Whillock: September 2010

New Year, New Project:
Short Story about an event that altered our life.

Early Ideas

Books:
Unweaving the Rainbow - Richard Dawkins
The Collapse of Chaos - Ian Stewart
Guards Guards! - Terry Pratchett

Other events:
Working in retail - made me damn sure I had to do something with my life to avoid having to do it again.
Birth/acceptance of my empiricism in general? - Always need to know 'why?'

'The Pale Blue Dot'

Well this is my 200th blog post, so something animation related that's close to my heart at the moment.

I've always enjoyed gaming in its different forms, but never before have I thought a game was really beautiful. Sure, Crysis is pretty but for me, nothing compares to the overall style and beauty of Team Fortress 2. It perfectly realises the dream I had when I was younger; that one day games would be cartoons you were a part of, so much more perfectly than I could ever have imagined.

Looking like Pixar decided to do an war-themed retro-era shooter, everything about it is beautiful and incredibly thought-out. This has been delved into many times before, from the silhouettes of the nine classes for readability, the contrasting RED/BLU territories/colour schemes and so many other aspects.

The environments range from industrial factories, rural farms, missile silos, snowy mountain complexes, woodland hideouts and many more, but all fit the style of the game perfectly, and nothing looks out of place. There seems to be a trend in the gaming industry to relate better games to realism. Now to me, the number of polygons used has nothing to do with how good a game looks. If I wanted realism I'd play simulators.

When I play a game I want one thing - to have fun, and to get that fun I want to be immersed and surprised and entertained. I want to be taken somewhere new and fantastic and be allowed to play. Team Fortress 2 gives you a community of distinct characters and environments, and lets you shoot, jump, talk, sneak, race and blow other people to bits in them. Fireworks of rockets explode, blood splashes up the walls, spys shank you from behind and huge russian men gun you down in a hail of bullets and throaty laughter. You get killed again and again, and always come back for more.

I had no interest in 3D digital animation before Team Fortress 2. It showed me that it can be used for something other than aiming for realism, and dull space-marine-centric shooters. It has colour and style, character and excitement. Every detail matters, and just shows you can always create something new with a common medium.

May your drops be frequent and full of hats.

Just a collection of a few thing I wanted to group together. I always found when I watched cartoons when I was younger, it was the title sequence that sold it to me, if a cartoon had a 'bad' title sequence or music, it was instant switch over. These are just a few that stuck in my mind and thought worth mentioning. There were a few more I wanted to add, but couldn't find any videos of them so I'll try and include them If I find them later on.

Anyway, Lets start with possibly the best one:

The Rescue Rangers

This song will forever be embedded in my head, it's wonderful and cheesy. What the hell was that flying bottle/balloon/boat/blimp, I didn't know but I liked it.

Thunderbirds

Grandaddy of them all, this was what my childhood was about. That sequence where they'd disappear behind their portraits and slide down slides and trapdoors until they landed perfectly in their ships ready to take off. The palm trees that moved out of the ships way. That was the stuff of dreams. Heath Robinson meets Star Wars. Oh how I loved number 7, the Mole. If ever there was to be an episode with that lovely underground drilling tank in, it was the making of my whole week. God I loved Thunderbirds.

Freakazoid

I suppose this is when I became aware of cartoons being parodies of them selves, taking the mick out of everything cartoons and comics are supposed to be. I loved the randomness, but even then remember thinking the animation wasn't great and got annoyed when lip-syncing didn't line up. Theme song wise though, definitely in my top three.

Angry beavers

Another truly wonderful song here, no lyrics, but it doesn't need them. Fantastic.

Taz

I think I just thought the Oz accent was brilliant. Another one where I wasn't so fussed on the cartoon, but always wanted to watch the opening theme.

Pokemon

I guess I was a little older, and the game had already sucked me in, and I always felt slightly ashamed for watching it. I knew I was 'too old' to be watching it but enjoyed it anyway. Man, that episode with the hot air balloon made me well up I remember. Fine, yes I'm a girl.

Animals of farthing Wood

This was always a bit of a funny one to me, whenever it came on I felt compelled to watch it, but never enjoyed it. I thought it was too girly for putting the flowery wreath around the animal silhouette. But watch it I did.

Sharky and George

This was another stand-out one for me. The cartoon always made me feel a little uneasy though, it always felt a little dark and suffocating, perhaps it was the dull colour scheme and dark locations?

Charlie Chalk

All I remember of this stop motion cartoon was noticing some of the racism in it, even when I was young, nevertheless it didn't concern me too much at that age as he was a freakin' clown that lived on a beach, and it looked amazing and real. That's all I wanted.

The Family Ness

Now, I don't think I actually liked the actual cartoon much of this, but always hung around to hear this music at the start of ever episode. Lovely.

Just another little something I've been having fun with now that Sculpey supplies are ok. Wanted to do something a little more realistic and ugly things are always more interesting than the beautiful and generic. Anyway, will keep you posted of how it goes.

I had a bit of Super Sculpey left and enjoyed the bit of sculpting I did the last time, so thought I'd have another go. Joe had just done me a rather super avatar, so thought I'd have a go at seeing if I could create his in sculpey. It went mostly ok, but had trouble getting as smooth a finish as I would have liked.

Just a quick post to see if posting from my iPad sketchbook pro app works ok

EDIT - Hm. Sideways it is.

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