(review) Heavy Rain

I bought Heavy Rain on a whim, after it being recommended to me by the ASM at work. I had heard a lot of good things about the game beforehand, though I was a little hesitant on buying it due to it's notoriety for being theatrical based and your whole interaction with the game was quick-time events (plus, someone had told me it was a horror game which is an instant no for me). Besides this, the storyline for it was said to be fantastic. After playing a few games lately that were quite hard pressed for storyline (namely Rune Factory 3 on DS and Pokémon Rumble Blast for 3DS), I felt like a change. And Heavy Rain was a fantastic change of direction.

The game starts quite slowly, taking you through the usual tutorial section at the beginning of every video game ever, introducing you to one of the four main characters, Ethan Mars; stay-at-home, architect dad who has a wife, two sons and a really nice house. After you get through the somewhat overly tedious tutorial, the game doesn't waste time on getting into the story, already reaching tragedy at about 15 minutes in (depending on how long it took you to do that tutorial), his eldest son dying in a car accident and Ethan himself winding up in a coma. Fast forward two years, you find out that Ethan was stuck in a coma for six months afterwards, now experiences black outs, separated with his wife, lives in a dingy apartment (you never see that nice house again ): ) and is currently seeking therapy so he can rid himself of the guilt of the death of his first son and be a proper father again with his youngest. When he finally starts to connect one day, his son is conveniently kidnapped after Ethan has one of his trusty black outs and you learn that the kidnapper is a known as the "Origami Killer", a mass murder who targets little boys who go missing then turn up dead three to five days later.

You also follow the story of three other characters along the road as well; Norman Jayden, a drug addicted FBI agent called into the case who dons a cool pair of sunglasses that makes looking for evidence about 5000x easier, Scott Shelby, an asthmatic, semi-overweight ex-cop who now works as a private detective and is investigating the current case of Shaun Mars (Ethan's kidnapped son) and Madison Paige, a journalist who suffers from insomnia who is also investigating the case but gets wrapped up in a way she did not expect.

The gameplay is extremely simple; walk around and interact. Not exactly rocket science but it works quite well for this game. Whatever it lacks in general gameplay it makes up in its extremely intricate storyline which can change direction at any quick time event. You'd think quick time events would be simple and easy, but no, those bad boys can get quite challenging when it comes to fight scenes. Interaction is optional between your usual Playstation controller or if you have the Playstation Move patch update or the Move Edition (like myself), the Playstation Move controller is usable. It doesn't really matter which you choose, I found both options worked well. If I had a choice though, stick with the usual controller if you're not confident. A few times I found myself shaking the Move controller vigourously only to discover that I was holding the controller the wrong way. Walking gets awkward at times, the character in play often walking into random walls as the camera changes randomly as you walk into each new section of a room. They seem to lack proper brakes, often walking a little more even though I let go of the analog stick.

The graphics and voice acting were quite fantastic, the face models communicating each emotion effectively. I checked out the actors who their faces were modelled off and wow, what a fantastic job the designers did. The whole theatrical feel about it, the quick time events, it feels like a movie. And that's the whole point of it!

It's a great game for those who are just starting to get into video games as the gameplay is extremely easy to understand and the compelling plot seems to come straight from a 10 hour episode of CSI. Even if you don't want to play, it has that pull-me-in effect that games like Bioshock where you just want to watch it because it looks so cool. Definitely pick it up if you see it around, it's worth the $25/$30.

A sketch a day keeps the doctor away

Sketching, from personal experience and what I've read, is probably one of the healthiest things you could do. A doodle here and there, illegible scrawl that you've slowly drawn whilst on the phone, that scribble in your diary while you're waiting for something, it's all practice that add towards the real thing. Of course, doodles can always turn into something more than you thought it was. Sketching is a good cure to art block as well, I find. Even if it's just nonsense, it stretches the creative muscle.

These were my initial sketches of Oakley, which I did on a whim. This has now turned out to be something I look back to often for ideas. True, I have changed a few things, but I still use it as a size ratio... thing. I did draw over some screens of Xam'd to try and get a perspective, but I wouldn't consider that cheating since that's the kind of body type I wanted.

Usually, I'm super terrible at feet, as you can see in one of the next sketches. This one though, the lower half seemed to turn out better than the upper half, as well as that super dodge sketch up in the corner. I seem to use Disgaea covers to help with postures since they have such cool postures with the many gazillion characters on the front.




I did these at work since the store I was at was totally dead for many a length of time. That sketch of Errol seemed to turn out really well, but there is some disgusting crap in the corner up there in the right. Adeline, was a little too busty, but I redid her sketch later on tonight on the computer. I very much based her design off Lisbeth from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Lisbeth is such a strong character, I couldn't resist giving her a shot at my own. I'm going to be using this character in Atlantis Arising as an Atlantean who can spin web from her fingers. She's practically spiderman! I also redid Errol/Atom/Errick below as well. His design is based off two of my best male friends, Sam and Dom, in which he has Dom's punky personality and hair but Sam's Welsh heritage, though in some cases, Errol can be extremely polite and quiet, which isn't really Sam or Dom at all.

My favourite sketch-turned-awesome has to be my greatest painting so far, one I did after deciding to draw my crappy avatar from Gaia Online. I don't actually play that weird site, I just remembered how much time I used to spend there. But, it started as a sketch, then I slowly coloured it and it just... went really great. I wish I used more than one layer, otherwise I'd post the guide lines I used. Even if SAI had a feature where you could record as you draw! That would be cool.

Keep sketching away kiddies, you'll never know when you'll make something awesome.

Also, I've already broken 200 pageviews and on my way to 250. Thanks guys!!

Expanding outwards: part II

So, I gave backgrounds a shot again. This time though, I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this, restart it or just not do anything altogether. The idea was to have this graffiti ravaged background then have a singular guy (Errick is his name) walking towards the far left. Since backgrounds are definitely not my forte, I'm kind of slowly spending time working on this. I might finish it... eventually. My only concern is that the realism of the texture and the poster cross with the cartoonism of everything else might be too much of a clash. But I'll keep trying. The hardest part will probably be getting Errick's walking posture right.

For a fun fact, I'm trying to pull inspiration from this image. Ry-Spirit is one of my favourite artists out there and his style is very unique. I met him at Brisbane Supanova in November last year and bought a poster from him, which he even offered to sign for me. It is now stuck quite proudly on my wall.

If there was anything that I had the most amount of fun on while doing the above image, it has to be the poster. It took me like fifteen minutes, but I really liked it in the end. There was probably more I could add to make it seem more like a band poster, but I kind of wanted to pull off the amateur look since real bands don't put posters up in streets.

Speaking of bands, one of my favourite, Angels & Airwaves are going to Soundwave this month, which I will be sadly missing out on due to my tight-assness and hesitancy. I did get to buy a cool coat and shirt from the Panic! at the Disco store and hopefully, when I can nab some money off my brother, some shirts off the AvA store, as well as LOVE the movie!

Expanding outwards

I was pretty happy to have met 100 pageviews on my blog already after a just over a week of posting. I've been drawing more and more lately, though it's mainly in the form of crappy doodles, but it's still practise and that's what matters! Every aspiring artist should learn to continuously draw, no matter what gets at them.

I've kind of realised that I draw too many people standing in the same pose. I focus more on the character themselves than on their posture or how they sit, how their fingers sit, what they do with their feet, etc. I feel I gotta push from this box. I did a quick speed paint tonight, took me maybe an hour, an hour and a half? I did redo it once but this time, I focused less on the characters and more on where the characters were:

This is meant to be two characters, Oakley and her brother Michael (I didn't pick this name, it's part of a roleplay about the rise and fall of Atlantis I'm in with a bunch of people). In this situation and context, the worst has happened and they are floating away from the aftermath in which Atlantis is burning. Every Atlantean has a power, where Oakley's is her armour and Michael's is multi-vision (he can see in multiple sights, such as x-ray vision, heat-sensory vision, night vision, etc) but each power has a consequence. Michael's is eventual blindness from his normal sight and Oakley's is loss of memory and identity. In this picture, I imagine both character's have overused their powers and they've started to feel the sting; Michael's eyes are white and he cannot see Oakley properly and she cannot remember who or where she is. I kind of liked the sketch, so I decided to colour it. 

I was a little irked to stick it in during the day but I wasn't confident enough to play with dark colours to get the night effect. And I'm not good with ocean to begin with. But, I think I did pretty okay for a speed paint. 

Next time, I want to go all out with a background. Perhaps set it indoors, focus more on a book shelf or a bed. I'm not sure, but I just want to break free from this comfort zone and surprise myself!

And to celebrate my 100 pageviews milestone, let's include some small paints that I had saved on my computer!

To the left is meant to be a steampunked version of Simon from Gurren Lagann, something I never plan on finishing (it was for an art competition that I never entered). To the right is an old character of a friend that I haven't drawn in a long time.

(review) Demo of Amalur

The demo of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning that was slowly downloading on my PS3 finally finished yesterday so I was a little excited to give it a shot. The trailers are kind of intriguing, the storyline released so far seems original and the whole game seems to have a whole lot of potential, even after the release of Skyrim in November. At first when I caught glances of the trailer from the corner of my eye at work, I was barely interested; new fantasy RPG game? Surely it's going to be an Elder Scrolls knock-off thanks to Skyrim's predictable success. Never-the-less, the guys at work managed to rope me in and convince me that it was going to be this fantastic thing, a meld of all the greatest western RPGs (plus a little from the east).

I didn't have the volume up too loud so I couldn't hear what the girl was saying at the opening sequence when I started playing it, but from what I could gather in the first ten or so minutes of the game, these Dwarves in some mountain are trying to resurrect the dead either to counter some war against these big guys with big armour or because they just like playing with magic. Your character, who I named 'dicks' for lols, is the first successful resurrection and happens to come alive at the convenient time when these bad guys decide to trash this joint (also known as the Well of Souls). So, they blow up the place while some of your Dwarven buddies try and protect you so you can tell the right people that you survived and this research can continue. You meet some guy on the outside who is another convenient friend of these Dwarves and says he can't read your threads of fate or whatever so you can decide how you're gonna live your life and if you'll be good or bad.

Long story short, you're a zombie who gets to choose their own fate. Or... something.

The demo itself was a 'get outside the first dungeon then you get 45 minutes to do quests and checks out this place', so you don't get a whole lot of time to explore willy-nilly. There's a few quests, a small number of loot to collect, a small town and a decent sized space for you to explore. As a player, you get to choose whether you want to build Might (a Warrior), Finesse (a Theif) or Sorcery (a Mage). The beginning gives you a small range of weapons, being a sword, a staff, daggers, a bow and arrow and a hammer plus a small variety of armour, being leather and plated armour for the light and heavy users as well as enchanted robes and stuff for the Mages. As the game progresses, you have to choose your destiny with some weird looking cards. These cards determine your class and give you abilities or something (I didn't really get to read into it too much).

The first interaction you get in the game is creating your character after one of the Dwarfs pulls a cloth off you. The character designing process is pretty simple; pick a race (between what seems to be human, Viking human, dark elf and slightly lighter elf), male or female, pick a hairstyle, pick a preset face, pick some jewellery, pick a tattoo, try and determine an eye colour and off you go. The create-a-character process was too simpleton to be honest, there wasn't enough to make the character truly yours. What about body size? Height, weight, slanty eyes, giant noses, ears that stick out? Adjustable boob size? Perhaps tattoos that go on places OTHER than the face? There was really only three small pages of options, but at least it quickens the process; I often find myself spending a ridiculous amount of time making my character nice and pretty.

Anyways, you start in a pile of bodies, meet some guys, kill some guys, get some crappy weapons and learn the basics. I did enjoy the fact that this tutorial starting wasn't all that boring; it was very quick and straight to the point, letting you have a go at everything at least once then leaving you do your own thing for everything else. I did find the start and inventory menu a little tedious, however. It's not a really quick process to switch between weapons or armour if you decide that the troll is resisting your damn magic staff thingy and you need to switch back to your giant sword so you can cut that bitch. To counter that I suppose the primary and secondary weapon options come into effect but I'd prefer some way of quickly getting into your inventory, perhaps an option on the D-Pad (though that seems to be taken up by the potions and the ability to switch between friendly fire (I didn't really get the point of that)). Combat is combo style so I found it rather refreshing after an enormous flood of FPS styles in gaming recently (well, the ones I bought). There's a SUPER-ULTIMATE-POWER mode which you get from killing heaps of dudes and is gladly not over powered nor completely useless. There's shields for blocking, rolls for dodging and crouch(es?) for sneaking. The combat is covered, really.

Now, when you get to the exploring, I gotta say I love the bright and vibrant colours. It really brings a light-heartedness the same way Fable did and I did not get sick of looking at everything. True, the draw distance got a little retarded after I ran pretty much everywhere really quickly and some of the people are pretty gross looking (as are their assorted European accents) but the trees and buildings and water and armour are all very cool, the designers going out and over the top. The monsters are fairly decent and go in quite well with their surroundings. The Fae, which are some kind of immortal, elvish race, are actually pretty easy on their eyes from the impression I got from the whole one I met in the demo, it's just too bad they're not a playable race.

If I had to complain about anything, it would be the lack of the ability to jump, the lack of any real skill behind lockpicking or the confusion behind some of the skill trees. Jumping really takes the freedom out of these games; it might be free world, but you can't just jump off a ledge into a lake to swim around (thank god, you can swim though). There are only certain places where you can jump off and that's usually either so you can't go back the way you came or because you're taking a short cut.
Lockpicking was just a big haze. It told you how, sure, but there's no skill behind it. As far as I could gather, it was 'stick it there and hope for the best'. If there is a technique to it all, I would love to hear about it.
And yes, the skill trees. The one involving the weapons was pretty easy to understand but there's a separate skill tree to choose other skills, such as alchemy, smithing, sneak, etc. The boxes lit up when I used my skill point but I had no idea how I was spending them or what each little box did or what the little symbols meant.

There was a few glitches with people getting stuck and the water rendering fucking up but I'm not going to go into that at all; it's a demo, an unfinished copy and you can't expect perfection.

At the end of it all, I'm a little excited for this game. The vibrance is what really gets me into it and I'll definitely be placing a pre-order on it when I get into work next. Plus, from downloading and playing the demo, you get a bunch of cool extras and a bit of DLC for Mass Effect 3 (for those into that game as I am yet to play it).

Attempting 'action'

I've never been that great with action shots, especially ones that actually invoke real action, as opposed to basic running, jumping, talking or doing something simple. I gave it a shot tonight and did pretty okay. I actually put a little colouring effort into it then I decided against it for something so small. I was thinking of doing an animation loop of Oakley punching a wall with her armoured arm (one of the coolest parts about her) but I'm terrible enough at one frame of action, let alone ten or twenty.

I did have a lot of fun cutting up her face but you never see much of it with such a small canvas. So, I blew it up again like I did in the previous post.

There's something about zooming into a piece that I love. Whenever I go to art galleries, I always step closer and lean forward over the guard rails so I can see what the artist did and how they did it. People say you can't appreciate art when you can't see the whole thing but I disagree; it's always cooler to see streaks of colour throughout each stroke and appreciate the true detail of an image!

This is probably why I'm not a big fan of cell shading and why I've never really done it that well, but whatever.

An actual ‘art blog’

That’s what this is going to be. This is going to be an actual place where I will actually update art on a daily/weekly/monthly/whatever-I-want-it-to-be basis. I want to try and have at least one artwork per post and talk about my stuff, as opposed to just mindlessly writing stuff. Which I tend to do on my tumblr account.


In other news, this drawing right here is blown right up, about 400% of what it’s meant to be. I love to play with colour, its one of my favourite things to do. I want to see this colour, put my hands into it, really get into it. I can’t do that too much with a computer screen, but by having it so enormous you can see the strokes and stuff.


Okay, I’ll stop blabbing and stuff before I start puking rainbows. In any case, this is Oakley, a recurring character of mine who has such an adorable face.