Puzzle girl

Work in progress again. Seems I can't get anything finished these days. I even accidentally lost the background texture for the Worldgate so I still haven't been able to render it out completely.

Anyway, she's a girl who I'll probably rig when I'm proficient enough in rigging. Next to her there's going to be some kind of machine; I've been hoping to get a Heavy Gear Kodiak modeled in time. Deadline for that little interaction animation is somewhere at end of the month, so if I just work hard, I might be able to do it properly. Though she needs some proper skinning and we're only still working on mechanical designs that need no fancy stretching skin, so we'll see how things turn out.

Gateworld

One of the so called gateway worlds built around a star in a Dyson sphere -manner, called the Worldgate 6. With its three moons orbiting steadily and the massive quantum fluxuation coolant extract flaring out from the knotted sun, the Worldgate functions as a hub for millions of farcasters around the galaxy, processing Planck space reactions and arranging the quantum fluxuations to preserve safe farcasting. Also a home for a population of 1.5 million post-humans.

This started as a random torus-creation while waiting for classmates to join our planning of another school project. I soon found myself adding details and slapping space around it. Then I thought that what the hell, I just might use this as the assignment for the environment modeling -course.

So it became a world. So I have become inverted death, creator of worlds.

I might change the silly torus knot into a proper sun.


This is how it should look when finished, without the particle flow from the center.


And this is how the effect probably ends up looking. Might tone down the blur a bit, though it also might look better in motion as is.

Pretty flowers for the pretty lady

Yesterday I remembered that I had a lot of unwatched episodes of Pushing Daisies as I needed something to pass the fever-time. I know I should be working on multitude of school and other projects, but this cold is demanding some serious rest. And while I can't just sleep 48+ hours straight (a damn shame), watching fun stuff while being wrapped in a warm blanket does the trick.
Though I just might get some odd chills from the "you love her but you can't touch her" -thing going on there.

Anyway, it's a fun and sweet series, try it out.

We're also having a tv-graphics -class at school and we've been learning tracking with SynthEyes and after effects in Combustion. I'm still not that sure how different Combustion is from Fusion that I've been learning out a bit, but I guess time will tell.
I'd post some footage if I had some here.

Instead, this

Icy supernova

Tonights Zen, straight out from Photoshop.

Bones & toes

So here's something I whipped together while visiting the Finnish Museum of Natural History as a school thingie-project-class-something.


A pretty severly dead kangaroo.


A staring wolf.


Ribbit.


Napakettu, eli naali.


I got a bit carried away with this and even got a visiting artist on my paper; the Sun is the result of that unholy alliance.


These guys were pretty much dead too.


This ferocious bastard was hiding in the museum's café.


And something completely different <3.
I think I'll write more about these guys later.

Rooftops

Nowhere near done, but getting there. I'd also rant about people ignoring problems and all the stuff that keeps me from sleeping, but I'm way too drunk for that now.

Particles

http://users.evtek.fi/~anttijus/received_a_banana_final.mov

Bleh. I was drunk.

Seeker of wisdom

Another night at the Old Library.

Boo

Still not done with the one I'm working on.. but here's the best cosplay ever.

Also watched the HOLOGRAM MAN we bought at a high price of 2€ with Sarkain.
It indeed sucked, just as planned. People pretty much just kept shooting stuff while barfing out horrible dialogue - including the saddest techbabble in a while.
As a bonus, the subtitles were godawfully wrong, we kept laughing at "Fuck hänet!" and other awful errors in the translation until the whole subtitles just stopped and disappeared completely at 3/4 of the movie :D.

Next week I'm also getting Lele & his better half Anna over for some ~weeks or somesuch, so much hosting it is for me then.

*silly campers*

I always wondered what actually happens when a ship collides with a planet in Star Control Super Melee, except for them to just bounce off with a bit of damage.

Gentle winds

Sketched this while having my 'morning' coffee just now. I'll probably complete this soon, I like where this is going.

Aftermath

So Ropecon was composed of win and fail.
Win on seeing lots of people, neat cosplays, modded ponies (Miller would be proud), relaxing in a sweet sauna and getting familiar with DMC; Detroit Metal City. And writing spells.
Fail for me turning passive under social competitive pressure and for forgetting where I'd put my neat pirate dreadlocks.


I almost had a chance to play DnD 4th ed too, but the schedules were kinda unforgiving in the end. I managed to roll a character though, and fleshen it up a bit. It was really random, I just spanked the system and thought of Kohr-Ah while choosing stuff. The result was one of those star worshipping warlock tieflings. I was going for a human, but the gr1mdark past and wis+cha bonuses got me in the end. I don't know if Khora is playable in any serious way, but I might try. His firm belief in The Eternal Doctrine could cause some issues, not to mention the other plain silly stuff.


So mostly win. Some anxiety for the lack of information, but otherwise I'm alive and awake.








Some random GE-elementalists. At least few months old, but it kinda fits in the mood of rpgs methinks.

--
Also had an evening of Haunting Ground last night. We pushed about half way through during the ~8 hours of intense gaming.

It's funny how HG is still a pretty fun game, even though it's achievements in the plot are pretty lame (and damn it, alchemy-theme sounds initially pretty neat, but the writing is just damn boring) and the genre seems only 'survival' rather than 'survival horror'. There's this feeling present in every plot twist, that perhaps it could seem awful and scary if you were a little girl and it really-really happened to you in real life, but as a game it completely fails to scare me. Daniella has some creepy effects and she's the best character in the game (which isn't that much to say), but pretty much everything about her too is just ripped from other horror titles. Like Silent Hill.
Hewie wins, though. He usually manages to seem like a real dog, which is nice.

Whoops

Due to, er, jet lag and 'stuff' we regret to announce that the entry concerning Ropecon is delayed by a day.

So here's something completely different.

Divinity

Please endure me being a bit silly here, but oh good god <3<3.

Ahem.

..must sleep now.



MY ORIGINAL CHARACTER PLZ DO NOT HAX

Intermission

I'm quite impressed.
More Ropecon tomorrow. In the meantime, have the sketch that spawned the earlier post.

Con time

Ropecon approaches and I still haven't looked at the schedule or anything. As usual. I pretty much attend these things to see friends from far and near, the panels and alike are only secondary objectives, as entertaining as they can be.


Also finished this pic of Lady, found the sketch hanging around my HD tonight and felt like it deserved getting finished. That red cloth-thingie was supposed to be Dante's jacket, but somehow I lost all the detail on the way.. I guess that's the price I pay for drawing so late at night, with a glass of scotch.

Dakka dakka 6D6

Yay, I got to GM a small game of Cyberpunk tonight. A friend of mine has been visiting my near-neighbour for a few days now and it has led to unusually active social-time. Which is nice.

And they wanted some Cyberpunk for three.

Well, this turned out to be pretty much the first more serious game of CP (CHILD PORN, yeah, that's what I meant) and I kinda liked it that way. Cyberpunk usually tends to slip into being just some fancy firefight between cyberpumped junkheads leveling half the town while duking out over a spilled beer. It can be a relaxing kind of fun, yeah, but System Shock2 inspired me to try my best with the spookiness.
Have to say, I'll be gladly doing more of these creepy Cyberpunks in the future.

--
Also, this.

Pierce the cyber with your flesh

So I was in a "hey-let's-try-watercolors" -evening. I haven't really touched such things since, uh, whenever I had to for some school-thingie. Even though I really enjoy seeing watercolor art.
It was good practice and I ended up in some kind of orkish Rumbler wandering through Von Braun.

Rokkit skienze

The dentist only cranked my teeth a little bit, finished something with my root canal that I didn't even know needed finishing. All good, though a bit crunchy operation. I had a hi-dense nap right after, until got a bit unusual wake up as few friends showed up to my door and asked me to join them for the evening.
We watched Disnep's Fantasia and it brought back a lot of memories from the time I first saw it here in Jokiniemi a few years ago <3.

I had my scetchbook with me and since we're also in process of playing Silent Hill: The Room with Sakari, our kind host, miss 20121 came up.


Also, damn you Many. To think I was afraid of one Rumbler, now I get to crawl knee deep in them.


..and today's wtfzomg goes to this

Hacker's omnom

I have a dentist appointment at 12:30. So I kinda shouldn't still be up writing this, now should I?

Too bad I didn't manage to snap a decent shot of the cybernetic modules, otherwise the stuff there is kinda authentic. I mean.. this one isn't really that detailed anyway. Just something quick and zen.




















Something neat I found from Von Braun's mall as I hack'n'hacked my way up to the UNN Rickenbacker today.


Also this one's from the Von Braun's movie theatre, as you can see from the prices. Nothing worth buying costs more than a few hundred nanites tops.. ammo, medkits, nothing I can think of. And I do consider myself kinda wealthy with my 489n's. So the magic of movies remain, even in the distant future.

Damn it Miller

Quit modding our nurses, Miller. It's not funny anymore :<.

UNN starts with U

Wonder how would it feel like to be aboard the first faster-than-light starship, 67 trillion miles away from Earth.
To wake up from cryostasis and have someone tell you immediately that you can't remember past few weeks right away because of the surgery you just underwent, some experimental cybernetics you volunteered for as something went terribly wrong aboard this ship. Now move before you get killed.

Yes, I installed System Shock 2. I had to, since drawing GLaDOS made me think of Shodan and one thing led to another, durr durrr..
I ended up in youtube, watching the SS2 intro and after that I really had no choice.


It's kinda hard for me still to imagine any place lonelier and away from everything than the starship Von Braun near planet Tau Ceti V, 67 trillion miles away. That feeling of isolation combined with the insane screams of the Many hybrids echoing through the empty hallways creates a nice feel of creeping panic for me even today.
Though the graphics are pretty outdated - some hybrids look even ridiculous - you still learn to fear them in game since they tend to be kinda lethal.
The voice acting is great among other sounds, which is important since the audiologs you keep finding around are a huge part of the spooky atmostphere. The files are well written and tend to sound like stuff people could really babble to their audiobooks. A few moments after usually getting killed or otherwise in trouble. I could be even a little surprised that there're no jokes about 'castle aaaaaaaargh..' anywhere :p.

One thing to complain about though. While the wrench you find in the beginning becomes your life-time friend, the shootah-weapons seem to originate from SH: Origins. You need to maintain them constantly just to be able to shoot a few magazines. The ammo is pretty rare so I guess it's just a matter of balance, but even still. What went wrong with the weapons developement in the distant future when the guns are made of cheap plastic?
There's the old trick to haxor the weapon entropy a bit milder and I feel it won't spoil anything too delicate from the game by slightly lowering the gun_degrade_rate from shock.cfg. The hacker just got hacked.

Also, I kinda lawl'd here, check the menu opening into the upper left corner. It should contain the list of available products for replication, but this Replicator is broken. And I think it's apparent why after seeing the bottom line.

Der Heiler

A bit older piece, just had a few lines & touch ups waiting for this to be finished and since I felt awfully and especially tired tonight I thought I'd just finish something yet unfinished rather than start from a scratch.

Also as a cunning prelude-plan for planning to see the Dark Knight (uh, anytime now.. probably on monday), I watched Batman Begins just now.

I think I enjoyed it, yeah, it was pretty ok. It wasn't even too high-tech'ish, the usual bat-gizmos were even cutely steampunkish and everything went smoothly enough with the storyline. Didn't really blow my mind, but hey, it had its moments. (Damn you ninjas, Bruce should've trained with pirates!)
But anyways, as a result I'm eagerly looking forward to the Dark Knight now that I've heard a lot of praises about it from people I believe share a similar taste in movies.

But let's not get too excited yet, anything can happen at the theatre :p.

--
ANNND I also watched Blade Runner since I couldn't sleep no matter how tired I was.
Oah, my god. It's wonderful to rewatch movies that you've seen as a kid, liked them for some reason and now to realize just how good those movies actually are, in all the ways you had no idea back then.
I even have the old Blade Runner game somewhere, never finished it.. probably way up north at Home, meh.

Releasing the neurotoxin

GLaDOS, the sweetest AI since Shodan.
I don't know what's with the "seemingly omnipotent AI with a fragile insides" -thing, but internet has proven that I'm not the only one having a sweet spot for such brilliantly written female AI's.
Pushy, childishly selfish and calculatingly rude, still smart, ah-so-sweet, and in absolute control of the whole goddamn facility/spaceship you're in, kinda. Ah<3.
Behavior like that just feels somehow cute and acceptable when it comes from a malfunctioning machine :p.

I've been wanting to draw GLaDOS for some time now, Portal had a huge impact on me when I finally bought the Orange Box some months ago. I didn't think that such a beautiful yet simple writing existed anymore in games. Oh the black humour.
As the credits rolled I truly realized what love is.


Feels nice to have a place where I actually enjoy writing and drawing stuff for.

0rigins

Or Silent Hill Zero, originally for PSP.
My friend bought it for PS2 and we played it through somewhere during last month. I had my initial mood based mostly on early screenshots like this utter poop one, so I'd set my expectations to nil.
So at first I couldn't avoid being positively surprised; hey, at least it actually looks pretty good.
Oddly though the characters, their modeling and everything, were kinda lazy and basic stuff compared to the surroundings, not to mention characters in any other Silent Hill.


The story told is just what we already knew, stuff that lead to SH1, moviefied with some bleh-effects including flying!Alessa in a stiffy prerender and other stuff to surely blend the overall feel downward. But also with some nice puzzles and neat surrounding aestethics and some demons of Travis' past.
And it was good to see Lisa alive again :>.

The soundtrack is excellent. One of the best in the series I'd say, too bad the game itself left so little memories to strenghten the music even more.


I guess it could sound kinda neat as a puzzle concept that Travis has the ability to switch from this side to the Other by sticking his finger in any mirror at any time; ping, you have two worlds to explore for the prize of one puzzle. Too bad Travis isn't supposed to be Raziel and the whole effect kinda ruins Everything.
Why? Because I as one enjoyed the otherside transitions most when they were subtle and you'd find yourself wondering 'Wait, were those walls that rusty and dirty just before..?'. The feel how the town itself seemed to lure you somewhere you didn't want to go and slowly changing around you into something you didn't want it to change. Now it kinda nerfs the unpredictability and replaces it with a feeling that Travis has somehow subjugated Silent Hill itself by having this kind of awesome power to go however he pleases. Bleh.


Also, the combat kinda sucks donkeys. The problem is that every single weapon you'll find breaks after about ten or so hits.
It seems logical enough when the huge glass bottle you're carrying around shatters when you forcibly place it into someones face, but when the same happens to your solid iron wrench after just a bunch of swings it kinda leaves an awkward feeling. And since stuff breaks, there has to be a lot of stuff around to replace them. Even to the extent where you'll wind up carrying multiple copies of everything imaginable from IV drip stands to small TV-sets and file cabinets to be used as a weapon.

Oh well, done whining.

Wounded forest

So here's for another sleepless night.

..I had a dream of being some kind of monster hunter last night, somewhere in the middle Europe I think. It was all really confusing, I think there were bears too.

White rabbit & silk fox

A little giftart from some days ago made all colorful and stuff.

HA HA I'M USING THE GLORY DEVICE

So I heard pyramid head is going to have a big role in Silent Hill: Homecoming, formerly known as Silent Hill 5.

GG The Collective, among other brilliant stunts you've pulled this far. Should I get worried, and just how worried, when probably every fan out there knows more about the world than these people who are actually writing an official game about it?
A brief spoiler to explain my nausea; James' subconscious created phead, with a little help from the town of course. So I guess they better have a sassy explanation for this -- the movie was a borderline case as it still was possible to see it just as an adaptation (and since it sucked ass apart from the visual side).
The existences of any incredibly 'clever' twists in plot I do highly doubt, and phead has been just a sad fangirl-magnet ever since the movie.
Dear god, I never get tired of ranting about this, but somehow I do not wish to see phead as some kind of Cid making totally unrelated appearences in every possible game there's gonna be. That's Robbies job anyway.

Come SH2, let's make sweet love in moonlight to reminiscence the neverfading memory of your name's former glory.

This blog in *orz*

English it is
So much to change, edit, tweak and *dance*, hopefully this works out in the end.



http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Orz_communications