Posting posts no wood in sight

So yeah, first post on this blog I guess. I was going to post it on my other blog... but I forgot where I even had that or what it was even called, so yeah new blog posts for the first time in a few years for the people who care about whatever stews in my mind.

Lately - nay for the last few years - much of what has been passing through my frontal lobes has been to do with the mod For Hire. For those who don't know it's project I've been working on with Toadie since some time in early 2009, and during these last three years I have mostly worked on level design and occasionally modelling stuff like characters or props.

Why am I doing this you might wonder? Three years is a long time to sink into a project with no prospect of payment or profit, indeed lately I've almost been wondering if I've been diligently working to get magic beans. To be honest I hadn't expected the project would take up so much of my time, but I continue working on it because I do hope that my work on that project will prove to be a means towards employment.

Using a mod for prospective employment is something I increasingly worry about, partly because I look at other people's work and see a huge disparity between theirs and my own, and also because it seems as though employment in the games industry is shifting away from experience with modding as a prerequisite.

Whilst things like this do feel disheartening, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm working with Source. It's one of the hardest game engines to work with, extremely time consuming and has a terribly disruptive workflow cycle (trying to get original content into Source is extremely trying, so much so that few people have even bothered).
The other thing I need to remind myself of is that I'm only working with 3DSMax to produce models, whereas other people have more powerful tools for character creation. To be honest though, I doubt I'll ever pursue character modelling as a career point since I imagine you would need a solid art background to do so.

But yeah, all things considered I feel pretty pleased with what I've managed to do with Source, it's taken some real pig-headedness to work with but I'm almost finished now. Even if Source is a seldom used engine I have learnt a great deal about professional level designing, optimization, etc - all things which can be applied in other 3D engines without too much trouble (as always learning the interface of a new 3D program is the only tough part).

Phew, with all that longwinded stuff I feel as though it's time to talk about something fun. Typically fun for me right now consists of anime (feel free to stop reading from this point onward if you are sick of hearing me talk about it) which serves as a pleasant sort of mindless escapism when almost all my other waking hours are spent thinking about things.

Lately I've been greatly enjoying Mouretsu Space Pirates, which is sort of a slice-of-life space opera about a prospective space pirate (I am very much hoping it will start having plenty of yarr harr harr and plundering sometime soon).  The show is pleasantly slow paced, it's nice to see one that doesn't dive head first into a storyline to try and grab the attention of the viewer in less than half an episode.

It's still quite hard to judge where the storyline is going at this early stage, but suffice to say the first few episodes have been pretty good; characters are presented in an endearing and idealized way (which is to say, pure of heart and good natured without any fanservice or otaku pandering).

So yeah, Mouretsu Space Pirates is a good show.  Another new show I've been enjoying is one which is simply titled umm, 'Another'.  The initial setup was very much derivative of the horror genre (which this show belongs to) whereby a new guy moves to a new area, everything is not quite what it seems and no one will tell him anything... you get the idea.  But even if the initial premise is extremely generic, Another is produced extremely well: there is enough mystery each week to keep me entertained and wondering what is going on; the plot moves on at a reasonable rate; the animation and backgrounds are superb - some of the best I've seen since Gosick.  If you're looking for something vaguely like Higurashi or Shiki, this is worth checking out if only for the fact that it is a very polished horror offering.

Speaking of Higurashi, I've suddenly found myself hankering for DEEN shows, so I've been rewatching Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka. I'd forgotten how much I love that show, I'm glad I bothered to archive it.

So yeah, have some genius masou-shoujo.



Thats all for now (and really it must be) this has been a longer blog post than I intended.

Until next time!