Pretty little Bugses

First page: Done when I wasn't really sure what I wanted to focus on. I did these all in pencil first, then went over them in biro and watercolour later on, after painting the first thirteen bugs on the second page.

Second page: Bugs copied from Micheal Chinery's Collins Guide to the Insects of Britain and Western Europe.
Top row: Epilachna chrysomelina, Subcoccinella 24-punctata, Coccidula scutellata, Scymnus frontalis, Hippodamia 13-punctata, 7-Spot Ladybird, Eyed Ladybird.
Second row: Thea 22-punctata, Propylea 14-punctata, Wasp Beetle, Plagionotus arcuatus, Chlorophorus varius, Calosoma sycophanta, Common Swallotail.
Bottom row: Black-veined White [Aporia crataegi], Large Blue [Maculinae arion]. Large Blue larvae are pink to begin with, feeding on wild thyme flowers. They are then carried into certain ants nests, where they feed on antgrubs until they pupate.
Picture in the bottom left corner of page is of a hall with a ceiling decorated by beetle shells.


Third page: Oleander Hawkmoth [Daphnis nerii], Hoplia caerulea [top right], under that is the Spanish Moon Moth [Graellsia isabellae], and bottom right is Pterostichus cupreus.


Fourth page: Very quick colour studies of Calosoma sycophanta, from photos found on the net.

Me likey Anamorphosis

[Source photo here]

Calosoma sycophanta

Looks a little messy maybe, but my eyes keep seeing the back end as 3D in the second photo :)

Small entry I know, but it is Freshers fortnight... More paintings to put up later.

Politics, Wellbeing, and that thing we call Currency.

One of the major reasons I haven't been spending all my time doing the work I should be doing, has been Affluenza by Oliver James [my sister bought it because it sounded psychological and interesting, the same reason I even started reading it in the first place]. It's all about how money doesn't make you happier, but it goes much deeper than just making that old statement.

Oliver James travelled around the world to interview people in different English-speaking countries, giving snapshots into their personalities and emotional lives, and showing how their environment could have contributed to each. He's also extremely anti-Selfish-capitalism, and by the end of the book I had decided I really dislike adverts that tell you that if only you had their product, you would be so much happier.

Funnily enough, his book also gives his suggestions to avoid the "Affluenza virus" [known symptoms include wanting to be famous for the sake of being admired, wanting to have lots of nice things that you don't actually need in order to keep up with the Joneses, and thinking of people as commodities - including yourself - who will help you in your career or else you're not interested, as opposed to friends you like to spend time with], thereby reducing your vulnerability to emotional distress, giving you a chance to be happier. The difference between me saying that and an advert is that, if you buy Oliver James' book, I won't be getting any money for it. I'm spreading the word, not selling a product - there's a very fine line. It's one of the reasons I thought Lostprophets were awesome when I went to go see them in Newport. One of them said to the crowd that he didn't care if you downloaded their new song illegally, so long as you spread the word. Then again, I suppose they know enough of their fans would buy it anyway.

So what's all this got to do with computer games, eh?

Well. I was thinking about the politics of it, what Capitalism was all about, and I realised I didn't really know a lot about it and it's alternatives. I knew my friend Tito likes to write political things on his blog, apparently he's an Objectivist, and again, I didn't have a clue what that meant. He wasn't about at the time, so I googled it to give myself a vague idea. Then I had a look at what Socialism, and Communism, was all about, and then it struck me: how come I've not heard of any virtual worlds that try to put these ideas into play in the game? [If you know of any I could look at, do leave a link for me to check out :D] The unpredictableness of some players would be useful in seeing how such systems would work [or not work].

I thought about WoW and how it seems to involve a lot of [virtual] materlism. You kill one thing and what do you get? Copper. Silver. Gold. Maybe an item. Complete a quest and you get gold, or items. As you level up you get more gold to buy better items to increase your stats. When you get to the end level, your focus shifts towards group work to gain items in raids that have better stats that help you get better items in raids to give you even better stats. It's similar in the Sims in one way too - they NEED money.

They need it, not just to eat, but it's also decided that their happiness depends on the items they own - the items that are the most satisfying to Sims in-game are the ones which happen to be the most expensive. And [ignoring the money cheat for a moment] if your Sim doesn't have a job, you can't meet your needs very well, your Sim gets unhappy, and then it can't get a job. Then it dies or something. I'm not sure, I've never done a deprivation experiment on Sims, but I have witnessed how difficult the game got for one Sim a long time ago, probably before Sims 2 or 3. He ended up very depressed, and angry, and his wife left him. It was endgame for him then, because he had no one else in the house to bring in money for food, and he wouldn't get a job because he was "not in the mood", and we didn't know the money cheat at the time so we couldn't save him.

It might sound like I've just been stating the obvious. But in real life, it's not always the most expensive things that make people happiest in the long term. "The best things in life are free". If you think about it, this system of materialistic punishment and reward is something many of us have taken for granted in games. I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time now considering what the alternatives may be and how they might be implemented.

I don't know if this post has made sense to anyone at all, seeing as this is all quite new in my head and I'm sure I have a few contradictory thoughts floating about. Oh well. Here's some more reading, an article I just stumbled across but have yet to decide on how I feel about it: Happiness, the new currency in France.

Only a FORTNIGHT to Go!

Only a fortnight til I get to be back in uni :D

It might not look like it to the casual observer, but my mind is that hyper about the thought of going back that I'm actually losing sleep at night. Can't imagine how I'll be in a week.

I've started to pack by putting everything I brought back from uni into a big heap on my table. Now I just need to sort through it, and try to bring back only what I need [dad wasn't kidding when he said I'd accumulate junk there].

On top of that, I've got my Summer Assignment to do... For some reason, I had tons of motivation during my first month home, although I didn't actually do much proper work, and then after a few weeks it fizzled away so I could get on with holiday fun. Oh how inevitable of it. I feel like I'm at that point again where I don't know what to do, so instead I do nothing but ponder.

On the flip side, it took me 8 minutes to clean a shower-room at work today. 8 minutes! It used to take me like half an hour, because I'd have to think and try to remember what to do. But now I've got myself into a routine, I can spend those 8 minutes thinking about more important things as I clean... such as what on earth to do for my Summer Assignment.

It's not all bad I guess though, I'm making it sound like I've done no work. I've drawn, gone over in biro, and watercoloured the images of 13 pretty bugs in my book for use as reference [pictures to come]. Except they kinda only take up part of an A3 page... Hmmm...

Jonas Brothers - "Fly With Me" Cover Contest

I was going to wait until we recorded a little segment to add onto the proper animated video, but I have a feeling that's not going to happen for a long while now, if ever. Basically, just over a month ago, my sister, Gen, found this video:



Win a guitar? Yes please! One of Gen's ideas to make our entry a little more original [other than completely change the melody and chords... haha] was to do an animation for it. So... guess who did the animation... :)


Gen kept listening to the JCB song, and we liked the simplicity of the video, which is why I went for the scrolling sky thing and cartoony us's.

Although, in the actual entry, the sky wouldn't scroll... because I'm not quite an expert on Flash [yet..] and I ran out of time trying to figure it out. But I've remade it now, so that when I exported it as an avi, it actually worked properly... It involved a lot of copying and pasting, but I got it done in one night. I think rotoscoping that wind up box thing took longer, haha.



Everyone you hear is a Gyseman gal :)
Me: Background singing, guitar and backbeat [...which was actually just me hitting the guitar]
Gen: Singing, and background singing
Abi: Singing
Yvette: Singing with Abi

Gen came up with the tune [the day before the deadline!] and did most of the sound editing. We didn't actually win in the end :( But so far all the commenters have loved how original it was :)

Aion Online

By the people who brought you Guild Wars, Lineage and City of Heroes, NCsoft have got a new game out soon, Aion Online. I saw this video and thought, "Oooooooh, ahhhh!"



I like the pretty places, I like that you get to fly, I like the customisation options in the character creation... but I have a minor complaint. In the videos I've seen [I've not played the beta] I think the running animation looks a bit weird. Like they look like they should be going faster than they are.

It's like the opposite of what bugs me about the kodo[?] mount run cycle in WoW [they're so massive, but their legs move really fast, and they sound like little gnomes when they run through water. It's actually kinda amusing now I think about it].

I dunno. Mebbe they tilt forward that far because of.. the gear they may be carrying? *shrugs* Maybe it's to create the illusion of speed, and the camera angles I've seen it at have just made it look weird. Or maybe, I'm being fussy :p

"When I grow up..."

I've been thinking over the last few days about what it is I actually want to do. I haven't figured it out yet. This is after reading about finding your true calling on The Lazy Way to Success blog.

So far, I've figured out that:

- I like cleaning. And tidying, restoring, and generally making things and environments look and feel nice. I'm not sure where I'm at with my 'collecting-junk-to-make-things-out-of habit'. I guess I try to organise things so that all those little bits of junk get their own drawer, out of the way of all the useful things..

- I don't really like deadlines. Which is why I tend to prefer cleaning my house over cleaning the lovely lodges at work.

- I like finding out the truth. Getting to the bottom of things. Kinda like a journalist I guess. I've only noticed that recently, while writing these blog posts about things I've read online. Ever since finding out Jeff Goldblum fell off a cliff and died, the same day as Michael Jackson, I've realised I can't believe anything I read on the internet just because someone I know believes it [for those who hadn't heard about him dying, Jeff Goldblum didn't die. Or even fall off the cliff. Or was even on a cliff that day].

- I like making stuff. Especially stuff that, when someone looks at it, makes them say, "Charlotte! How did you make that?" I also like it when someone says, "Charlotte! How did you do that?" I think I kinda like teaching, too. But at the same time I like being able to do things, where people do not have a clue how I did it. Like magicians. Illusionists. They create experiences and stories out of thin air with the help of the viewer's imagination. Sounds like good fun to me.

- I like learning stuff. I'm not sure if this is because I just like to know how things work, or because I don't want to end up sitting on a stool for a week waiting for the lights to turn back on. Not that that's what I'd do in such a situation... [Watch the video below if you've never seen it, he makes a very good point, hehe].



- Following on from the learning stuff point, I've noticed I've kinda forgotton about my like for science. As arty as I am, I did wonder whether to go for the other Games course [a BSc] that UWN offered. In the end I applied for both the Animation and the CGD course [both BA's], thinking I'd get to involve plenty of sciencey know-how in terms of Physics. That said, when it comes to designing games... you can design games about anything. I remember somewhere, somebody said that we, as game designers, come to find out all kinds of odd bits of knowledge while researching for projects.

So yeah. I'm supposed to figure out what it is I can do to create a service, product, or something like that for other's to pay me, while I do work that doesn't feel like work. Uni doesn't usually feel like work to me, which looks like a good thing. I think the deadlines won't bother me as much if I'm loving what I'm doing, because I'll always be inspired to get things done on time. But I've gotta say, I've always liked the idea of becoming an Entrepreneur. One thing I have wondered is whether this blog can generate any easy income [after reading about a thing called Project Wonderful]. It won't be long before I get to try it out and see how it goes. Sounds good for a bit of pocket money.

Twilight: The Video Game?

Daemon made me aware of a link last night that Craig had put up on Facebook. Apparently there's been a little bit of chatter on the net regarding "Twilight MMO". Before anyone gets too excited/enraged at the thought, I should tell you that [at the moment], no, it's not actually happening.

From what I can tell, what seems to have happened is Twilight Source put up a news post stating that there would be a Twilight MMORPG, probably after reading about it on Artuji, who may have possibly come across the story first on The Examiner. I think. I kinda stopped halfway through writing that paragraph and lost my train of thought to watch an episode of Psychoville with my sister.

One look at the actual website of this game however, tells you everything you need to know:

- The game is being created for academic purposes.
- Brandon Gardner is the Game Director and Lead Programmer, Steven Danielson is the Concept Artist.
- The game is not going to be an MMO.
- They are going to surrender the game and all it's materials to Summit Entertainment once it is finished, and it's up to Summit Entertainment whether they want to actually publish it or not.

If you want to know more, I suggest heading over to the "actual website" link above and checking it out.



On a more personal note, I seem to still be living in a sheltered world.

I'm a fan of the books and the story, and all the girls I know who have read the books loved it [as well as a few mums and a couple of librarians who had been introduced to them too]. It seems to be a chickflick of the book world. So it's no wonder to me that it's became so popular, that they made movies for it, and that anyone would consider making a game for it.

What did surprise me was the reactions of most of the articles I read about it. Such as this one on Massively. To put it simply: They didn't like it. Some thought the books were rubbish, poorly written and/or lame. Some thought a Twilight MMO would be the end of the world.

At first, I thought that point was a bit dramatic to make, just because one is not into the idea of romance and videogames [and people wondered why there weren't enough women into games...]. But then, I thought about it. Maybe, they're scared of the idea of a Twilight MMO. Women everywhere could take such delight in it, that their other-halves and/or sons would have to fend for themselves. Oh, the horror.

Imagine playing on COD4, or WoW, or whatever your addiction is, and suddenly finding that you're absolutely starving because the lady who normally brings you food has disappeared from reality. The thought of it kinda makes me wanna laugh and say, "Get over it, and stop playing that game for two seconds, or you can eat pixels for dinner." But on the otherhand, the idea of a game as addictive to women as WoW seems to be to, um, people who can't seem to stop playing WoW, is understandably scary.

I think the only way I could condone such a game would be if it helped women develop personally as they played - rather than turned them into one of those people that sit around letting their reality fall into disrepair, while they get sucked into an imaginary fantasy world because their reality sucks, because they've let it fall into disrepair... And if you don't think games can help a person develop as an individual, stick around. It'll happen. If a person can come away from a film feeling like they've learned something or been enlightened, I really don't see why a game can't be capable of the same and still be entertaining.

Age of Conan, The Last Bastion, and The Order of the Silver Dragons

I am so very intrigued right now. I came across the MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and now I really really want to play it. Here's a "re-review" of the game, from curse.com.

I'll be honest, part of the attraction for me is the fact that it sounds different to WoW in gameplay. I was trying to play WoW the other day and found I'd forgotten how to play my belf rogue. Button mashing, anyone?

However, I also found what I've seen of the world to be quite pretty as well. Shiney water make Lottie go, "Oooooh! ^_^". Also, I kinda have a thing for watching the sun and shadows move in games as time goes on...



While researching AoC, I found out that somebody called Zsolaith has started an epic machinima series, The Last Bastion, inspired by the player Silverar in the guild they call the Order of the Silver Dragons. I'm intrigued by not only the way The Last Bastion came into being, but also by the idea of the Order of the Silver Dragons.

The Order of the Silver Dragons (OSD) are a long-standing multi-wing gaming community that was founded on January 9th, 2006, and exists well beyond any one game, being involved in many gaming environments. What makes the OSD unique is their ongoing commitment to mature interactions, their proud display of civility and concern, their desire for adventure and their healthy placement of value on individual effort and communications. They are known across many gaming servers for taking the high road when situations arise, and they pride themselves in the knowledge that they will always strive to help others. Their continued success stems directly from the OSD officers of this order whom take it upon themselves to uphold these virtues, reminiscent of the fabled Knights of the Round Table, which in turn are mimicked by the community of players within the guild.

- Zsolaith

Anyhooo, I've found Zsolaith's channel on YouTube and I'm about to watch what he's got there. You're more than welcome to join me :)

XFIRE: Now you can spy on me gaming.. or lack of it.

Just joined the Xfire site and downloaded their thingy. I'll admit I've not come across anything quite like it, but I'm not a proper gamer yet, so I guess that'll be a given. I'm impressed though. How does it know how to find what games I have installed? Clever little thing :) But yeah, the point is that I've joined partly to see how much gaming I do, and maybe encourage me to game more. Not so sure the last part will work. WoW is probably the only thing that'll gain hours, if any..

Time for some focus?

I'm having a little bit of trouble with this summer assignment, namely, I keep staring at things in my garden and doing little much else. Just had a bit of a revaltion now though, because I keep noticing the dreamcatcher-like things I made and hung up to decorate the BBQ area in my garden last summer, and the actual spider webs that have come to decorate the place in the time since.



I'm thinking bugs. Bugs and insects, and beetles and creepy crawlies. Butterflies. Moths. Dragonflies. Spiders. Lots of lovely shapes and sizes and colours for me to choose from with bugs.

And I'm thinking: I reheheally fancy some cheese on toast first.

Top Secret Project!

Okay, it's not really all that top secret and amazing, but I figured it would be more interesting if I titled it this way.

Remember the Dogbot character I made?
And the post where I mentioned David Freeman's book on Emotioneering?

I'm gonna be trying out a few of his techniques and design a game around the dogbot, and for some reason I'm also imagining a little green blobby alien that takes over the dogbot...

No idea how far I'll take it, but if anything more interesting happens with it, I'll post it up.

As for the Summer assignment, I've spent more time thinking than doing at the mo. I got about this far before I joined the family in the BBQ area in our garden.


Something like bamboo with windows in... and the other one was.. something like... willow branches? Yeaah. I think I'm gonna have to start taking a few pics of stuff in my garden for inspiration and do some proper sketches.

Plot to Take Over the World: Stage 1 - COMPLETE

Officially passed 1st year CGD with a respectable load of B grades [B11, B12, B13 & B13, in that order]

Now I have a Summer Assignment: Natural and Man-Made Form, Micro and Macro.

I am supposed to produce a series of drawings for the design of a virtual environment, inspired by forms in nature, paying "particular attention to differences in scale, from small to large, micro to macro..."

Sounds good, I'm pretty excited for next year already.

Also, I spoke to my friend Dan [a.k.a. the BigBlueLion] and showed him the little flash clip I made. He loved it.

Changing the topic once again, tonight I removed all labels from my posts. My previous system was... barely a system, to be honest, so I'm going to be re-labling [how does one spell that word?] all my previous posts and all posts that follow in a much more useful way. Also added Twitter to my sidebar... although I rarely use it at the moment...

Why Guitar Hero is a Beautiful thing.

It introduces kids to classic songs they may otherwise have never heard of.

How many kids go on youtube and purposely seek out this stuff? Not many. Proof that games can introduce kids to more than just a billion different types of gun - it can also introduce them to old music styles in a fun way. Take that, critics of the idea that games can't teach anything!!

Big Blue Lion & co.

The other day [yesterday?] just for fun, I began making a series of flash clips, using voice clips my friend Daniel sent me via MSN during a random conversation [or three]. It's almost like a follow up to the AIR project I had been involved in recently.

[AIR - Animator In Residence. Basically the animator, Ian Gouldstone, would make a 5 second video clip for us to make a response to. We would have 24 hours to make our 5sec or less response. He would then respond to that, as if we were writing animated letters to eachother, creating a dialogue between two characters that were created by us as the story went on. Click HERE for the result...]

The project went on for a few weeks, and I found it a good way to practice different animating techniques or try new ones I haven't done before, such as the digital rotoscoping maya method Eric and Rhys introduced me to.



This is a video of one of my entries. Bit frustrating as I haven't figured out why I can't export Quicktime movies from Flash, so it wasn't in the format requested. I also ran out of time to do what I originally intended, which was to have a picture of a joker on the side of the red cuboid - like a pack of cards - which would have an animated facial expression.

Also... in the previous clip done by our character, we called Ian's character a leprechaun... I wanted to make a leprechaun style "Jack" pop out, but also didn't have time to get it done. I made the box and handle in maya, animated it in maya, and then put printscreens of each frame into photoshop and traced over the action there. Rotoscoping is a cool technique, but rather time consuming. Especially at 25 fps -_-

But yes. I'm going to show Dan the first one before I put them up anywhere, to see what he thinks. I imagine he'll end up laughing. I know I am, and I haven't even gotten to the good part yet.

Watch out for HEADCRAB ZOMBIES...

I'd apologise for finding this funny but... no. Hahaha :D

This is, without a doubt, the greatest film adaptation of a piece of literature ever.

-- whichwayfilms

Assassins Creed 2 & My Maya grade...

Kieran told me we got a B13, yay! I've just emailed Corrado so I think he will be emailing me some more indepth feedback later.

Onto the next thing:
Just caught this trailer on YouTube...



Verry naiice.
Very cinematic.
Very sorry for the poor dude near the start.


Now for some commentated gameplay..



Leonardo Da Vinci gadgets... It's like James Bond set in the Renaissance.

Eric just made me j*zz in my pants.

Forgive the rocker in me, but words cannot express just how awesome this video has made my day.

Video Games | Brutal Legend | E3 09: Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Super Monster Candy Attack!

Went to the 3rd Year's Grad Show the other day, it was pretty good [it's still on, til the 5th June 09 - click here for more info]. Pretty interesting to see what kinds of things we'll be expected to do when we get to Year 3, and the atmosphere was really lively compared to some of the other Grad shows going on.



I wonder why.



CGD, knows how to party hehe :) But I guess the theme was Super Monster Candy Attack, so it wouldn't have been right without some candy!



A lot of the playable pieces were very glitchy, but still cool, and I'd like to see them when they're all done up proper. I heard some are heading to Game City this year, which I am totally attending as last year was Suhhhweeet :) As was breaking the world record for the most number of zombies recorded in one place...



1227 of us :) Anyhoo, back to the Grad Show. Here is a photo of the best thing there.



Am I talking about the mutant chicken thing in the background, or the fan? Blatently gotta be the fan. Just check out that structure, the choice of textures, the fact that it works when you press the "on" button...

I'm joking, however, it was absolutely boiling hot in that room with all those people and computers. It's because CGD is so damn amazing, hehehe.

Also because somebody decided to put the table of sweets in front of the window.. and then somebody decided to have the blinds pulled down so the wind wouldn't blow the sweets away.

Oh! On another note, I've finished playing Fable II. Well sorta, I got to the finale of the game, but I haven't yet experienced the consequences of my wish before leaving the Spire. Am I the only one who got creeped out by the way Theresa spoke at the end about the Spire? But yeah. I was well miffed when Lucian shot my dog. Even if it was just pixels, and the only name I had given it was "Dog", or "Doggy"...

Dating for WoW Fans

Just saw this random Ad on the Adsense section on here and thought it too funny to not mention.

Hilarious. The thing is, I play WoW and I'm not a geek. I took a highly scientific test, and got the following result...

To be fair, I do say dude a lot. I suppose that's what happens if your childhood heroes included Bill and Ted, and Wayne from Wayne's World.