But let's not deviate from the plan too much...

So just because nights are WIP time, doesn't mean the train rides are too. The rub is that I'm not going to do any colouring on this one. Rough rough sketch it is. On a side note, I know a crappy carpenter blames his tools, but the new pens I brough aren't that great :(. I'll have to keep trying new ones and buy up big when I find good ones again.

But enough of that. To the left is "The Baron", main (silent) antagonist of "Johnny Lovebaby buys the farm". He has a moustache because a) he's a moustache twirling villain (which let's face it: it's the only kind of villain worth being) and b) because he's a connesuir of 70's pornography.

The Baron is the big bad that's put Johnny in the position he's in for the majority of the story. He's the head of a large mob family, but mostly rides the coat tails of his father's previous success. As a result, he has little knowledge of how to run the family business, and spends most of his time satisfying morbid curiosities.

Work-in-progress week?..

... Is going to be what this week is until I get this done.

When finished, this is going to be an invite for a thing. I don't wanna give away too much now or else I'll have nowhere to go for the rest of the week. So, for the moment, just accept that this for what it is: A bunch of lines vaguely representing my housemates in various costume.

So where I'm at now? I've got the base line art done for all the people (some more than others, poor Caitlin up the back is like 6 lines I swear). I've added some depth to Sarah's lines, and I've started on some of mine. Hopefully by next post I'll have that, and Jame's and Caitlins finished, as well has tweaking the faces to look a little more like they should.

Then? I'm still undecided. Note that the colour scheme is only so I can clear up the line work, it's only temporarly. I'm still deciding how I'm going to colour this (if at all) and what I'll do for the background (if anything).

Boxing's been good to me. Hoooooooowaaaaaaard.

But tonight hasn't. I was planning on having our faces on those bodies, but it appears my body is violently against that, so it teamed up with my patience and tag team wrestled with me and my intentions. I lost thanks to fatigue coming out and throwing a chair into the ring when I wasn't looking.

This whole business is in recognition of Drew getting some Rocky style montages on to match my mighty mountain training.

As interesting as a fight between James Hollis and James Wallace would be, I think we all know who would win.

This is my boom stick.

"Shiro the Bastard" is a bastard by name and a bastard by nature. As a young orphan, Shiro was drafted into the Yakuza, where his natural bloodlust and scrupulous morals allowed him to rise in rank until he became the chief enforcer for the Shanghai branch. In public he's calm, confident and powerful, in private he's a sadistic nightmare.

His weapon of choice is a modified pump action shotgun that fires short range buckshot rounds. Rather than use it like a conventional gun, Shiro uses it entirely for melee, and will only pull the trigger when the barrel is pressed up against an opponent. His attacks with the gun are similar to conventional jo strikes, but modified for the irregular shape of the shotgun, and include the pump action mid strike when required.

Naturally, all this close action shotgunning has left Shiro with some hearing problems, which while not servere do cause him to mishear things sometimes. Not that he has to here much, since it's normally him giving the orders rather than taking them.

Shiro the Bastard is one of the main antagonists in A Fistful of Dollars. When I get around to doing something with it at least.

Also, as a side note: Those of you with math skills may have noted that according to the blog tally to the right, yesterday was only post 99. It's both sad and true that I can not in fact count. Don't tell anyone.

100 post combo!

I was pretty excited when I went to post yesterday and noticed that I had 98 posts already. However, after posting and seeing the post counts to the right I noticed it was only showing 98 still. That's the reason for the double post today. I wanted to clear that draft and get a 100 post commemorative picture up. Sure, I could've deleted that draft, done something today and posted this tomorrow, but then my schedule would've been out of wack and besides, today is Motivational Monday, and today: I am my own motivation.

I decided to kick it old school for a change and do it all in ink, like I started out. I think right now we should have a moment's silence for all the sharpies that died tonight during the course of this picturing. Looking back, theres a lot I should've done. Making sure I had enough supplys would've been a start. As would a little bit of planning. As would not doing the 100 by hand. But hey!: where am I going to go for the 1000th post if I get everything right here.

Lastly, can you spot the 100 robots* that I drew into that picture?



*Note: Several, if not most of those robots are invisible.

Don't believe Ondore's lies - First impressions of Final Fantasy XII a few months too late.

More like a few years too late. I had this saved as a draft from the very early days of the blog and in order to make the other post of today make sense I've decided to publish this one. It's kinda pointless, because it's been so long I can't even remember much about this game, but oh well. I want my 100 posts dammit. I'm not even going to rewrite or finish it, that's how little care. Mind you I should get around to finishing that game some day.

I always planned to write a little bit about what ever game I'm currently playing. Not so much from a review point of view, I'll leave that to the professionals, I mean sitting down and trying to analyze what it does right and wrong, and how I can rip it off in some future design. I have tried putting on the 'Games Reviewer' hat previously; It was ill fitting and felt dorky, but the problem is the games I play are always fit into an odd reviewing niche. They aren't new enough to be considered cutting edge, yet they aren't old enough to be considered retro. They are the kind of games people just finished playing, as I've managed to find them cheap secondhand somewhere, and so me telling them if it's good or not becomes kind of redundant.

So without further ado, here I am playing FF12 and it's not that bad. It's both Final Fantasy and Not Final Fantasy at the same time. And also part World of Warcraft. And also part Star Wars.

The obvious difference is the abandonment of the ATB (Active Time Battle) system and random encounters. In its place: Active Dimension Battle (ADB) and no world map travel. In scope, It's a lot more epic than previous games, if not taking place over a much smaller area.

The new ADB system is pretty interesting, it allows you to give AI commands to team mates. Not only does it change up the way battles are fought, but it also adds another element of collectability to the game, and thats always good for the obsessive-compulsive crowd. The downside of the new system is that it makes the game feel a lot more like an mmorpg, just where instead of friends you have a couple of robots to help you out. Unfortuntately, this only goes to highlight how shallow some of the side quests can be. Fetch quests are abundent. Item farming also feels somewhat unnecessary. Futhermore there are several points were I've felt too detached from the main plot, sometimes due to level requirements. Grinding becomes necessary just to progress with the story, and thats never fun.

Similarities to Star wars are striking...

Etc.

In-joke Sunday?

I've typed the word "giraffe" so many times it has lost all meaning for me.