Games Course Alumni Shares His Top Tips On Art Projects.

A big 'Thank you' goes out to our Alumni, David Woodman, who has shared some of his top art tips on ArtStation for our students to learn from his many years of experience as a 3D artist and Art Director in Research and Development at TT-Games!

Top Tips.

You can also see examples of David's work n his ArtStation portfolio.

Swabbing The Austro-Hungarian Poop Deck

Work continues on the Aeronef. The decks got their base coat and wash, and I managed to paint the highlights on five of them.

I also took one to completion, it got its funnel, turrets, windows and colors done up. Like I said before, I'm not looking to go overboard with these. Just a serviceable, table-top paint job.

Suikoden (PSX)

Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

1997 (1995 in Japan)

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Systems:

PlayStation, Saturn, Windows

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to Suikoden, a game that's been sitting on my shelf for ages. I borrowed it from a friend a while ago and he moved away before I could give it back, so it's just been lying there ever since, unplayed. Until today!

I knew the game was an JRPG when I borrowed it (one of the earliest RPGs on the PlayStation in fact), but I had no idea what the title was about. Typically Japanese games will get an English title when they're released in the West (except for games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest which had an English title from the start), but for some reason this has remained Suikoden.

Turns out that it's loosely based on a novel of the same name. Well, that's the name it has in Japan anyway. It's actually a Chinese novel called Shui Hu Zhuan, one of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature (along with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber), and in English the title translates to... Water Margin. Probably for the best they left it as Suikoden.

Read on »

First Post In A Long Time

Can't wait for Eldar to come to AI!

Well, what can I say? I've been gone a long time. The last time I posted on the blog was over a year ago, covering ASOIAF. Since then, a lot has changed: Work got busy, got a kid on the way, COVID, and the craziness that is 2020 keeps on coming.

I'm not even sure who even follows the blog anymore so I'll try and keep this brief, just to test the waters. To keep everyone honest, there's a lot of content out there that talks about 40K these days. I stopped writing and started listening more to podcasts, watching others play games on YouTube and reading other blogs out there that are really informative and interesting. While I still play the game, I just haven't been writing as much because well, there's not that much need to.

The games I still play are:

• Warhammer 40K (yup, still playing.. since 3rd lol)
• All Eldar - DE primary, then E, then Harlequins
• Age of Sigmar (fairly recent)
• Hedonites of Slaanesh
• Aeronautical Imperialis (just built my Tau, waiting on Eldar, still haven't played a game)
• Tau, until Eldar come

Games that I have currently retired:

• X-Wing (sold all of it after FFG rebooted/destroyed it)
• Armada (packed up and sitting in the garage, just got boring with no new content)
• ASOIAF (packed up as well, just couldn't find any interest nearby or in my immediate playgroup)

Since I promised to keep this brief, I'm just going to leave it at that. If anyone is still following, let me know if you want to see some content on 40K, AoS or AI. I know with 9th Ed. coming up, there's going to be plenty for me to write about. I also don't see a lot of content out there for Aeronautica for some reason, maybe that can be something I can get into.

Stay safe everyone :)

Post-Credits Scene

So, I've been re-watching a lot of great stuff during my forced time at home (lockdown), as well as staying the fuck away from major cities during the rioting, looting, arson, and murder-fest that's been going on.

One of those re-watches has been Community.  Another, incidentally, is Rick and Morty.  Just the other day, something hit me like a ton of Antifa lobbed bricks!  The Dan Harmon post-credit scene that either ties up a loose end or just some funny throw-away bit that caps off the episode.

That made me wonder... how many GMs go back to the well, mining that after-the-denouement gold seemingly just beyond reach?

To my recollection, I've never knowingly done that (planned it out before the session began).  However, I'm sure that either I or a player mentioned something after the session was pretty much over and it got discussed.  And through that discussion, a kind of roleplaying happened.

But in the near future, whenever I start gaming again (face-to-face is my preference), I'm going to consciously initiate a post-credits scene.  During the session, I'll casually look for characters and situations ripe for loose-end tying.

Anyways, just wanted your take.  Leave me a comment!

VS

p.s. In these sad and frustrating times, who wouldn't want to escape into an eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalyptic world?  Yep, I have just under 150 hardcover Cha'alt books remaining.  Want one? Details over here!

p.p.s. Is our 2020 the darkest timeline?

p.p.p.s. I just realized this blog post is #666.  Shemhamforash!