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Krystal V. Weber
I'm a student focusing on digital illustration and video game design. I also enjoy writing comics and designing characters and worlds to put them in. I'm a proud geek-ette and crazy about cats, cartoons, computers and other cute things. My favourite colour is turquoise and I love Haribo Goldbear Gummibears.
☆ Contact me: kvweber@gmail ☆
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Tweets
- @shinyidol Right, it's not from Campo Santo, but it is stolen work. Accidental, but still stolen.
- @shinyidol Ah, you're talking about that- that was stolen also, in that they didn't pay the designer who made it originally, just used it.
- @hospitalvespers I can make out where it becomes purple on the left and...like kinda...cyan? On the right? The rest is all one hue.💦
- Whoa, apparently inFamous gets waaay more buggy as the game progresses. I'm tired of glitching through walls, so goodnight.
- @hospitalvespers I struggle with variations of blue and green looking the same, but I'm like 99% sure that's just all blue except the sides.
- Me, playing InFamous: This giant armoured bus with automatic weapons is hard. Cole: Maybe if I get closer... Me: Are you infamously STUPID?
- I just got a PS trophy in InFamous for...winning back my girlfriend? Gross.
- @gamesaslit He just sounds a bit...misguided? Maybe I'm giving him too much credit though.
- My fan somehow got faced directly at the air vent and I know there's a 'notice me, sempai' joke there somewhere.
- @MarkUsmianiArt I dunno, 'Steal My Sunshine' is a kind of annoying song. Personally I'd leave it off.
- @bombsfall 😘❤💕🎆💞 💥 ⭐🌟🎆✨ Sorry, I, uh, only have cuteness powers.
- Look, King of All Cosmos, the Taurus constellation would not be tiny if you stopped counting ~every milk carton~ as a cow.
- @collect100coins Interesting! In Downtown Dallas all traffic yields to the light rail automatically.
- @collect100coins *thinks on this* Do trains obey traffic lights?
- @gamesaslit Ha. The irony here is that sentiment is actually sexist toward men by implying the status quo is that all men are sexist. 😆💦
- @gamesaslit Oh. Then no, he's just latching onto popular topics without understanding basic concepts because that's SO far off-base. 😂
- @shinyidol @Babylonian But it's...literally the Firewatch tower and background spread? Like, not even tweaked a little.
- @kylelabriola Neat! I gotta do this more myself.
- @gamesaslit Maybe he supports sex positivity? But he might just be defending objectification. We'll never know since he can't be concise.
- @NoelArthurian It's okay, that's happened to literally everybody on earth at some point!
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Posts
I designed some stickers this past week! Two variations on World Domination Cat, two variations on Innocent Cat, and a happy, snack-loving hamster.
My goal was to keep my Adobe Illustrator skills warmed up, since I’d mostly been focusing on paintings and personal illustrations lately. Some friends and family showed interest in owning some designs as stickers so I decided to give selling them a shot. These are part of what I’m calling my “test batch”.
~
If you’re interested in getting one, I have them up on RedBubble for now!
Cubed Cats RedBubble ShopI did a big “About Me” illustration with a bit about my personal background as well as my experience with games. I did a lot of research to find accurate photos of things I owned or used as a child. My personal favourite is the iMac with Kid Pix Studio Deluxe, which was probably the software that led to my love of computer graphics!
Done 100% in Photoshop with a brush from @kyletwebster.
Another character portrait to match the last one. No name for this guy either.
Krita + PhotoshopCC for adjustments and touch-ups
It’s been a few weeks since I did any CG painting and I didn’t want to get too rusty, so I decided a simple profile portrait of a character I’ve been having some trouble nailing down the design for would be good practice.
Krita for the sketch and painting and PhotoshopCC to adjust some of the colours, add some slight light effects, and sign the piece.
Krita gave me some really weird issues with this one (something to do with accidentally changing the colourspace I think?) so the brush strokes ended up looking sloppy and compressed for some reason, but such is life!
The final playblasts for my project, along with a quick low-res render I did for fun using some basic textures and a tiny skybox. You may remember Space Rabbit from my turnaround done at the beginning of the semester.
The requirements were to model and rig a character for animation, then produce a short animation showing the rig in action. The part that took the longest was most definitely skin weighting! What a tricky process that can be in Maya. If I had more time to spend I would have worked more on the UVs, even though they weren’t a requirement for this project.
// Maya 2016 and Photoshop+Illustrator CC for textures.
Storyboards for my motion infographic midterm. A few things changed for the sake of time, especially in the call-to-action, that I think work better. My idea was to have it set up as a package with four infographics, this one being the shorter, more generic introduction one.
My midterm Video Graphics and Visual Effects project was a short infographic on animal shelters. I had a lot more data to use, but it’s already fifteen seconds longer than it was meant to be, so I had to scale back a bit.
Done in Illustrator and After Effects CC.
Music from incompetech.
A character turn-around for 3D Character Set-up and Rigging. She’s currently in the process of being modelled in Maya. At the moment she’s just known as Space Rabbit and she hails from Pluto. I also made a logos for the Plutonian Space program and her specific branch of it that will be on her spacesuit and backpack.
I made some new-and-improved Cheesecakecat papercrafts for Valentine’s this year. You can either save these PNG versions (right-click >open image in New Window/Tab for full-size)
–or download one of the gigantic PDF versions below (fair warning: these are seriously huge files).
Chocolate Cheesecakecat (97 MB)
Strawberry Cheesecakecat (97 MB)
Touched up that K-pop inspired portrait like I said I would. Also fixed the fluffy fur collar…thing and tilted the composition a bit more. Two colour versions because I couldn’t decide which I liked best. Still kind of a W.I.P. I really want to do something more with the background.
Realised I hadn’t posted anything else from my Intro to Game course! Here are some of the assets I created for Itty Bitty Kitty Mitties. A full sprite sheet for Cat Hero, a shrub, a rock, and a log. Very exciting, I know.
When I get the win/lose/restart states working on the level I made, I’ll put IBKM Level 0 up online so you can see it in action. Once that’s done I’ll be writing my very first post-mortem (haha) so be on the lookout for that (eventually).
GIF previews of the run cycle I’m working on for my Cat Hero sprite. Obviously unfinished with some tweaking left to do (mainly the ears). This is really my first time designing sprites to be animated and I’m learning a lot.
Since I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro for my latest portfolio piece I was able (and kind of forced…) to save lots of versions, which makes for a good process post! So here it is- a few steps I was able to save before having to merge all my layers together to keep the app from crashing.
The last step here isn’t the finished product, but it’s the last part I did in Autodesk Sketchbook. The final piece was edited in Photoshop CC 2014 where I did lots of tweaking and colour balance and changed my mind about details like the tail and horns.
My History of Animation professor was getting on our case about being bad time managers and went on to say that it was why so many of us had empty portfolios. Since no one disagreed, he made it an assignment to do one new portfolio piece in a week and present it. Here’s mine! Concept painting of The Bellows Beast, a monster from a story I wrote as an exercise in class.
First time designing a monster, first time painting in this style, and first time spending 20 hours on…well, probably anything! It was a lot of fun and a lot of work, but I’m proud at the results and now that I’ve cautiously wandered out of my comfort zone, I think it’ll be a lot easier to do it again! My professor said I should definitely do more stuff like this, and I probably will!
95% Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and 5% Photoshop CC 2014.
If anyone is interested, I have a little process post queued up for it. :3
Posting animation stuff is kind of hard on Tumblr, so here’s a few things from my Basic Animation (that’s Intro to Flash animation) class. A character design done in Illustrator and then transferred to Flash to do simple, “puppet-style” animations. I was hoping to get to take another class like this, but my Game Art program focuses more on 3D than 2D animation, so I won’t get to (for a while anyway). However, I won’t let it stop me from playing around in Flash from time to time!
(Psst. The final assignment was a movie, so I’ll put that up when I find it!)
Oops, wrong blog of course. I’ll try to get used to that!
Hello! I haven’t posted here in ages, but I promised I’d put up some school work to make up for it so here’s the first batch. From my 3D Modelling and Rendering I course (that’s basically Intro to Maya) my Midterm and Final projects.
Not super exciting, but I did well on both assignments with very little critique from the instructor. The midterm was three real-world objects, polygon modelling, textures, lighting, shadows and rendered with a nice composition. The final was much the same, except we had to model an entire room based on a room of our choice (here’s my reference) and give it two different lighting schemes (ideally night and day).
There was probably about 50 hrs of work devoted to the first and 35 hrs to the second, total, and I wish I could have spent at least 30 hrs more on the final. This was because I didn’t have a PC to run Maya at home so I had to work only during lab hours.
This semester I’ll be taking the second half of the course and also I will have access to my own copy of Maya! Be on the lookout for more awkward 3D renders in up coming months.
My submission for the Twitter #CLAMPcollab. I drew my all-time favourite Cardcaptor Sakura character, Eriol Hiiragazawa. This is the version I adjusted for print, which wasn’t allowed a background so to make up for the fact that I needed contrast to show the light source properly I slapped a moon behind him. Deciding what to do with that one aspect of the design probably took longer than any of the other parts- even colouring, haha. Still, I’m pretty happy with it and super excited to be a part of my very first group collab!
I really wanted to paint some pretty boys this evening, but I wasn’t able to get any looking the way I wanted so I decided to dig through archives and paint over some old ones. Maboroshi is the antagonist from Reality.Hacked, that dropped comic I’ve had forever. He was designed to look dark, mysterious, and curly-haired (though for some reason I used to think curly hair meant looking like you’d been doused with water?) …Anyway, I think the new one is much sexier, though I can’t put my finger on why…Hmmm.
I got a new sweater today to wear at work. It’s actually bright red but I wanted to use a darker but still warm colour scheme.
I guess I’m still working on this after all…Cropped the sketch and repositioned a few things so I could do a close-up shot of these three losers and their dorky faces and completely ignore the wonky anatomy.
Mao (L) and Loki ® are having fun, but Hikari © is plotting murder.
Sometimes you just want to sketch stupid stuff. Sometimes said stupid stuff is the bad guys from your own old comic idea, posing like the girls from Perfume because you’ve been listening to this song too much.
I’m sorry for a lot of things in this image, but not the image itself. Ha.
Eh, might as well throw it here too.
I haven’t been able to draw (or technically type, but I broke that rule a few times- shh) for the past month or so because I hurt my shoulder and wrist at work and was placed on restrictions for using my right hand. To celebrate the healing, I dug out my tablet and did this doodle of a dude that’s based loosely off of a dude from a photo that I saw once. He may or may not be a character-design-in-progress.
Sketch in FireAlpaca with colour adjust and details in PhotoshopCS5.
I’m starting a Pathfinder campaign with some of my friends and here is a teeny-tiny sketch of my first character ever, Fi [fee]. She’s a Halfling Cleric! This is really small and stylised (and too pink because I forgot I had f.lux running until after I saved it) but I think I’ve got the overall feel I want for her.
Instead of making business cards as contact cards this year I decided to print these neat little 2x2" stickers with my info on them instead. Like my last card design I decided to do alternate colours so I can ask people “what’s your favourite colour?” and hand them the right one- I love doing that! I like that people have the option to use it as a sticker or just keep it as an odd-sized business card.
Last time I designed business cards didn’t make any purple because I don’t like purple, but this time I decided to go ahead and do it so I don’t have to say “sorry, but I have pink!” (whether they ask for red or pink, they’re covered by the light red here) -afterall these are made for the benefit of other people, not for me. I printed sixty and now I need to cut them all out~ haha.
Because I finally drew a new portrait I decided to go ahead and make an icon version too- sans-personal info of course. I used the background colour from my current Twitter background because why not.
If you’re curious about the font or the icons resources, let me know!
I self portrait I started sketching, did a few versions of, threw a colour-pass over, and then decided was just too similar to the one I already had and a bit too cartoony and goofy to represent me right now. Still it’s a drawing, and the first one I’ve done in a while, so here it is.
I’ve posted these Vaguely Unromantic Fandom Valentines all over my social networking sites, but I kept the messages simple so the jokes could be the main focal point. But!- this is my artblog so I get to ramble on about making them now!
Moriarty was my first one and his took a very long time because I was out of practice with drawing. I had a hard time capturing his likeness in my simple little style, but I think I succeed in making him look somewhat recognisable. The “quote” I used is really what sells the character though, so I think I got off easy on that one! Drawing-wise, his is my favourite.
Watson was the last one I did, so his took the least amount of time since I had already established a style and process to finishing these quickly. The text for his was originally longer(!) and more awkward sounding, but I couldn’t fit it onto the card properly without messing up the composition, so I dialled it back. The most important part was the “platonic” statement anyway. Also, Martin Freeman- I can’t draw you with any other expression but grumpy-cat, what the heck?
Dean Winchester…ehhh I actually have only seen the first two episodes of SPN- and just a few days ago too- so I wanted to make one with my favourite brother, but I didn’t have much to work with so I used a situation from the pilot episode. It doesn’t look much like him, but I started to notice all the guys I picked to draw looked the same (I had originally planned a Shawn Spencer [Psych] one and a Neil Caffery [White Collar] one but they look too much alike!)
And finally, Ulfric Stormcloak, the number one person in Skyrim I love to hate! Except for the “mostly ego-fueled” part, the rest of the text are direct quotes from the man himself. I can’t imagine him being very romantic, ever- but his complete lack of compassion for anyone just makes him a more amusing character to me. Text-wise, his is my favourite!
(I’m not tagging this post with the characters names or series because I don’t want them to wind up mixed in with all the other fandom tags!)
- Ahhhhh, Miss Krystal! I saw your ice cube cats on my dash just now and may I say they're the cutest lil kitties ever. Everything on your blog is amazingly done as well! I'm falling in love with all of your art and sketches now haha. Keep up the fantastic work c:<p>Wow, thanks so much Miss Minh! I will be working really hard this year to produce lots of fun and interesting projects this year. You definitely have to let me know if you think of any cute ideas also. After looking at your blog, I think something bubble tea related would be perfect to fit my cute foods theme! I’ll have to brainstorm it on the train today. (^<span>•</span>ω<span>•</span>^)~♪</p>
Ice-cubecats! I wanted to do something cute and simple for my theme/identity this time. I’ve used ice-cubecats in my themes in the past but I’ve never painted one like this. I really enjoyed painting it! I was channelling a little bit of Elda The on this one for sure.
I think it looks best as a tiled pattern, but it didn’t work for the FB header so I changed it up a bit (I also made the background hue closer to blue so it would compliment FB’s colour scheme a bit better). Right now I’m using the tiled version for my Twitter and flavors.me themes.
My first digital sketch of 2013 (and so late in!). It’s a self-portrait, but it’s nothing special. I was mostly testing my tablet drivers on this new laptop and trying out Photoshop CS6, but I realised I hadn’t posted anything yet so have this.
Here’s a new cubecat papercraft just in time for autumn and All Hallow’s Eve.
This time it’s a colour-it-yourself design so you can make the cat-o’-lantern any colour and style you like! Notes on how to assemble it are included on the page.
Hope you like it everyone! (=^◕ω◕^)
Another pocket-cat! This one is for my mum’s birthday. It’s our cat, Fiona.
Fiona is a rescue and we took her in at a very old age. She is nearing 15 years old! Because of her age (and an unfortunate amount of over-breeding) she doesn’t meow like a regular cat. Mom and I started to joke that she has a “smoker’s meow"and she also has heavy "mascara” around her eyes (a common trait of her breed as well) and from there we decided that she was a fading starlet, old but rich, who often relives her memories of being a chorus girl in the 30’s and 40’s. This was taken from that funny little storyline.
Illustrations of the two cats that I’m living with right now, Sasha and Cinder. They’re sisters but they look nothing alike. A gift for the owner’s birthday.
The plan is to make them into pocket-cats. They’ll be printed onto semi-heavy stock at about business card size, laminated and then trimmed to look nice. When completed they will be the perfect size to fit in your wallet! The idea is to be able to take your kitties with you when you travel (and their owner travels a lot and she’s sometimes gone for a long time).
You will probably see more pocket-cats in the future. (=^◕ω◕^)
Got around to finishing that thing from before though I had to finish it in FireAlpaca because of computer issues. I added the text and effects
that are distracting you from how shoddy the shading isto bring it together and make it look more “finished”.To be honest it’s been so long since I did the lineart that I kept finding errors but I couldn’t start over completely at this point so I just chugged along and got this.
Everything is off-model because I’m terrible.
Thought I’d go ahead and post another WIP since I probably won’t be around for the next few days to work on it. (Moved it from SAI to Photoshop to colour it).
Oops, wrong blog again. Here’s the next WIP.
Things to fix: Blue’s right sleeve, Red’s left sleeve and cuff, Blue’s smirk, Red’s left hand, red’s glasses (off-model) and like a million inking tangents, fffff
WIP - A gift
Cleaning up the lines tomorrow, when my hands stop shaking.
Oops, wrong Tumblr. I didn’t realise this at 2am last night though…
Nee~ Nigiyami-sensei, your glasses are crooked and your hair is a mess!
What have you been up to?
Wanted it on both Tumblogs I guess. Derp derp.
This is a tertiary character from Reality.Hacked my forever-on-hiatus webcomic. He’s not actually a teacher, but disguises himself as one to get into a school.
Not as creepy as it sounds.
Cubecat Papercraft BLANK Template by ~kvweber
I made a blank template thing for someone on dA. It’s not very exciting or anything, but I’m really happy that people like them enough to want to make their own.
I feel like I’m slowing becoming an actual designer, yay~ \(╹▽╹)/ ♥
Space Oddity
An alien girl I doodled and then threw some colours on in Photoshop. Theme was “Space”. You can see through her hair because it's translucent not because I’m lazy. She’s actually made of plasma and so she’s like semi-gelatinous. Space Goo. Yay.
Having issues with my tablet- damn it, Monoprice. Anyway, another Vinnia, since I like her hair so much. I think I like the idea of her having magenta hair even though I am really not that fond of magenta. Beats plain blonde though.
Um, hourlies up to…as far as I drew them. I was sick yesterday.
Maybe I’ll ink them later. Click for bigger.
My first attempt at a Hergé style self-portrait for the article I’m writing for my mom’s Pea Green Boat e-zine. I look like the chick from La Roux in this one (haha) so I’ll definitely re-do it when I get my tablet here.
Other things to note: The Artist’s Loft (that’s Micheal’s art supply brand) ink pens say that they’re water resistant but does in fact smudge like crazy when you use water-based markers to colour over it. They are great for just ink though!
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Posts
- Jul 23, 13
Since the goal of merely having a clean bedroom was not enough to actually motivate me to clean it, I decided to make a new goal. Instead of just rewarding myself for doing it by saying something like “I’ll buy myself an ice cream cone tomorrow if I finish” I decided to set a more fun and productive goal. I spent quite a bit of time on organisational blogs this morning and decided that it would be fun to do my own little quick blog post about cleaning my room- just ’cause. It might also help me next time I have to clean it by reminding me that it didn’t take very long at all to do (less than four hours)!
I started by taking before pics of the room- it’s pretty bad! I’d been too busy to clean because of school and work and it really got out of hand!
Turn the corner and…
This is just where I piled everything I was too lazy to put away! It’s all stacked on top of empty mailing boxes from my mom’s many care packages. There’s everything from books to shoes to bags to trash down there. It definitely needed to be taken care of! So, first thing is first:
Pitch all the crap!
Next I move everything from the floor to the bed so I can vacuum and so that it looks like I did a significant amount of work. Actually, a lot of times I start cleaning my room and only get this far, then I get distracted and when it’s time for bed it all goes back on the floor. Whoops! I had to make sure I was prepared to work on this until it was done this evening. This part also makes me feel better, even though the bed is still cluttered the floor looks so pure…
Time to tackle all the boxes of stuff I piled on the bed. One box at a time.
I sorted everything from those boxes into…more boxes, mostly. But now they’re organised boxes! I can now take my time to sort through the paper goods in the left-hand box and the non-paper ones in the right-hand box. I will probably do that on my next day off. Maybe break it down and do one per day. There’s no need to rush because I have put all sensitive material into the black and white bag to make sure it gets taken care of first.
Ready to be sorted when I have more time!
Ahhh, now the floor is clean and most of the stuff on the bed is gone too! All that’s left is my least favourite- the laundry. I didn’t want to take a photo of a pile of clean clothes so I skipped that part. Needless to stay, I begrudgingly sorted, folded and put away all of my clothes.
I cleared off the table I used to throw my bags on and my shoes under and put a catch-all basket to put the stuff I usually carry in my bag in. The bag I usually carry to work is hanging behind the door on a little 3M hook, so all I have to do to get ready is dump the basket into the bag and move on. When I get home I can either leave everything in the bag or if I don’t have work the next day (and so might carry a different bag) just dump it back into the basket.
Very last step: make the bed. Now my room is officially clean.
Besides being a fun and goofy little project to inspire me to clean my room, this has also been a nice practice for maybe someday blogging about things that aren’t horrifically mundane because I don’t really DO anything- let alone anything exciting. It feels a little…kid-ish, but I don’t really care, it’s nice to get something done. I don’t get much done lately, even though I could be starting projects and doing all sorts of stuff in my free time outside of work. Perhaps this will be a good (if small) start to getting better at self-motivation. The constant reminder as I worked that I’ll have something to show for it was really what drove me to finish. Sometimes the things I do don’t leave me much to show for it, but I guess it’s a good idea to just do them anyway even if there’s nothing impressive.
Who would I be trying to impress anyway? No one even reads this blog.
- Mar 10, 13
There aren’t really any nasty spoilers in this but it’s meant to be read by people who have played the game and understand the references, or people who aren’t planning to and are willing to do a little research into it
I have found the exact moment where Skyrim ceased being a magical experience and became a video game. It is a frustratingly simple moment and it’s partially my own fault and partially the programmer’s faults. Maybe. Mostly my fault. I have done the same thing many times in the past without quite the same consequences, so I am a bit irked that this one time has become the loose brick that topples the wall. I accidentally started a quest I wasn’t meant to. The big one – fighting Alduin. I wasn’t ready to take it on, by any means, and I just fled the moment I realised it. Upsettingly, the series of events leading to it hadn’t allowed a spare moment to save, so just quitting or dying would have lost me an hour of progress. Unacceptable. So I fled.
The trouble with running from an active quest like this is that it keeps going even if you aren’t there to do it. It’s not just active in name, it’s actually active- all the time. If I’m down at the base of the mountain or anywhere near it, I can see a dialogue for the quest scrolling past as if I was right there fighting.* But I’m not there. I’m literally anywhere else in the game doing every other quest because I’m not ready for that quest yet. I want to have more fun. I want to get stronger. I’m not ready to “beat” the game.** I want to revel in my heroic epic a bit longer.
I still can, of course, it just irks me that the game is waiting for me to finish that one part. Every time I journey near that mountain and see that dialogue it’s as if the game is impatiently tapping its fingers on the table. Aren’t you finished yet? Jeez, you take forever.
Talos damn it, I was just enjoying an immersive environment and interesting storytelling and I don’t need your stupid gameplay to get in my way. I was having fun playing the game my own way and now you have to force me to play it like I care about the outcome – like winning the game is the point. The second a game reminds me with a whole-hearted slap in the face that it is in fact a game, I start to nurture a bit of a distaste for it, and unfortunately Skyrim has irreversibly done this. It didn’t do it on purpose and I can’t run after it with a rolled up newspaper shouting what it could do better next time to avoid this mishap again, because in reality it’s my own fault I’m bothered.
Why though? What other games or media have I based this expectation on exactly? The idea of a completely uninterrupted game is ridiculous; something always exists to break the spell. It’s not like the game has actually forcibly halted my progress just to shove me along its main linear storyline; it just feels that way to me. Everything else that I do between now and that quest is just extra stuff- filler- unimportant to the storyline in just about every way. But the thing of it is, everything up until then has been the same way. My favourite part of Skyrim- in fact, probably most people’s favourite part of Skyrim- is exploring and doing all the stuff you don’t have to do, just because you can. Up until now though I haven’t really thought of it that way, that stuff has just been the game to me.
Now I’m going to back up a bit and make a small confession: I did actually look things up on the Skyrim Wiki so I could proceed along the Main Quest more efficiently at the beginning. I did this because I cannot navigate Skyrim for crap. I will spend an entire hour jumping up a mountain before I realise I’m on the wrong side and I can’t get up that way. I will then frustratedly fast-travel to the nearest point that I think can get me to my destination and proceed to do the same thing again for another hour, unless I have at least a vague idea where I’m going.
However, while I did look up locations of some things (mostly areas to find the Walls) I did not look up the exact location of anything directly associated with the Main Quest. The reason I stumbled into my predicament was because I wasn’t aware that I had gotten so far through the main quest that I was being forced to play along with a large chunk of it. And perhaps that was the whole idea behind presenting the quest that way: to sneak it up on you so you are forced to make real-time decisions, but that wasn’t going to fly for me. After all, I was completely unprepared for it.*** So I made a real-time decision and got the hell out of there as fast as I could.
I broke the immersion myself by making that choice, but I’m still stuck with the knowledge that I have to go back and do it eventually (sooner rather than later, urges the game every time I wander into Ivarstead). So in the end I don’t have any real anger directed at Skyrim or its programmers, I’m just a frustrated little gamer who wound up stressing out over a quest for her own reasons. The part I never got to answer though was “why?” Not “why am I angry” because I cleared that up nicely but “why does it bother me in the first place?” I still don’t know, but it really does and from that moment on Skyrim just hasn’t felt like the same game to me.
*Only visual dialogue, no actual voice-overs, which is part of what leads me to believe this is partially a programming error. Not the quest running constantly, but my visual reminder that I’m not doing the quest- which is, of course, the root of my annoyance.
**I have looked it up and I know that this particular part of the quest isn’t the absolute end of the Main Quest, but it’s a big part and not something I could just dash into at level 34- a level 34 unbalanced mage, I should add. The fact still stands that the quest is pushing for me to complete the Main Quest even if it itself isn’t the end.
*** Maybe the game didn’t think so, but I knew for a fact I was going to die after the first few seconds of battle. I wasn’t even carrying the right weapon. Or wearing decent armour.
- Jun 22, 12
I started writing this as part of a two-part split mini bio of myself as an artist and a gamer that is going to be part of a sort of self-examination as I slowly decide which direction to take my passion for art and games and game art. Unfortunately, it got somewhat out of control and turned into…well, this. I could talk forever about how I feel about video games, but I managed to get at least part of that into an essay-like thing, which I offer now in all it’s rambling splendour.
I am really bad at video games, but I love them anyway. I started off around age 10- later in life than most gamers- with the N64 and Gameboy Colour. Everything I knew was Mario, Yoshi and Pikachu. Then in high school a close friend of mine introduced me to Zelda and all of that changed. Much in the same way that Pokemon changed my view of the world of animation by introducing me to anime, Zelda introduced me to a genre of adventure games I had never experienced. I started to love games for more than just gameplay. It was about art and music and storytelling now. Arcade games were fun but adventure games were an experience. Still, at this point I didn’t consider myself a gamer.
Even to this day I’m hesitant to use that term to describe myself at all. In the same way that computer enthusiasts are hesitant to be called “hackers” in today’s society, I think there’s a nasty stigma attached to the term “gamer” that I’m not prepared to identify with. Saying I’m a gamer seems to imply that I don’t just play the ocassional videogame but actually live and breathe the world of games- which isn’t true. I do love videogames because they are a wonderful artform, but I’m in no way obsessed with them. For example, I won’t drop $60 on a videogame because I can’t afford to. Yet I know people who are just as badly off as myself who will drop several hundred dollars on games and have no regrets about eating ramen for a few months. I can’t do that. I love videogames, but I can’t do that.
I definitely don’t identify as a casual gamer though. I have called myself that in the past and over the years have found it to be less and less true. In fact finding a category or an archetype to place myself under as a gamer has proven difficult for me. I don’t even want to discuss the “gamer girl” archetype/stereotype. Actually I’m pretty disgusted that Wikipedia even felt the need to list girl gamers as a “type of gamer” in their article on gamers, as well as “gaymers” which make it sound like you can’t just be a gamer, you have to be gender-identified (unless you’re a straight male, I guess). Anyway gross amounts of sexism aside, according to the half of the article that doesn’t piss me off I could be considered a mid-core gamer, which is somewhere between casual and hard-core. Personally I think that sounds really stupid, I would not go around using it to describe myself to anyone. Plus it doesn’t encompass the fact that I don’t just play games, I appreciate them for their artistic qualities as well.
As I was writing this blog post I did some brief research into gamer archetypes and ran across a humorous article from last year on Kotaku. I went ahead and commented even though the article is old and no one will ever see it. Here is the article: Which one of These 27 Gamer Classifications Do You Fall Under? My comment reads as follows:
Where is my “Artsy-Fartsy Gamer” stereotype? I almost exclusively prefer games with good storyline, interesting graphics and art direction that doesn’t make me want to puke. It can’t just be “fun” it also has to be innovative or at the least a decent example of creative thought put into motion. You could also file this under an “I Studied Game Design in College and Now Nothing Can Ever Be Simple Again” stereotype.
While I mostly wrote it to be funny and echo the humorous attitude of the original article, it holds pretty true to my feelings. I often brush off my feelings about creativity and art as being “artsy-fartsy” because it’s easy for people who don’t get it to just say “oh, it’s an artist thing so I don’t have to get it”, but I’m actually really serious about my love for this stuff. Seeing videogames as an artform is part of how I enjoy them- or don’t enjoy them, depending on the situation. I’m just that kind of gamer. And yes, I did study video games in college and I loved every minute of it, from the technical history to the culture to the artists and scientists behind the designs and consoles. It’s really fascinating- every single part of it- and I love it. That fascination is a huge factor into why I want to be a part of that culture, even though I’m no good at games and can never afford new ones.
It’s not just about the art; I do enjoy playing games too, I just prefer games that reflect what I’m good at understanding. A great example is action/adventure games. Running around and hitting things is something I can readily understand, no problem. Looking for things, solving puzzles, talking to NPCs and travelling places are also things I enjoy experiencing in games. I’m not a big fan of shooters because I’m not a big fan of guns in general, not to mention there is absolutely nothing natural about the way you have to use a controller to shoot a weapon (outside of the fact that most controls do indeed have triggers on them). My brain has never successfully grasped the concept of: move with one joystick, aim camera/weapon with the other and do this simultaneously while also shooting things. It’s probably because moving and looking don’t register as two different actions for me, as I generally do them at the same time without thinking about one or the other. I will probably be much better at shooters once we get the AR/VR thing down. Then again I will be far, far less likely to play them that way as well. There is such a thing as too much immersion and virtual reality gunfights are where I will most likely end up drawing the line.
I really like immersion though and it’s a big part of why I really prefer games where I can be myself, instead of simply taking on the role of- or in some cases just simply controlling- a predetermined character. There are a number of exceptions to this, but for the most part I like to play a “hero” and not “Bob the Hero”. (This is one of the reasons that those terrible free-to-play MMORPGs have always appealed to me. I can be myself as an avatar and live and play however I want to, to reach whatever goal I want. I usually don’t stick to these games for long though because truth-be-told they are generally pretty bad.) Of course immersion is where we start getting back into the art of games and not just the gameplay because it really depends on both things working in harmony to achieve what the designer wants. I won’t get into any specific examples here, because I would be listing things all day (and this entry is plenty long enough). Suffice it to say that being part of the game is one of the reasons I play them.
- Mar 24, 12
I guess I’m doing pretty awesome at that one post a week thing, eh؟ Maybe I should lower the expectations and make it one post a month? At least one post a month. Yes-Hmm- yes I like that better! Realistic expectations for the win. (•‿~)
I’ve meant to keep a notebook with me at all times to write down ideas to write about but honestly I’ve just spaced on the whole thing. I have been pretty good at drawing everyday though and I’m going to try and start posting sketch dumps on my Art Tumblr if possible (I really hate scanning things out of hardbound sketchbooks and that’s mostly what I’ve been using). If nothing else, I’ll make it a priority!
Wondering what this>> ؟؟؟ << is? Click the link and wonder no more.
- Feb 14, 12
Asking what “love” is has never been a light question, but despite that fact I have always had a light answer:
“You make me happy- I want to make you happy too, that’s it.”
It’s hard for me to categorize people when I refer to love. I love my family; I love my friends; I love cats. They are all different “kinds” of love but they all spawn from the same emotion. I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that.
- Jan 15, 12
No free Wi-Fi in Midway, it’s a travesty! Using Sticky Notes app instead.
The 35 minute flight from IND to Midway was most uneventful. I waited to see where people were loading the fewest carry-ons in the overhead bins and sat on an aisle seat after finding one that could fit both my carry-ons without issue. As with everyone I have sat next to today I made sure my aisle-mate was not allergic to cats (I am COVERED in cat fur like whoa) and then got comfy.
She and her husband were flying to Dallas on a vacation and it was his first flight on a commercial airline. Their son was a pilot, she explained to me, but he’d never flown like this and he was nervous. She teased him about needing the barf bag, but he seemed fine. He stared out the window (he was window; she, middle) pretty much the entire time. At the end of the flight I asked what he thought about it. “Ehhhh” he said. I laughed, “pretty dull, right?”. “Yeah,” he said, “it was kind of like riding a bus.”
As for me, I spent all the time I was allowed in the air catching up on my Pokemon White game. I haven’t played it since May of 2011, so I was concerned I might have forgotten what the hell I was doing. Thankfully, playing Pokemon is very much like riding a bike (hush, you) so it came to me pretty quickly. I was pretty tickled to find that the city I had saved in was in fact Skyveil, the Flying Type gym leader’s city, and it was in fact an airfield with planes, staff and security everywhere. That was about as far as I got though.
Arriving at Chicago Midway was uneventful. I found a bathroom that was actually DESIGNED to be in an airport! That is, it had room for a person AND two large carry-ons to sit comfortably with more remaining leg room than the Exit-Row on a plane. Everything was also stainless steel.
Being pretty hungry at this point I decided to hit up the nearest restaurant to my gate that looked like it would have food I could actually eat. I ordered $9 worth of chicken tenders and fries, expecting a really tiny portion, but actually it was on-par with Chili’s or Applebee’s in size and it tasted significantly better.
Ran into more people who wanted to know why I brought so much stuff.
Got more wishes for good luck.The flight from here to Lovefield is about 3hours. I guess I get my nap!
- Jan 14, 12
I don’t know how much sleep I got last night- probably not enough, but you know how adrenaline can power you when you’re sleep deprived. I should be good until at least the flight from Chicago (not Colorado, as I was originally informed) to Dallas when I’ll probably pass out. ]
I prepared two backs to check and two to carry-on, plus a personal item. I guess my personal item was too large because I had to fit everything from it into the checked bags and the two carry-on bags. When I got to the airport I figured I could just drag my stuff across, check the big heavy bags and be done with it. Nope. Luggage #1 (a suitcase) was 58lbs which puts it 8lbs overweight so I had to put more of the stuff into the carry-ons and squeeze as much as I could into Luggage #2 (which is a duffle bag). Luggage #1 weighed in at exactly 50lb and Luggage #2 weighed in at 34lb. People who know me well (or really, at all) know that 30lbs is pretty much my limit on lifting things. Thank god those were checked bags!
I had refused to let my dad park and help me carry the luggage. I was bound and determined to somehow drag it that 150ft from the door to the baggage check. I was able to grab everything in one go and move about 3ft at a time. After the first 6ft a nice guy walked right up to me and said “please let me help”. I think he worked for the airport, but wasn’t an attendant or a security personnel because he was in casual clothes. He helped me get all the bags over and we chatted a bit about how heavy school books and electronics needed for college were. He asked if I was an artist, since I literally have 6 sketchbooks with me (some are really tiny, but STILL). I said yes and that I was in game design. He only had a chance to mention he was majoring in digital photography before he was swept away by an employee. I barely got to say thank you before he left. I was really clogging up the baggage claim area too. The attendant was really, really nice though.
Security wasn’t too much of a problem, though I went through the scanner with $0.27 in my pocket without realizing it. Heh. Glad I opted to wear my ballet slip-ons, cut at least 3 minutes off of that mess. I had to explain to pretty much everyone who asked (or gave me incredulous looks) that I was, in fact, moving away from home and not just a spoiled brat who has too much stuff and carries too much luggage for fun. “Everything but the furniture and the cats” I said to most of them. Everyone wished me luck, which was nice. One little girl ran behind her mom when I walked up to her, but then I smiled and said “are you excited?”. Then she was all about talking. She had been staying with Gramma and now she is going home to see “LUCY!” her dog. She was also very excited that she didn’t have to take off her tennis shoes because she was younger than 12 (and apparently 12 is the cut-off for potential terrorists?).
I got cash at the ATM, then marched over to a food place and over-paid for a Sierra-Mist Natural, a bag of chocolate covered peanuts and a banana. I ate the banana and I’m now snuggled into one of the Gate-B waiting chairs, deciding how on earth I’m going to keep any of the stuff I brought to actually entertain me with me since both of my carry-ons seem way too big to fit “completely underneath the seat in front of me”. I’m going to attempt to squeeze some stuff into my lunch/food bag which apparently DOES count as a personal item, while the purse did not. Huh, go figure. Assuming I don’t get really tired and sleep for most of the flight I’ll probably break out the sketchbook and do some comic panels. Or not. Goodness forbid I allow any form of creativity to impede my boredom.
- Jan 10, 12
