Atmospheric Pacing in an Ancient Video Game

     Because I've been obsessed with Doom music recently (partially due to this Doom ripoff illustration project which I'm regretting), it got me thinking about how great the level when you meet THE CYBERDEMON really was, on reflection.

     The first thing you'll probably notice is the really creepy carnival music.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iIrg4DM078

     The level starts you off in a tightly packed room with four switches, each one opening one door. Plastered on the adjoining walls are four of the strongest demons you'd faced up to that point, gutted like frogs. Walk out one of the doors and you'll be in a large courtyard. You'll probably notice a few of the pissant flying flaming skulls you've been killing by the dozen up till now. At this point you've got a suspicion there's gotta be more to the level than this. You take a shot at one of the skulls, only to hear a kinda deafening "RAAAARRRRRGH!" somewhere in the distance. If you were a kid when you first played Doom you probably peed a little. By firing a shot, you alerted the behemoth to your presence, and now he's stomping around the courtyard. Looking for you. All you hear now is a loud clanking metal footstep. You'll probably wander around the place for a while, out of a combination of curiosity and just hoping you find him before he finds you. When you finally DO see him... HE'S PRETTY BIG.

at this range... you're pretty much dead.

     The thing about the Cyberdemon is, he doesn't stop to show you his huge set of fangs or strut for a while while you soak him all in. The instant he sees you he starts firing rockets at you in salvos of three. If one hits you, odds are you're dead or close to it. It was one of the most intense boss battles I'd experienced, and it was with nary a dialogue screen, cutscene, or a plot at all, really.

This is something that games today are often terrified to do; let you build the suspense by yourself. Games today are so worried that you might miss something that the whole thing becomes more of a sightseeing tour than an actual experience. 

     Fighting ol' Cybie now is kind of a joke, as the good ol' mouse and keyboard combination which is now standard allows you to just circle-strafe him to your heart's content without ever catching a missile up your nose. Back in those days, though, when you were awkwardly using the arrow and ctrl keys to do business, he was one scary bastard.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Final Fantasy IX

     The following is going to be very gushy, nerdy, and nostalgic, but I feel like it's my DUTY as a gamer to say these things. So, abandon all pretense of coolness, ye who enter here.

     So I reread my Top 10 Video Games list that I wrote a while back, and I think I'd like to revise it. Clearly, Ocarina of Time is superb; I know it, you know it, anyone remotely aware of those games that you make move with a piece of plastic in your hand knows it. But Final Fantasy IX is number one to me, no questions asked.

     You see, I'm writing a comic script, and as the pages come out, it's becoming abundantly clear that this game has influenced me in a way that no other singular piece of media has. I owe SO much to this 11-year old game about a polygonal monkey boy and his adventures with his friends around the world. Whether it's the cheerful, reckless main character Zidane giving older-brother advice to Vivi, a young character who struggles with self-confidence and the uncertainty concerning his own mortality, or the beautiful, imaginative towns and landscapes, or the mostly-uptight cast gradually learning to welcome a sense of adventure into their lives, this whole story made an impact on me which I'm still realizing today.

     I remember every time I ever played through this game. Whether it was my first time playing on my brother's Playstation, my chubby little eyes watering from every cheesy Zidane/Garnet moment, or my playthrough when I was snowed in free from school, drinking hot chocolate with way too many marshmallows, or my venture through it in high school where we narrated the dialogue with ridiculous voices, or hell, even my last playthrough this past year where I picked up the controller when I felt overwhelmed or just a bit down. Every time I go through the game it's like embarking on an adventure which somehow never gets old.

     I should also explain something about my first playthrough; it was at the beach where my brother had brought his Playstation and this game. After we left that beach house and I no longer had access to a Playstation, I started to literally *miss* the characters. Like, I honestly really wanted to see more of them, and that's the *only* video game that has ever done that to me. True, I was also a stupid little kid, but even so!

     It has my favorite soundtrack (and guess what? Nobuo Uematsu, the composer, says it's his favorite out of all the ones he's done too. So YEAH.), my favorite characters... hell, the only strikes I can mark against it are the moments when the standard RPG random battle nonsense gets excessive (FOSSIL ROO HNNNNNNNG). Oh, and also the strategy guide sucked; after you bought it they had the nerve to put half the content online. But hey, at least it had pretty pictures.

     I don't really know why I'm telling whoever's reading this right now, though. I'm not trying to convince you to play it, because even if you did and liked it; hell, even if you did and LOVED IT and declared it *your* favorite game ever, there's no way you'd have the same stupid, nonsensical nostalgic connection I have to it. Your childhood's only constructed once, and for better or for worse, Final Fantasy IX was a fairly strong part of the foundation of mine.

tl;dr: I like Final Fantasy 9. A lot.

Notes on Stupid Childhood Comics

     When I was a kid I had a stupid little comic strip called Wormy & Stoopy, starring an oval I called a worm and a stick figure with buckteeth. It began as a coping mechanism in church, where my boredom inevitably reached a critical level. This was stream of consciousness at its most basic; I’d grab a piece of paper (or rather, a donation card from the pew in front of me) with, AT MOST, an idea like “amusement park” or “guinea pig” to draw from for my plot. Then I’d just fill the page. The plot, the jokes, the dialogue… everything was formed at the same time as the final pencil marks. Hindsight being 20/20 I think this might be the ideal approach for me in terms of writing in general. In a way, I was dealing with the same timelines and deadlines back then as a kid: my attention span. I would draw until the end of the page was reached and/or my attention drifted to something shinier or video game-ier. These days I all too often approach my comics like a “writer;” I get the plot hammered out beforehand, and then actually put pen to paper. And it often sucks. Working that way removes your ability and willingness to be surprised for the vast majority of the process. It locks you in to a specific path, and if you’re looking to make someone laugh, or hell, just tell a good story, that’s the last thing you want: to be predictable.

     There’s something so pure about that “improvised” Wormy & Stoopy approach (which shows like Adventure Time have down to a science) that I need to find again, because I find that unfunny jokes are harder to stomach if they've clearly been written and rewritten. If you don’t laugh at a given joke in Adventure Time, it’s simply because it didn’t hit you as hard as some of the other ones did. The chemistry of absurdity between you and the show just didn’t line up. This is a marked difference from a failed joke in, say, Two and a Half Men (AKA ALL THE JOKES HEY-OOOOOOH), where you just wince in uncomfortable silence while the canned laughter drones on like a detuned radio. I, unfortunately, went through this wormhole to unfunny and am now trying to claw my way back.

     There was a point during Wormy & Stoopy’s “run” where I started to actually attempt “writing” and “drawing.” I would meditate on jokes before I put them down, and meditate on what people would look like in the strip. Guess what? Those are the strips I hate the most today, because it’s me trying to be funny and/or artistic rather than just drawing what made me laugh. They’re the strips that make me wince as opposed to the older ones, where I mostly just wonder “what the hell was going through my head?”

I think my favorite Wormy & Stoopy strip was one that had no words at all; it entailed Wormy unknowingly taking a shrinking potion and urgently trying to get the now-colossal Stoopy’s attention by climbing him, while Stoopy was completely oblivious, repeatedly shaking Wormy off and occasionally trampling him under random bouts of tap dancing.

     There’s something about that spontaneous approach to writing that ends up being timeless, as opposed to actually sitting and trying to write jokes, where it’s more likely than not that the next morning I’ll wake up and hate what I wrote; or, in this case, I’ll hate what I wrote for 20 agonizing hours.

     I also think it’s important, at least in comedy writing, to completely ignore outside feedback because you can’t really adjust your sense of humor to include everyone. Unless, of course, you’re working with people who share your exact sense of humor—in which case, you’re lucky. I like fart and butthole jokes, but I know for a fact not everyone does. But if I neglect the less vanilla aspects of my humor, it’s basically me neutering what could potentially be my strongest material. That’s another thing I did in the 24-hour comic challenge, and it’s something I’ve been doing too much in general.

All this rambling is stuff that the 24-hour comic got me thinking of. And while I didn’t end up with something I liked, hey, I learned from it. And as many people have said in many ways, reaching the end of the exercise is never the point of the exercise.

Artist's Note

     As a child, nothing got my imagination running faster than the breakneck insanity and baffling logic of cartoons. My greatest heroes throughout my life have been the artists who could convey adult themes and jokes in their work that have rendered it timeless, work that was intended for a two-foot tall audience whose primary occupation was eating sugar cereals.

     I incorporate these ideas of nostalgia and humor into my work, which manifests itself as cartoony illustrations, often with a darker edge. I also frequently incorporate texture into a piece; the ghostly drip of a watercolor can evoke a haunting visage, like a shadow from cartoons past, vaguely recalled by a more twisted and cynical adult mind.

    In addition, it’s highly important that I keep my subject matter fresh and diverse as possible. I don’t much condone getting stuck in a cycle of a few certain stylistic tendencies or certain characters, unless of course it’s necessary for a specific story. I think it’s vital to never stop pushing yourself and experimenting with your approach, regardless of how successful or profitable any given iteration of it might be. If you get locked in to such a specific work method, you run the risk of growing bored, which is first of all the greatest condemnation of anything you do with your spare time, and second of all completely stagnates your growth as an individual and as an artist. For this reason, it is also important to me that I keep other creative muscles unrelated to drawing strong; everything in the creative sector informs each other, and the deeper the well of influences you have in that regard, the better.

    In keeping with that philosophy, writing often plays a very important part in what I do. Whether it’s just forming word bubbles to fuel inspiration in my sketchbook or writing a comic book series from beginning to end, for me the written word and the visual arts have always been very much intrinsically related. There is little point in knowing or feeling if you lack the means to communicate, and I feel that writing can often add punctuation and punch to what a drawn image aims to express.

    I also aim to keep my dialogue and characters “real;” even in my current comic, Mirabelle the Architect, which takes place in a comedy sci-fi setting, it is important to keep the story grounded in reality. My characters are all based on people I know, even if some of them end up being amalgams rather than strict 1:1 copies. If I keep the base structure of my art rooted in the familiar and what makes me react emotionally, it thereby makes it more relatable and accessible to the outside viewer who might not even understand the subtler, “nerdier” references I frequently utilize.

    Overall I try to treat my art as I’d like to treat my life if I could; as a never-ending experiment where nothing is sacred, nothing is permanent and nothing should ever be taken too seriously.

The Justice League of Everything That is Wrong with My Creative Process

UNITE! Soldiers of bringing this small curly-haired hobbit's writing prolificacy to a screeching halt!

-PROCRASTINATION MAN! With your powers of video games, movies, and bullshitting around on Facebook for hours at a time! You will keep this kid so distracted and bored that, when the times comes that he really wants to write, he'll be too tired!

-SOCIAL LIFE WOMAN! He'll never be able to type or put pen on a paper if he's busy socializing with friends, and more than likely talking about their favorite bottom noises! With your stylish and patriotically-colored metal corset of unrealistic hourglass curvature, you'll make sure that no long novels get written!

-DOUBT BLOKE! You'll keep an already self-destructive mind in absolute creative sludge! You'll cause him to draw unreasonable comparisons between himself and the greatest literature writers of yesteryear, despite the fact that he neither wants to be nor would be happy writing that kind of stuff!

-SLEEP BOY! You know that a soft, cushy bed is his biggest weakness! Why would he write, after all, if he could nap for a few hours instead and probably dream about something really cool?!

-BATMAN REMINDER POST-IT! You'll remind him that he is Batman! How can he write if he has to put on a form-fitting bat suit with big black boots and cute little bat ears and fight crime?!

NOTE: one of these five is false

Mikerofiction

Some really short fiction (microfiction. See that pun in the title? Yeah). And some other stuff. These are fun.

Darkened Corridors

A blind eye to what might stand behind

I run as fast as I can from nothing.

Edit

I can’t help but feel I’ve done this already

One more time couldn’t hurt.

The Bright Eyes of Strangers

I’m not sure I’m cut out for this

Seems as though for everything I can do, there will always be someone miles ahead.

Shed

There were repeated warnings about this place

And if I could see anymore, I might know why.

Rising Tides

A plunger is nowhere in sight

The brisk hush of the water fills me with dread.

Layers

Everything was looking great until I realized I’d been working on the wrong layer.

Son of a bitch.

Sun

Everything is warm, friendly and bright

But as I shamble out of bed, all I can think is

That singing bird is an annoying twat.

In the Mail

“…Starbuck…?” Mirabelle said with a quivering tone, which eventually rose to a squeak. To the tired Starbuck, it sounded as though Mirabelle might have found a black mamba in her daily junk mail.

But what she held was an intricate, conspicuous envelope branded “DSA.” The people that had been in Mirabelle’s dreams for over a decade had sent her a letter.

Did it contain an acceptance certificate? A polite rejection? A simple thank-you note?

Mirabelle had a good feeling about this one. She had just saved the world, after all.

After Hours

They laid perfectly still in the rafters. All they heard was a distant pounding electrical noise. As far away as it was, it was undeniably coming closer. Looking for them. 

Jimmy Was a Pterodactyl

     Jimmy was the only pterodactyl in the class.

     As a prehistoric aviary creature, Jimmy had a hard time fitting in. He tried wearing the coolest thick-rimmed glasses he could find, but that didn’t work. They didn’t even fit on his face, and the other poser hipsters would call him a poser. Also, he was a liberal dinosaur stuck in a red state. He always had to put up with the accusations that he had come there illegally, and that he was taking away jobs from average hard-working humans.

     He tried learning how to play guitar, but his wings got in the way of that. The best he could manage musically was Hot Cross Buns on recorder, but recorders don’t get you girls. They get you wedgies and pink bellies.  

     There was nothing he could do. Jimmy would always be the exception, the outsider, the loner. The only flying dinosaur in the world.

     Sure, he had big ol’ shiny eyes, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Great, girls would think he was cute. So what? He didn’t want to live life as a teddy bear. He wanted to live life as a carnivorous alpha male.

Are pterodactyls carnivorous? They should be if they’re not.

     Either way, life was hard for poor Jimmy. Every day he’d come home from school to his adopted parents’ house with tears in his eyes, and start shrieking like a banshee.

And then he died.

TAH-DAH.

A Critique of a Horrible Ad

     One of the worst ads in recent memory was Republican Rick Perry’s “Strong” advertisement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAJNntoRgA
     Basically, everything about this political campaign advertisement is just wrong. Like most political advertisements, it aims straight for pathos; which, in this time of unrest and overwhelming concern for the direction in which our country is headed, is likely the most logical choice. But the way Perry attacks  the target he picks—specifically, homosexuality—is so hilariously backward and absurd, it only leaves the viewer wondering if what they just saw was real, or a Tim & Eric bit, or an illusion. An incredibly brittle mask hides the vitriolic content of the speech; the pleasant flowing creek in the background, the lush, green hills, and Perry’s unfailingly sickening smile.
     It’s baffling because it’s not too hard to find common ground on an issue, even across political parties. It’s easy to see that most people in America are in some shape or form upset with the way things have been going in the past decade; you don’t even have to blame anyone, although they most certainly would. So of all the concerns we face as a people, the downturned economy likely being the most prominent, why did Perry lament the alleged sacrifice of religious freedom? Which, I might add, is hyperbolic, nonsensical, and, well, wrong. Which would have been bad enough had he not used progression in gay rights as an example of how this country is going to hell in a hand basket.
     It’s rare that a political advertisement is unifying in any way; you’re lucky if a viewer of the opposing party doesn’t start foaming at the mouth and barking when one comes on. But this one’s done it. Even conservatives saw this ad and wondered what the hell it was they just watched. Of all the negative political ads, of all the hyperbolic, apocalyptic, manipulative language I’ve seen in advertisements, this has got to be one of the worst.
     Even SNL waited for a while before sinking their teeth into Obama, but that was hardly the case with this one. Comedy spoofs parodying this ad exploded practically the following day.
FAILURE.

An Introduction

     As an illustration major the whole “writing” thing rarely falls under my prerogative, at least in so far as sitting in front of a blank screen and watching it fill up with words, which is a shame. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing, and the reason I took this course was part of my desperate attempt to not allow my writing muscle to atrophy (it’s far too late for the science and math muscles at this point). At the moment the most I’m exercising in that regard is in my independent work, where I’m writing a comic about a manic, destructive architect girl and her pet fox fighting the powers that be in an attempt to be the greatest builder there is.
     There’s a great deal of overlap creatively, I’m finding, between my illustration work and my writing work; at least as much as how the process goes. My best stuff in either case has been the material I just let fall out of my skull; as a student I find I work best under pressure, where I know every word I type counts. If given too much time to faff about and plan, invariably I start overthinking, and the overall work suffers. Perhaps the strongest example of this came in my freshman year of high school where a paper I’d crammed out the night before it was due wound up being copied and distributed around the class, as the teacher said it gave him a new way of understanding the character I was writing about. Meanwhile, the stuff I slave over and ponder about for hours ends up being drivel.
     As far as my previous academic experiences go, I’d have to say my best one in writing was in my junior year of high school, where I had one of the most interactive and engaging teachers I’ve ever known—plus he shared my birthday, which is irrelevant but still no doubt the primary reason I enjoyed it. Basically the way he taught was very much based on discussion and getting your point across. He was focused on you coming away from any given paper with your brain meats flowing, rather than filling an arbitrary quota for the number of characters in a given assignment. He actually had word count maximums as opposed to minimums, which was a great way to avoid filler and redundancy. It was a great time where one could joke about masturbation and not be met with a stare of disapproval and/or disbelief.
     My worst experiences tend to be the classes that focus heavily on reading books that I cannot invest myself in. The year before my best academic experience I took an AP Literature course that wound up being intolerable. I enjoy pulp literature—flighty fantasy fun with swordfights and revenge plots a la Count of Monte Cristo—but when you’re talking literature literature in the “English upper classes spend a lot of time doing not much at all except have uninteresting romantic drama” category, my eyes glaze over and I forget my name for a few seconds, indeed as I did throughout most of that year.
     Anywho, that’s just a bit about me. Also I have curly hair and I enjoy old video games more than the average person.