Saturday Night Stupor

Another Saturday evening stuck in front of the computer. I suppose it’s a good thing I have plenty of work coming in but people need sleep for heaven’s sake! Still, typing this post has me slightly more alert than formatting another instruction manual in Spanish or perhaps downloading artwork for the umpteenth time. If you are curious as to what I get up to nowadays you can wait a few more weeks for my site update which will show some nicely arranged images of recently completed projects. The PDF method I currently employ is not as immediate as some people would prefer so I will be adding a gallery on the site instead.

Not much gaming this week due to work and the kids hogging the plasma with the sickeningly garish Wii incarnation of Paper Mario. I will admit to playing and enjoying the first Paper Mario but after few years of Xbox 360 ‘therapy’ I no longer have the patience to tolerate these sugar coated offerings from Nintendo. I need thrills, suspense and a little grit from my games at the moment and titles such as Cooking Mama, Tamagotchi Party On and Mario Party 6 Billion aren’t cutting the mustard. I grabbed a few demos from XBL this week and will give those a blast when I get some time. Timeshift, Stranglehold and the Call of Duty 4 beta all await. I know, all guns, all killing but that’s my bag right now. Almost all the big games around nowadays such as Bioshock, Halo, GTA, Lair, Heavenly Sword etc all involve… well death basically! Except on Nintendo. They have floating pink dresses and pastry rolling.

Off my feet!

Going to be short on updates while I work through a mountain of projects. Got lots to talk about but no time to write it or find the right pictures. I managed one resized image for the Lair story a few posts down. These new pics look much more effective and will allow me to show either larger images or a collection of images in a comic-panel style. All the earlier posts will get tweaked at some point. Where's a Tardis when you need one??

Blogspot breaks

Just changing some things on the blog today so hang tight while I switch the header graphic and make the pictures bigger and meatier. Tried it once and the site just hangs and can't finish the job. Technology today eh readers!

Ok, header done. All the post images need to be reworked to the new size so I need to do some photoshop jiggery. Then things will not look like you're viewing the blog in glorious 'cack-a-rama' vision.

Little Men

Another idea poached from the pages of Famitsu were the comment box characters of the staff writers. Famitsu review section had its own little drawings of the four main writers and everyone agreed it was the best approach for the Mean Machines reviews. Not only did we miniaturise the staff we took on the super deformed Japanese style with the tiny bodies and massive heads. Sketching countless variations of characters was easy to cope with especially as a lot of the drawings were generic figures that could be reused again and again. It was not so easy when new staff joined the magazine and a brand new set of character drawings had to be made. I got so lazy near the end that I just drew the heads and stuck them on the old bodies.

Tat Attack #2!!

Nintendo are the masters of tattle and probably keep more kids locked in warehouses packaging plastic toys than any other games company in the World. The star of this particular tat update is an oddball card game for Mario Kart. You seemingly build a kart track using the cards and that's about all I can figure out from the box. Complete pants but still more entertaining than most of the rubbish that’s released on the Wii.

Sony Suxxors?

Another incredible week for Sony. Crappy PSP sales, rampant ownage by Nintendo in Japan, major PS3 titles getting kicked in the teeth. Oh, lets not forget the almost daily hilarity of Sony staff getting caught doing retarded things like a shambling review of Bioshock and this week’s editing of the Halo 3 wiki entry. I’ve worked with SCEE on a few occasions and their PR department always seemed to be staffed with chimps and gimps so I shouldn't be surprised anymore. Still, recent activity beggars belief don't you think?

The jury is still out on the PS3 as far as I am concerned. I’ve yet to see that killer title and there’s nothing on the horizon that won’t be out earlier and play better on another system. Lair is the latest next-gen tragedy to receive a Kipper with some truly appalling review scores. I recently finished the design for a Lair promo guide and was forced to use a load of pre-production artwork instead of screenshots so it wouldn’t look so... err... naff. Still, the onliners who have recieved a copy seem to think the reviewer's guide is 'elaborately illustrated' so mission accomplished!

Black lines. Don't do it.

My first few weeks at Emap were spent creating illustrations of one sort or another. I had a technical illustration background along with reasonable freehand skills so most of my day at Priory Court was spent preparing the templates for the launch of Mean Machines. I was put to work constructing the icons, symbols, score panels and the 'little men' charicatures. We took inspiration from Japanese magazines and game packaging. Famitsu magazine and a host of game manuals and boxes were always strewn across my desk for inspiration. It's also interesting to note that we never had any computers for the design department when Mean Machines began! All layout was created by hand then photocopied and stuck to paper templates using a wax machine. We endured this 'method' for two years before we got our first Macintosh Quadra for the launch of NMS.

Weekly Tat Update #1

Keeping to the chicken theme I reckon it would be neat to reveal snapshots of some of the hoard I’ve collected over the years. I'll select one item a week that looks either interesting or completely rubbish. First up are some cool metal figures that came as part of a pre-order freebie when you bought SNES SF II. The figures were randomly thrown into the package so you had no idea which characters you would get. Vega is a keeper but the others aren't that exciting.

A shocking theme

It’s not often I go through a game again so soon after beating it but such is the case with Bioshock. Doing it again on Hard (which isn’t hard at all), listening to the soundtrack and searching the web for any Bio-related malarkey that might be available. What isn’t so good is the Cult of Rapture theme for your Xbox that Eurogamer are currently pimping. It’s free but you’ll need to give over some of your personal details before you can claim it. Anyways, got my code, downloaded the theme and… ugh. Nasty, porno colours and an uninspiring choice of preproduction artwork thrown across cheap textures nicked off the internet. Who is responsible? Are they colourblind? An interface similar to the faceplate with the rusty, metal textures would have been so much better.

Tastes like chicken

When I worked at GameFan we had a word to describe all the freebies sent to us by the software companies. That word was chicken. We loved chicken. We hoarded chicken. We fought wars over chicken. Chicken made every day worthwhile as we worked tirelessly to get our grubby mitts on the hottest software, toys and promotional garbage that would bombard our postbox each morning. I had an advantage with a brother living in Japan whose monthly chicken round-up was the envy of all the other staff. Most of it was magazines, games and game guides that we would tear apart for news and other stories. The rest was a selection of weird plastic licensed tat that included card games, stationary, novelty toys and plushies. Most of it is gone now as it just took up too much space but I did keep a lot of Street Fighter merchandise. We gave more coverage to the Street Fighter series than any other game hence the huge amount of material we had managed to blag over the years.