increased amount of pickups, players are often overwhelmed with items that build little intrigue to use them. Making for a big, cluttered inventory of unused items and equipment.

The feeling of creating an interconnected, coherent world that can be learnt and in turn rewards players for doing so is lost from the first game and replaced with mostly linear runways that build up in the warp menu, slowly making it more bloated and hard to navigate. The warp mechanic really just exists as a crutch for the level design, as well as breaking the pacing of the game when your forced to warp back to the hub area to level.

The combat has become far slower, the enemy AI nerfed. The dodge roll feels particularly harmed, although it could be argued it was due a nerf. Its animation gets little distance, making it feel awkward to use, the invincibility frames gained from a dodge are tied to a stat that is not explained to players, meaning new players main form of defense is removed in a way that is hidden from them, this is insanely frustrating. For players that know about the stat, it is given priority in character building, making player choice less emphasized and builds more uniform.

Bosses, which I though were a highlight of the first game. In Dark Souls 2, bosses are often easily cheesed by walking around them, attacking, then healing if they manage to land a hit, as often they just leave big gaps of time in-between attacking for players to do so. Often times you'll fight a boss only to die and realize you don't have the MacGuffin to beat them, which once again is often left unexplained, souring all the bosses and making them feel more like a cheap trick rather than the actual test of raw skill they were in the original Dark Souls.

The new healing system, honestly isn't all to bad. life gems are easily obtained and abused, not great for balance but for a game with poor balance anyway, its a decent remedy. The actual nerf and added progression of regular healing/Estus at first feels like a mistake... which yea it is, players need more than 1 Estus to make it through the hordes of enemies the game throws out in the first level. At least feels like a step in the right direction for the balancing of the game, giving the player more renewable healing as they progress. I wouldn't be surprised if the wide range of healing options available to players at any given time is why the balance is so off throughout the game as opposed to Dark Souls 1s more reserved approach to healing.

Now that I've run out of actual gameplay mechanics to complain about and could really only nit pick from here on, ill touch on the story. Its the same story as Dark Souls 1 spelt out through an annoying, on the nose and mostly forgettable bloated cast of characters.

I disliked Dark Souls 1 as I played through it, but as I looked back, I realized most of my problems stemmed from my bad decision making in a world that left so much choice up to the player and my own lack of perception. As I learned and became better it slowly made its way into my favorite games list... The word "most" should be emphasized, there are some moments of genuinely horrible design, but I thought the same might be true for Dark Souls 2 which is why I gave it so much time to win me over and went on to beat it. But sadly, it just ended up becoming a further lesson in poor design. Although I know there are many people who enjoy it, I personally would not recommended.

[drainowl]

The one on the left is me drawing Duda Gracz's Remanenty from memory and the right drawing is done from reference. Really showcases the importance of angles and how they relate to different parts of the image, particularly in the body, arm and head.

I was going over the Cthulhu mythos on Wikipedia and started learning a lot more about H.P Lovecraft. One of his most interesting characters/deities, Nyarlathotep, a manipulative show man that controls large crowds through propaganda, obviously stood out. He said the deity was inspired by a dream, that's been suggested to be H.P's fearful interpretation of Nikola Tesla and how he though his inventions would push the world to madness, his fear of a modern world filled with painful change brought about through a technological revolution. It wasn't until I saw this quote,

"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

The idea of the internet and its connection to H.P Lovecraft's writing was cemented in my head, of course a lot of historical writings include great advancements that open doors for both good and evil that could be equated to the internet in the modern day but H.P's fear of dissociated knowledge is straight up just the internet. He was quoted as saying something along the lines of his collection of books was his most prized and valued possession. This is a man who was too afraid to leave his house and spent all day with dissociated knowledge, driving himself insane. The quote is a jab at himself and in turn almost all the chronically online. Maybe the scariest monster of all in the Cthulhu mythos was accessible information, which is what the creator of the internet Tim Berners-Lee brought upon us and still continues to bring upon even more of us to this very day. What a dreadfully evil man he is!

Just to tie up a loose end, I mentioned Nyarlathotep because the internet is a great, maybe even the greatest distributor of propaganda. making another connection to my "H.P Lovecraft predicted the internet" theory. Even if H.Ps writing is extremely misguided, I find you can spring together some fun interpretations of his stuff that hold some truths, at least within my own biased world view.

[drainowl]

Here's an attempt at sketching a shot of Nicolas cage from wild at heart. I was feeling a little lazy and fell back on an old comfort, shading studies. These are nice, as the reference already provides you with a plan of what to draw and the result often leads to a level of instant gratification... basically shading studies are like crack and just as harmful.

My review of wild at heart? its a classic but not really that good, don't think id recommend it but there's some unforgettable moments in there, some unforgettable vibes in there.

I was watching a video about the archetype of the starving artist. The narrator was talking about a banana with a piece of tape over it selling for thousands and how it was an insult to art which required technical skill. I began thinking about it more and came to an epiphany. The banana despite having no skill put into it, actually had a lot to say, maybe even more than most pieces of classical art (or I just don't know my classical art) and definitely something that's more relevant to our modern time. The banana selling despite the lack of effort or skill put into it, presents the professional art world as a business that's primary goal is to keep a cash flow going, the quality of art being negligible in this goal, an ideology that can be seen in many other sectors... The banana is an anti-capitalist statement. This is why bananas are my favorite fruit.

[drainowl]

I'm working on my construction and perspective, I like dynamic angles and good compositions, I always find myself impressed by images that creatively set the subjects in frame with the use of the (hypothetical camera). Though my design skills are left quite neglected, you may have already noticed the pattern of flat, painted on, collared shirts.

We need more utopian stories. A trap I've fallen into myself, becoming so obsessed with noting & avoiding negatives, further feeding into a mindset of vague directionless negativity. Stories are often seen to be born from their conflicts rather than their contents. in this sense a utopian novel might be considered an anti-story... if non-conflict wasn't considered a conflict itself. A story based entirely on its contents may exclusively be seen as escapist media, but there's the idea of resolving narrative conflicts giving people in the moment gratification that adversely disincentivizes future action, making stories with a resolved conflict a sort of escapist format (within the context of this idea). Maybe instead we should purposefully leave a viewer dissatisfied, writing to create problems that are left to the viewer to solve, re-incentivizing action.

When has anyone even been convinced by someone other than themselves.

[drainowl]

Started sketching regularly a few months ago and without the crutch of Ctrl Z to save me, I've resorted to a very scratchy and rough look which I've tried to play into by developing my pocket book to look like it belongs to an asylum resident... I'm not putting much effort or thought into these sketch's, focusing instead primarily on improving my "fundamentals" but ill be using this tumblr to archive anything I think will be handy to call back to, and potentially more developed artwork.

This particular "piece" features a demon I've named the constrictor. Its because it constricts people in enclosed boxes! which you may have noticed are actually just the primitive perspective lines I used as reference to draw the victim. A prime example of limitations breathing creativity. The victims melting face is taken from the imps in rule of rose, there's no meaning there I just thought it would convey the emotion well. The pentagrams there to elude to a slight allegiance between the victim and the constrictor. Basically there's really deep meaning and symbolism behind all this, Its just begging to be read into further...

I think a fair bit of media has picked up this habit of feeling the need to explain itself out of fear of its audience overlooking or just entirely missing the message or point its trying to make. On one hand it often leads to out of character, annoying and on the nose commentary that compromises on immersion and appears to insult the intelligence of the audience although It may instead be an attempt to normalize conversation on pretentious topics, trying to introduce change that will influence masses, who likely hold more control then anyone.

"the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built. They've built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners, and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they've made or to even see it as a prison." - André Gregory

This is all in the image and more