March 4th 2010 : permalink : 4 notes : Comments

webcomic reveal: arkhangelsky dojt

This month marks a very special time for me. It is the month in which I will attempt to return to my roots — illustration. I’ve had a lot of story ideas in the past few years and none of those ideas ever saw the light of day…until now.

I present to you: Arkhangelsky Dojt. Arkhangelsky Dojt is Russian for “Arkhangelsk’s Rain.” Arkhangelsk is a city. Check out the website when you get a chance because I worked hard on the design for it. Here’s the RSS feed if you want to subscribe to it and keep up to date.

I already got 3 comics up and here they are:

I’m going to throw in the fourth one (which won’t go up for a few days) as a Tumblr exclusive!

I’ve accepted my limitations as an artist, so please forgive the artwork’s shortcomings just as I have. For example, I almost never draw females. So this project is twice as hard for me because of that. Not only have I stopped hardcore drawing for a year and a half now, the protagonist is female (which may not be obvious from the last panel, but I have already addressed that issue).

With that said, what do you think so far?

March 3rd 2010 : permalink : 3 notes : Comments

paradigm shift from a discipline smorgasbord

In this post I will discuss how literature and mathematics influenced my perception of visual arts — particularly fine art and video games.

I used to be very excited about pure maths. I would look up abstract algebra and topology in my free time and be anxious about going to my first modern algebra class. Used to.

I used to believe in knowledge for knowledge’s sake, beauty for beauty’s sake. I used to really value philosophical debates on the nature of time, free will, existence of God, and other intangible topics that can never reach a conclusion.

Then I was introduced to existentialism and absurdism, and I saw the futility of such discussions.

Last year, I eventually gave up on pure mathematics. I saw no point in it. The beneficiaries of my research would only be limited to myself and my field of study. That’s it. I don’t want to be part of that. I want to use math to make some sort of an impact. So I chose statistics. Turns out I really love it.

This made me reflect on art, the meaning of art, the purpose of art. The conclusion that I came to was that art should be a vessel through which you should transport the observer from one state to another.

Art should make a difference in somebody’s life.

I can appreciate the skills, the talents, and the mastery that produced a painting or a design. That is, I can appreciate the technical side of it and find that part beautiful.

But I cannot appreciate the painting as art unless it tells me a story.

Just as a pure mathematician will research abstract ideas and publish his or her work for others, perfecting his/her knowledge and skills, an artist may create drawings and designs to be displayed on walls in various facilities. But neither one of them truly makes an impact.

What is true impact?

The impact on somebody’s character; the impact on somebody’s life.

If literature has taught us anything, it is that the greatest impact is achieved through story. Good stories may not necessarily entertain us, but they make us think and they propose ideas about the world — themes — through characters, dialogues, plots, etc.

That is why I love comic books: they are beautifully crafted works of fine art and design that tell stories that have the potential to change people. Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman had the most significant impact on my feelings about death and dying.

Video games require a different consideration. Every video game’s experiences have two creators: the developers/designers and the player(s). As a player, I am presented with a world in which I can do things. This world may have a rich story or it may simply be, with a set of rules I must obey and a set of actions I can take. But that’s where I come in. On top of any existing story (if any) that the game presents me with, I also create my own through the simple act of playing the game.

Ultimately, I will exit the game having grown in some way from the experience. Whether I will be drowning in a sea of philosophical thoughts brought about by Bioshock, or maybe I will be intellectually stronger after a few strategy matches in Greed Corp, or maybe I will be a happier person from interacting with other people in Team Fortress 2 (which also adds the benefit of strategy and combat), but in the end, the post-game me will be a different me than the pre-game me.

I hope you understood all of that. If you have thoughts you want to share about this post, you can leave a comment or you can contact me via email (mike [at] bearloga.net). I always enjoy other people’s feedback and opinions, so don’t hesitate to explain to me why my views are wrong…in your view. :)

Thoughts?

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March 1st 2010 : permalink : 2 notes : Comments

the only way to stay sane

Let the gaming come back to me…

While I’m waiting for summer — that’s when all of my friends come back from their various colleges in LA and Europe — I’m keeping my sanity with video games. Partly by playing them, but mostly by listening to podcasts about video games.

I’ve discovered that the people I listen to are some of the most intelligent, funniest producers of audio content. Not only are there witty jokes, there are also sophisticated discussions that analyze the actual medium of video games.

My PC has barely been turned on since I finished my 30 hour Mass Effect 2 playthrough couple of weeks ago. I’ve been playing a lot of newly released Greed Corp on XBox Live Arcade (XBLA). It’s a turn-based strategy that’s so well made and such a joy to play.

I’ve been meaning to come back to both Bioshocks, but I’ve been too tired to invest a solid hour or two into them. They’re not something I can just play for 15 minutes and then stop. There is a mental and emotional investment that needs to happen first. Also, I suck really hard at Civ Rev now. I think the AI might be cheating.

I have no weekends. I go to school from 7am until 4pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I close (that means work until 11pm) Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Going to school and coming back involves a 1.5 hour bus ride. That means I spend at least 9 hours a week just sitting on the bus. I can’t do my homework on the bus because it’s impossible to write on that shaky thing.

How do I pull through every week? Video game podcasts!

Idle Thumbs, Giant Bombcast, Gamers With Jobs Conference Call, Drunken Gamers Radio, Rebel FM, PC Gamer Podcast, Nation of Gamers, CO-OP, 4 Guys 1 Up, The Married Gamers

…and SModcast (non-gaming, but still hilarious).

Do you have a video game podcast to recommend (requirement: must have funny, intelligent hosts)?

permalink : 2 notes : Comments

micro story telling

Fresh after ranting about a gold farming coworker, I want to briefly mention something I’ve been thinking about today: inference. Not statistical inference, which we’ve just begun learning in my Math 435 — Mathematical Statistics — class, but rather literary. Consider the following:

They were cellmates until Jack mistook Jim for a ghoul and stabbed him.

There is a lot of information encrypted in that single sentence.

  • I could have started it with “Jack and Jim,” but since I mention them anyway, I can get away with referring to them collectively.
  • Jack must have been found guilty of some crime.
  • Jim must have been found guilty of some crime.
  • Jack somehow got his hands on something that can be used a stab weapon.
  • The fact that Jim was mistaken for a ghoul can mean several things:
    • This happened at night.
      • Jack had a nightmare and saw Jim when he woke up.
        • If Jack had been showing signs of nightmares, was Jim concerned about him and therefore was near Jack?
      • Jack may have been hallucinating.
        • Psychological problems?
        • Physiological problems caused by food poisoning?
    • OR this happened during the day.
      • There is something seriously wrong with Jack’s mentality.

This is a basic exercise in analysis. That sentence tells a story. It gives you just enough information to create a rough picture in your mind, but depending on your own personal history, you will end up crafting your own story.

This makes me ponder:

If the artist purposefully delegates the art to the observer, doesn’t the observer become the artist…then who becomes the observer?

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a rant about gold farming

It’s 2am and I just finished watching Law Abiding Citizen. Great movie but I’m still unsure how to feel about some of the things it says. I’ve got two things I want to post tonight, here’s the first of the two entries. There’s this new guy at work and apparently he’s a gold farmer in World of Warcraft (WoW). I want to talk about this right now.

Let me try to explain what gold farming is, because conceptually it’s ludicrous. Gold farming is grinding through tedious parts of a video game online, devoting hours and hours of your life to attain virtual money (that can be used to upgrade your character with better armor, weapons, etc.). Here’s the absolutely ridiculous part: people will actually pay those gold farmers real money in exchange for the virtual money that they don’t have to acquire play the game for themselves.

You know, I’ve looked into quantum mechanics, string theory, and polynomial quotient rings, and I’m still having a ton of trouble wrapping my head around this idea: that people pay a monthly fee to play a game and will pay more money for virtual gold that they don’t wa…I can’t even finish.

So this guy — who, by the way, happens to be the worst employee I’ve ever seen at the store, but for some reason won’t be fired even though he’s still on the probationary period where he’s not part of the union /rant — was saying all proud and shit that he makes like $200 a week that way.

That’s two hundred dollars a week, ladies and gentlemen, that is not taxed in any way, provided by playing WoW. With that and his pathetic new job at the store, that’s still not enough to get your own place in Southern California. With the amount of time required to accumulate enough gold to sell, that eliminates any other possible jobs. He’s young — 18 or 19 — so there’s a really, really high chance he’s still living with his parents.

This guy… He is making money from something that has absolutely no positive impact on the world. He is scamming people out of their money. He is illegally using somebody’s intellectual property for his own financial benefit. And I doubt any of that money goes to his parents who house him, if not pay for his subscription. $200/wk is a substantial, taxable income, and it’s one that escapes the IRS.

Congratulations, sir, you are not contributing to society in any way.

February 25th 2010 : permalink : 2 notes : Comments

introducting @gamefortunes

If you liked my post “in game” is the new “in bed” then you’ll definitely want to follow the Twitter account I just set up for it: http://twitter.com/gamefortunes

Currently there are only the ones from the post (because I have to get ready for work right now), but expect a lot more later. OH, and here’s the high-resolution icon I made for it in Adobe Illustrator: