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Shadow Wolf

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Posts posted by Shadow Wolf

    Disney goes back to it's roots... about time..

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah, I think the reason that he could never "get a break" is because he was always pushing the boundaries on animation/content, and he didn't tend to sugar coat things a whole lot.

    I kind of wonder what his movies would have been like if he had had more control of what was going on, I know with Land Before Time he had to tone some stuff down cause it was considered too hardcore for the kiddies or something.

    More people should be willing to push the boundaries like he did.

    Incidentally, this was one of the main reasons Bluth's studios went under. In the early 90's when he was actually running Don Bluth studios, he did more children's movies. But even though they were kids movies, they often dealt with some pretty adult themes. Secret of NIMH, All Dogs Go To Heaven, An American Tail, and most of his other movies pushed a lot of boundaries. Because the American public has the weird idea that animation is solely for children, he really did have a hard time getting a break.

    Fast forward to 1992. 20th Century Fox, a media behemoth in every way, is starting an animation studio, and Bluth was helming it. Anastasia was their first project, and even though it was a pretty mature twist on a princess story, it released to critical international acclaim in 97. The movie grossed $140,000 worldwide, well over doubling it's 53 million dollar budget. They decided to try again, and Bluth received a gargantuan amount of funding for his next project, Titan AE. 75 million, to be exact. That's massive for a 2D animated movie. Even though most people that actually saw it liked it, it only made $36,754,634 worldwide. So Fox shut down the studio.

    So, in answer to your question, if Bluth had creative control to push the boundaries with his movies, you ended up with horribly underpraised historic gems of American animation like Anastasia and Titan AE.

    And in response to your final statement, Americans aren't willing to accept the idea that animation could be for anyone but the kids. If you push the boundaries, you lose profit and get shut down. That fact is one of the many reasons I got out of animation before I even graduated. You churn out whatever the kids are laughing at, however cliche and done to death it might be. Creativity in animation is not well tolerated.

    Disney goes back to it's roots... about time..

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I am REALLY excited about this one. Hand drawn animation has really been a lost art since around 97. Far as I can remember, Princess Mononoke was the last pure hand drawn movie. I'm sure this'll have some CG in it, but it's great to see a return to the roots.

    Without quoting half the thread, anyone who hasn't seen Enchanted should, it's a hilarious sendup of everything Disney ever. Also, Amy Adams. Need I say more?

    And while I agree that Disney's movies from 1989 till about 1995 were amazing, I think Don Bluth topped some of them for looks. Secret of NIMH is in my opinion one of the most gorgeous pieces of animated art ever created. Don Bluth is an amazing animator. For that matter, Anastasia and Titan AE (even with a ton of CG) were both gorgeous as well, although Titan AE wasn't recieved very well.

    Can someone tell me what's up with this sword?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    now see, that's a sword with a gun in it that actually fires projectiles

    the gunblade does no such thing

    I almost feel bad making posts this nerdy anymore, but something continues to compel me. The gunblade is actually one of the more feasible Final Fantasy weapons to bring to the real world. The barrel of the gun IS the blade, and the bullet passes through the 'spine' of the blade - the unsharpened back side. There's a piece of official artwork somewhere that shows the muzzle of the gun exiting where the gunblade curves down to a point. It would be entirely possible to implement such a thing, but it would be mostly senseless to try to use both functions at once. It would also pretty much require a cutaway of the blade in the hilt area so you could stabilize it on your arm and aim with it. It wouldn't be the most sensible of weapons, but it's totally possible.

    Can someone tell me what's up with this sword?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    First things first. The hilt of that sword is clearly a motherfucking bottle opener. Open your eyes.

    Have you played Fallout 3? There's an RPG on the 360 (and PS3 and PC) that's generally considered a good game. And hey, the main character's only a pussy if you are! Surely you're up to the challenge.

    Truth man. My character has armor that would make King Arthur shit his pants and a plasma rifle stolen from a piece of the mutilated corpse of the last asshole to try to mess with me. I'm so badass that people's heads spontaneously explode when they meet me. And by spontaneous I mean I introduce a plasma charge to their face, just to kinda say hi. Good game.

    Should I buy I new processor?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I haven't been up on my hardware for a bit, but if I'm not mistaken there are no dual core Pentium 4 processors. There's Pentium 4's with hyper-threading, a process that's kinda like 'half a dual core' if you will. The core processors I believe have a different pin configuration that would require you to buy a new motherboard as well.

    I'm being impersonated...

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Oh no, totally understandable. I just feel the arrogant need to leverage my "I've been here since October 2002 forum dinosaur" status for no good reason every now and then. Basically it's like this: If OC Remix was the Harry Potter series, Prot would be Lord Voldemort. "You know who." Only a few are fully aware of the train of transgressions that led to his banishment to the outer void, and I'm not one of them. But I watched. And I was sad because his tunes were epic. But evidently so were his hacking skills.

    LaEdit'e:

    The most influential life ever lived.

    I totally forgot about that tagline. It never struck me before how amusingly blunt and arrogant that is. And it made me smile.

    The Black Mages III - Darkness and Starlight

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    First of all, there is no such thing as "too much keyboard."

    Ever.

    Truly. Like listen to Children of Bodom. My brother does, not really me, but their keyboardist is fucking insane. If anything there's too much the rest of the band and not him. For those in the know and ready to bombard me with useful information, I'm already aware that he has solo instrumental projects, I just haven't been able to get ahold of them yet. :P

    Has a game ever changed the way you thought?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I wouldn't say any game has ever changed the way I think, but they've certainly made me think. The best example I think has been Fallout 3. That game lets you more or less decide if you'll be good or evil. I decided right when I started the game that instead of deliberately trying to be good or evil, I was going to play every separate situation by ear, and I've learned a lot about myself from that. The game forces you to realistically ask the question "What would I do and how far would I go to survive if this was the way things were?"

    The best thing about it is that even if you THINK you're making a decision for the best, it might not turn out that way, and there's nothing you can do about it. I reported a shady character to the town sherriff and we went up and confronted him. He shot the sherriff in the head, leaving his son an orphan. I led the ghouls into a tower full of racist aristocracy, knowing full well most of the rich bastards would die and deserve it... but in the process the ghouls killed one of their greatest supporters, no questions asked.

    I appreciate a game in which the repercussions of my actions can't always be predicted and might not be what I want. I REALLY appreciate a game that makes me take an introspective look at myself and realize that if I needed armor badly enough, I'd be willing to sneak up behind a girl, club her to death with a transmission bell, strip her down to her panties and take her money to pay for the repairs on the armor I just messed up. You don't get thought provoking social commentary like that in real life.

    (Incidentally, for all the folks I've killed, the game still labels me the last best hope of humanity.)

    OCR-Tan

    in Post Your Art!

    Posted

    Really impressive work Sixto. The only pick I'd put in is that her clothes are a bit too reflective. I dunno if that's a phong shader or what you used, but you can tone it down a bit if you layer a semitransparent blinn shader over the top of it. It's been forever (read: 2 years) since i modelled anything though, so maybe they have better ways of doing it now.

    The guitar now... All I can say is I want one. That's a Guitar Hero strat waiting to happen. Any chance of an OCR faceplate for the World Tour guitar? :P

    why do you play other people's music?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I'm gonna completely ignore the rest of the thread and answer the original post, because I find the question very intriguing.

    In general, I would say that music is composed because of a feeling. It is the language of our emotions. When someone writes an original piece, it is often because their feelings led them to it. The style, key, time signature, structure, every nuance of that composition is affected by the emotions of the composer and what they were feeling. Thus the song becomes a time capsule and a freezeframe of who the composer was and what they were feeling at that moment.

    That said, I think we play other people's music not just because it sounds good... I think that on an instinctive and perhaps subliminal level we want to understand the depth of what that composer was feeling when he or she wrote it, and we simply can't feel all of that unless we are completely immersed in it, playing every note, gaining a deep understanding of WHY they chose the key they did, WHY they chose that time signature. We want to know not just the music, but the reason for it, and we can't begin to have those answers until we're playing it.

    In essence, to boil it down to the roughest terms, I think a musician seeks out other people's music and plays it because sharing the feelings of the writer is an intense and beautiful emotional high, and every new song is a new fix. Good music evokes feelings, and great composers can use it to evoke the feelings THEY want you to feel. The purest way to experience it... is to play it yourself.

    New Final Fantasy XIII Trailer

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    You ARE aware of the odds involved in getting that other one right?

    Sorry for the sarcasm, but the odds of actually getting that thing is about 1/1000 every time you come to open the chest, which you can only do after you go 2 or 3 screens away, which takes a few minutes each time (if you are super quick). Mostly I think XII was a punishment to people who are obsessive and want to get EVERYTHING that can be had in the game. Maybe that is what some people go for. A game that will have you running around mindlessly for 300+ hours killing the same crap over and over again. With that kind of playability, who needs WoW?

    OK, I'm done ranting. Perhaps there should be an FFXII rant thread...

    I watched my brother try to do this for days. It was like 1 out of 40 that the chest would even show up, and when it did, it was a further 1 in 100 that it would have the spear in it. Far as I know it was about the only item in the game that he finally said fuck it and moved on.

    EDIT: I asked him, and no he never got it. The drop rate after the chest shows up is 1 in 1000. This exact type of thing is the reason I quit World of Warcraft as well. If somebody cares to figure the odds of 1/1000 on top of 1/40... it's all but impossible to get. I realized that especially with persistent games like WoW, if I actually attempt to get these items, I am being mindfucked into countless hours of gameplay, and I keep paying them so I can play to get an item that will be obsolete when I do. I refuse to put on a psychological leash like that.

    New Final Fantasy XIII Trailer

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    No really, I loved every part of this game except for one. Say you made Basch into a tank. Leveled him up to lvl 100, filling the entire license board. Now all of the sudden, all you need to do is change his weapons, armor, and gambits, and he is the absolute greatest mage that you can make in the game. I hear that the international version fixed that, but still. You don't need to work anything in order to specialize your character.

    That is definitely my biggest complaint with Final Fantasy XII. Character identity was skin deep and went no farther than the model because every character could learn exactly the same skills and be changed on a dime to be a completely different class, and perform exactly as well as the person before them. It removed the NEED for using more than the characters you had in your party. Pick the prettiest and play through the whole game with them. If that direction continues with the series, I'll probably never pick up another Final Fantasy game.

    I personally (and I'm aware of my minority status) think that 10 had the best training system devised in the history of the series. The sphere grid was genius, because while every character COULD learn the whole grid, they had to start SOMEWHERE, and that somewhere defined what their class would be for the majority of the game. Skipping around meant you never accessed high level skills, you needed to follow a path out.

    The second thing that game did right was instant and unlimited party shifts in the midst of a battle. I felt that actually reinforced the identities of the characters. Yuna was never ever a frontline in my party, because she couldn't fight worth a hoot. But if I needed a white mage, well dammit Yuna was it, so I moved out Kimahri, cuz I didn't need a tank, I needed healing and Yuna could do it. I thought it gave a great sense of uniqueness to every character, and a beautiful level of strategy and flow to party management.

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