Ghost and Spectres

StarCraft II - Heart of the Swarm is out!  I got the collector's edition but its still in shipping.  Boo!

I sketched a sci-fi girl to pass the time

Drew inspiration from ghosts and spectres.  I was asked what character she is.  I don't know.

I

...

Don't

...

Care

I'm already itching to just buy the digital download and get cracking.  This whole franchise has made my wife a widow and has left my little girl with a single parent mom!

XCOM, LoL

I did it!  I finished XCOM.  Checkout my unlocked achievement.

Humanity's saviour

I started playing over Christmas at my in-laws cause we were visiting and I had buckets of time.  I was power levelling at the end cause I thought the last level was going to be stupid hard.  That, and there would be 2 or 3 diffident squads assaulting select parts of the ship (as opposed to just 1).  After all that grinding, apparently for no good reason, my soldiers beat the game in a blow out.  A little anticlimactic, but I am satisfied.  Here's a snapshot of our heroes:

The team that accomplished the mission

vs.

Team Valkyrie that I wanted to end the game with.

Wait.  They're all...how come they all have the same colour...

ARMOUR!  Yes, good question.  I am too cheap to pay for the Elite Soldier Pack and did not expect enough of the game to pre-order it, which again, would have given me the same thing.  Um, as of writing, I just remembered my brother customizing his XCOM squad with flamboyant colours  You know what?  Never mind.  Moot point now.

So what's next?  I'm not going to play the Slingshot expansion pack right away.  I'm going to play the next StarCraft 2 episode.  But, seeing as how there are still a couple weeks before Heart of the Swarm, I'm jumping in and out of some sweet League of Legends.  Check out my primary and secondary champions:

Wukong and Lux

I really had no idea the Monkey King was going to be one of the champions, but I was scrolling sawhimERMAGHED!!INSTABUY!!so here he is.  Lux is little more of a different story.  It was a toss up between her and Fiora what with the fencing and the sword.  But really, when I considered it a little more carefully,  2 melee charters may get kinda old kinda quick.  Therefore, I elected to go with a ranged support glass mage.  Very low HP.  Very squishy.  =(

Pavilion

Here's a work in progress that almost slipped by.  A Chinese pavilion digital model based on an elevation of a gate from the Laio Dynasty.  

Oh, that Liao Dynasty!  Why didn't you just say so?

Sounding like a broken record, this is part of a bigger master plan (that is crawling at a snail's pace).  But I least I have some colours in mind.  Without further delay, how about some quick spin arounds?

The same way I love them Lamborghini convertibles. Topless.

I have no clever pun for the roof.

Lots of work left.  Especially modeling a suitable site.  In the likely possibility that never comes around, I'll just slap this on top of Queen's Park.

Googly Eyes

Yeah, OK guys.  Real mature...

Pencil Control

After procrastinating for a long 6 months, I finally tattooed my buddy's XBox controller.  Not exactly a tattoo per se, its graphite!  He'll have to spray some clear coat or ink it himself.

The drawing surface was much smaller and much harder to draw on than anticipated.  As you can see, I had to omit part of the bikini girl.

She had a face?

At least Cortana survived sorta intact.

What about the smaller icons?  I couldn't get Gambit's eyes quite right, so I switched it up to some playing cards on the left.  Spiderman's eyes are pretty obvious on the right.  And yes, he is a Brit(ish enough) man proud to sport the Union Jack.  Also enjoys Ricky Gervais, Billy Connoly and Eddie Izzard.

***

The first image that popped into my head when he asked me to draw something, was Mario.  In a split second, I realized my folly of drawing Mario on an XBox controller.  Please do not burn my house.

Not the Bravest

My brother and I play XCOM Enemy Unknown.  So we had a good kick seeing this:

It's funny cause its true.  LOL

Now we got that out of the way, I'd like to copy and paste an epic email about Final Fantasy All the Bravest.  FYI, I sent him a link with an unfavourable review.


===

For a $4 iPhone game, this seems to be a "You get what you pay" type of situation.  I don't think I'd want to do any serious gaming on a Smart Phone simply because of the power level, so from my perspective, I think this review lets people know what they're going to get.

Having said that, if I need to wait 5 minutes for a friend, I'd be happy to pull this out and waste time with a low-substance game with nostalgic and familiar elements.

I can easily see how this is quite a lacking game that's more a cash grab than anything else, but if you removed the Square Enix elements from it, and just had a bunch of characters fighting monsters, I think this would be a hilarious game to play.

Personally, I think the author is expecting a bit too much from a $4 game, and it's emphasized because it's from Square Enix.

My complaint, however, is that it's $4 for a LOT of reused and rehashed materials.  Music, sprite art, and concepts have have existed in the FF World for so long - I'm not convinced that the game system is worth $4 of design/implementation/programming/marketing.  I'm not comparing it to a $70 game, because realistically, this would sell more copies since more people have $5 and a Phone than $70 and a Console.  I think at $2 or $3, this would be more reasonable, but like Hello Kitty, add a special name, and you can charge more.

===


Other review's are equally if not more scathing.

PWND!!

Before the Oracle

Batgirl (the 2nd)

Barbara Gordon.  Before the Joker shot and paralyzed her and she became Oracle.  She's even got her brainy glasses hanging off her costume.

Subtlety

I added nerdy glasses, of course, to imply it's Barbara and not, Elizabeth, Helena, Cassandra or Stephanie.  Certainly not Kate, who's actually Batwoman and is sorta maybe interested in other women.  I... I actually didn't read everything, so I included the links to remind myself to catch up later.  This is more about the costume.

Speaking of which.  Supergirl's new costume.  HUH?  I've been a little out of touch but...  but that's another rant.