heavy space

Gonna get shoosh-papped

2012-01-31T13:39:00.000+02:00

♌ - The Disciple! Been meaning to draw her for ages, all that hair!<3

Again, a bit cleaner approach than my usual stuff, I...think. Is it?

♏ - And towards the other end of the style-spectrum, a huge mess.

Also this is what's going on here, obviously.

World of snow

2012-01-12T03:19:00.000+02:00

"I wish my friends could see it...I wish Shepard were here."

More Tali! And I'm not done yet.

Tali is mai waifu uguu

2011-12-15T17:05:00.000+02:00

"Go for the optics, Chiktikka! Go for the optics!"

I finished Mass Effect 2 few days ago and this one miss Tali'Zorah vas Normandy managed to break my vicious artblock<3.
I'd be painting a lot more of her and other stuff I've been planning for a long time, but I'm leaving to the frostbitten north for christmas later today. So I guess everything nice has to wait a bit. As it was with her and Shepard, how fitting.

Oh hey and I got featured a few weeks back in Mech Taco's Fan Art Friday, rrright here.

Also, guess I could take this early chance to wish some happy holidays of epic proportions for all you sweet things reading this :>

Handenglishlordmaid

2011-11-12T14:59:00.001+02:00

Some tumblr requests!

"We hear your thoughts..."

2011-11-11T03:27:00.000+02:00

"...and they rage for your brothers you believe dead."

Bumped into my old System Shock stuff at tumblr the other day, used in the background of some musicthings. That got me digging deeper into youtube, searching for all the System Shock audiostuffs once again (indeed, all the spoilers in those links) and then it felt just natural to draw one of the midwives again.

Delicious New Eden

2011-11-05T09:41:00.000+02:00

Hey guys, the new nebulae are on a test run at Singularity. EVE has always been pretty, but I had to take my boat out for a bit longer sightseeing trip this time, these things are incredible.

LWC Mk.II

2011-10-21T22:06:00.000+03:00

Even celestial objects want to cuddle sometimes.

I've been secretly angry at myself for being so sloppy with the galaxies in that one older piece. So here's a sort of remake, bit over a year later. I'm much happier with this one even though there are a couple of things I still could've done differently.
I mostly did this last night and damn me for always working so late, can't help getting sleepy at some point and then I have to fix a lot of stuff afterwards.

Also, need to practice more space things!

Blblblblb

2011-10-14T17:57:00.000+03:00

I...hope this hasn't been done too many times already, I needed to get it out of my system.

ablablablablalbablblb

Glub iä glub fhtagn

2011-10-06T12:39:00.000+03:00

I'm not even that big of a fef-fan, but there's a place in my heart for eldritch horror.

Breeze

2011-10-04T22:15:00.000+03:00

John, it's hard. ~~(heh)~~

Being a kid and growing up.
It's hard and nobody understands.

(had this on repeat while painting)

The friendly NEIGHbourhood mechanic

2011-09-28T16:36:00.000+03:00

A bit like going to the dentist, every zap just might hurt.

"yes dear"

What time is it?

2011-09-09T23:27:00.000+03:00

I've also been treating my cold with Adventure time.

Now who could have ever guessed that Marceline is my favourite character.

DeusStuck

2011-09-08T21:37:00.000+03:00

Sort of never asked for this.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is pretty awesome and I've caught a cold. This is the result.

how can i hold all these panels

2011-08-19T06:46:00.000+03:00

It's been years since I actually wrote stories. I used to play pen & paper RPGs a lot back in the day and since I was almost always the Storyteller, it kept me in some kind of shape with stories. Now that I live far away from my usual group, there's been a really long break with storytelling on any regular basis and it shows. I'm feeling uncertain about lot of things and any kind of writing is slow.
Willow's my attempt to fix all that, I'm launching it now after all the slacking around and postponing things almost indefinitely. Even though I am feeling wobbly about writing, the only cure is to start actually doing it again and even that things might come out a bit wonky at first, without practice there certainly won't be any improvement either.

On a technical note, after trying to bend blogspot into a functional webcomic platform for a too long, I had to give up that idea for good. I'm no web programmer and blogspot seemed to notice every time. So I signed up to Smack Jeeves, since all the cool kids seemed to be using it. I hope it works ok.

So. Below, through that bannerish imagery are the few first pages now. Let's hope I can find the time and inspiration to keep the updates appearing in relatively reasonable timeframe and improving a bunch while doing so. I really do enjoy telling stories and it would make me happy beyond all thought if someone could say they honestly enjoyed reading one of mine.

honk HONK

2011-08-11T00:00:00.000+03:00

honk :o)

Homesiders

2011-07-08T05:41:00.000+03:00

Playing Darksiders kinda made me wanna practice drawing those STRONG, hooved musclebeasts, especially the apocalyptic ones. So here's Equius borrowing War's steed Ruin and being happy about it.

Spider8reath

2011-06-05T16:05:00.001+03:00

Uuk.

Because I'm a potato

2011-05-23T07:18:00.001+03:00

Oh Portal, my love, uguu.

Roses are red...

2011-05-18T23:35:00.004+03:00

Yesterday we beat Outland with my friend on his xbox and uhhh, eyes still recovering from those eyegasms. And I can't get over that sweet feeling of finally beating the Winged Serpent, oh god, that fucker :3.

Also, sorry about the "tattoos", couldn't find a complete ref for them so I had to just improvise some parts :V.

snipestuck

2011-05-09T01:01:00.002+03:00

Sum Dave and Jade.

Dave, even though that's probably cool and all, I'm not sure that's how a point man is supposed to act. Or are you just being so ironic?

dicestuck

2011-05-06T20:34:00.004+03:00

Two of my favourite homestuck trolls and favourite smiling dinner plates. Dinner not pictured, unless trolls eat dice-sushi.

Also there's this silly thing going on called a softer homestuck, that borrows texts from a softer world and redecorates them appropriately with homestuck characters. After seeing this one I just...knew what I had to do.

==>

2011-04-21T01:45:00.004+03:00

This is kinda old news already, but lately I've been reading Homestuck. If you don't know about mspaintadventures, I heartily recommend getting familiar with it. Been laughing my head off many many times over the course of few last weeks. Yes, it sure ain't the shortest webcomic out there.

The first pic is a link to my Tegaki-e page, there's more HS-stuff there too, didn't wanna stuff them all here. I still keep popping those straight to twitter, so by all means do follow me there if interested.

res plz

2011-03-28T11:11:00.002+03:00

Spend a weekend in 3DsMax with schoolstuff and afterwards you'll want to paint something. Anything really.
This was quickly done before bedtime, just needed to do something with only two dimensions.

Quite inspired by (Spotify link)

Crafting those mines

2011-03-04T21:55:00.002+02:00

This is my last two weeks in a nutshell. Even my dreams are made of blocks now, so I though a little video or something was in order. Ended up with a small video. I almost still remember how to use Premiere.

This might get some complications soon, don't know how eagerly youtube kills these because of the music used without any ownership agreements written in blood. Blood of your firstborn. Let's see.

Bang bang

2011-02-12T00:02:00.003+02:00

So hey, how's your early Valentines so far?

Sketchy snakes

2011-02-01T19:35:00.009+02:00

Blargh. It's been a bit hard for me to focus on anything lately, guess starting the epic fight with thesis has something to do with it.

Dem carbons

2011-01-21T02:41:00.009+02:00

As you may know, EVE Online: Incursion is now fully deployed and with it the new Carbon-based character editor. The most powerful character editor around, hands down. And up, and then down again.

This is the new Anenae, the good old Minmatar miner-engineer-something. At the moment there are only few clothing items and accessories available (aviators, fuck yeah), but in the future there's gonna be more stuff, and the now static image becomes free to update, so they say. After that...we can finally walk on stations and see our characters in full glory. Maybe even as soon as this summer, who knows. Whatever the schedule, gotta love CCP for building this stuff with so much love. Even though the wait can be painful, the end results indeed tend to be worth it.

Otherwise Anenae's been messing around with the updated planetary interaction, trying to learn how that stuff ticks with few prototype colonies. Bunch of ISKies spent on the planets while trying out tricks the hard way. Also, there's been a long trip of shooting stuff with few old and new capsuleers in Empire space and that can be expensive, especially with all these wars going on lately. She never was that rich to begin with, so using nearly 100 million dosh in the process starts to show in the quality of her breakfast.

I saw your ship

2010-12-13T04:06:00.004+02:00

Days need to be longer, 24h is such a pffft.

If you're wondering about the rather present day (and not so outdoor'ish) outfit in a sci-fi setting, I was just letting out whatever lurked in my mind, apparently no rules there.
I see a bunch of things to improve but I'm le tired, punch me in the morning.

(There's also a super secret alternative fetish version.)

Boom

2010-12-07T23:24:00.003+02:00

I couldn't be arsed to finish this ship's design properly, so I blew it up. Yay, explosions. Space explosions.

EVE-related, I've been trying to dig something up from my brain to make up a proper ship design, but apparently my tech-creative parts are feeling a bit frozen. Must be the lack of sleep, been doing lots of stuff in EVE. Uguuh.

But hey, even if I can't figure out anything awesome and cool, at least I can blow up my boring designs \o/.

Stranded

2010-11-19T16:50:00.006+02:00

Last night I couldn't sleep until I squeezed something artsy out, some inspiration fallout stuck in my head, I guess.
Pretty quick work, but I tried to be a bit more concepty...conceptish... err, something, here.

And all credit to Ani for some of those sweet sweet brushes that helped this come alive!

11121

2010-09-30T22:20:00.003+03:00

This is for Ani, she's awesome \o/.
Walter from Silent Hill: The Room playing around with firearms, apparently. I wanted to paint smoke and Colt 1911, derrrp.

Also, brain saying BEEP. I've been wanting to do "fanart" of this thing for so long now. Check out the original here.

Large world collider

2010-09-20T16:42:00.006+03:00

Hurrr, got this idea after discovering God is an Astronaut from Spotify, quite atmospheric stuff. I slapped a few other pieces together also last night, but they need tuning still.

This particular song, Worlds in Collision, was the main mover for this. Spotify link

Uh, yeah. Trying to do and finish more stuff, I'm feeling inspired.

Tegaki E

2010-09-01T23:34:00.006+03:00

Click it to see the story continue on comments.

So I somehow found my way back to Tegaki E. My last entry was some few years old, so you could say it was about time.

I've missed the nice feel of its sweet oekakiness and they even added an opacity control while I was away. Feels good man.

So, come say hello fellow tegaki persons, you o/.

Living dead girl

2010-08-20T00:56:00.003+03:00

Sudden inspiration to paint stuff close to my heart: L4D zombies. Rule #63 of the Smoker again, to be precise.

This also reminds me, I need to arrange myself a day or two to finish the Huntress-model I started a while back, yes sir. Been figuring Hammer again out a bit, but still haven't tried out the Source rigging stuff or any means to replace the original Hunter with my own. So, yeah. What was I saying?

Also a very Helghasty G.H.O.S.T soldier. Derp.

Dem emoticons

2010-08-10T16:20:00.003+03:00

Hurp, a little meme I randomly found from DA, once again, and thought it was useful for general, quick and never-ending practice. As you can see, if you look at the sauce below, the lower half is my personal extension.

Sauce here.

Also, been having this unexplainable urge to model noses. Feels weird, man :V.

Land ahoy

2010-07-05T02:00:00.004+03:00

Spent some five days surrounded by water and friends before midsummer, recharged my batteries really nicely. Fed most of myself to the mosquitos there, some damn angry little things they were, but man, it's really good to get near the nature sometimes. With a little help from occasional gaming; we had all kinds of consoles there too. Yeah, I/we strongly believe that nature and technology can coexist. The midsummer itself went peacefully in my biological home, and I bumped into some really nice people during my short stay in Jyväskylä too. Yee-haw.

HIDDEN MOVEMENT. In your shower!

I've been drawing Sectoid/human mutants (spliced human and Sectoid DNA and whatever, with Sectoidish black eyes who were supposed to, plotwise, act as an alien infiltration unit during the first X-COM, but are recruitable in Apocalypse) as a result of playing X-COM: Apocalypse, but since my scanner is long since dead and I haven't acquired any replacement, I can't upload the pencil-stuff here.

So you'll get that digi-thing^, a bit lighter approach to the alien invasion. She's the Credit to the Team, miss Jane "Cockfag" Parker from X-COM: Apocalypse, with Heavy plasma, Personal armor and dead Chryssalid from X-COM: Enemy unknown (Ufo defense). Don't ask about the nickname, these things just happen while you play.

They do! I'm sorry!

Yes, back at the island, we gave a decent burial for our brother in arms, Lettuce. He fought bravely from the mainland to the island, only to be killed by the enemy while we were making salad.
Oh sweet and brave Lettuce, how me miss you. May your battles be glorious and victories countless during your stay in Valhalla.

So green and...lettuce'ish.

Meme tiem

2010-05-22T19:42:00.002+03:00

Found the template over there, do it maggots! -> Yoink!

New dreams

2010-05-16T00:53:00.003+03:00

Right, so I had my first experience of a false awakening, or double dream.

I woke up, at first I didn't notice a thing, then something little was odd.. I got the strangest feeling of misplacement, "did I leave that cup there..?" or "is there someone else in here..?" then I was back in bed, waking up again.
The misplaced details, about one per false awakening, included things like weird sounds outside, suddenly the time of day was way off like I'd slept for 10h instead of one, all windows wide open, odd lighting all around, different sofa in the living room with its top layer of cloth peeled right off, and one time my front door was slightly open.
As I went to see what the hell was going on with the door, there was an empty plastic bag just lying around with some, I don't know, remains of whatever liquid inside. Then my grandpa appeared from behind the door, looked very serious and tried to tell me something, I couldn't figure out what it was. I got a really damn creepy feeling, then I found myself back in bed, again.

After some five times of waking up it started to really bug me, always returning to the exactly same point in bed, as I started to gather some kind of understanding that perhaps this was indeed a dream.
I got up, tried to search for the clue of still being in a dream and thus achieving the blurry return to the start. It happened gradually faster, I could almost force myself just to "blur out" back to bed in the end. Still took about ten or eight awakenings after that before I finally turned on my back, stared at the ceiling and all the details around me, colors that had no weird post processing and the fact that I could sit in front of my computer and see that the internet was just the way I'd left it, making even less sense than in my dreams, convinced me that it was the real real.

It's funny, I'd left some music on, after all I was just having an hour nap (I actually even remember punching my alarm off, hmm), I kinda recall it playing during the whole dream and I usually don't remember any kind of sounds from my dreams.

Figures, music used to have a very strange role in my life for the last three or four years.

Jonne & Hiisi

2010-04-15T01:22:00.005+03:00

Jonne & Hiisi - Hole in the wall from amrrr on Vimeo.

So here's something me and my classmates were working on starting from last Fall.

My school produced some 40 animations for Nelonen during the winter. Here's one that's animated by me. I also did the texturing/materials for Hiisi - that green, striped dude - and also the special effects in this one, namely that welding effect and smoke.

These animations can be seen on Nelonen now accompanying the announcements (I think) during the morning cartoons :).

Copypasta from video description.

Regarding the whole project I was also involved in the script team, textured a few additional props like the marshmallow and the bubble visible in some of the clips, and helped with few other animations. There's one where Hiisi eats Jonne's gun and barfs out lazors, for that I did some tuning for the animation at one point, then there's one short loop of skipping rope. Unfortunately I simply ran out of time with the ropeskipping, had to leave the fine tuning there.. the thought gnaws me through the nights. Try watching TV to spot those I mentioned :).

The sounds were also done by our very own team helped out by the staff at Werne studios in the dark woods of Espoo. A really comfy studio that is, and our brave dubbers did a wonderful job with Hiisi and Jonne :D.

Some interesting things also happened during the early process, like the skin mesh suddenly blarghing straight out from Hiisi's mouth to infinity. Bricks were shat.

Here's also one shot of the nearly done materials and textures for Hiisi. Some things changed for the finals, but it's 95% done in this shot. Please note that I didn't make the model itself.

There's gonna be an official website for this whole project with making-of photos and stuff like that, but as of now I'm not aware it being online yet.

Nil space

2010-03-11T01:19:00.003+02:00

So Anenae is now a proud member of The Arrow Project, and as such, also a member of the Morsus Mihi alliance.

^ Over there. Click for an up to date influence map.

Been making myself comfortable in null sec and oh boy, this is one of the reasons to love EVE so much, everything feels so new and different all of the sudden. No Empire space creamy-ass conveniences, only the corp/alliance's own facilities to keep you safe, no CONCORD presence at all, big rats on stargates even, all kinds of stuff I haven't had the chance to get used to in highsec. Seemingly constant gatecamps. Pretty much every move counts during these unstable times, or you can kiss your ship and clone goodbye; seems that you gotta keep your eye on the intel channels all the time, or the next ship you see drops a bubble on you and soon the sky is full of fire, death and podgoo.

Speaking of podgoo, lost my second Hurricane, *dancing* Queen just the other day pretty much in that manner. Click for bigger - see that red in local? A few moments later it wasn't the only one, no sir. Stealthy bastards.

Can't wait to be part of some bigger fleet op soon.

Will goes OW!

2010-03-01T03:01:00.003+02:00

I kicked up a blog for my upcoming webcomic/graphic novel, the Willow, that's been going on in my head for a looong time now. By this post I try to encourage/force myself to actually get it going after all these years of not getting it going. Wish me luck.

The Willow <-- see it right over there.

Also, check out mah twitter for random EVE-screenshots and other even more random things. Thought it'd be the place to get more of these little shots I keep taking out to the public without making whole blog posts about them.

Also also, I added a donate button over there to the right :D!
Pretty please, with sugar on the top, I'm so very poor!

Hunting ghosts

2010-02-10T01:43:00.007+02:00

(B&W here.)

Hey, I got a free month for EVE from the EVE buddy program \o/. Thanks, you know who you are.

I've slept a lot, though badly and still not enough. Been a few especially rough weeks for me.
I feel like I wanna draw, paint, model and animate my brains out, but I can't find the strength to do so. When I get home nowdays I just sleep, shoot zombies/mine ice and fall asleep again. Then it's off to school again.

Guess this modeling fever has something to do with Avatar too, finally did see it and even though the script stubbornly refused to surprise anyone in any way with shallow characters having locked alignments like straight out of a bad D&D game, the special effects were pretty damn neat. First 3D movie for me, even.
Also, this is probably a spoiler, but I lol'd how it was neatly implied that a betrayed tribe is won to your favor again just by having the coolest car/pterodactyl/something in the neighbourhood :D. That's how life works, kids.
Too bad love stories make me twitch still, they all remind me of all the wrong things. Still, I have to say that I liked watching the movie, no matter how strictly it was done by-the-book. A solid performance, if nothing else.

And all in all, I did manage to start a little project a few days ago:

Inspired by the Smokette being done by the dude(s) over l4dmods.com, I wanted to do something with the hunter. Work in progress, she still lacks rig, any kind of materials and I thought I'd do morphs for the face, even though the hunter in L4D doesn't have any facial animations. Just to refresh my memory on morphs. We'll see where this goes, at least I could refine a hi-poly huntress out of this, if not a model for the game.

Also, there's this thing about System Shock 2.

Should've turned left at Albuquerque

2010-01-24T00:26:00.003+02:00

Some days ago, after getting the ~28,000,000.00 ISK for Hurricane battlecruiser, I got gateganked randomly at Tama while passing through. I got to sit/float in my new Hurricane for some hours only. They even podded me - my first time, that - lost a bunch of implants there, a fistful of millions to the solar winds. Goddamn, if you ever run into people from Involuntary Confinement, do steal their underwear.

Yes, I realized afterwards that the system I got killed in was indeed the very same that Hitler "got podded every time" :D. (The youtube-video in my previous entry.) I should've remembered just why it sounded familiar, before jumping into 0.3.

But hey, at least these are pretty sweet.

--
Also haha, I just noted that I've been receiving some traffic from Rule34 website. Okay, after pondering about it for a while I guessed it; seems that my female Smoker and Hunter & Zoey have somehow found their way up there -- and directed from there, I found out about this little project :D. Awesome.

Icy business

2010-01-10T01:04:00.008+02:00

Anenae trying her hands on used ship sales. Surely she's better at selling refined ore, but you gotta try different things once in a while.
I'm glad, finally some artsy stuff around here, hopefully I'll be pushing out some more EVE related art soon.
Her suit is just something whipped from my head, at least below the official chestplate-thingy. I dunno, just something that comes off quickly when entering the pod and something that looks distantly like ah-ever-so-sexy overalls :D.

Also, watched Starship Troopers once again a few days back after bumping on the soundtrack on Spotify. Made me wish Dust 514 would come out soon and come out successfully. Not that I'd be getting a console just to play Dust, but I'd be eager to contract some console-grunts to work for me on planets.

"The fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying."

Though *many fingers* probably needs to grow a bit still for that kind of business. And join some huge alliance, or something, to fight for sovereignty. And I'm still a bit unsure how that would work out.

Speaking of growing, we've recruited new members and done some general wrecking, this time in Amarr space. Still only drones, but a bit more dangerous kind this time. It's fun, though not that profitable.

Aaand speaking of profit, I also decided to take a shot at ice harvesting and hey, it seems pretty healthy for my wallet at first glance.
The ice fields seem to be relatively rare and as I finally found one, it looked even more peculiar; filled with CONCORD police. Well, no harm in extra security I guess. I spent some four million ISK on a nice pair of Ice Harvesters and went on breaking the ice, so to speak.

Everything seemed to work out peacefully until some miserable little bastard warped next to me and opened fire with a destroyer. Too bad for him it is still a high sec system and the ice field indeed is full of CONCORD to begin with, and I actually noticed his attempt at blasting me to bits only at the moment he was already a pretty ball of fire and twisted metal himself. He had some backup too, though his friend just floated near me with a lock-on, not doing a thing. Nice going there.
Of course, this has all to do with Hulkageddon going on at the moment. Drives all the lunatics out in the fields, damnit, I haven't seen this many pods and exploding ships during my entire time with EVE yet.

Also earlier, with our science team of one, we probed out a wormhole in one of the nearby solar systems, though as the bravest one of us ventured forth to recon with a small frigate, he soon noticed that there were apparently some heavy duty pvp-equipment waiting on the other side with scramblers and deathbeams. So we, on a second thought, decided it was a silly place and didn't go there.

And in case you're that kind of reader who doesn't constantly hover his/her mouse over the pictures; yes, do click them to see everything there is. The screenshots in this blog tend to be just small crops of the actual shots :).

Also, this.

EVEn further into the emptiness

2009-12-15T20:40:00.005+02:00

Our corp is up, yay. We are *many fingers* and we like to *squeeze the juice*!

It was a long trip, but there's a nice spot at Uosusuokko system (aka Suokukko) - lots of asteroids around, the system's near 0.0 space but still secure enough, and even quite close to Jita, the biggest trade system in the known universe. So Many Fingers got a hangar from this little Caldari station, one with a nice view.

Also, got myself a destroyer just for shits and giggles before getting a more expensive cruiser. The targeting range is abysmal, but once I get close enough with all my seven little babies, they do unleash a satisfying hail of uranium upon the offenders. Very cheap and not that effective in the long run, but gets my point across with those I need to get up against -- been hunting mostly small time (pi)rat(e)s with it, nothing grand, I still consider myself more of a miner/trader. Though when I decide to buy that cruiser, there's gonna be a small podgoobath just to get that out of my mind. Even carebears need to get loose sometimes.

Mining is getting more organized, bought a few secure containers as we got tired of the goddamn can flippers. Also with the Strip miners it's such a *party* to clear almost whole fields of valuable ore in a, well, reasonable time span. The corp just needs more sec containers, way more. And bigger ships, I want my Hulk already! ..enjoying my ~200,000,000.00 isk price tag.

Guess that's pretty much it since the last entry, on the other side of life I' ve been giving myself to school; we're doing this huge project for Nelonen and it really is draining all my creativity and strength. But I'm gladly giving, since it's fun, I learn a lot while doing, and we have a great team to work with \o/. The stuff we're working on is going to air somewhere during the next year as Nelonen renews it's look. Guess we'll be up for the whole year or something, keep an eye on the early morning cartoons especially, and their announcements :). That's probably all I can say about that here.

Happy holidays everyone, see you in space :).

The ____ is a spy

2009-11-17T05:23:00.007+02:00

Ooh aah, zombies soon (+ additional Valve Time). Left 4 Dead 2!

If you somehow missed it, preordering L4D2 had some interesting effects as revealed in these next few screenshots:

..just rawcking mah axe.

Getting there..

Yes. Bills hat for Team Fortress 2, yay.

--

The new, bluntly suggestive zombies. She looks like she's trying so hard! The L4D2 demo has been under some serious gaming for these few weeks, everything seems pretty much as hoped for; it still feels like home, but everything's more polished and just a bit different to feel fresh.

Hrrraah, can't wait for versus <3.

Not related. Really.

EVEnt horizon

2009-11-10T23:48:00.005+02:00

Oh wow, now I've done it, I surrendered myself to EVE Online.

The funeral bells for my already dying spare time, finally I meet the legendary MMO that avoids all the godawful "kill hundred dire rats after you're done with these thousands of dire wolves" and "hey it's this exactly same old generic fantasy theme all over again" traps and delivers something even I get excited about. And if you know me, you know that I'm not that good in coming into full terms with MMO's. I've tried many, since the idea of a huge shared world is still very intriquing to me, but it's one month tops that I can keep that interest alive when the game usually does its best trying to bury any innovative ideas and just fit into some already invented simple mold. Could be longer than a month in rare cases, but then it's all about the friends there, not the game itself. I'm very excited to see what happens with EVE.

I mean, I just spent another evening mining asteroids and enjoyed every minute of it; they weren't lvl1 dire asteroids and they didn't attack me! Then there's the actually working economy that's hugely dependant on the players (not NPCs with infinite pockets ), everything feels like it's actually immersible for the player. I spent time browsing the Market to find a good system to sell my ore, travelled there to sell my goods, refined some of them and: PROFIT. Of course, this is way more profitable in a group.

Sure, I'm not talking about some 100% realistic space simulation, but it's not just "magic", it's based on the real world and science.

An example: you accidentally or just out of plain curiosity jump in a solar system too far from authorities, maybe even as far as the 0.0 space, the no mans land with no NPC police at all, only the player controlled mega corporations' own laws. You happen to get ambushed by some pirates with pumped up PVP ships -- your ship gets shot to pieces, gets looted, they even blow up your escape pod. Those bastards.
Better start hoping that you did remember to take that more expensive insurance to cover your lost ship and that you updated your clone back in your home system so the skills you learned are still in your newly activated vatgrown brain as well, as you set course for revenge. The insurace covers only your ship, all the stuff in the wreckage is lost in the hands of the outlaws. It might sound harsh at first, but it only teaches you to stop doing stupid shit and in the end you are only smarter and having more fun.

Also, the fact that there are no levels per se, is such a huge plus that I could kiss them just for not being there, the important factors are your learned skills and your wealth. And you set up these 24h learning queues that progress even when you're offline, another nice trick to avoid unnecessary grinding and to make the next day's login a even more pleasant one; "hey, I learned a bunch of neat stuff during the night". And no different servers or shards, only one big world!

EVE, even though it's a bit too early to tell, I might be in love with you.

(Hey guys, there's a free 14 day trial available if you're man enough. You can catch me online by the name Anenae, a Minmatar miner/something.)

Also, the classic. Not entirely true though, just keep in mind that there's less hand holding and a bit more stuff to learn in the beginning than in an average MMO, and the game isn't gonna tell you that "you're a [FIGHTER] so you must [FIGHT] with your [WEAPON]".

Hmm, I think I have to create an alt Amarr at some point even though they are religious fanatics. Just because of the name :D.

Zombies plz

2009-10-22T04:10:00.004+03:00

Well then! Some of you have probably wondered why this took so damn long, I mean, it was bound to happen someday. Here it is now!

Also found this pic of Smoker-tan I drew about the same time I did Hunu-tan. She felt like she was missing something back then, maybe teh funnies, but after giving her colors last night I guess she's ready for the world. Bill, beware.

orz

BRÜTAL VICTORY

2009-10-19T23:30:00.004+03:00

Aaarrh, Brütal Legend <3.

If you're any sort of metallist-kind of dude/dudette, I highly recommend you to find yourself a copy of this awesome piece of METAL. Like, right now.

I don't have a X360 myself, but we gathered to a more better equipped friend's place with few dudes to try it out and Ozzy on a bicycle, it payed out thousandfold. Haven't felt that much like home with a game since, well.. I don't know when. It's not that the gameplay itself is too fantastic or anything new, the metallic beauty of Brütal Legend lies in whole different, brütal spheres. It's fucking metal, dudes.

Been spending my time finding those oldies that play throughout the game from Spotify now, pretty awesome shit. I love finding old treasures that can still make me go "hell yeah!"

--
And on a completely unrelated note, this kinda cracked me up.
(aww man, they already removed all the comments complaining about zombies)

Encounter

2009-10-13T15:30:00.002+03:00

Something little for those who enjoy these two insanely awesome AI's. Had to speedrun Portal once again to get the cobwebs out of my brain and this is the result. I have so much to do for school that I can't think straight.

SHODAN should be just a 2D image on the screen, but I felt like she needed some depth and perspective in addition to her charming manners. She's, err, using some mad parallax mapping, or something.

Perfectly normal maps

2009-09-28T14:16:00.003+03:00

Click above, I broke my embed codes.

This about one second's spotlight for my leading actress Will came to be as a part of my slowly regenerating trust for my PC's current updated state of not constantly crashing and actually being able to run 3Ds max properly. I began studying Zbrush and learned how to bake normal maps out from it, something I'd wanted to learn for some time now. After all, the games nowdays are pretty dependent on normal mapping and it feels like one of those things that every modeler should be able to handle.

So Willow here is my little learning dummy, she suffers from many flaws since I haven't built her that properly from the start, more like applied all newfound knowledges on her as time has passed, so she isn't finished by all means; the skinning needs work (the sleeves for example), her shirt -arms mostly - is probably going to get new geometry altogether (once again), she has yet no facial rigging at all, only that constant ":[|"-look on her face, and so forth. The actual NM's show best for some few frames as the light hits her jeans.

Anyways, as I baked her those maps, I thought that what the hell, might as well see if I remember anything from those After Effects -classes too. So I changed the moving light that was originally there just to show the NM in different lighting into that little glowing whatever, built a scene for her over this old low-res forest painting I'd made ages ago and tried to put her in there at least somewhat decently. Lots of different layers of noise, color correction and blur occured.

Spent only one late night for this scene and didn't bother with too much detail, but this proved to be really useful for me as I went through the phases needed for getting stuff into proper polygons and out of 3Dmax into a moving picture.

Brontotype

2009-09-17T18:43:00.004+03:00

What I've been doing the past four days? Playing Prototype, that's what.

I had no idea I'd get so deeply consumed -- exploring Manhattan, and the ridicilous feel of raw power just blew me away and glued me to my PC for every free moment I could spare. It probably will today also, as soon as I'm done with this entry.
Even though the story mode is completed, there's the free roam mode which lets you, well, freely roam through the island and complete little events to gain more exp.

Alex isn't as subtle in his gentle pushes as his look-alike Altaïr.

Or in his attacks.

Or in his feeding habits.

He just likes to slam his fists to the ground all day.

"Ugh..no more dude, I'm done drinking for tonight."

The fact that the slimy dude sitting there is called a Hunter and Alex looks like a Hunter from L4D with his hoodie, is such a huge little joy for me, a hunter hunting hunters. Heh :|.

Also this.

Level up

2009-09-11T05:55:00.005+03:00

So, I got my rig updated. I can finally shoot zombies with every possible eye candy there is without my PC choking up all the time!

Miss Internet.

With that look on her eyes, she'll probably take him as far as Valhalla.
..I dunno, this just somehow got me thinking of Valkyries.

The motion blur looks pretty neat, especially in screenshots. Featuring Miiz as bouncer.

"Shit. You did all this?"

Uaah

2009-09-08T12:22:00.007+03:00

I did it! I hacked and purged her mainframe.

I'm sorry ;_;.

Couldn't be helped, slicing up a whole space station full of people is a bit harsh, not to mention the endless threats of spreading her nasty virus-thingie to Earth. I mean, I can't even use the infestation.

This place was creepy, didn't expect such a Gigerish approach from her.
And that stuff crawls - pulsing red veins underneath it. You should've been there.

Meanwhile, I caught a roomfull of these guys sleeping on duty. How sweet.

Her elites tried to give some resistance, then I remembered the RF-07 Skorpion I'd picked up earlier. Minor damage yeah, so here's 3 x minor damage's per click from a 100 bullet mag; swiss cybernetic cheese.

There's she is, finally. Didn't go quietly, no.

But oh well, when this baby gets to its destination -- we should always watch where we dump our garbage, now shouldn't we.

It's funny, but now after the original it's much easier to see the little things that are 'missing' from SS2. Nothing too big and nothing that makes the game any less brilliant, but still some little things point out even sharper now.
Like the lack of cyberspace/simplified hacking, some UI-things, and there's the omnius presence of the badly executed 3D that makes the sprites actually look good and stuff like that. Derms, I really miss those little patches, but I guess that's just the influence of me reading Gibson's Neuromancer a while ago. Good book, you should look into it.

I also started a new game in SS2 with a PSI-fag, let's see if his neuromagic can replace guns completely. As if.

Facts of survival

2009-08-23T01:40:00.002+03:00

Here's one for all the L4D-beginners. It should be obvious, but here it is once more: keep your team well informed, it just might save your life and nerves.

Wanted to try my hands on making a random L4D-poster, kinda just blindly chose this old pencil sketch and started building stuff on it. Nothing too planned here.

This was also extremely useful.

Marry that thing

2009-08-13T13:16:00.001+03:00

An old piece featuring Chell with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.
Just felt like uploading something.

Unyuu

2009-08-10T22:04:00.004+03:00

Fanart of the unlucky Carnifex named Unyuufex who only wanted love but ended up as a brutal warmachine.
I've liked it since I first saw it some years ago.. and now that I have my own little Tyranid-fleet, I finally ran into it's original maker on DA too.
And by chance, my own Carnifex came up with Scything talons and Crushing claws too.
The original here.

Also, my granpa was feeling temporarily pretty well since the painful treatment for his cancer had to be terminated recently to prevent it actually doing more effectively what the cancer is trying to do. He's had cancer for 14 years already and now it's going to win.
Good thing he can be home, with his wife. I can't imagine a more perfect way to go than in your own bed, being with someone you've shared your long life with. Still, I hope he hangs in there as long as he can.

Mai waifu meme

2009-08-06T18:51:00.002+03:00

Found this on the internets, could't resist. Zoey, mai waifu!
I've got a serious hair fetish.

The empty template is here.
--
Also, if interested in Yamaoka'ish music, try out Liminality albums by these guys, who seem to be giving out Silent Hill inspired ambient for free. Just scroll all the way to the bottom for the SH-stuff. Some of these do capture the atmosphere nicely.

Also, also. Next weekend isn't going to be too cheerful for me, I'm off to see my grandpa starting tomorrow, quite perhaps for the last time considering his much weakened condition. He's 89 now. I don't know how to feel about it..he has lived a full life, something we can only hope to achieve some day, it's hard to feel too bad about the natural way of life when there's no reason to, really. But it ain't gonna be a party either.

Everybody dance

2009-07-28T03:19:00.003+03:00

I just realized, *heavy space* is one year and seven days old. Whoa.

Even Zoey approves of a survival this long. Thanks for reading, people. Wouldn't be fun without you!

(goddamn L4D authoring tools, you)

HEAVEN OR HELL

2009-07-23T16:13:00.007+03:00

Hey, haven't done any fanservice in ages.
So here's I-NO, yay, and I-NO & May, yay ~.

That felt surprisingly refreshing.

OMFG (2097)

2009-07-16T01:50:00.003+03:00

One Must Fall 2097 found it's way into my epic retro machinae through Dosbox about a week ago. It's still such a fun game, even though it's really limited comparing to the standards nowdays. You've got about three special moves and that's it. And semi-imba Jaguar among the cast of robots.
The pilot/robot combo-thingy is pretty neat though; first you select the pilot with different strenght/agility/endurance -attributes and then the robot which brings the special moves with it. So guess there is a bunch of differency available there, in theory at least. Though everyone I know only ever use Steffan, Milano or Shirro.

The epicus maximus musics nearly bring a tear to my joy-filled eye - oh the nostalgy! The Power plant theme, the menu music/OMF theme.. oh man. I'm such a retrosexual nowdays. Guess it's also a reaction to my plans of updating my hardware soon - gotta play the golden oldies while I still can, could be that after that it's mostly smooth L4D and other NEXGEN stuff for me, lots of catching up to do there.

Of course, there's some semi-RPG-like tweaking possibilities in the single player tournament mode. Lookit mah pretty Jaguar, isn't she sweet.

Yee-haw.

---
On a completely different note, Endeavour is up and away, yay ~. NASA TV gave a nice view of the launch tonight that got delayed a few days ago due to bad weather.

Or else it gets the hose again

2009-07-08T17:26:00.002+03:00

Our school project is proceeding nicely on time. Can't spoil anything else except this fuel hose that I've been working on. It still needs (work on) textures - handle grips and most of the main body -, but the geometry is done and the simple rig is functioning fine. You can turn the valve, and the hose itself has control points to move it around, yay.
More of this coming later, the whole refill station is deadlined this friday.

The dude partially visible on the upper right isn't my work, he's there just to help me maintain the right scale.

Shock my system

2009-07-01T19:53:00.009+03:00

The first System Shock (released in 1994) is freeware/abandonware today, and I just now found out that it's been made easily compatible with winXP and even Vista. I finally get to see it through, which is nice since I rank SS2 very, very high on my top-ever games. I just never had the nerve to see too much trouble getting SS1 in any playable shape before, since well..have to admit, old sprites and all that outdated stuff without the nostalgy-factor, it didn't seem that motivating, even though it was System Shock. I had enough fun at Von Braun already.

And now, after playing for a few days, aaa, SHODAN<3. She sounds somewhat cuter even, I was so impressed when I blew up some security computers and she emailed me in almost Portal-turrent kind of way "Who, who are you D:?" After that she did promise me some vast new knowledges of pain unimaginable and sent a huge armada of hunter-killer cyborgs after me, but for that little moment she seemed really sweet.

Gamewise, the controls are/were pretty revolutionary, though not that perfected yet as they're in SS2. But if it'd be up to me, every shootah game would have this delicious mix of point'n'click and WASD -based controls. You interact with the world - pick up items, go through inventory, fire your weapons - with mouse and move around with the usual WASD. Well, ASDX in this case, since S key is forward by default.
So 'Shocks utilize the best aspects of MMO and shootan gaem controls in my opinion.

The default fullscreen view with inventory open in the middle, automap on the left and weapon details on the right. You can customize it to show targeting details (if you've found the targeting hardware), item details and stuff like that.

This green girl keeps mailing me the strangest things<3. (Too bad it's voice only.)

The basic cyberspace jack for god tier hacking. God I wish SS2 would've still had these.

Good thing I brought my Drill to break the ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics) securing the data package. ICE seems to be Black ICE (the kind of ICE that usually also tries to fry the hacker while keeping them out) by default, since it splashed a volley of pain towards me as I started my drilling operation. Live and learn, keeps me on my toes.

A fierce cyberspace combat with angry software.

Nearly blew my brain for this, new games for my military grade hardware. Okay, I did also unlock a few doors.

Life can be hard on the Citadel station. Note the cute skulls lined up against the screens.

..yes, very hard.

It even supports 1024x768 resolution instead of the original 800x600 :D. Some epic high-tech here, folks!

http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,211.0.html

Go get your dose now, I'm getting my ass back to Citadel.

Nuts and bolts

2009-06-29T00:18:00.000+03:00

A few more of these unlucky assault machines with apparently quite similar bills coming up from their respective repair shops afterwards. Or, well, the other one is clearly just a state-of-the-art part-time cook, probably wondering who the hell bombarded the shit out of her kitchen while she was preparing dinner and unleashed a hail of bullets on her while they were at it.

Damn you grimdark future, you.

Hurrr

2009-06-28T15:30:00.004+03:00

"Let me give you an idea of how fast boosterware is. There was a guy in the 102nd Cyberav back in Panama City. One night, we were all real high on something - must have been 'Lace - and some flathead fired off a round. This guy actually - believe it or not - caught the round in his hand -- a one in a million chance, sure, but he did it.

Of course, it blew his hand right off. But the way he figured it, he could always buy a new hand, and he'd be gettin' drinks off that story for the next ten years.." - Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook

Realized that I've been drawing mostly damaged cyborgs lately, she's one of them. Also remembered that there was a pretty fitting quote in the 'punk-book, the one above. About a week old piece.

Last night I also had a spontaneous visit with a friend to this one nice, big tree near my apartment. Had a few beers while sitting on the branches, talking about life and stuff. Sun was getting up, though it was too cloudy to see anything but few rays of the shiny awesomeness that without doubt was happening somewhere out there. Have to admit, sunrises are slowly getting back their place as a symbol of hope in my book.

Midsummer

2009-06-26T14:42:00.004+03:00

I spent the midsummer at Old home and regained huge amounts of sanity. I so badly needed this break from everything to spend time with my family (also getting to know my semi-sisters a bit more again) and friends.

I also got my hands on a functioning scanner, so now I'm armed with a set of old & new scans from my sketchbook. Hunu-tan here is from just a few days ago, spawned by some quiet morning hours spent staring out the livingroom window, watching the rising sun color all the infinite green of trees into something quite pretty. I wish there were more trees and birds here where I live.

Family, small towns, friends, midsummer<3.
(okay, so I couldn't avoid a few of those dreams I wrote about earlier. But I'm getting used to them, in a way.)

Spotify

2009-04-30T11:33:00.003+03:00

I've had an invitation to Spotify for a few months now, I just didn't manage to install it until a few days ago. And oh boy, it rocks.

So every Spotify user reading this, feel free to join in or just lurk in me and my brothers collab playlist
spotify:user:amrrr:playlist:7qUlLe6nKQazwqAOIJXi3w

Nightmare world

2009-04-28T16:03:00.004+03:00

Fuck these nightmares. Even though I'm going through the emotional self-evisceration of the full acceptance that she apparently never did feel enough for me to try for real or mostly at all, my dreams refuse to let her go and no wonder, I tried, waited and believed her obscure hints for years. Nothing ruins the day more than waking up and being slapped in the face by the real world after a dream where everything was fine and as promised. Like I'd need any more reminders of my situation, doesn't help a bit with the seemingly impossible process of forgetting and moving on.

So as a result I'm missing a big deadline again, skipping school, sulking at home since I barely have the strength to raise a cup of coffee. Fun times.

Picture unrelated, just some old random stuff for the sake of being an art blog.

Right 2 die

2009-04-08T14:10:00.003+03:00

Finally did this (also found on DeviantArt) and with it, tried the other style I'd like to use (okay, a wee bit simplified here). Maybe. The brush isn't custom yet, but I'm not sure if it needs to be after all.

Actually now that I've tried these two different things with a thought, I think I'll try to combine them somehow.

We'll see what happens.

The end of the world

2009-04-07T01:45:00.002+03:00

I've pretty much always toyed with this kind of sketchy line and messy colors -style and I'm still not so sure if I wanna do things that way. It does feel natural to me and I kinda like the result also..yes, it could have something more - contrasts, details - but it would lose something in exchange I think..damnit. Run or shoot, run or shoot? Where's Bill to tell me "both!"?
This is also an issue of yet confing a good 'scratchboard tool' for photoshop, I might be interested in that kind of results also with the lineart.

So yeah, this here is an attempt at grasping one of the possible styles I'd like to do a comic with; testing it out a bit with familiar Left 4 Dead characters.

Never learn

2009-03-15T18:54:00.001+02:00

Bigger here.

Terveiset lapsille

2009-01-05T20:50:00.002+02:00

She's gone.
I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say. I honestly thought that things were healing. But we just couldn't communicate.

I probably can't even see her in the next six months. It's perhaps for the best. I don't know how to face all this after building all that hope inside.

The sketches are the last pieces from last year.

Puzzle girl

2008-12-04T01:04:00.004+02:00

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

2008-11-19T01:41:00.000+02:00

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

2008-11-13T23:40:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-11T02:36:00.004+02:00

Tonights Zen, straight out from Photoshop.

Bones & toes

2008-10-30T15:27:00.002+02:00

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

2008-09-08T22:58:00.008+03:00

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

2008-09-02T09:50:00.002+03:00

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

Bleh. I was drunk.

Seeker of wisdom

2008-08-16T23:44:00.003+03:00

Another night at the Old Library.

Boo

2008-08-15T20:12:00.005+03:00

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

2008-08-14T18:02:00.004+03:00

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

2008-08-13T17:12:00.002+03:00

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

Aftermath

2008-08-12T18:30:00.007+03:00

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

2008-08-11T03:54:00.005+03:00

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

2008-08-10T02:26:00.001+03:00

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

2008-08-09T01:34:00.003+03:00

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

Con time

2008-08-08T04:36:00.004+03:00

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

2008-08-07T07:09:00.007+03:00

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

2008-08-06T05:33:00.003+03:00

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

2008-08-05T06:48:00.004+03:00

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

2008-08-04T06:55:00.006+03:00

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

2008-08-03T04:59:00.002+03:00

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

UNN starts with U

2008-08-02T04:58:00.004+03:00

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

2008-08-01T05:26:00.004+03:00

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

2008-07-30T20:51:00.004+03:00

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

2008-07-30T04:56:00.010+03:00

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

2008-07-29T04:59:00.004+03:00

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

2008-07-28T18:54:00.004+03:00

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

HA HA I'M USING THE GLORY DEVICE

2008-07-28T07:38:00.006+03:00

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.

*heavy space*