Johnuva

Oh my gosh that new Star Wars trailer Yay, so awesome!!

So the annual deals for Brick Friday through to Cyber Monday are reportedly right around the corner - 28th of November to 1st of December - and this will entail the usual goodies on offer. Free exclusive Winter set for £50, 5% off for £100... you know the deal. Apparently US and Canada are seeing these two bits in particular today as part of an early-early-access scheme before it hits the rest of the world next week, so hopefully people know what I'm getting at. Based on the last two years, starting from the 28th there should also be some exclusive early access to sets that would otherwise go live in January. For me, I'm keeping a very close eye on that delicious 75060 Slave I, and if you've noticed the title of this blog you should have no reason as to doubt why. In fact, it's become a "tradition" of sorts that the only directly-asked-for Christmas gift is a UCS LEGO Star Wars set. This started a couple of years ago and this has included the AT-OT (cheapest "big" thing the store had to offer, although I was going through a minor Clone-army-building phase), R2-D2, and the Red Leader X-Wing. As the Slave I is also one of my favourite ships from the Star Wars universe, and as I have been neglecting to get any of its most recent set iterations* due to not being too keen on "standard sized" iterations of classic ships as I feel that the detail and grandeur is lost somewhere in the "scaling-down", I do feel quite a base need - let's not deny it - for this beauty. Also the new Detective's Office is rumoured to be on early access. Any material I have seen promoting Brick Friday indicates that two exclusive sets will be on offer, and I don't see any other which would be appropriate for an early access. It's something that has caught a lot of people's eyes, and it's something that people who aren't into Sci-fi can get their grubby mitts on whilst adding to their Modular collection or creating a very stable foundation for a first-time one. Time shall tell, of course, so until then I shall satisfy myself by finishing work for this term at Uni and simultaneously preparing for SWTOR's Shadow of Revan expansion on 2nd of December. * The only LEGO Slave I versions which I own - not including any free miniatures from any Advent Calendars - are the 7144 from 2000 - yes! - and the 7153 Jango Fett from 2002, so it has been well over ten years since I have owned and/or built any non-miniature versions of the ship. This even beats the Millennium Falcon, the only iteration of which I own is from 2004, and the reasons for not "replenishing the stock", as it were, are the same as listed above. That, and the UCS was too expensive and size-y for my liking, even though that does mean that I am now technically (?) contradicting myself. Ah, well. Additional: If there's one thing this hiatus has proved, it's that I need to get back into the proper "swing" of blogging and proofreading entries. I've had to edit this entry about five or six times because of things I got wrong or misspelt or what-have-you. Seriously, I had even left a sentence hanging ("As the Slave I is...") without even realising it.

Good to know that there are some who still do

So somewhere along the line of general internet-ness I of course caught wind of those new sets for Bionicle and after much of keeping-an-eye-on-things (I like to keep tabs on some former interests of mine, after all), I eventually found myself drawn back here. And so naturally the first thing I needed to do was make a blog post regarding my return from such a long absence and then prance off merrily into the blogosphere. *Prances* Also, blog clear-out under effect. 198 visible entries back all the way down to one. Seemed like a good way to return to clear out everything and "begin anew", as it were.

This looks awesome. It looks to me as if the graphics from the games in general have been improved, which is going to look awesome when released. I seriously cannot wait for this.I'm not sure what to think about the voices. I doubt that they'll be able to used sound clips from the actual movie without speical permission, as they'd technically be selling film-copyrighted material within the game. I don't know exactly how copyright in this area works, but I'd imagine somebody would get a bit upset if material was taken from their film directly. At the same time, if voices were to be used, it wouldn't be 'right' if it were other people voicing the characters directly, so they'd have to use the clips from the film...I would personally prefer them not to use voices in this. Lord of the Rings is indeed something where more than just grunting figures would be needed to convey the story, although having gotten used to what we've had for so many years, it will take some time getting used to. I can't quite imagine the humour of LEGO games coupled with the epic dialogue of the films working somehow. If something humourous follows that "You shall not pass" speech, it just wouldn't seem right and would be very anticlimactic. This works with the others because of the lack of speech, and we know that it is not meant to be serious because of this. Voices would make the very humourous game series too serious, and therefore would not truly appeal to their 'true' target audience. They managed to make the last three HP films kid-friendly and fun, so if doing the same thing to the LotR films will make them more universally appealing, they'd do it again.We'll just have to wait and see.

I wholeheartedly agree with this review. Everything seemed to fit neatly into place. You could easily tell the characters each had their own distinct personality, which then clashed with everyone else's, and that they weren't all base shallow characters who get on absolutely fine and dandy. The plot made sense, and was a remarkably fresh take on a widely-recycled plot. (I haven't seen any of the Marvel films before this one; I seriously need to catch up. )

Due to the Second Great Dataclysm, I was of course unable to post last week's comic (and there was much rejoicing), so have it now.This is the second comic in the Fugitive arc. It is also the first comic to actually feature Rahnga's sprite in a walking pose. Additional: This is going to be the last comic for three weeks, for reasons I'd rather not divulge. One benefit of this is that it sets up the cliffhanger ending of this comic in a much better way than I ever could in the comic itself.

They're tricker than they look, though. The legs are easily the trickiest part (or so I've found), just to keep them in accurate proportions with the body and head.

I know that feeling. I can't either. Daniel Ingram is a genius.

I don't really have a preference myself. I mean, yes, it's great to see people putting in the effort to actually draw their comics rather than 'just placing sprites onto a background and adding text'.But both types of comic do have their downsides: neither is definitively better than the other. Hand-drawn comics are great when the respective artist to carry across the art in a clean manner and with readable hand-written text. It would also mean that detailed backgrounds aren't really a necessity. If the writing is too scrawly to read, then there would of course be a problem. Not only that, but if the art is smudged with unrefined pencil lines, then scanning said picture would make it even worse to see on screen, let alone actually read if the writing suffers the same fate. Of course, one way round this would be to draw round the art in photoshop; even better is to use a tablet, as doing so would be easier than mouse-drawing, which could leave the artwork looking a lot more worse for wear.Sprite comics are good because they are overall more simple, both in execution and in creation. However, in order to seem completed, backgrounds are really a necessity, and for some sprite comics, this can make them seem to be a little 'off'. For example, using real backgrounds which have been abnormally squashed with sprites would be effectively creating a jarring effect, and any text would have to be in a very bright colour in order to be seen if just typed without aid of speech bubbles.Sometimes, though, it isn't the work that goes into them that is what counts: Quality is also something to watch out for. People who are new to comic-making could accidentally save their latest comic as a .jpeg, thus ruining the quality. Of course, some series do do this deliberately to either spoof 'stereotypical noob' series or as a homage to other noteworthy series which have done the same.People resort to sprite comics in order to show creativity that they might otherwise be unable to show through any other mediums. If the respective artist just can't draw for toffee, they can use sprites as an alternative and thus pour their ideas into those. Of course, their ideas would be limited to whatever sprites are available at the time; hand-drawing allows for any character or object that hasn't been sprited to be shown.Sprite comics have one additional benefit that hand-drawn comics don't: through using sprites, one could very easily make an animated movie, which, given all the frame-tweening and the collaboration, takes a lot more time than anyone ever realises, and so also takes more effort in these regards. Does that make it better? More dynamic, certainly, given that one could also then use music and show scenes which would otherwise not be as exciting. Besides, in this medium, one could quite happily use sprites and draw characters in the animation software to cut down on time than if just using the latter on its own.I myself am a fan of both of these forms of comic-making. I make sprite comics, yes, but that is because I personally do not feel that my drawing ability is good enough to be put into comics here. I encourage all forms of comic-making, and I am aware that people can learn from their ealier and worse material to create better and better versions in both categories, so really one can't say whether one is better or worse when they aren't at the 'endpoint'.However, there's one comic medium which I personally think takes much more effort than any of the two mentioned here: 3D comics. Modelling bodies, masks and backgrounds would take much more time than either drawing or spriting, and it would also likely cost more to run the software. The amount of effort one has to pour into doing something like that would be phenomenal. Again, this makes the series much more dynamic and 'real' than any of the standard forms of presenting comics. It would certainly be a lot cleaner than just drawings without any attempt to spruce them up, and more effects could be placed into the models to make them appear more impressive. Not hand-drawn, but not sprites either.

Easily This Day Aria was one of the best parts of the episode. It just fit in so nicely with everything else that was going on: it didn't feel forced, and it ran ever so smoothly. Few shows have songs that are able to be fitted in so nicely with the general surroundings. The organ in Chrysalis' part just made the songs absolutely perfect, in my opinion.Best song overall? Tossup between This Day Aria and Smile. Both of these songs are perfect in that they convey the personalities of the singers so very well. The former shows how powerful and lost Chrysalis and Cadence were respectively, and the latter just showcases Pinkie.

link [Please link images that have filesizes greater than 500kb. -Bfa]

Thanks for pointing that out, Knave: the topic's links have been corrected.Anyway, time for a new comic.I didn't point out a first for the series for last week's comic: it was ironically the first comic to feature all five main characters of the series in one panel. Now it's time for another first. This comic features absolutely none of the main characters. And so I give you the first story arc: Fugitive!