matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

A few months back, my two youngest bros and myself had a little art battle which I summarily won quite handily. This weekend, as I was visiting my folks, we held another one. Same premise: each person chooses a picture, all three must draw said picture to the best of their ability. All laying around my iPad, the battle began.

I would've figured Joe would have this in the bag as he draws Wind Waker Link A LOT and without reference, even. But, such was not to be. As can be seen, I got a little bored waiting for everybody to finish.

Now, I will go on record and say I didn't like the chosen picture much, but there it is. I'd actually call this a three way tie because we all hit and miss aspects of the picture (there's something going on with the eyes on mine).

Joe decided to sit this one out for whatever reason pretty much leaving me the winner by default. Both Steve and I quit prematurely because we were getting bored with the whole thing. I'm just happy mine doesn't look "lumpy" and even Chris agreed.

So, there it is. Our second art battle with me, yet again, taking away the trophy. I think next time we should try not copying a source image and just toss out a subject to draw. It could very well level the playing field. All in good fun, though.

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.

So I decided to do Midna today. There are parts of this picture I kind of like but overall I really hate it. First off she looks like a guy. Second her head is not wide enough and I scrwed up the shading on the face so it's hard to make out her eye. The body I'm happier with than what it originally was, but it still seems... off. Ugh. Maybe whatever I draw tomorrow will be better.

I need to do more drawing to help beef up my skills. As such I have set up a little exercise for myself: select a theme each week and do a drawing every day. This week's theme, as the title suggests, is Zelda. Specifically, Twilight Princess. So I bring you my first "masterpeice":

Honestly, I'm not terribly thrilled with this. All I can say is I can't wait to get my Mac Book Pro from the school loaded with Photoshop so I can use tools I'm already familiar with. My Prismas are nice, but they lack an undo function.

I had the top 5 post all written up and something went screwy when trying to post it. Now it's gone. Lost forever in the digital mines of hell. I'll give you the basic rundown without the commentary because I don't feel like typing it again.

Top 5 Games I Can't Wait For

5. Final Fantasy VI DS (not confirmed, but you know it's coming)

4. Pheonix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

3. Eternal Sonata

2. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

1. Super Smash Bros Brawl

I'm going to have to reserve some money because these all come out within the first couple months of school.