A regular exploration of YouTube will produce many top X lists for various genres and topics each with their own level of questionable credibility and quality. The better ones have slick designs and come from online magazines or famous blogs, while the lesser ones come from Winamp playlists and the default settings on Windows Movie Maker.
As I sat bored one night/morning I thought to myself, "Self, I can do that too."
So I did.
This is the first of an ongoing series of Top X Countdowns I'll be producing. This one covers the top 6 most br00tal-est machine gun riffs in metal music.
Note: I misspelled br00tal as br0tal in the video, apologies to metal heads everywhere.
Finally, after a bit of a hiatus, here is the third episode in my Alleviate series. This episode covers the speed running subculture of video games (a subculture of a subculture?). The delay in the release of this episode had to do with the inability of an external hard drive to endure a three inch drop onto its side. Suddenly, everything is unreadable and I have a $180 paperweight!
I digress.
Speed Running has a long history among video game enthusiasts. It began as a way to extend the life of favorite games by challenging yourself and others to finish the games as quickly as possible. Before the console days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, games were typically only found in arcades and had no endings. Famous examples like Pac-man and Space Invaders were made to eat your money and the only real test of valor lay in attaining high scores.
With the NES, though, games could be played without a limit on continues (even the most brutallyhardgames could be bested through perseverance and a high tolerance for pain). So the goal of high scores was replaced by simply beating the game. What followed naturally was being able to beat the game quickly. The Speed Demos Archive is a great place to find all of your favorite games being beaten on their original consoles very quickly and efficiently.
In this modern computer age, we also have the ability to emulate the old consoles on computers. This led to a type of speed run that used computer tools to assist in their development, hence the Tool-assisted speed run was born. TASvideoshas the most complete and interesting array of this variety of runs available for download.
A less than compelling thumbnail...
Remember, legitimate console runs are demonstrations of pure human skill and TAS runs are exercises in mathematical precision. Both are fascinating in their own right. Here are a list of some of my favorite runs in both categories:
From the Speed Demos Archive:
Blaster Master, NES, in 0:36:59 - Blaster Master is one of my favorite games, just beating the game is quite an accomplishment.
Contra: Shattered Soldier, PS2 S-Rank in 0:38:01 - Shattered Soldier is a hard game. Earning an S rank means beating the entire game, start to finish, without getting hit once.
Doom 2, PC, Nightmare in 0:29:56 - Doom 2 needs no introduction, it is the seminal first person shooter for the PC. This beats the entire game on Nightmare (which means the enemies are twice as fast and respawn after they die). I could write a novel on my love of Doom, but I won't. Suffice to say, it is a great game with prolific and still-active community.
Mega Man 9, Wii, in 0:21:37 - Mega Man 9 was released on the Xbox360, PS3 and Wii but retains the look of the classic Mega Man titles from the NES. Here the game is destroyed in less than half of an hour.
From TASVideos:
Rockman 2, NES, in 23:54.75 - This is a work of tool assisted art. It completely destroys the game and remakes it in the authors' image. Note: Rockman is the Japanese name for Mega Man, but the game is the same.
Super Metroid, SNES, All items in 1:08:10.87 - Super Metroid is my favorite game of all time. Here's how to collect all of the game's items in just over an hour.
Megaman X and X2, SNES, in 41:41.43 - This is the single best Tool assisted run I've ever seen. The concept is brilliant and simple: Play and beat Megaman X and X2 simultaneously. A feat only possible using emulator tools, both games use the same input (read: controller) and are beaten nearly at the same time. Truly, a marvel.
As an aside, you may wonder if people in this age of fancy 3D games and massively multiplayer extravaganzas still compete for high scores. Of course they do! And not just in a King of Kong kind of way either. A game run that tries for the highest score is called a Superplay. I cover superplays in an upcoming episode of Alleviate.
If I could compress my lifelong ambition down to a single idea it would be to tell stories through video games. During the last years of college,I actually got an opportunity to complete a small XNA game with two programmers from Rice University (one of them was my brother, nepotism?).I was taken on board as an artist because they wanted to have art content slightly more impressive than MS Paint scribbles (ah, programmer art).
Naturally, if you give a mouse a cookie he'll want a glass of milk, so I ended up designing the game concept, writing the "endings" (it was an abstract shooter so not much was required in the form of writing), designing the 3D and 2D art, composing the music loops (inspired by this song from Infected Mushroom), and creating the sound effects.
The game was called Arc.
This is a screenshot from the level "Irrational".
The basic idea is that you pick a colored ship and fly through a trippy auto-scrolling level whilst trying to destroy as many blocks as possible (the name comes from arc welder). There are a few novelties and nuances to this process. First, the laser cutter on your ship cuts faster through thinner chunks of blocks and secondly, various power ups can help you succeed.
In this shot, the second player is using the score laser to attack the first player.
Arc also contained a co-op and versus multiplayer mode. The versus mode gave each player half the screen where the goal was to out score the opponent. In this mode, extra power ups were available to harass your opponent including one that destroys everything on there half of the screen (thus robbing them of potential points). Vengeance was always available in the score laser, though. The score laser was a secondary weapon in versus mode that attacks the other players score directly. In this way, versus matches can either be played by trying to increase your own score or by decreasing your opponent's score to win.
This is a screenshot from the versus mode.
I will hopefully have some fancy trippy videos of gameplay available soon. But for now, enjoy these screenshots.
I am a drummer and love writing and playing music. Personal drum heroes of mine are Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater (I hope that link stays active, if not here's another), and Neil Peart of Rush. There are certainly othersthat I enjoy, but none that really inspire me as much as these two guys. They play very precise and creative progressive metal and rock respectively.
Having said this, in the conceptual realm of music theory, of which I know only so much, there is a large domain dedicated to rhythmic constructs, i.e. drum beats. One fascinating subject, to me, are polyrhythms.
A polyrhythms is at its basic form two rhythms played over each other. 2 on 3 polyrhythms have a strange and soothing sound and are commonly used by Phillip Glass (that's right, another reference to Glassworks). This video tutorial below, though, one I did for a video class, teaches the basic idea behind quintuplet polyrhythms.
Content aside, I also did the editing, directing and post-production on this video. So the color asides and black and white medium shot were intentional. Successful? That's a different question. I'd like to think so. The lower thirds are a bit large, but overall I'm happy with this edit. As a bonus, here is some unused footage from the (very short) shoot of me improvising and generally just screwing around on my kit.
This was a short film I did for an art class. I think the video speaks for itself (it has audio, for instance).
All of the post production was done with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. The piano piece playing in the background is, in fact, an original piece that took no longer than the length of the video to compose, perform and record.
My dad, brother and I recorded an entire album of progressive metal under our (creative) band name, Nordin. Our website is here (made by me). You can buy said CD here or here.
The other website, Pouet, is a great index of the productions from the demoscene, a subculture of computer engineers and mathematicians than create art using the limits of various computer platforms. The results can be quite amazing. Keep in mind both of those examples come from 64kb files.
You could fit that over fifteen times on a floppy disk.
Raphael Morovo was an odd fellow. He had almost everything anyone could want in life. He was very wealthy, a result of an eventful life as what could be described as a professional adventurer. His main source of income was his fortuitous discovery, and subsequent negotiation of rights, to a vast oil field in eastern Forstat.
This monumental find enabled him to live in the opulent estate he now inhabits. Of course, for all of his accomplishments Raphael is not without his demons. He is haunted by nonspecific and all-consuming guilt. Seemingly sourceless, he would be seized by bouts of crippling depression and suicidal thoughts. Any prolonged consideration of the reason behind these episodes was met with powerful migraines and occasional blackouts.
The pain is especially pronounced when he spends too much idle time thinking about the Pylon.
But all of his worries seem secondary to his current situation. Alone in his sprawling estate, night has fallen and the rain has begun again. He knows that this time the rain won't stop. He awakes in his guest bedroom, where he always sleeps, and notices the bathroom has been boarded up.
During my last semester at the University of Houston I, like many before me, had little interest in doing what could reasonably be defined as "work". But at the same time I wanted to do something to contribute. The solution was, of course, to make a video blog. YouTube is full of these things. Morons with opinions in front of cameras, talking to the dot that is their webcam, deluding themselves into thinking that a single other soul in the universe cares about their idle ranting.
Like this!
Now I get to be that moron. I get to be your moron. And I couldn't be happier.
I produced six episodes for the class and the first is about Hulu and Wikipedia vandalism (the smart kind, not the stupid kind). The remaining episodes will be released in the coming days/weeks.
It is no secret that Silent Hill 2 is the greatest video game ever made. The game is very much an experience like no other. As far as sequels go, undoubtedly the finest example as well considering the restraint that went into its design.
There are roughly two different kinds of horror movies and video games. The first is the traditional American style which is heavily based on gore (Hostel), the literal manifestation of fears (Arachnophobia), monsters (A Nightmare on Elm Street), and generally speaking violence and mayhem. These elements make for visceral and shallow attempts at scaring the audience. Usually the only reaction these methods can elicit is an involuntary jump when something loud happens on screen.
The so-called jump scare. Usually accompanied by a scare chord.
Note: Follow that link at your own risk, you may look up at the clock and see that seven hours have passed and the sun, previously set, is rising despite your efforts to will the Earth's rotation backwards to give your night back. You're now addicted to TVTropes.
Now, shallow doesn't mean bad. These efforts are like potato chips; delicious, but gone quickly and rather unhealthy in large amounts.
The second method of horror is what I'll call the Japanese style. This methodology relies on an atmosphere of dread to create horror by implying horrible things, using supernatural elements like ghosts, symbolic manifestations of fear, alternate realities, and unreliable narrators. Of course, this style was not invented by the Japanese but the term is used basically as a distinction between the two ideologies of modern horror movies.
Games fall into these two categories as well. The American style is epitomized in the Resident Evil series with its gun-toting heroes and flesh-eating enemies. The Japanese style is epitomized by the Silent Hill series, specifically the second.
I prefer this style of horror. Disturbing. Lovecraftian. Psychological.
This is the painting that James Sunderland finds in the Silent Hill Historical Society as interpreted by my meager painting abilities:
An appropriate alliteration is always ahead of the aberrant adjudication of alphabetic assonance. I am the arbiter of arbitrary aptitude, amply able to apply my awe-filled aperture at able-bodied associates.
Alas! Whence I am absolved of anonymity, I will announce apathetic apologies to the annoying agents amidst me. Adjoining adherents are all aware of an awkward aura around the altar of artistry that abridges my arrogance. Again and again, astute acolytes of altruism will amp my ability to allude to areas of ancillary actions, but such apparent ambition is an abhorable act.
I was contacted by my sister a few weeks ago about a lady who needed some things for her wedding. She wanted to have a photo booth set up at her reception, so it became my task to create some high quality photo collages that fit the wedding's theme, Japanese Cherry Blossoms.
This is how one of the panels turned out.
Fortunately, Hermann Park has an authentic Japanese Garden. Hooray convenience!
I took many different shots of the garden and only ended up using a few. The better ones ended up here and can be purchased. You can also commision me to do a photo collage by following this link.
There, I trolled my blog entry. Cathartic in a way.
Sad in another.
Since this is the first entry I feel the need to praddle on about my mission statement, my desires and dreams and various other irrelevant personal matters, but I won't. I'll spare you any excessive self-indulgence (naturally, there will be some, this is the internet after all, a breeding ground of strange humanity).
The succinct purpose of this blog is to be an outlet for all of my personal creative endeavors. This serves a few ends, namely, to act as a sort of online portfolio for all of my digital art, video, music etc. and also a place to make money by shameless cross-promoting other sites I operate. Like this one!
This goal is noble and bold, like an English king. Yes, that was formatting-based humor. The first, but not the last I assure you. This blog is 100% original content* so I'll make sure to include actual content and not just a wall of text.
