WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Here is a sketch of Deadpool. The end.

All Good Chefs have Burns...

I burnt the crap out of one of my fingers, which meant that I couldn't do what I was planning tonight. Since I was down to one hand I thought I'd just doodle something on my wacom instead. What I thought I'd do is draw a chef with his hand on fire. That doodle eventually became Akuma, and has lead to my desire to see a fairly unlikely cross-over: Capcom vs. Black Books.

Can Fran and Chun Li make it through an entire bottle of wine without breaking out into a fight? Will Blanka ever stop stealing Manny's Hawaiian shirts? Will Akuma put up with Bernard's dour ways, or will he perform the Shun Goku Satsu?

Other Capcom cross-overs I'd like to see:
-Capcom Vs. Trainz.
-Capcom Vs. Archie Comics.
-Capcom Vs. The Mountain.
-Capcom Vs. Larry Flint.
-Capcom Vs. Woodstock: The Dream Concert Never Ends.
-Capcom Vs. Piracy: An animated guide to copyright law.

Hasty lunchtime art attack

@Drew:I thought samurai were really more my kinda thing?

BTW, two of your posts this month totally don't count. I think that makes us even at the moment doesn't it?

HEY COME ON COME ON

I keep on forgetting I'm the Lone Freakin' Wolf. In honor of me remembering that I'm the the Lone Wolf, I've done this picture of Terry "The Hungry Wolf" Bogard. He is part of my wolf pack.

I also want to let you know you are part of my wolf pack too.

I needed to practise a little more with my wacom, so I took a sketch I did on the train and digitally inked it. I still need more practise, but I'm starting to get used to it.

Meanwhilst, I think this is also my most posting-est month ever. Go me.

Game of the Moment - Dawn Of War 2

I was a bit of a fan of the original Dawn of War, well at least after a couple of the addons came out, I'd taken her on a few dates and met her parents. Even though I could never really find anyone to play against I thought it added a bunch of new options that really shook up how an RTS should be played. Map control was the most important part here, much more than in a regular RTS. Combined with the relatively slow pace, this suited players like me (i.e. Lovers/Not fighters) who prefer to defend rather than rush in (like fools).

Dawn of War 2 keeps that basic feeling of combat but like someone hooking up in a nightclub toilet, it completely does away with base (relationship) development. Instead, players pump out units and thrust them directly into battle, shifting gameplay from strategic to something more tactical (if there truly is a difference). I haven't really ever played Warhammer 40k, but I imagine DoW2 is more like getting it on in a dining room; i.e. a lot closer to a tabletop game than the original ever was. To be honest, I'm not sure where this leaves me, or whether I can continue casually tieing this to sex and relationships.

Sure, you can still bust out a bunch of different playstyles, and technically there's nothing 'missing' in that. Removing base-building has only simplified the build order. But thats probably the biggest problem here, everything seems overly simplified. As far as units go, you don't get that many to choose from, but I guess you get enough for each race to have a few strong tactics. Following that, considering how little troop variation there is you'd expect there to be more races to choose from. I for one miss Chaos, and those crazy outerspace commies, the Winter Guard, and it couldn't be that hard to add a couple of the other races from the expansions. After all that, even considering the small numbers of troop types, its still not that greatly balanced.

The other major win DoW1 has over DoW2 is that it can run well on my computer. I know I may not have the greatest computer EVER... But I can-not-for-the-life-of-me work out what is causing DoW2 to be running so slow on both mine and my housemate's computer. There is honestly not that much going on screen, but it seems to take a godly amount of processing power to do it. Furthermore, I bet I could get a decent LAN game going in DoW1. DoW2 seems to handle online play fairly well, but LAN play was like a pile of broken dreams, soaked in tears.

It's not all doom and gloom though, the single player (or co-op) campaign is pretty cool, coming off as a kinda linear Dune 2 meets RPG. I'm not sure I'm entirely following the plot, but whatever. It's different and kind of cool. Furthermore, as limited as it is, playing skirmish maps is fun. I haven't played against anyone yet (and probably never will) but judging by the reviews it's gotten I guess there must be a little bit of magic in the multiplayer.

So there we go. As far as I stand, I'm still in that awkward place before I'm ready to see her exclusively or decide to go for her older, slightly more traditional sister.

This has gotten very creepy.

Last night Jackie Chan came round...

I'm still trying to work out what I should call these posts... Character Mondays is boring and lacks alliteration.

This guy is Shinichi Watanabe (perhaps, I can't find my old notes notes at the moment, but I definitely remember his last name is Watanabe). Long time viewers may remember him from old (and failed) comic "Fistful of Kung Fu". In that story, he's an Shaolin Monk drop out, who wanders into Shanghai, looking to start a gang war between the resident Triad/Yakuza gangs.

Watanabe is proficient in many forms of unarmed kung fu, particularly the 5 animal styles. He is also privvy to the secrets of the forbidden "Shadow-Eagle Claw" technique, which specializes in one hit kills.

He's a pretty casual guy, who likes to keep his cards close to his chest and his motivations hidden. When things don't go his way, he tends to overcompensate a smidge. All in all, I wanted him to be more Jackie Chan than Bruce Lee. For an outfit I wanted something that looked like a rough approximation of the outfits from period kung fu movies. The jacket is pretty much a straight up chinese jacket from one of those movies, the rest of the outfit is a little more modern-day hipster-ish. In other words, he's wearing it to be ironic. Or something.

I'd still like to get around to re-doing (and finishing) Fistful one day, but I could always turn it into some kind of fighting/beat-em up game. Half of the fun came from coming up with wierd unorthodox fighting styles. Admittedly, Watanabe was kind of boring in this regard, but there always needs to be some normalcy amongst a group of freaks.

This scan didn't come out as well as I was expecting. To be honest I rushed the sketch a little bit, but I had lives to save so I think it's ok. I decided to add a little more colour than the last one to try and compensate, but in the end it doesn't really matter, these are only supposed to be rough character sketches anyway.

Roomy

I needed a post, so I've quickly knocked together a bunch of the little, uninteresting stuff I've been working on into something post worthy. This is for that thing I'm doing at that time...

It's a bunch of templates for rooms. I haven't slapped them together like they should go in the game so they kind of seem a bit nonsensical (but who would building shaped in the letters BSR anyway?). I'm aiming for executive office space. Imagine desks and cubicles. Also not properly finished are the connectors between rooms and some of the shadows could use work but I'm not entirely sure whats going on with shadows at this particular moment. Also, I shrunk it down.

More later, but it's late. I'm out.