By
Sarah on
March 20, 2006
My last two transatlantic flights were nothing short of traumatic , so maybe this one will be better. Anyhoo, if nothing goes desperately wrong I shall be snarfing down bagels and wearing holes in my shoes in just under 48 hours… Woo-Hoo.. and this time, no research, no photographing trash cans, fire hydrants and windows. Just pure unadulterated tourism.
So I leave you, both of you, with one piece of art and my latest addiction. The below image was done for the ‘Draw My Character’ thread on the Drawn! forums. I was lucky enough to get superb source material in the form of Ironspike’s character Eugene, from her webcomic ‘Templar, Arizona’. Do check it out, she has a superb and striking inking style. And it’s a good read, with great characters.
So the Addiction? Well, after finally getting fed up with all the grinding in RF Online, and the stupid AFK Mining.. we decided to give Guild Wars a try. So far I’m really impressed with it. It’s not a monotonous grindfest, quests actually make sense and farming low level mobs for points does you no good whatsoever – so you have to keep playing it properly. Although I have to admit to making my character dance probably more than I should, I have yet to run around screeching “I Pwn Yor Ass” , “Yo” or other general L33Tspeak madness.
I can usually be found in Ascalon City, under the pseudonym Saraphim Belacqua. Dancing, crafting and generally pestering the merchants for armour upgrade materials.. .
Guild Wars really does bring the pretty as well. The geometry in the environments is far more complex than RF, and more detailed. Characters don’t LOD out at ten feet either.
By
Sarah on
March 12, 2006
Yup, I decided to check out the hype and ordered myself a couple of Moleskine sketchbooks this week. Unfortunately as I am a complete berk, I ordered the small ones (9x21cm) so they’re a bit cramped. The idea though was to have something to sketch in on a long haul flight, so they may actually be just perfect for that. What do I think? Well they’re lovely. Sturdy, strongly bound and easy to bend back without the pages falling out. The paper is top notch, perhaps a little too much so really. I like to doodle on inferior paper, as it generally makes for less smudging and I get a lighter touch. Looking back, I wouldn’t order this size again as it’s nothing more than a pocket book. But neither do I want the larger sketchbook as the thicker the paper (in the sketchbook the paper is 250gsm, pretty heavy), the less the pages.
So I’ve ordered another one, this time in A5 size, and a notebook instead of a sketchbook, so it’ll have 240 pages instead of 80.
Willl this celebrated object, favoured by Tennyson and Picasso, replete with quotations from the likes of Truman Capote actually make me draw better?
Um. No.
Still, tis a bonny little thing.
By
Sarah on
March 5, 2006
Okay, I promise the next post I make will have some artwork in. I just felt the need to say something about what I think of this game so far.
First off. Damn it’s pretty, with reservations.
The characters look beautiful, and are well animated. Weaponry, armour and clothing all looks absolutely top notch. Where it’s a little let down is the scenery, not so much in that it’s simplistic (which it is) but that the textures are often badly tiled and there’s quite a lot of tearing in the geometry. Personally, I don’t find that in itself too annoying, and MMO’s are bound to have a few teething problems, it’s the nature of having so much crap going on at once. The design of the game is asthetically pleasing but… as many seem to have mentioned – it’s a grindfest. If you are unlucky enough to go through the first few levels without realising you need to build up your PTs (points) you can find yourself in trouble. This happened to me, I didn’t really pay attention to the (very minimal) tutorial at the beginning, got to level 7 and realised I had to go around PT training, which is a bit tiresome and time consuming. The shield PT ridiculously so, the most efficient way to do this seemed to be picking monsters of a low level and equipping my shield and then letting them hit me incessantly for anything up to a couple of hours.
I actually did the housework, shredded a load of paper, shoved some washing in the machine and ate breakfast and lunch while my character was being molested by big winged thingys. Boring much?
|inline
Recent Comments