it's tasting time

Hey mambo. Mambo italiano.

I've been a busy bee.

Craigslist is something I'd never touched. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But I figured, seeing as I'd already exhausted all my other sources for freelance work, that I would take my friends advice and give this place a shot.
I must admit I was pleasantly surprised to find a rather eager amount of jobs that were somewhat in my field. Of the 50 or so that I found, I responded to about 25 of them to see if anyone would reply.

Two did! The first was a group of local film-makers. They were looking for a storyboard artist. Unfortunately they wanted me to storyboard a 90-page script completely for free. 90 pages with like 5 shots per page. Which means 5 drawings per page. 450 drawings. For free. No pay.

nope.

The other was a local man, quite friendly, who needed an animated logo done. I did it, and it was done. And then to give him the files and get paid we would need to meet. In person.
This guy is the first person I've met from the internet. I don't go to 'meet-ups' and when I go to conventions I usually stay anonymous. For reasons that should be clear to anyone who reads this blog even mildly regularly.

That said, I'm glad it was a pleasant meeting of the minds.
Me and this friendly chap will probably work together on more things in the near future.
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So.
Nintendo released the new pokemon game. Currently its only available in japan, although you can get a Japanese emulator right now if you feel you must. I didn't feel like I must. But from videos and livestreams I've seen, I'm actually pretty impressed.
Pokemon, while very popular, has always had a very VERY rocky road in terms of game balance, design, and overall quality. Too many water-based animals. Uninteresting puzzles that slow gameplay. Creatures with useless moves. A drop in animal design quality (Magnezone, Rypherior, theres others). Plus too many creatures that were simply far too powerful and 1-hit KO'd most anything. And most annoying of all, graphics that look like these games could run on the game boy color.

Obviously, it wasn't meant to be played competitively. At least not originally. But that's what happens when you make a game that has so much strategy cleverly hidden within it's rather misleadingly simplistic exterior.

But as I said, I'm impressed. Gamefreak and Nintendo have really pushed themselves ahead this generation.

There's a plot. Normally these games try to give you a sense of "make your own adventure" which never works right due to how limiting the game structure is. This time there's a real story. With twists, villains, and mystical gobbeldy-gook that has to do with mankind and it's origins. That's pretty cool. Good work.

The pocket monsters themselves have been balanced very well this time around. Plenty of new moves for types that had nothing special. Plenty of strong new animals for types that were lacking (like Bug). Weak moves have been strengthened, and overpowered moves nerfed. Very few of the new animals is useless. Almost each one has a unique move and ability set. Considering its almost 160 new animals, that's pretty great.

The new creatures themselves are also lovely. Due to this game's setting being in a new world, the designers decided to do a sort of "bizarro" version of the original 151 creatures, plus a few more. And they pulled it off well. While there are some new creatures that look a bit silly (like the garbage bag critter and the ice cream cone pokemon), none of them are "fugly" and none of them look like bizarre decorative pinatas. Honestly most of them are either painfully cute, hilariously funny, or badass looking. I mean there's a fuckin ARCHAEOPTERIX pokemon. And a Lamprey. That's pretty badass. Check em out here before nintendo removes them from EVERYWHERE:


Another thing they added was ANIMATION. While the pokemon anime, bland as it is, has gotten better animation over the years, showcasing battles as highly action packed slugfests...the games haven't. It's always the same thing. Still drawings, often reused from previous games, that occasionally stretch up and down in a very ugly 'we used a gif in a vector-based program' type of way. As time has gone one, they added occasionally, a small dash of animation, though nothing major:


This time around however, the creatures animate. They move around flailing their limps and moving their parts. It's nothing amazing, but it sure as fuck makes the game look so much more lively. Now originally, alot of people were rather sure that none of the animals from the previous games were in this new one. Turns out they are. And Nintendo bothered to animate them also! Wow! They gave 600-something little sprite animals cute simple animations! Isn't that lovely? Look at these two critters from previous games floppin around in the new game:

Apologies to the people from VP I stole most of these pics from.

I'm just happy. It's nice to see a series that was starting to stagnate have such a nice evolution into something more rich and higher quality.
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Anyway, enough gabbing about game franchises that technically should have died a decade ago.

If you come to this blog every now and then you may have noticed I changed something. There are now bright colorful buttons on the far right side. I came to the decision that all the text links on this bright hideously colorful clusterfuck I call a blog were far too damn tacky. So I sorted them and replaced them with big colorful buttons that go to places I feel are important.

Speaking of, thanks to the 12-20 of you who read my New Webcomic every night. And thanks to the 1-2 of you who comment.
I promise, once these old ones are done, I'll make nice pretty new ones that aren't quite as crappy as the current ones.
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My good pal Billy Monks has been working on the game that he, I, and Lenko Biscuit have been working on.
He just got the physics engine working.
Have a very brief sneak peak at a new game! One that you won't all hate like Arthropod Armada!

WonderKnight Radish


Speaking of Youtubey things.


Over the last couple of weeks, me and my friends have been been filming a short comedy film called "A STING TOO FAR" which we wrapped up principal shooting on a day and a half ago.
Expect to see me embed it in this very post soon. Watch this space!











And


BOOM


its out.


Please watch and enjoy this short little silly film starring Mike, Me, and Alicia.