30 Day Zelda Challenge

Starting today, I will be doing one o' them dumb little 30 Day Challenge on "The Legend of Zelda." Everything is already written, and will automatically be posted every day at Noon PDT. Since I don't feel like spamming my main blogs with the challenge, it will be on my secondary reblog Tumblr: The Skaploony Bin - Excess Luggage. (or click here for just the challenge posts.) It starts off a bit slow, but you'll notice when I really start to have fun with it :)

You had ONE JOB!

Made this for kicks.
(Tumblr link)

A Video Game Christmas

     I took this photo back in 2009, back when I did my three-part Winter Video Game Piano Medley. I hadn't seen the full-res image since then, and I recently found it while digging through my old operating-systemless laptop. I'm so glad I kept it around. Found a bunch of old pictures like this that I almost thought I'd never see again.

     So I went in, adjusted the lighting, and added a frost frame... you know, just for the hell of it. The medley took a while to get done - One, maybe two weeks during my free time. The whole process was fun to do... though when I wasn't playing, I was a tad anxious, hoping that my cat or someone didn't knock anything out of place :D  It's still one of my favorite piano vids I've done, along with my favorite Christmas picture that I've taken. (DeviantArt Link)

Merry Christmas!!

 PART ONE
(0:07) Chameleon Twist 2 - Ice Land
(2:08) Jumping Flash! - World 4-1: Slippery Ice Land
(3:10) Jumping Flash! 2 - World 2-1: Checking Out the Castle
(4:23) Diddy Kong Racing - Snowflake Mountain
(5:25) Duck Tales - Himalayas
(6:21) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Ice Cavern

(7:31) Metroid Prime - Phendrana Drifts

PART TWO
(0:00) Final Fantasy X - People of the North Pole
(2:28) Mario Kart 64 - Sherbet Land / Frappe Snowland
(3:48) Star Fox Adventures - Snowhorn Wastes
(5:20) Diddy Kong Racing - Frosty Village

(7:22) Final Fantasy VII - Buried in the Snow

PART THREE
(0:00) Chrono Trigger - Singing Mountain
(1:07) Paper Mario - Shiver City
(2:22) Final Fantasy IX - Ice Caverns
(3:47) Donkey Kong Country - Ice Cave Chant
(5:45) Diddy Kong Racing - Everfrost Peak
(6:46) Super Mario 64 - Cool, Cool Mountain
(7:58) Banjo-Kazooie - Freezeezy Peak

Zoras Be Jammin'

 

      It's no surprise that I love Zelda. My favorite entries is a tie between A Link to the Past and Majora's Mask, and my favorite creatures in the series have to be the zoras. This piece was inspired by one of my favorite Zelda songs, "Zora Band," particularly the Mario and Zelda: Big Band Live version. I began this sucker back in 2009, but because of school, I never had time to continue until recently. It started out with a couple reference photos of me and my guitar. Unfortunately, I don't know where those photos have gone to. I then went and did a trace sketch. It looked embarrassing as hell. :S

      Yes, folks. This is the schlock I had spewed out in '09. Just be thankful it wasn't a fully fleshed out version with these wonky proportions. I would never have heard the end of it.
      You can see a bit of ass coming through Japas' (left) scale-flap. This was just to figure out proportions, as vastly improportionate as it already is. ...No, if you must know, I was wearing pants in the reference photos. Actually, in the design stage, I was thinking of a way to tastefully censor him without interrupting the flow of anything, since the zoras are naturally exposed - more so in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Overall, I just didn't want a the vast majority of the internet comments being about Japas' ass. So I took some liberties, and incorporated parts of the Twilight Princess zoras. You could argue that the zoras didn't evolve these features yet in the timeline, but for this particular instance, I'm letting it slide :)
      Moving, on, I jumped a bit far ahead, and worked on a color layer separation, while tweaking a few proportions. Japas' neck and bass are noticeable changes here. After this, the project hat to remain on hold, until school wasn't consuming so much of my time.

      Two years later, on a Winter Break, I finally returned to this piece, while I still had a bit of school left to do. I had gotten pretty far in it, but unfortunately, the file corrupted. I was pretty upset at the time, but it was a blessing in disguise. It gave me the chance to start almost from scratch, fix even more proportions, and to make it where the two zoras aren't standing so ridiculously close together. In also comes shading/highlighting and the first incarnation of the background. The second iteration came when I decided the characters shouldn't be so close to the frame.

      Around the time I was doing this, I had my oil painting instructor check it out. He gave me some pointers on what I could do to improve on this piece. It had been a long while since I painted anything. Most of what I was doing at the time had to be done in 3D programs. I'm glad I understand 3DS Max and Maya, but I always had more fun, and would have rather improved my 2D painting skills. It took a while for things to click and re-learn what I had lost when I first started college, but that one oil painting class really helped out a lot.

      Here we have what was a placeholder final product. Water light and reflections have been added to the characters, everything has texture, small rocks are coming out of the water to counterbalance the picture, Mikau has a new pick, and we have a new third background. I just didn't like the way the old one was turning out. That, and I changed the aspect ratio to 16:9. The fins also have a new sparkle, based on that of how the original artwork of Japas appeared. I was thinking of adding water droplets, but they were became distracting to the picture.

      Now, a few months later, we come to the latest latest product (up top). Version 1.1, if you will. More detail has been added to the lighting and the rock wall, faint spots have been added to Japas' bass, and the rocks in the water have been replaced. The water collision edges have also been toned down. The one thing I couldn't stand about the image was Japas' head fin, so I made it to where it was over his shoulder.

      ...Well, thank you for sitting through these long ramblings over a silly piece of fan art - over the little tiny details you probably didn't care about. :P Now this may not be the best way to go about doing art in the slightest...but it was a good little experiment, and I learned a heck of a lot by doing this one picture. And with this, I opened up my DeviantArt account.

Update 05-15-2012

Where the hell are my new piano vids?
Remember when I said I'd be able to work on those 100th and 101st videos in May? Well, May's half-over, and I still haven't gotten to them. And honestly, I don't know when I will. At least I didn't exactly promise I'd have those videos by May. Then I'd be in a whole world of trouble :P ...But I do still intend on doing them this Summer. I've just gotten myself into a small bind, is all. I just had my graduation ceremony, and I have only one more semester of College to go over the Summer, then I'm FREE!! WOOOO!!

Art
You're probably going to kill me for this, but instead of taking the time to make those videos, I've been arting. I've been digitally painting something I've wanted to get done for a while, but school wouldn't give me the time to do. There's still a lot I want to do with it, but I'm pretty impressed with what I've done so far. I'll post it when I'm finished, and may even start a DeviantArt acct afterward.

Live Streaming Sites
I have signed up for different live streaming sites, just to try them out, like Livestream and JustinTV. Only which one do I want to try out first? Last year I did it on UStream, and that went well. I was thinking of going over to JustinTV, but now that I have my iPad, I see you have to pay for the app. Not only am I concerned for viewers, but I would like to read the chats right in front of me for a change, instead of turning my head and squinting my eyes, reading what's under the laptop's built-in webcam. And the reviews for the JTV app aren't as good as others. Is $5 worth the risk? Which do you use?

Kid Icarus: Uprising
As far as gaming goes, not much has happened, except for beating Kid Icarus: Uprising. I LOVED it. There has been some bashing on the controls, but honestly, I didn't have too much of a problem with them. Actually, the thing that scared me before playing the game was the voice acting, especially coming from Thanatos, having heard him in the 3D Anime feature. He sounded like something that would come out of 4-Kids. I shiver just mentioning the vile company. But even he was entertaining in the game. In fact, the entirety of the nonstop dialogue was probably the best part about the game, and that's kinda rare.
Since I pre-ordered the game, it came with a free copy of the 3D version of the original NES game I remember playing when I was a toddler. Not only did it add extra visuals to the game, it did away with the blasted password system and gave us a save feature! It would have been cool if they had left the passwords in to jump to a further level for kicks, but I'm not really complaining. After all, I had never beaten the game until just last month.

Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses
I also attended the Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses concert in Seattle. It was pretty great, and some of the performances were more powerful than that of the CD that came with the Skyward Sword preorder. My favorite piece had to be the A Link to the Past movement, especially the Ending Credits theme, which nearly brought a tear to me eye. My only real gripe with the event was that we were jipped out of two medleys that were played at Vancouver, on top of all the same songs that were played here. The song everyone was expecting to hear in the Majora's Mask Medley, the Song of Healing wasn't played because it was in the random Ocarina song medley, which wasn't in our setlist. That was a rather lame move on their part, but nonetheless, I'm really glad I went to this masterpiece.

A Song of Ice and Fire
I just finished audio-reading "A Clash of Kings." I'm a little irked with some of the changes they made in the TV adaptation, compared to how close the first season followed the book. I just think they could have taken a bit more time with it, or even extended the show by a couple episodes if it meant pleasing fans. But at this point, it's becoming less bothersome. As long as it's still good, and even if George Martin is okay with it, I'm still watching. Now onto "A Storm of Swords." I already know of some of the serious shit that happens in that book :D

Update: Okay, I take back every nay-say I said about Season 2. Those last two episodes were amazing!!

Tex Murphy Kickstarter
Looking for something to dump your wallet into? Well one thing I am super-excited for is the Kickstarter revival attempt for Tex Murphy, of which I have just now backed. If you haven't played these games, I highly suggest you check them out - at least the latter three. They're all on gog.com (I still have the original CDs, myself). They were some of my favorite PC adventure games back in the 90's..... Wait, what am I saying "were" for? They still ARE! I replayed them fairly recently, and wound up just as entertained as I was back in elementary school, and I was pretty damn entertained. I'll probably replay them again once I'm finally finished with College, and may even do a song from it.

Lastly, err.... yeah.... Avengers..... F#$%ING SEE IT!! ..............That is all :)

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

A little meme thingy I made:

Piano - The Legend of Zelda Theme

This is my little contribution to my favorite franchise's 25th anniversary.

Pre-DigiPen Renderings

I found a load of renderings I made back in 2004-6 with Rhino. This was long before I learned about unwrapping texture maps. Every separate color is all its own separate object, seamed together to make one. Just imagine how many polygons they were! ...Fun times :D

 

Some self portraits

 These are the images I used as the posters in the piano room picture below.