DaveC

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Posts posted by DaveC


  1. I also love Fifa bot!

    I'm sure I'm in the minority here but that Falcon shot was a big downer for me. I'll try to articulate why!

    It wasn't well composed and the motion felt weird, basically. It reeks of that overly artificial digital camera move thing that's become pretty prevalent in a lot of big CG sequences nowadays. I get what it's going for, it just felt really tasteless to me. And it is still early days and I'm sure it'll be perfectly okay in the final thing, but.. eugh. 


  2. In the wake of GamerGate I've actually just followed literally everyone who's being suggested to me that is clearly denouncing it both because I feel like it's supporting them and also because I want to retain the voices that will criticise stuff when it arises.

     

    Heh, same here. I've ended up following a bunch of really interesting people. Thanks, Gamergate! 

    In other news, this is funny and good:

     

    http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/ebf5e34fc8/10-hours-of-walking-in-nyc-as-a-man


  3. I know a couple of people that work at Pixar, and it sounds about as awful a work environment as working at EA or Activision or something.

    Man, that's depressing!  I work in a small studio doing mostly motion graphics (and a little character animation) and sometimes consider applying to bigger studios... but I always feel like if I did, I'd just become sort of a cog in a machine. 


  4. Checked out Star Wars Rebels last night after seeing a few positive reviews around the net. 

    For me, it was a lot better than expected. I didn't want to go near it at first because the aesthetic seemed kinda wretched looking. I guess a lot of it comes down to the fact that it's TV animation and they have to compromise (that wookie hair, yeeeesh), but I actually got used to it pretty quickly. 
     

    Sidenote: Interesting to note that Team Fortress 2 Source Filmmaker shorts are on par with (if not better than) the animation quality on display here. 

    Anyway! The story really fucking flies, and there's some nice intriguing stuff scattered in there. The characters are surprisingly likable and the plot is interesting enough. It probably moves a little fast - it really feels constrained by its short running time and kind of feels the need to have a JUMP TO HYPERDRIVE or a SPACE BATTLE every few minutes. But overall I really quite liked it and I'm gonna keep watching. 


  5. I can't find the article at the moment, but I remember reading a piece about the origins of the word ''Xenomorph''. 

     

    As far as I remember, it went into how the word ''Xenomorph'' is more of a fan creation than something explicitly outlined by the filmmakers. I believe Aliens introduced the term itself, but that was meant to refer to any alien being, and not the species of the Alien itself. Or something like that. Maybe somebody else has more info. 

     

    Edit: Found it: http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2014/08/the-throwaway-line-in-aliens-that-spawned-decades-of-confusion/


  6. In response to Damian's post, those depictions of violence in the latest Sarkeesian vid disturbed the shit out of me too. Mostly because I had no idea it was that bad. I haven't played a lot of these games, and I think I'm generally desensitized to violence in media, but that stuff is just abhorrent. 

    It was actually the first Sarkeesian vid I'd seen, and I will now be checking out the rest. 

     

    One argument that I keep seeing slung at Sarkeesian is that she doesn't ''play or like games'', with vague references to a talk she gave a few years ago. Does anyone know what this is supposed to be in reference to?

    The idea that she 'doesn't like' games seems like such a lazy accusation. She even gives positive references (Papa & Yo) in that latest vid. 


  7. I felt like the characterization was done great! I mean for me it pretty much carried the movie apart from the comedy. Those weirdos were just so much fun to be around, even if their constant ''I'm explaining who I am and what my motivations are'' got a bit grating.

     

    It had downsides for sure (Ronan wanted.. what exactly? Why?? What?). And for me, not all the tonal shifts worked all that well and I actually felt it needed to lay off the jokes for just a second to let the more dramatic stuff breathe a little. 

    But, i dunno, I had a jolly time at the cinema with it. 

     

    EDIT: Oh! And I also didn't like that new Captain America movie. For me it was a soulless assembly line product with no real personality or creative vision driving it. It had me worried that this is what we're in for with these movies now, but Guardians is so the opposite of that. It had Gunn's fingerprints all over it. 


  8. I didn't really feel any strong feelings towards the scene. It's Game of Thrones. 

     

    After I watched it I went on the internet and was like, ''Oh. This.''


  9. That's my mini-rant against Whedon I guess. Also, as a person, he's a shithead, but that's a discussion for somewhere else. 

     

    Mind if I ask why you think so? I don't idolize him or anything, just curious to know. 

     

    I feel like I don't know much about the guy despite being a fan of his stuff (mostly Firefly/Serenity). 


  10. Goldeneye/Perfect Dark... I don't know. Maybe it was because I was playing PC shooters at the time and Goldeneye didn't come to me as the revelation as it did for others. Conceptually I like some stuff they do, like how the objectives tie in with the difficulty settings, but I just don't like _playing_ them.

     

    That's understandable - I myself had it the other way round, where my first real FPS experience was N64 Goldeneye / Perfect Dark, and later migrated to PC Shooters and Half-Life etc.

     

    So my memories of Goldeneye are probably rose-tinted somewhat, but I remember booting that game up a few years ago in college. We had a projector set up and played the multiplayer for hours, and still got reduced to tears with laughter. 

     

    Those games definitely did something right!


  11. This is kinda the opposite thing, but I thought I'd mention how stressful I found Paper, Please. It may be that, when I played that game, I was at a particularly stressful time of my life, but I found that Papers, Please just stressed me the hell out. It literally gave me heart palpitations (I was getting them anyway, at the time, but I'm certain the game was making them reoccur).

     

    So, yeah. I recommend avoiding that game if you're not in the mood for being put under immense pressure. 


  12. I had an early-morning, incredibly lucid dream where I got out of my bed, looked in the mirror, and all my hair was gone. It seemed to take hours for me to realize that this wasn't actually happening.