#i feel like both are a bit harder to stylise than other people but both for different reasons

[theoldkyokodied]

Hello! I really love your art! I was wondering if you have any tips on how to capture the person the facial features of the person you are drawing so well?(!) Your Billy and Stu are is amazing! Although it is in your style (which I absolutely adore) you still keep their likeness/resemblance which is very hard for me to do when trying to draw them in my style! (Sorry if the wording is confusing, any tips?) Thanks!

Ah thank you so much and sorry for taking so long to reply, but I needed to figure out how to answer this.

I have put some general tips together, but I need to point out that none of these replace the time investment of learning art. It is merely a suggestion of direction for practice, and I don’t want anyone to feel discouraged if any of these tips don’t immediately make them into a master of arts. Art practice is not easy and it can be frustrating to not be up to your own standards yet, but you will get there! :) In the meantime: be kind to yourself!

That said, let’s get to the tips I can share:

1) Use references!

I usually create a reference sheet for any character I want to draw more often, with their face in lots of different angles. Being able to know how, for example, someone’s nose looks like from the side and from the front can be essential when it comes to recognition. You basically want to be able to create a 3 dimensional object with these references. I tend to need the references less the more I draw the character, after a while i just memorise their key aspects for drawing them from most angles :)

2) Figure out key-features of a person

Try to figure out how to simplify someone in a drawing. What are their most striking features that NEED to be included? Sometimes it helps when you try to think of what features a caricaturist would accentuate in a caricature of them. Here you have some features that I personally try to focus on when I draw billy:

As mentioned in the bottom right corner, the placement of these key-features is also important. Try to figure out where things are placed in relation to other facial features and mind their size as well. this becomes easier the more you do it!

If you struggle to find out what features are important you can also look up other fan-artists stylised work you like and try to see what they chose to highlight :)

3) Do studies!

4) focus on values and contrast before considering color

doing a study without a sketch by blocking in shapes can help you figure out the planes of a characters face

as you can see here, stu’s eyebrows kind of blend in with the shadows of his brow bone, which is why I usually draw his eyebrows pretty light/in a color that doesn’t have high contrast with the skin tone, it makes him instantly more recognisable in my opinion

5) Draw (a lot)

I have been drawing basically every day since I was a child, but my ability to actually draw someone recognisable has only developed in the recent years. And I don’t think I’m done with learning. In the undying words of Bob Ross: “Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything that you’re willing to practice, you can do”.

I hope my tips can help a bit and and perhaps lend you some motivation for the never ending practice that every artist has to face :’) <3

[prof-peach]

If you could cross over two of your favorite games, which would you choose? Please explain, why that crossover would be a good match.

Oh you’re going to regret asking this one, I’m bout to GET SERIOUS.

So Pokemon, obvs, I love the whole world it’s built in, but the games imo are REALLY boring, I haven’t enjoyed one a lot since gale of darkness, the main ones just are a little too linear obvious plots, pretty standard setups for story and style. Speaking of style, the games lack personality, the models aren’t animated well, moves have no dynamic energy or visual difference at times, and the turn based battle style just feels kind of, I don’t know, old? Slow? Just doesn’t suit what I enjoy personally, gives me a FInal Fantasy vibe and I just cannot stand the speed at which things happen in those games, plus not into 3rd person ‘let’s build a team of people’ much, but that’s a problem for another time. With this all in mind, the game I wish would happen is like gen20 Pokemon, far future sadly, I doubt I’d see it in my lifetime but god I’d be happy if I did!

Ok so take the newest Zelda graphics, the visual treat that was BOTW, open world, puzzles, not JUST combat, you got side missions, hunt the chickens, find missing pets, parcels, items, whatever. Love it! The horse taming?! Amazing you funky little game. Now take the bad guys and beasts from that. And put Pokemon in instead. Give them the diversity, the life and believable natures that BOTW gave the animals, I followed a frog in BOTW for 15 minutes, and it was a great experience, it felt like it was believable. Above world spawning, ACTUAL difficult gameplay, rare spawn rates, make dragons hard to get again, cmon, it’s too easy now, make it so we need a certain set of Pokemon for certain tasks. Water types big enough to carry you will be able to get you to new areas, rock types that can help you climb mountains faster, or break through blocking boulders. Actual towns with more than 4 houses in them, shops, barns, farms, homes. Like little link with the heat, maybe ice types would struggle in volcano areas, or bug Pokemon not be so comfortable in gale force winds. Give the weather more of an effect on your partners. Mounts, don’t even get me started that Pokemon Let’s go had you able to ride any of the larger species, but swsh did not???? Bitch please, give me my rideable Pokemon. The wild area too was far too closed, limited, online was laggy and a mess, camping is limited, let me do more with my team. Pokemon for me is all about the actual creatures, how they live with humans, and the many wonderful things they’re capable of. Yes of course it’s cool they can fight, but like what else you know?

I’d love a game that lets me buy a plot of land, maybe plant things, custom build things. I’m a sucker for the fallout4 settlement builds when they’re modded to hell and back, they’re fun! It can be a really calm and creative process. If I could do that and skip the main campaign and all the battles for a bit? Amazing, it sound perfect for me. I am that distracted hoe collecting flowers while the kingdom burns in the background. Side quests are everything to me. Let me give homeless people enough money to get them in a home? Let me adopt Pokemon that are stray around the town? Plz oh plz bring me a Pokemon game that allows me to work WITH my team to do more than KO other species. I want to save and buy a plow for my buddy gogoat, and grow amazing foods to sell to get currency to spend in decorations, to spoil my team. Give me actual game consequence, if I ignore that sick and injured Pokemon I find in the wild, later maybe it’s family don’t want to help me out with a different problem, too stricken from grief. I am all about the average bits, the old women who need help, the lost pets board in town, the general day to day stuff. Let me get cosmetic items for the Pokemon I keep, cute outfits, special gemstone items, let me actually live with them, or even feel remotely like they’re realistic.

Ok so in game, if it’s looking like BOTW it’s pretty beautiful but also stylised, I’d have it so you can send out a maximum of 3 Pokemon from your 6, using bumpers and such to throw them out. If you hit the trigger you switch from controlling the human trainer, to the Pokemon you’ve targeted with a standard lock on targeting system. You then can be the leader, but be the Pokemon. You could technically defeat the game without a human if you wanted, which incorporates the mystery dungeon games I think, and caters to that crowd. I’d love to see the use of attacks out of battle, things like using water gun to grow plants, using ember to start a campfire faster and stave off the cold. There’s no consequence to Pokemon anymore, and I think that’s where it’s lost me. I have to admit I miss the days of a poisoned pokemon fainting if you don’t heal them soon enough, I miss gym battles that were actually tough, damn, try picking charmander in red and beating brock without grinding in viridian forest first, it’s not easy. And I loved that. Yes it’s a child’s game, it will never be difficult again, but god it’d be nice to have a bit of a challenge, or maybe a difficulty setting, so some could play it with hostility turned off, great for kids, or you can be n adult like I know so many Pokemon fans are, and play it on expert mode and ACTUALLY have to work hard to beat the game. Alternate skill trees anyone? Train gun a fire type to ACUTALLy combat water moves?? Please! Cmon! It frustrated me that every challenger has pretty much a systematic set of moves to use to win. Grass opponent? Fire attack spam until you win. It’s dull, so at least with very difficult tricks to either find or learn in game would make it more achievable if you can send that fire type in and I don’t know, train them so much the heat evaporates the water mid-battle and you suddenly have a shot at winning. Pokemon has taught me that if you work hard enough you can achieve something, but the games just have such strict ways to win. Feels wrong.

In terms of battling, let us BE the Pokemon, let us learn to dodge, train our speed, train our defence, make a team of truly tough Pokemon instead of just, average? Some species have a cap on their skills, a squirtle has lower stat points than a Charizard, but you can’t ever change that? Let me choose the Pokemon I believe in, and let me work with them until they’re just as good, if not better than the game tanks. This would also make online battles more interesting. Everyone picks the top trio. Fairy, dragon, legendaries. And yknow what? It’s boring. That one IRL fight with the monster Pacharisu that won in the world tournament with follow me and the situs Berry? Unbelievable, I love that little rat so much because of this, so let us all have a chance to build a team that’s strategically viable, strong, and potentially a winner formula, even if they aren’t fully evolved, or the biggest Pokemon in the world. Yeah maybe you have to grind way harder with your unevolved Pokemon, but you get to the end game and win, because you put love and time into species that you enjoy, not just good fighters.

Unfortunately I am beholdent to Todd-idiot-Howard, and I love the Eldrescrolls and fallout games (before they got dumb, not that I don’t play the new ones. 76 I’m looking at you, you big asshole game.) honestly I hate online games, so none of that junk, just a good old fashioned open world sandbox game is plenty. Games for me are an escape from others, not an invitation to socialise. To each their own of course, and I do play online games sometimes, just pretty short lived ones, over watch and rdr2 for example. Would they be sometimes better on private servers? Yes of course, fallout76? Want to play with others? No. I do not. Please leave me alone. And if you buy a private server you’re feeding the monster that is Todd Howard, the man the myth the asshole, then we’ll get more bad games like 76. I just so desperately want the Pokemon company to see what a beautiful potential game they’ve got on their hands, that could be suitable for far greater audiences, but instead they’ve focused on the kids. It’s fine, it’s functional, but it’s lost to the fans from day 1, that are all 20+ years old now and want something meatier to play, something far more broad and inclusive. I also hate that there’s no wheelchair option in any Pokemon game. Like cmon, it’s not hard to include that.

In short, BOTW + Pokemon, with a sprinkle of open world sandbox to it, less fighting, more fun. Or, at least both options. Sure, go fight everything, great, but I want to farm carrots over here with 6sunflora, plz let me have some peace.

Edit: I forgot about harvest moon, chuck some of that in there too.

SECOND EDIT: someone in the comments mentioned to put this in Unova? Plz love yourselves, this game would be ALL MAPS. Stuff one singular location, this is the ideal game, put every map in it, join them, put islands in, make them more explorable, more detailed!

[nclkafilms]

Something’s rotten in the United States

(Review of ‘Vice’. Seen in Nordisk Film Biografer Aalborg Kennedy on the 15th of February 2019)

The fact that I went to see Adam McKay’s latest film, Vice, just hours after Donald Trump declared a national emergency to aid his desire to construct a border wall in the south, seems tragi-comic to say the least. In Vice, McKay uses his absurd natural talent for telling the obscure stories to unravel former Vice President Dick Cheney’s “origin story” as well as the political reality that fuelled his ambitions and the eternal footprints that he firmly planted in the mould of American politics. Vice makes it clear from the beginning that it will not and cannot stay objective in its portrayal of its main characters - a fact it wittily comments on in a funny, mid-credit meta-referencial scene. Vice will divide people for obvious reasons but I - for one - am a fan of McKay’s incredible narrative skills that makes Vice a wildly entertaining, thought-provoking and (if you are in opposition to Cheney’s politics) anger-inducing feast.

We follow Cheney and the pack of people surrounding him all the way from his drunk, lazy time at Yale in the early sixties to his scary and shockingly ruthless prime under the presidency of George W. Bush in the beginning of the new century. It is a story that mainly takes place in the hidden corridors of American politics where the true power oozes from every crack in the law or established practices. The story about the “creation” of the Bush era’s Cheney is, however, only the bricks that form the much bigger road that McKay and his cast wants to take us on a journey down. Vice is an exposed, witty and often baffling exploration of the decaying nature of modern politics where lawyers, focus groups and officials influences, exploits and even forms the very government that we - the people - are choosing.

At the centre of the film is, of course, Christian Bale, who (as so often before in his career) is the main attraction here; partly due to another mind-blowing physical transformation to match the bodily presence of Cheney. Bale’s weight gain and the impressive work by the make-up and prosthetics team are only details in a powerhouse performance by the admirable Briton. He nails the distinctive mannerisms of Cheney and he manages to construct a marvellous, unscrupulous and multi-layered character that is easy to hate and much harder to care for. It is clear that the film portrays Cheney as a villain and perhaps even a crook (Bale thanked Satan for his inspiration when he took home the Golden Globe); but somehow Bale still manages to inject likeable assets into the character (especially in scenes related to his daughter Mary and his personal achievements). Cheney was and is a character fuelled by a personal drive towards power and influence - you can agree or disagree (as the film wants you to) with his means, goals and use of this power; that is completely up to you. But as with Cheney himself, Bale manages to manipulate us into simply witnessing in - an admittedly uncomfortable and sour tasting - awe as Dick finds one loophole after the other slowly fighting his way to the top, taking no prisoners on his way. One of the strongest and most interesting character studies of the year!

As in real life, Bale’s Cheney is supported by his stern, conservative wife, Lynne, who is portrayed by the always impressive Amy Adams. She might not be given that much screen time (it truly is the Bale show here), but she utilises every second she gets on screen. With her strong beliefs and strong influence on her husband brilliantly conveyed by Adams, Lynne is the lady standing in the even darker shadows as she pulls the strings of the puppetmaster himself. This is made perfectly clear to everyone (including Cheney) in an early scene where she has had to pick the young Dick up in prison once again. With a few cooly delivered lines and a firm look in her eyes, Lynne makes everyone aware of the influence she has on her husband. Together Bale and Adams turns in another impressive couple performance after they stole the show in American Hustle.

Next to Bale and Adams, Vice boasts a stellar supporting cast who not only bears physical resemblance to the real life persons (LisaGay Hamilton resembles Condoleezza Rice to the extreme!), but also delivers some mesmerising character portrayals along the way. However, the strongest assets of this insanely talented supporting cast are Oscar nominee Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush Jr. and most of all Steve Carrell as mentor-turned-subject Donald Rumsfeld. Rockwell’s Bush is naive, comedic and infantile to an extent where you almost feel sorry for him when Cheney and his team order him around. While it is a good performance, I cannot help but wonder how he “won” the awards spot ahead of Carrell, who delivers one of his strongest performances after turning to more dramatic roles. His Rumsfeld is believable and “hateable” - just as the film sets him out to be. He portrays a rollercoaster  development throughout the film as he starts out as a charismatic, yet peripheral when it comes to real political influence, mentor for Cheney and ends up as a dangerous, direct and sly political big shot facing several beatings throughout. When the final blow hits, you feel his pride as reality hits him hard.

Just as in McKay’s 2015 surprise hit, The Big Short, he returns here with this strangely stylistic and absurd mix of dark comedy, hard hitting political drama and hints of documentary. In a way, I am edging towards acknowledging McKay for de facto having invented a new genre here - both films feel distinctly unique and unlike any other films. Just as was the case with his financial crisis revelation, the aesthetics of Vice are sure to be divisive. You have fast paced editing (although Vice is allowed more slower paced segments than its predecessor), sudden inclusions of real clips or pop culture references, and returning situations where McKay skirts the classic dogmas of film making. The fourth wall is broken, the dialogue is suddenly and briefly deliberately stylised, hard-to-fathom terms and expressions are directly explained (i.e. through a hilarious cameo by Alfred Molina) and the genre is changed on the order of our narrator.

Speaking of the narrator, this might be one of few of the returning, successful elements of The Big Short, that simply does not work as well here. The character that delivers the narration here feels oddly distanced from the story and its characters in contrast to Ryan Gosling’s character in The Big Short, who was right in the middle of the story adding a relevance and credibility to his narration. Here, in Vice, Jesse Plemons’ character is never truly revealed and neither are his motives. While this is surely deliberate by McKay (as nothing seems left to coincidence), it did distance me a bit from the story rather than making me more absorbed. Ultimately, the character faces an ironic fate, it has to be said - making the character slightly more approachable. A fate that can be seen as yet another hit at Cheney and his politics’ influence on the American society in general.

The early reports put a lot of emphasis on the prosthetic work made by Vice’s incredibly talented make-up department. Understandably so! It is an impressive achievement to make Bale, Carrell, Adams, Rockwell and co. disappear into their characters through subtle and realistic prosthetics (making last year’s Darkest Hour look like a cheap Halloween party), but do not let this physical achievement deceive you and, thus, make you miss the sharp and important political points brought forward by McKay here leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth.

We live in a society in which we focus on our democratic rights more than ever, but we also live in a society in which a growing contempt towards the political establishment brings all new personalities to the table. It is here that McKay urges us to never forget the monsters that hides below said table, patiently waiting for the publicly elected “guardians” of our democratic rights to lose their focus or let “the political dish of the day” slip through their fingers on to the floor for the monsters to feast on. These monsters are there and we - the people - are the ones feeding them through our choices, our opinions, our representatives. The bad taste in your mouth is your responsibility, it is yours to change.

4/5

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

I Like ‘The TALOS Principle’, but it Needs to Try Harder.

Good evening, humans. Apologies to those of you who thought I might have died... and are disappointed that I haven’t. I know it’s been a long time between blogs but, in my defence, I do have better things to do with my time. One of those thing is playing The TALOS Principle.

If you haven’t heard of it, The TALOS Principle is a cerebral, philosophical puzzle game in which you play as an artificial intelligence in a simulated world, struggling with ideas of morality and what it means to be a person. Now, I enjoy this game quite a lot. The puzzles are well-designed and make you feel like a genius whenever you beat one. The game-world is visually stunning in a very non-stylised, matter-of-fact kind of way. The backstory (accessible through e-mails and text-dumps found in scattered computer terminals) is beautiful and absolutely heart-rending. Without giving too much away, The TALOS Principle’s backstory may be the most tear-jerking thing in the videogame medium.

However, the game is not without its problems, and all of them can be traced back to one crucial flaw. You see, The TALOS Principle is clever... but it’s nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is. The game clearly thinks its far smarter than its players and spends a lot of time dangling philosophical ideas in front of them. Unfortunately, one of those players is me, and I’m a shit-ton brighter than the game is. This leads to some... interesting moments.

Let me explain what I mean using the ancient art of the example. There’s a bit where you debate the nature of personhood with a disembodied computer system that later turns out to have a very cynical outlook. The thing asks you for your definition of what a person is and the game lets you pick betweeen a number of options with philosophical precedents. For example, you can say that a person is “a rational animal” or an “ordered logical system” and so on. And the game clearly thinks its got all its bases covered. It doesn’t. There isn’t an option that defines personhood in terms of consciousness and self-awareness (which is how I think most people would define it), which seems like a massive oversight in a game whose central themes are the consciousness and self-awareness of non-human entities. I‘d say that it might have been done on purpose to serve the narrative, but there are so many obvious omissions of this type that I’m forced to conclude that its the result of insufficient thought on behalf of whoever wrote the script. In most other games, it wouldn’t matter (let’s face it, none of us are upset that Commander Shepherd’s dialogue options in Mass Effect were a bit far removed from what we’d say in similar situatons). However, in a game that sets itself up as a crash-course in philosophical reasoning, missing out entire basic philosophical precepts is a bit of a kick the urethra.

On a similar note, it suffers from what I like to call Geralt-of-Rivia Syndrome, which is when the main character never actually bothers to explain their actions to other characters or argue their point of view in a clear and concise manner. I managed to get into a debate about the merits of equal division of resources among a population with the snarky computer system at one point. The game was happy to let me state my belief in fair division of resources and listen to the other fucker reply sarcastically to them, but didn’t offer any options for explaining or justifying those beliefs.

Obviously, these are minor flaws. It’s a puzzle game, not a conversation simulator: the dialogue options in your debates with other machine intelligences can’t cover every possible contingency. It just would have been nice if they’d covered some of the painfully obvious ones. Trying to argue with the intelligence using the limited options you have feels like playing a game of Taboo (you know- it’s that word game where you have to describe something without using a pre-set list of verboten words and your team-mate has to work out what you’re describing).

However, minor gripes aside, there is one fairly major problem that I can’t let go without a spanking: the ludo-narrative dissonance in this game is off the pimholing chart. Let me ellucidate. Within the game’s narrative, the lead character’s central dilemma is whether or not to climb a forbidden tower or obey the edict against doing so in return for immortality. See, the main character thinks that the tower is genuinely off-limits. The forces that govern their world have put it out or reach. What’s more, they’ve offered a very tempting reward for not going anywhere near the tower. In short, the character I’m playing has no reason to want to go near the tower. It’s big and menacing and holds the fairly explicit promise of death. However, as the player, I know the tower isn’t actually off-limits at all. In fact, I know full well the game developers want me to go poke my nose in it. Right now, the team who put that thing together are going “Ooh, please player! Please climb our big tower- it’s ever-so tall and erect!” As a player, I have every reason to go into that tower: there’s loads more content in there and I suspect the ending you get for climbing to the top is way more satisfying than the one you get for ignoring it. Developers: when the entire central conceit of your game has a big dollop of ludo-narrative dissonance in it, you need to rethink some things. Here’s a rule of thumb for good game design: if the player has to make a choice, both the character and the player should have compelling reasons for both possible choices, otherwise things start to seem a bit silly.

Now, I still recommend this game. The TALOS Principle is very bloody good. I’m berating it because I like it so much and want it to try harder, not because I consider it a failure. It’s a solid experience and I suggest you give it a go. Be warned though, it is depressing as fuck, so don’t go in if your prone to dark thoughts.

[knockonceforyes]

The Paradox of Paranormal Evidence

I’ve noticed a trend in evidence presented for the paranormal. I’m sure I’m not the only one and I’m guilty of it myself. It is that any evidence presented is either so poor that it could be anything, or indeed nothing, or that it is so good that it is unbelievable. How many times have you found yourself looking at a photo or video and thinking to yourself ‘that looks so real, it must be fake’? What other discipline is there that any convincing evidence is written off as fake and you are just left with things that look a little bit like a stylised face if you rotate them 90 degrees, adjust the contrast, add a filter, stand 3 feet from the screen and squint whilst humming a Waltz? It isn’t just photographic or video evidence either, audio recordings and personal encounters all suffer from the same problem.

The initial problem would seem to lie with the ease at which these things can be faked. A few minutes with a modern computer and a couple of images can create a convincing apparition and there are even mobile phone apps that can insert a passable ‘ghost’ to your mobile phone pictures in the tap of a screen. Video evidence is slightly harder to fake, but is by no means impossible for someone with a little technical knowledge.  It is even easier to fake audio clips, so much so that discussing the methods isn’t even worth it. However, trickery and charlatanism has existed in the field from its inception and faking evidence has evolved alongside the technology that can be used to capture evidence. It would seem then that the biggest problem is the abundance of fakery (and to a lesser extent those people for whom any unexpected noise, blurry photograph or radio static is considered the most convincing evidence of the supernatural ever recorded and that they must publicise it as much as possible).

Anyone with even a twinkling of scepticism can discount anecdotal evidence at worst as an outright lie and at best as a case of mistaken identity or pareidolia. Scepticism can also quite easily discount the more modern investigation tools. The now popular K2 meter is designed to detect Electro Magnetic Fields (EMF), which are given off by practically everything with electrical power or that is magnetised including walkie talkies, mobile phones, cameras, voice recorders and practically every other piece of equipment used to detect ‘ghosts’ as well as unshielded power mains and other items common in almost all sites under investigation. As far as I am aware, there is no definitive proof of what ghosts* are made of, even the confirmed detection of EMF where none is expected cannot be much more than evidence that there is an EMF present. Any correlation between questions and responses as are commonly seen when using K2 meters are easily dismissed by the sceptic as coincidence. This is not to say that K2 meters have no place in the investigators toolbox, high EMF levels can cause feelings of insecurity and nausea that could be mistaken for a haunting and should investigators find that activity tends to occur alongside their readings of high EMF (taking into account the issues above) or following the possibility that ghosts are eventually proven to exist and that they are in some way made of, create or are powered (for lack of a better term) by EMF and we will all have been kicking ourselves for leaving the K2 at home.

The spirit boxes and other electronic items that scan radio frequencies, as well as those that take readings of such things as temperature and EMF and assign levels to word dictionaries, are also both easily dismissed. Even where the communication seems relevant to questioning, any sceptic will still need to dismiss this as coincidence without some other way of confirming the accuracy of what is being heard or stated.

Is it then an impossible task? Will the allure of transient internet fame forever tarnish the true investigator with the manufactured ‘evidence’ of the fakers? Hopefully not. The very computers that make it easier to make fake evidence are getting better at spotting the fakes. Smaller, cheaper and higher quality cameras mean that all members of a group are more easily monitored and that the evidence gathered is higher quality. True parapsychologists and investigators will slowly gather evidence to help pinpoint what we are looking for and last but not least, our scientific understanding will eventually advance to a point that the truly supernatural can eventually be explained and simply become natural.

Fitz

* – See previous blog ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’