xenophilia

I never thought they could do it again.

I never once thought they could actually do it again. Sure, it looked okay in the screenshots, a tad underwhelming compared to FFX, but then, that was the way with the last one too. I remember those screenshots: interesting, but not intriguing. That changed soon enough.

One of the first video clips I downloaded on the internet, 4 years ago, was from Squaresoft’s website. It was tiny, pixellated, aretfacted and I couldn’t make out a single detail, but damn, that single 5 second clip sold it for me.

Same way now. Saw the screens, interesting, not intriguing. Then I downloaded this (60 MB, use a download manager):

tgszenosaga01.mpg

I never thought they could do it again.

I never thought they could capture the same feeling. But they have.

I never thought Mitsuda could do it again with the music. But he has.

I never thought Joanne Hogg could sing something as good — no — better, again. But she has.

It’s probably a year away, but hey, I waited the last time, and it was more than worth it (disc 2 included), and after seeing that video above, I’m sure it’s all going to be as good, if not better than the last one.

MGS2 Who?

¡Vb!

the dwarf of the opera

Paradoxically, I’ve been doing more writing about my writing than writing. Fantasybits has been buzzing since the entire closing ‘joke’ pulled by El Dwarf. It feels good that all of it is out in the open and the mess has been sorted out. Not that this is an end to it by any means, but at least now we all know things in black, white and a few shades of grey I’m not so sure about.

I’m most interested in what JacLyn has to say about all this.

Meanwhile, the Cube-i-fying process continueth, with mixed results. I think I’ll stick with it — looks better than anything else I’ve done all year.

NaNoWriMo still kicks major gluteus maximus, and the ongoing story that just spontaneously sprung forth is running well. An excerpt:

“No thanks,” she said, “I tried some of these — Jez gave ’em to me, they’re foul. Don’t compare to the stuff we have back home.”

“Back home?” Drago asked.

Alexandra wedged herself between Angie and Reese on the couch. Reese couldn’t stop staring at her. Angie couldn’t stop glaring at Reese.

Alexandra said, “Have you ever smoked the leaves of the Aureate Gonvax, farmed off the back of a Silk-Dragon and dried in her breath?”

“Can’t say I have,” Drago said.

“I’ll show you sometime, shug’ah.”

“I look forward to it.”

~~~

The other writers are nice — maybe I can get a few to come over to Fantasybits to play. I know C’Tah joined.

Bender is stuck. She shall not be by tonight.

¡Vb!

box populi

NaNoWrimo sure is fun. The message-board is just overwhelming sometimes, but hey, that’s what you get with 2000 people participating.

One thing it has taught me even before I put pen to paper on my NaNo-vel is this: Aim Low.

For months — heck, years — I’ve been trying to go from 0 to Da Vinci in no time flat, which usually leads to a lot of badly done, half-finished drawings and tons of frustration, followed by the “I can’t draw anymore!” thing.

Aim low, the sage says. Quality? Fuhgeddaboudit! Quantity — you bet!

You know those parts in the art books where they tell you to draw simple skeletons? Too complex for me, to wishy-washy, especially the way I draw.

Boxes.

You heard me, boxes — from now on until God knows when, I’ll be drawing boxes. Or rather, I’ll be Cube-i-fying people. Taking their curves and dips and nasty looking contorted expressions and turning them into boxes. One for the head, one for the body…

I did two sketches — haven’t drawn boxes in years, so the lines and perspective were a bit off (I’m still prone to ‘curving’ the boxes to make them look more like body parts) — but I’m getting there.

Think out of the box? Heck…

…The Box is your damn Think.

¡Vb!

debut-isms

Today has been a rough day, writing wise. I hammered a few thousand words into Bender, but even in writing them I wasn’t satisfied. I have to move away from this habit of ‘introducing’ my characters in every story — it’s starting to annoy even me that I have to start Savant off as ‘the guy in the black coat’ every time. I do this with a lot of stories. I never say “John crept along” — I say “The figure crept along” until later on someone says “Hello John” and the character is named.

This never happens with my smaller, lighter stories, probably because lighter Savant stories are like new editions of a comic strip, whereas I unconsciously try to keep each longer/serious post as a self-contained thing in hopes that someday it may be published… this is even stranger as, to date, I’ve never tried to be published ^_^

Of course, the exception to this habit was Saturn Syndrome, but then, that was long and light-hearted, so…

Hopefully I’ll finish Bender tonight, but I may sleep early — tomorrow we’re supposed to start either Frontpage or Dreamweaver…

…eep.

¡Vb!

live and in naked colour

So I finally went and created one of these. Hello world, I’m Vishal, and this Blog will be used for displaying the stranger excrements of my mind every few days/weeks/years.

Please, stay, and feed the beast.

¡Vb!