life drawing fun!

Went for my 2nd ever life drawing session today. It was a 3 hour pose; I only stayed for 1.5 hours, because I wasn’t planning to work on a piece for that long. I ended up drawing the same pose 3 times.

Seems like the short poses sessions are more suitable for me! Because I’m so impatient. I tried the stick method of gauging distances, but it didn’t work out for me as well as if I just use plain visual observation.

Shading was tricky, as usual! I’ve never taken any classes on figure drawing, so I’ve never been taught any methods or anything. My method of drawing is crude & dependent on habit. I so need to attend a life drawing class! I realised that even in life drawing, a lot, especially shading still depends on one’s imagination and artistic sense. The finesse in wielding a pencil is important as well, especially in shading.

Ahh, I still have a lot to learn.

Potter7

So I finally finished reading Potter7! It concludes part of my childhood memory. I think I belong to the generation that has grown up with potterbooks; I started reading ‘em in 2000, picking up volume after volume at the airport at sequential intervals.

Sentimental value was what propelled me to read this book. For childhood memory. And since I’ve read 1~6 I might as well read 7.

Personally I would say the back stories were a tad bit tacky. Too sensational. Especially since 1~6 have been pretty pristine, as far as I remember. They also draw attention away from the main trio, and I’m not even sure of they’re that relevant. (Personally it was a pain going through that chapter, gwarsh…) They bring depth to some characters, yes, but flatten & diminish the depth to Riddle, who stooped by the end to a pretty one-dimensional dark lord. That’s my complain for this book.

Though all in all I think it was a good read. These 10 years have been an entertaining ride. I appreciate the author’s effort in keeping stray elements from the previous books together (of course she has to). It was interesting revisiting all those characters again.

Dragon Age: Origins

Hmm. I can’t give an impartial review to this one because to put it simply, I got bored of this game halfway & only finished it for the sake of finishing a game.

It’s such a soul-sucking game nonetheless. Super long. I no longer have the patience for long games like this one. I stayed up for two nights or so through Orzammar because I just wanted to get through it. It over-stimulated me & had me negatively obsessed with the game. (Which is ultimately my own fault, blah)

The main attraction of this game are the characters and the story. The characters are colourful, funny & interesting (I love Zevran) and the story is classic. The gameplay is really so-so. Might be because I didn’t exploit the options fully, but seriously! I can’t be bothered to tweak every single setting. I got so tired of just choosing abilities and equipping the characters.

Also, the dialogues were cumbersome & tiring for me. I know having varied choices for PC dialogues is a signature of Bioware games. It gets so tedious at one point. I guess this just means that Bioware games are not for me?

I miss being a teenager

I was so filled with dreams and fancies back then.

Mirror’s Edge

 

 

So I finished Mirror’s Edge.

Almost “rage-quitted” this one because I got stuck for 5 days at the subway aeration room! That one required a jump after a wall run, which I only found out after scavenging the forums. I literally put the game in the “to-sell” pile during that time. After that, I teetered to look at walkthrough whenever I think I got stuck.

This game requires a lot of patience, in that it makes first-time players retry 100 times, & it seems like a lot of players have pointed this out. The thing is, it gets really, really annoying at times. Sometimes it’s hard to actually judge what distance is viable and what is not.

Nonethe-$%#$@-less, the concept is good, & this game creates a nice adrenaline rush. Gameplay is good, too, if it doesn’t require so much repetitive effort. It’s far too much sometimes, if I might say. It’s also frustrating to have no weapons & be weak in combat, yet have to deal so many compulsory combats. Having to repeat so often makes the gameplay very very unsmooth, & it’s hard to like this game in this aspect.

Interestingly, this game is made by a Swedish team! What with all the strom & bergs. Interesting. It does have a Swedish feel, come to think of it.

Overall… I enjoyed the game. The concept mostly. If it could involve less repetition & smoother gameplay! Namely, distances that are easier to gauge, better combat design & fewer footfalls.

Atonement

YEAH ROIGHT.

One very strong point of this film is that, it has an A-Star cast. Other than that, not much to say. The middle was such a drag. & I’m not sure about the effectiveness of making the audience see everything twice with very confusing skips to & fro in time.

To be judgemental of the protagonist, I think someone like that had no conscience in the very first place. I don’t care how many ways people can interpret what she did.

All in all, I was glad I didn’t fall asleep.

I am a dark tempest

Yup, I played Hitman:Blood Money. On easy mode because I have no patience & wanted to get through it quickly. (Imagine some people can get through one mission on pro mode in 10 minutes. One has to know exactly what to do.) I never referred to walkthrough, except for the California one where I saw the gameplay before I bought the game. So I am still proud.

Why did I pick up this game? It’s entirely because of Jesper Kyd. & because it is a Danish game. I want to see what the Danes are up to.

Gaming

How important is “gaming” to my life?

I’m back to gaming after about two years of sporadicity.

Anyway, following the E3 previews, there are a few things on my mind pertaining to what console I might want to get down the road:

Valkyrie Profile

So I spent 5 hours playing Valkyrie Profile this afternoon.

I wanted to play this game 10 years ago! Never got to play more than 15 minutes of it until today.

The snippets of stories are very good stories. Very nice, very creative. The art is beautiful. The music is beautiful. Though all in all most of it is an utter waste of time because one needs to spend 90% of the time training the candidates by doing turn-based combats in very boring dungeons. W.T.F.

Say I’m sick of games like that.

I mean, I really like the art and all. I’ve liked it since 10 years ago, so to speak. I just am not one for “crunching” anymore. I played until I got sternly censured by Freya and could not continue with fishing the stories.

Prototype

Because reality is just too dull.

It’s strange that I’m playing this game at this point. I’m reasonably acquainted with the two main things Prototype deals with. Or should I say it’s a curious co-incidence that the games I’ve been playing deal with “genetics” in a sci-fi way.

What do people think “genetics” could imply? I mean, it’d be freaking cool if you study the stuff and end up being involved in a top secret project that pertains to world domination or mass destruction, no? Though all in all I think the concept of Prototype is a very far stretch of scientific ethics. Or should I say BREACH. It’s such violent, cannibalistic, bloody, macabre, absurd, terrifying aspect of imagination.

Yet I love this game and I know why. The parkour is MIGHTY fun, for one thing.

Right now I’m still quite early in the game, I believe. I’m only on sequence 3 of the web of intrigue. I caved in and watched all the WoI vids on youtube. I still don’t know (most of) what actually happens in the game though; didn’t want to spoil myself that far. The WoI snippets didn’t spoil me that much, because I knew from the start that Alex did a certain thing (because it’s what usually happens with a guy like that), I just don’t know the motive as yet. I wonder about it. Maybe it’s not even disclosed in the game?