So, after my epic battles with Premiere and then three times uploading to YouTube, I've finally finished the video that completes my series of reviews. If you can excuse the rather poor writing and me tripping up over my words, you may find enjoyment in it. Either way, it's been fun writing these reviews and I look forward to the good stuff to come in 2010!
Continue reading >Due to many codec and such type issues, progress on the third and final installment has not progressed as quickly or smoothly as I hoped, so I'll give you a quick sneak peak at what's coming down the turnpike.
It is time now for the second wave of '08/'09 reviews with today's column covering video games.
There was quite a bit of hype surrounding this game when it came out. It was supposed to be a Star Wars IP that the world hadn't seen since Shadows of the Empire. Did it live up to the hype? Depends on who you ask. I didn't buy it until recently, but I definitely had fun playing it. That said, there were also many points where I was frustrated out of my mind to the point of controller throwing (something I've not done in years). Some of this was due to faulty game mechanics, but mostly my own incompetence. Sadly, the game is fairly repetitive in terms of combat and I found myself relying on Force lightning to handily finish off every enemy I came across. There are plenty of options for combat such as push and choke and, of course, your lightsaber, but none of these were as handy or wholly satisfying as lightning. Oh, and for all the hype about Euphoria, never once did I see a stormtrooper grab another in mid air. 7/10
Continue reading >Yesterday, we (Ryan, Tyler, and I) had the pleasure of finally attending my very first convention (outside of the local county fair). Sadly, it wasn't a sci-fi convention as I would have liked, but an anime convention. I don't consider myself to be an anime nerd, and even border on disliking the genre entirely, but I did have a pretty good time none the less. The convention itself was fairly small in comparison to others, but there was still a goodly amount of things going on and plenty of dealers peddling their anime related wares.
The atmosphere or the con was... nerdy. Even so, I felt strangely out of place as I was one of the few attendees that wasn't cosplaying. Most of the costumes I didn't recognize, but there were the likes of Phoenix Wright, Yuna, Link and, surprisingly, several Snakes from Metal Gear:
It still surprised me just how many girls were there. In fact, I'd say the males were outnumbered by quite a bit which, for me, is an unusual situation to be in seeing as I go to school overflowing with testosterone. Just being around all these people was probably the most entertaining part of the day.
One of the areas we spent the most time in was the dealers floor. Just about anything anime related was being sold. Mangas, DVDs, T-shirts, action figures, plushies, costumes, weapons. And that's barely scratching the surface. As you can see in the picture above, I broke down and bought a Godot shirt. I wubs it!
There were some video games, including an NES championship tournament, but it was a side to everything else going on. There were rooms showing animes, people talking about how to improve your AMV/drawings, all sorts of crazy stuff. We wound up the night by sitting in on the "Weakest Geek" game show. It was kind of like Double Dare (sans the mess) and a quiz show with the Who Wants to be a Millionaire music playing in the background the entire time. The biggest part of this game was the "Box" game wherein a picture of an action figure would be shown and the player would then proceed to try to find said action figure in a fish tank filled with more action figures and packing peanuts. It was all rather entertaining to watch and the crew running the show was pretty cool.
I'm going to wrap this post up with a video I took while I was there (and later added music to).
[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/I712oSEjZIM]
One of the more mundane things that happened over Christmas break was my learning how to solve the Rubik's cube. My ability to do so was actually big thing in math class the following month. Since then, I've been improving upon my technique and now I'm going to show you how to solve Rubik's Cube in ten seconds or less. Video after the break.
Continue reading >Over the last couple of months I've been served a delicious helping of 3D stuffs at school. This was, of course, overshadowed by the awesomeness that was Flash. But I digress. At the end of this month our final 3D project wound up in an awesome culmination of 3D animation and my favorite motion program, After Effects. The result? See for yourself.
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Summer is here, and with it vacation. Unfortunately for us Full Sailors, we only get about a week of summer vacation (I get ten days because all my classes let out early). However, that's not to say I'm not going to take advantage of the time off. Quite the contrary. Tomorrow I will be heading back to the good old midwest and chill with my folks. It's been over half a year since I've seen them, so I'm definitely looking forward to going back. I'm especially looking forward to potato salad. Mmmmmm....
Interestingly enough, tomorrow is also one year from my graduation. It hardly seems like I've been here for nine months, but there it is. It probably helps that I'm usually pretty busy and that most of this is pretty fun. Though, I will admit, Flash was pretty boring. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed working on my projects, but they were small enough that I finished pretty quickly. And the last half of the course was a beginners guide to programming, something that I really don't need. So, while I did try to do more advanced things than what the project originally called for, there wasn't a whole lot of room to flex my muscles, as it were. You can check out my final project here. Yes, it is an homage to egoraptor's series of awesomeness (who I had the great pleasure of helping recently). My other class this month was 3D modelling. That class was a lot of fun. The teacher was cool, the project was fun; I just enjoyed the entire class. I'll have my final project up on YouTube sometime soon.
In other news, I have begun and am about half way through animating a real Flash cartoon, one which will be entitled Phoenix Awesome. I hope to have it up on Newgrounds sometime over break.
Well, that's about everything. I'll leave you with my MGP final project which I never actually posted on here. Enjoy
[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/0JIccRK5PUA]
One of the first video game songs I remember really enjoying was Gerudo Valley from Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Back when I had a crappy computer and little hard drive space, I would listen to MIDI files and Gerudo Valley was one of the few songs that had a pretty good version out there. Of course, now that disk space isn't an issue, I've moved on to MP3s. However, I still find myself listening to more remixes than the actual original itself (because, let's face it, the N64 instrument library sucked). But, anyways, here are this weeks Gerudo Valley music picks.
Continue reading >You've seen Metal Gear Awesome 2, and other wonderful things Newgrounds. But, now, egoraptor has a new adversary! Lo and behold the glory that is MY FLASH!
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</object>
For the heck of it, go check it out on Newgrounds as well.
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Not going to put a whole bunch of useless text on this one, however I will explain things a bit. This is yet another project for motion graphics. The criteria on this one was to create a commercial for a demographic outside of my own. So, I decided to market Full Sail to women (because we don't have near enough). Enjoy.
I've wrapped up my first month of motion graphics (MGR), and with it I finished my sixth month of school. Hard to believe it's already been half a year. Time does fly when you're having fun. But that's hardly why we're here.
For MGR, our final project was to create a magazine layout and thirty second animation for a product, service, etc. I had a few ideas for mine before settling on something that was close to me: Crayola crayons.
I've never really touched much on my artistic background, but I've always had a box of Crayons crayons handy. I can remember buying crayons with my birthday money (it was the only time I ever had any) many times. Also, whenever we'd take a trip to visit my grandparents I'd always be drawing stuff with a bowl of crayons that my Grandma would set out. Even now, sitting next to me on my desk is a box of 64 Crayolas, and they're not unused either. And, for the record, those other brands aren't really crayons. Crayola's have a distinct smell, texture, and feel that has not been duplicated by anybody else. I don't mind spending a little extra for them. Upon opening the box and getting a whiff, I am suddenly a little kid, lying on the floor doodling and day dreaming away as only the innocent can.
But, enough of the schmaltzy stuff. Before you can watch the video you must see the ad. It kind of sets the mood.
And, now, for the coup de gracie. Enjoy!
[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/2FcS9z_JVv8]
As of the beginning of this month I began my foray into the wondrous world that is motion graphics. Our first project was to make a ten second bumper advertising ourselves or a "company" that represented ourselves. I was originally going to use my name and try to brand myself as myself, but it was advised by an instructor that I brand myself under a pseudonym, at least for the remainder of school, so as to have something that gives a lasting impression. I decided to play off of my more or less established internet moniker, dxprog, and came up with dx productions. Grab yourself some popcorn and prepare to be sold my awesomeness.
[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/GHCdSXO4_Fw]
Everything I had posted here before is now outdated (and more than likely was when I came up with this). The latest Xinput driver from Microsoft supports the Harmonix controllers out of the box (people who think I'm fake probably already had this). You can get the 32-bit version here and the 64-bit version here.
Be sure to check out Andrew Rudson's Drum Machine
Answers to common questions:
Does this work for PS2 or PS3 controllers?
No. This driver is for Xbox 360 compliant controllers. Seeing as I don't have either of those, I don't know their level of support.
Do the Xbox 360 work on the PS3/PS2 version (or vica versa)
More than likely not, but once again I don't have anything to test it out with.
You're not a hacker. I plugged mine in and it just worked.
Not really a question, but:
A) I had old drivers when I did this (Nov '07). The old drivers didn't support anything outside of Microsoft Xbox 360 controllers. The newer drivers have been rewritten to support third party contrllers.
B) Hacker is (or was) a synonym for programmer, so once again, you're wrong.
I have a problem with my computer. Can you fix it?
Being a full-time college student I don't have time to attend to every little problem. There's an internet full of willing people who are much smarter than I and have far more time.
No time? But you made this! You obviously have no life!
I made this in half an hour (video included). And it was over Thanksgiving break at that. You, my fine sir, troll the internet telling people they have no life when it is in fact you that have no life. Seriously, go and get yourself a girlfriend. Once again, you lose.
Okay, enough poking fun at people. I hope this brings all the confusion and chaos to a close.
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Hah! You thought it was going to be something about Smash Bros., didn't you? Well, my friend, you were WRONG!
This is actually a school project. If you can name for me a college (other than mine) that tells you to rip your DVDs and then cut them together in a bizarre manor, I will give you piece of candy. This movie here is the result of about seven hours straight of work. I was up until three in the morning finishing this thing up and, many, many revisions later, I get something that's almost semi-believable. I was trying to just use Episode III Anakin so that I'd have some continuity. I also needed to cull footage from a red vs blue lightsaber battle which limited me to the Dooku fight and the fight at the end of Episode V. I was hoping for some more close-up shots, but there weren't very many in either of those battles. Lucky for me the sets were fairly similar so that helped a little bit.
Well, enjoy.
No, I'm not dead. I'm not even necessarily all that busy, just no real drive to write anything on this blog. However, there is something I need to bring to light and here it is:
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Maybe some more on me later after I'm done with finals and stuff this week.