It's Probably Safe to Post Now...

Wow, life takes over fast, doesn't it?  Haven't been able to play SWTOR in a while, either.  I want to say "Hello!!" to Rach and Eli for being awesome people!  Also, Rach, I've been meaning to e-mail you, I haven't forgotten!  Just suck is all...

I did get to watch all of Bioshock Infinite...and boy if you don't want spoilers don't read anymore after this paragraph.  I can safely say that it was an amazing experience that had me glued to the television and I wasn't even playing.  Mostly because FPV gives me motion sickness and I suck horribly at it.  Literally.  When I pick up the controller there's a strange vacuum noise...

Here be spoilers:
Okay, so the first thing I noticed was that a) Elizabeth looked exactly like Belle from Beauty and the Beast except she had blue eyes and b) she had the same AI duties as Elika (except for combat).  Yay for Magical Girlfriends!  Er, whoops...daughters, I guess?  I'll cover that in a bit.  Elizabeth was your perfect AI companion, collecting resources for your usage only, help in combat with her magic tear powers, and even giving you money.  If you leave her alone she even interacts with the environment.  She is pretty awesome and again, reminded me heavily of Prince of Persia's Elika.  Courtney Draper did an amazing job (especially as an-almost novice) and I'm dying to get the OST just for her singing. Gameplay was otherwise pretty standard Bioshock fare which wasn't broken so it didn't really need to be fixed.  The moral choices in this game were different in that no matter what you did or didn't do the outcome was usually the same and had little to no impact on the ending.  That was new, at least.

Your main character is a fully realized individual with a detailed background, emotional state, face, and voice.  I love Troy Baker so much, and it was a real treat to hear him throughout the game (and not being Snow!).  It was also nice that Booker was actually important to the story itself and the actions taking place instead of being merely incidental to the events around him.  It was a nice change of pace for Ken Levine and I think it worked really well.  Infinite was all about the outcomes of choice and it was enjoyable to see this thematically, even if in-game it wasn't completely relevant.  Tony and I really enjoyed the whole "There but for the grace of God go I" dichotomy presented in the Booker/Comstock character(s?).  Tony really approved of the idea of baptism introducing a quantum state which I latched on to when he presented it as such.  One of the voxophone recordings by Comstock sealed it with the plight of the sinner who "drowns" in the baptism.  It's a neat concept we've been discussing for a while now.

I know it irritated some people to high heaven (my good friend Joel being one, and I tell him to shut-up every time he opens his mouth on the subject) that your actual choices as the player don't count for much, but I think in a game like this it works.  It creates a linear path (and we know I'm all about linear story-telling) and doesn't have the issue of trying to resolve why certain characters would still be allowed to live or what to do if they were dead and trying to justify the choices players make.  The tone doesn't have to shift wildly between the puppy-kicking psychopath or the holier-than-anyone-goody-two-shoes morality system you find in most games nowadays.  I found that to be a refreshing change as it allowed for more morally ambiguous actions or left the player questioning if what they did really was the better option either gameplay-wise or character-wise. 

My favorite character was actually Rosalind Lutece, though.  A) she was voiced by the incredible Jennifer Hale, b) she had the best lines, and c) she was part of a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead routine, which is a sorely underused concept.  Triple thumbs up for the Luteces and their incredible, slightly sinister accordion theme!

Anyway, these are my half-baked thoughts as I stave off sleep for longer than I should.  Leave your favorite moment in the comments if you'd like.  Mine was Elizabeth being mistaken for Lady Comstock by the gate to Comstock house.  Anyone know if that was the voice of the Claptraps for the Borderlands series?

Take care you wonderful people.
 

Disney

Anyone know what Disney's next move is?  Besides Pixar sequels?  I'd love another Tangled, that movie had everything I'd been missing from Disney animation.

I still watch it at least once a week.  Ssshhh, don't tell anyone.

I just re-watched Beauty & the Beast last week.  Man, that's a great film.  The animation still holds up pretty well, though I noticed Belle was off-model in a few important scenes.  Also Gaston never fails to crack me up.  They were so spot-on with this villian.

Favorite Disney villian of all time?  Mine's still Hades from Hercules.  Hmmm...I think I'll watch that after work today.

Purity of Art

You might look at the post title and go: "Buh? The hell?", and I wouldn't blame you. It took me almost a year to understand this concept and I can't even remember the proper term for it. In fact, I had a 1/3 of a class on it and for the first time in my life I received less than a 'B' on something English/Humanities-related. But because this can apply to animation, I wanted to discuss it here.

I'll start by asking you the same question I asked myself after re-watching Wall-E for the fiftieth time: Which is superior: 3-D animation or 2-D animation?

Seriously now, don't blurt out an answer. Sit and think about it for a good solid minute, come up with reasons and arguments, and then keep reading this blog. Whatever you do, keep reading!

First, let me start off by saying this: Wall-E is a brilliant and heart-warming masterpiece. I utterly adore it to itsy-bitsy pieces. The fact that about 85% of the movie relies on pantomime to convey story is utterly fantastic and a concept that I adore and can babble endlessly on. It's my personal pick for Best Picture of 2008, maybe a tie with The Dark Knight.

That being said, it is (in my opinion) inferior to most 2-D animated features. Just as most 3-D features are. There are exceptions to this rule, and I'll go into detail later.

Two dimensional animation is superior because it is made directly from the artist/animator. Each cell of animation was hand-drawn from the animator. There was one person and one person only involved with that character on the page, and made them come to life by their own hand. Every expression, every movement, everything done with no interference from a machine, other animators, etc. All was created specifically by the animator themselves, and everything about the character on the page is inherent to the artist/animator's hand.

In computerized animation programs and just about any animator can manipulate a 3-dimensional model stored on the computer into doing whatever they want. Sure, only the best programmers and can get specific expressions, but with enough practice anyone can duplicate it. And therein lies what will always make 3-D animation inferior: the duplication. The mediums. A program made the art--not the human. A bunch of 1s and 0s created what the human hand didn't.

Think about the difference between a photograph and a painting. A painting is a purer form of art because it cannot be reproduced in exact detail, even with the same materials. Even the best copy-cat with the same type of materials, brushes, oils/paints, etc. cannot produce an exact copy because of the little things like paint clumping (for oil paints) or brush strokes, or even a hair of a paint brush being left behind on the canvas in the paint. A picture can be recreated in the same lighting and position easily, or at the very least you can take the original negative and create as many copies as you want. The machine created the art--not the photographer. In reproduction it loses its' purity.

The same with hand-drawn animation and computer animation. With the machine acting as the medium, the purity becomes lost and reproducible. Sure, it takes time and skill, but in the end you can create an exact copy of what was already made. With hand-drawn animation it take innate talent to be able to create recognizable characters on a page, much less copy the exact ones over and over ad infinitum. Could you copy Disney's Pocahontas cell by cell over and over again? Or Production I.G.'s Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade? I think not.

Look back on Toy Story now. At the time, it was a brilliant feat of animation. Now the textures look kinda silly and out-dated compared to what can be accomplished these days. Yet something like Beauty and the Beast is still incredibly impressive in terms of fluidity, motion, and character design, etc. Seriously.

If things like this interest you, I suggest taking a Humanities course or a Philosophy one. They think about this kind of stuff all the time. ^_^