Ah, I skipped a month again, it seems.
June was rather interesting, though. I finished the special topics class and our "demo-in-progress" was submitted to the Apps for Healthy Kids contest. It's rough...very rough, to the point the it's almost unplayable. But the idea of it is there, and if more time is spent on it, then a full game could emerge and actually be enjoyable. There were a few students (myself included) that continued some work after the class itself was finished, and there's been a group created on Facebook for AIO IGDA students, as well, that I've been following to keep up on the news for our game. Voting is taking place now.
I finally got to see "Avatar" (James Cameron's, not that white-washed "Last Airbender" tripe). The visuals were indeed impressive, and overall I enjoyed the story. I've heard it compared to "Dance's with Wolves," and it did make me think of the British colonization of the Americas, but there were parts that made me think of my Aislin story that I've been writing for the last eight years, what with the mining of precious ore and whatnot.
I've also seen Miyazaki's "Ponyo." I'll go ahead and say that it's not my favourite Miyazaki movie. I wanted it to be since I love "The Little Mermaid" stories that I've read and seen throughout the years, but this...wasn't "The Little Mermaid" to me. I felt like "Ponyo" had no real climax and no real resolution, and when compared to Miyazaki's other works like "Princess Mononoke" or "Laputa," I felt that it fell a bit short near the end.
Speaking of Miyazaki, though, Studio Ghibli and Level 5 (the developing team behind Professor Layton) are teaming up to create two games, one for the PS3 and one for the DS that take place in the same world, but tell different stories. To me, they appear to be like Pokemon, with the characters using monsters and summons to fight instead of battling themselves.
And speaking of Professor Layton, I've finally beat the first game and can now safely pick up the second one (now that a third is on it's way over to the states). Boy, talk about a game that can make you feel either stupid or a genius. I have the bad habit of over-analyzing the puzzles and having the answer stare me straight in the face, or thinking "A-ha! This is easy!" only to have my solutions constantly rejected.
I've also beaten Dragon Age, but have no clue how the game ended because of a power outage. I can now either reload the finished game to continue exploring Ferelden, or load an alternate save file about an hour away from the Archdemon. One of these days soon, I'll go back and replay the battles leading up to the final fight, but right now I'm a little miffed.
I'm close to beating Assassin's Creed (something I should have done a long while back), and I've decided to pick up Luminous Arc again and finish it. I've also been exploring Hogwarts in Lego Harry Potter, something I highly recommend to fans of the books or movies, as well as anyone who enjoyed any of the other Lego games.
I'm just about ready to wet myself over the excitement that preludes the coming Final Fantasy XIV. The PC version is coming out in a couple of months, and Ian and I are already planning on getting a new desktop computer for it. Unfortunately, the PS3 version won't come out until next year so we won't be able to play together, but when we first started playing XI we didn't party together, either. I'm really looking forward to creating a character and running around in such a rich environment. I'm also thinking about registering my copy of FFXIII to try to get into the PS3 beat test of XIV...
In other news, my deviant art page hit over 7,000 views, so I submitted a chibi drawing to thank everyone who watches me. I'm almost finished with a coloured version that I'd like to get up by the end of the month. I'd also done a marker drawing for an Art Institute Online DA contest (that involved no prizes) to personify Summer, which I feel turned out nicely considering I don't work with markers as much as I'd like. There are still a lot of pictures that I'm in the middle of completing, but I picked up some extra hours at work, so I'm not sure when everything will get done. I've actually got a sketch sitting next to me, but I'm a little uninspired at the moment, so this will probably be yet another drawing that remains unfinished for years to come...
