MrHoatzin

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Everything posted by MrHoatzin

  1. Idle Thumbs Ruinationcast

    It is funny to hear you talking about what a huge kick to your lives and weltanschauung the Kickstarter was before it even went up. Even though we have been working on the new Idle Thumbs logo since fall of 2011 and I am on the Kickstarter page as one of the "value-added" features—I didn't know ANYTHING about the Kickstarter until A DAY before it went live when Jake offhandedly mentioned it in an aim chat. Can't wait to check out that logo t irl.
  2. Confessions of an Internet Eater

    Ditto. I keep thinking the problem would be solved with a better RSS utility, something that wouldn't present all that content in a level playing field, with count of unread posts, but that would let certain fast-updating things expire and sometimes keep track of just whether the site updated or not and send you to the last unread post (say for web comics for example). Ugh. Whenever I start down that rabbit hole I remember Slavoj Žižek's observation about American attitude towards discipline: chocolate-flavored laxatives. The solution to your constipation is not to moderate your chocolate intake, but to eat more of this new and improved kind of chocolate... All of those toys that are supposed to cut off the internet are generally impossible to implement in my case—since everything I do needs internet to work/is the internet. Maybe I can dupe Hobo Lobo into local staging, unplug the internet, and work that way. Hmm... Anyway, yeah, fuck the internet. And fuck social media, the most horrible of internet drugs. I kinda feel like old-timey forums that focus on some kind of common interest of a community (e.g. this one) are a lot healthier than monolithic centralized clearinghouses of status updates, but I have yet to really figure out my take on all that.
  3. Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

    Oh, hah, I noticed the same typo before you guys toothed it up. I briefly thought he was bringing up this kind of molarity before my brain properly kicked into gear and reaffirmed the context I was in.
  4. Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

    Aw dang! Shame about The Wire bit—that kind of comprehensive inter-factional narrative would be perfect for a sneaky game where you break into places and partake of people's private documents and conversations. I guess this is not that game. I have been enjoying the environmental stuff so far tho. If the world ends up feeling anywhere nearly as rich as that of Arx Fatalis (another ultimately shitty story with a rad world), I'll be happy.
  5. Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

    Just got out of the sewers and am wandering around the safehouse distillery. I think I might be expecting The Wire-level macro plot from this game. How disappointed will I be? How much should I lower my expectations? Also, I am starting to realize that my annoyance with PS3 games is largely due to not being able to read any of the interface or the narrative or see which way distant guards are facing on my quaint tube-based televizing machine. As much as I enjoy pointedly not participating in consumerism by holding on to it, it is starting to be a liability to my participation in culture. Keeping it real is hard on the eyes! Plus PS3 and PS2 games on CRTs don't look that drastically different from one another…
  6. Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

    Anyone know any reason I shouldn't get this for the PS3 (that being the only computer in the house that can play this game)?
  7. Fresh Indie Game Compendium Extraordinaire

    This thread was a pristine wonder for three whole years! Stop commenting in it!
  8. Prison Architect

    Defcon hit a high watermark in shocking subtlety. It would be hard to get there again. Plus, this is the first time that they've actually hired an artist. Let them play around. One way or another, I wish they were more resolute and deliberate with their decisions—or rather that the final impression of whatever they settle on is strong.
  9. Breaking Bad

    EDIT: I accidentally soiled this post. ¬¬
  10. Life

    Well, son, you have an idea on your hands. Congratulations! Not only that but you've written it down. My own notebook entry for a similar idea would probably be something like… BAM! Now the real question is what do you do with this? This is where that conversation between the creator and the creation I described before starts. This might end up being the overall arch or a theme of a narrative or whatever. It boils down to what skills you possess that could help you turn this into a thing. The other idea—about poetry being affected by material considerations—is kindof DUH in my case as I am an artist and this shit NEVER LEAVES my consciousness. It helps that I have a job and do art on the side, so that I don't have to feel constantly compromised by the hustle of art. That said, I would be a lot more productive as an artist if I could free myself from having to sell my time to someone. ⬇⬇⬇
  11. Life

    People sometimes talk about creativity as a domain of certain professions or talents or whatever—I just wanted to nix this notion as we're talking in abstract vagaries. I don't know where you're coming from, so I kindof plugged in something as a starting point. What are we talking about here, anyway? Like, visual ideas, aural ideas, narrative ideas? Is it just a matter of not having a technical jargon specific enough for your purposes? Have you tried quickly rambling your mind into an audio recorder? Trying to explaining your idea to someone, until you boil it down to its essence? Free association writing? The only time I have had ideas that leave that quickly and are lost without a trace is on drugs. Those ideas were probably not that great anyway (either way, writing down stuff SHOULD help regardless ). A lot of the time ideas lose their luster when they're banally flattened on the page—I dunno if it is experience or what that I use to figure out which ones are good and which ones are shit in that form. Sometimes the flattened version retains enough information to remind one where it is going, sometimes it doesn't. If it is a vague idea and the vagary is what appeals to me, I will try to describe all of these vague different aspects of something. I find that structure helps, I dunno... this may be getting too low level or something... may need to think about it. Maybe there is something important in there that I take for granted and can't see clearly from where I'm standing...
  12. Half-Life 3

    Or they could just make the world flat-out adventure-gamey. Go over there, distract the dude, grab his monkey and open the waterfall—that sort of stuff... only more suitable to be mixed up with action elements and with less dialogue.
  13. Life

    Creativity is a concept invented by managers to describe solving problems they can't understand. You always hear about the "magic" "the creatives" do or whatever. Like most structures that come out of contemporary business thinking, it is super bureaucratic in as far that it invents a caste of people singularly responsible for a part of the process ("the creatives" are in charge of "making shit up"), and shortchanges everyone else who may have something to add. It is all about learning how to probe ideas that you do have, find out what it is that is awesome about them, and implement them. These are individual and separate laborious processes that require developing their own individual sets of skills. The longer I spend creating shit, the less I believe there is such a thing as talent. I mentioned this to a neurophysiologist of sorts and she was positively outraged that I would so flippantly throw nature (as opposed to nurture) out of the picture, so maybe I am full of shit. Maybe some people are predisposed to the kinds of observation and rumination that result in creative output. In any case, talent alone is nothing. You don't have to completely open up what it is that is awesome about an idea, just discover an interesting conundrum, riddle, or just a strong sensation that SOMETHING interesting is going on there. The more you re-digest a specific idea by implementing it multiple times (as sketches or versions or whatever), the more you come to discover what it is that it is hinting at. The process of developing ideas into tangible things is just as important as the initial spark—if not moreso. The conversation between the creator and the creation is ongoing. You never sit down with a fully-formed idea in mind and plop it out exactly as imagined. If your process is like this, you will be very frustrated and—more often than not—not make anything. My ideas come in form of sentences or little blurbs. I write them all down in a series of notebooks that I have been dragging around since high school, and then I let them be. When I want to make something or need a wrench to throw into whatever project I am currently working on, I look through my old ideas and see if anything bites. This is somehow tangentially relevant maybe. Every now and again, I go back and reread the whole WHAT IS ART semi-spinoff discussion.
  14. Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!

    It is terrifying to see how Lee Petty and the art team are all freaking out, while Schafer is sabotaging them with grand ideas like an unreasonable client, as if unaware of how much money they have to work with. Scary how fast they seem to have to work to make effective use of the money—and that it is everyone except for Tim who seems to be minding the budget. I'm also excited that Peter McConnell is on board for the music. I dunno if his name was previously mentioned in the context of the project.
  15. Half-Life 3

    Variable graphical fidelity targets can give us some potentially interesting new gameplay styles. Less fidelity per character, but now with 400 characters on screen because you didn't spend all your processing power on reflections on wet hair or whatever. The upcoming generation of designers have been refreshingly eager to explore this space so that is something. Also, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think of this alleged open world HL3 as a sort of STALKER game? It would kinda work.
  16. «Kickstarter is not a store»

    That sure is an elaborate opinion on light bulbs. And I read it. The whole thing. Studiously, even. I feel like I need to reward myself for that. Aaaaand—ah, what the hell—you deserve it! Wear it proudly. All of these Kickstarter rules are probably for the best. At the same time, I hope that they enforce the spirit of the rules rather than the literal word. It is interesting how everything in capitalism seems to gravitate toward peddling tchotchkes. Even Kickstarter when it functions correctly (as in, in the spirit of its founding vision) is all about producing a whole gamut of increasingly more precious tokens of support for whatever the main goal of a campaign is—this aspect of it is what everyone has had the most trouble getting right. It is interesting to reflect on. Seems like a good rule of thumb is that lower tiers shouldn't get tangible things.
  17. Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

    I made some horrible internet decisions as MC Kingsley—so I initially planned explicitly not to fold Mr Hoatzin back into my other selves—and then I did. Because discipline is hard.
  18. Breaking Bad

    Nah, it fits perfectly! Thanks for cluing me in. The show was starting to drag halfway through season four, they seemed to forget to turn on the cinematography and editing tricks that set the tone to most of the show—but then shortly before they remembered what they were all about and shit got way better. Ugh, wassup with the spoilers, why they gotta be so stupid?
  19. Breaking Bad

    Sal and I finally caught up with Breaking Bad (which we started watching only a couple of weeks ago). Dang. Good show. Insufferable sometimes. Any idea what the tune is that Walt whistles while they're wrapping up the cook—
  20. Dishonored - or - GIFs By Breckon

    Whoa whoa whoa—is F. Nick actually Ratsofatsorat?? I need to reprocess a whole lot of internet history here.
  21. Internet Comics

    Nah, not angry, just backpedally. And no, I didn't make that thing, I just shared it.
  22. Internet Comics

    Cough.
  23. Internet Comics

    Notwithstanding any (alleged ) qualities of XKCD and the stench of petty jealousy emanating out of my knee-jerky response, I was really only angry at the interface. I would've spent an hour with that thing if it didn't require me to crank the screen around forever to no conceivable end. I'm all about bending the format in fun ways, just wish they did it in a more user-friendly way. I guess there is no way for me to comment negatively about anything comics related ever—because obviously I must be whining about my unrecognized genius. I should also never gripe about stupid things people complain about because people will complain about anything. Present company excepted, of course, because we're all righteous and wise and shit.
  24. Internet Comics

    Booo. Your face is jealous. It is only a matter of time I make a comic on a lark as a parody of what the internet lurves and it takes off and I kill myself.