Sai's Asylum

Alan Wake

Sai — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:15:33 +0000

If you’ve been hurting for a good Silent Hill game to come out, you’ll probably enjoy Alan Wake. In fact the more I played it the more I became convinced that the makers of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories ripped it off.

I know SH:SM came out first, but Alan Wake was in production for 4 years, and there was a good chunk of info on it as well as footage and images during that time. Of course this long production cycle shines through in what is inarguably a gorgeously designed game. Even though the levels are linear this fact is expertly disguised, and the game never feels limiting or repetitive. And where it may not be as scary as an SH game, it is as intense. Too bad it’s kinda short with little to no replay value.

I'm looking for my wife Mary- I mean Alice! Have you seen her?

Now don’t get me wrong: Alan Wake is well worth playing. The story is told over 6 episodes that play out like a TV serial (including episode recaps) kind of like what Alone in the Dark tried to do, only, you know, successful. The story itself is practically a love letter to Stephen King, who is even mentioned by name a few times, and takes obvious inspiration from his unique brand of horror. In this fashion the story is about a famous writer, Alan Wake, who has had writer’s block for 2 years and so he takes a vacation to an isolated mountain town called Bright Falls with his saccharine and wholly unremarkable wife. As you might have guessed: wife goes missing. The twist here is that after losing a week’s worth of memory Alan keeps finding pages of a manuscript he can’t recall writing that seems to be dictating the events of the game. He becomes convinced that if he can figure out the story he can save his wife.

When I say the wife is unremarkable, I mean it. Luckily there are other strong female characters in the game but she is just completely stock. She’s devoted and doting for sure but she doesn’t seem to have much of a personality (besides her intense phobia of the dark.) This makes her kind of lacking as a goal and I’d often forget about her while I was running around enjoying the rest of the story and finding the game’s various collectibles.

Like I said before the game is short, probably around 12 to 15 hours. It also doesn’t really hold much in the way of replay value save for achievement grinding. There are some manuscript pages you can only get on Nightmare mode but I can’t see much benefit in it. Sure the pages are short and interesting to read/hear Wake narrate but it isn’t quite compelling enough for a second playthrough in my eyes. Though these extra pages may explain the ending, which was a bit schmaltzy and very abrupt.

I also thought the voice acting in this game was quite good, and the characters were likable, even Alan with his grumpy artistic temperament. Though I found the stiff facial and mouth animations to be really distracting. I know most games with a more realistic style tend to dive right into the uncanny valley when it comes to mouth movements, but Alan Wake’s are especially bad.

As for the gameplay, you traverse dark environments with a flashlight solving practical puzzles, monsters attack you but only at certain times and you can fend them off with flares. Yeah okay, I’m still working this Climax ripped off Alan Wake angle, but unlike Silent Hill: Shattered Memories you’re actually allowed to fight the monsters in Alan Wake. Your monsters here are called the Taken, the darkness that seems to stem from the town’s lake takes over shells of the townspeople. What’s both amusing and frightening about them is that they say random, every day phrases in a monstrous voice, as if the darkness is just plucking familiar phrases from their mind. A Taken park ranger, for example, wailed about how you’re not allowed to feed the animals as he attacked me. Most Taken encounters seem to be triggered events, but there are times when you’re trying to find your way through the woods (and Alan spends alot of time in the woods) where they’ll just keep coming until you reach a checkpoint. A building noise coupled with the fog seemingly being sucked toward one spot hearkens the coming of the Taken, and it is quite a haunting effect. Checkpoints are mostly lamp posts where you’re completely safe from the Taken, though often you have to start a generator first in order for it to illuminate.

As for your weapons you can banish the darkness protecting the Taken with your flashlight and then cap them with a gun. You find a variety of weapons throughout the game such as shotguns and hunting rifles, and you can even use flare guns and flashbangs to destroy enemies quickly. I spent most of my time conserving those latter items for when I was really overwhelmed, but on Normal mode at least the game throws ammo at you often so it wasn’t entirely necessary. Alan also has this annoying habit of getting knocked out, falling off of things or getting arrested and subsequently losing everything he was carrying, leaving you to find a flashlight and weapons all over again, so don’t bother trying to stockpile anything.

I hate to call this game a weekend rental, since it’s a good game that everyone should play at least once, but it is short enough to be comfortably completed in two days or so. The game does come with some DLC right off the bat that you can only get by purchasing, seeing as I did indeed rent it I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s been hinted that there are future episodes planned as DLC, but in that case you’d want to wait to purchase the game. Even though Alan Wake doesn’t offer much in the way of replay value if you want to enjoy a finely-crafted single player experience, you definitely need to play this game.

Art – Mountain Elf

Sai — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:39:04 +0000

So this is no particular character, I just wanted to finalize the design for this variety of elf. The costume was inspired by Thai hill tribes like the Akha people, and… a John Galliano fashion show.

The creative process is weird sometimes.

Inks Timelapse 3

Sai — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:43:33 +0000

Here’s another quick timelapse video. No voice over or anything fancy for this one, just the inks for my recent artwork. You will notice I’m using the rotation option in Manga Studio this time. It does help, after all if I were traditionally inking I’d be flipping the paper this way and that constantly.

Art – Terith

Sai — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:08:50 +0000

Art – Desert Elf

Sai — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 06:10:27 +0000

There I go trying to get even the fraction of the texture of traditional art in digital again.

More On Coloring

Sai — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:46:50 +0000

My second coloring timelapse that doubles as a tutorial! My Rhode Island accent comes out BAD in this one, see if you can spot where I slip into it. I did slice and dice the footage on this one a bit because I didn’t want to make another 10 minute long video. I’ll try to keep them around 6 – 8 minutes now.

Sorry that it’s a bit jumpy at the beginning, getting used to some new capture software. Stick with it, it smooths out!

And of course here’s the finished piece:

Elves? You Bet.

Sai — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:45:24 +0000

Coloring Tutorial & Timelapse

Sai — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:42:19 +0000

This is my most complicated video yet! I even have voice over now! Footage and audio taken over several days, this would have been done sooner but… heh… um… Mass Effect 2 came out.

This video comes close to 10 minutes long, but I pop in now and then to explain some techniques I use or why I’m doing certain things and narrate while constantly losing my train of thought, so hopefully it’s informative to someone out there.

And here’s the finished image:

If you like, feel free to comment! I crave feedback!

Mass Effect 2

Sai — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:05:08 +0000

So Mass Effect 2 came out on the 26th. I got it at a midnight launch and played it until 6:00 am. I have since been playing it at least 2 or 3 hours a day. Suffice to say… I like it.

I found the first Mass Effect pretty addictive too, which is strange because I don’t really like sci-fi, especially Star Trek-esque space operas. And that’s exactly what Mass Effect is. And yet these games suck me right in, it helps that you can design and direct your own Commander Shepard, getting to pretty much decide who this person is. And I have to say when I got to see my Shepard again (because you can import your ME1 character) I was elated. I guess I got pretty attached to her over the course of the first game, and she hasn’t changed. She’s still a Vanguard and still a crazily equal mix of Paragon and Renegade.

My Commander Shepard. You don't mess, bitches. ...Yes I took this with my digital camera.

That’s right, the primary system of deciding who your Commander Shepard is and how the people of the Mass Effect world react to him/her is still intact. Though I found I had dialog options based on my Paragon and Renegade rankings pretty early on. Besides responses and choices that determine these rankings you also get actions in the middle of dialogs you can preform, interrupting the character who is talking to you to by preforming a Paragon action with the left trigger or a Renegade action with the right trigger when the option flashes.

Those aren’t the only things that have changed. You can once again mine planets for precious materials, only this time you don’t have to land on the planet and wrestle with unwieldy Mako controls and the materials actually serve a purpose. At first I was a little put off that there were no level ups for gun skills or upgrades to attach to your weapons, but now you can use mined materials to research and create upgrade schematics you find, a better and much more interesting system. You also need to gain certain squad members to use features like this aboard the ship. And this not only goes for weapons but areas of your ship, omni-tools, cybernetics and armor.

Speaking of armor, it’s modular this time around. You can swap around individual chest plates, helmets, leg guards, arms, etc. with various bonuses on them to create your own armor. You can also choose the pattern and colors, which is a welcome addition considering that in the last game you were often stuck in ugly yellow armor for 10 hours because it was the best one you could find. You can also choose Shepard’s casual outfit that he/she will wear aboard the Normandy.

What do the aliens want, Cancer Man!? Oh... oh right, they're on my ship. I should probably ask them myself.

Mass Effect 1 always struck me as cinematic, but Mass Effect 2 takes that to a different level. The aesthetics, the camera angles used during dialogs, everything has been amped up. Though like Tycho said over at Penny Arcade, the levels sometimes seem a bit too designed. From a gameplay angle this is a good thing as it’s much easier to take advantage of the cover system (and you’ll need to, they’ve really emphasized the “Shooter” in RPG Shooter this time), but it can be a bit distracting at times. The story structure also seems a bit more tight, more unified to me. You answer basically to the equivilant of an intergalactic Cancer Man, and he’s an interesting device to structure the story around, tie events together and inject a bit of mystery all in one.

You don’t get the same squad as in the first game (on account of everyone thinking Shepard was dead for 2 years, long story, play the damn game) but familiar faces keep finding you which is a nice touch. Also it doesn’t bother me because, sliiight spoiler, my absolute favorite squad member Garrus returns. I won’t tell you where you find him, but I will say when I was hunting down a particular character and they mentioned he was a Turian I just kept saying “please be Garrus, please be Garrus” over and over until I found him.

So far I haven’t managed to relocate Liara, who was my Shepard’s lover (seeing as she was the only choice for lesbian!Sheps) and despite finding her to be insufferably dull in the first game (though, admittedly, more appealing than Ashley. Didn’t miss anything there, I let her blow up) I’m so attached to my Shepard that I’ve become eager to track her down by association. On the other hand, lesbian!Sheps can at least romance a female human this time (albeit bisexual and… er… panaliensexual? Why do we only get chicks who swing both ways?) , though I’m a little perturbed that the mega-butch, full-body-tattooed female named Jack isn’t available for girl on girl.

Really? Straight?

I mean really? And once again I might note that you can’t have a gay male!Shep. Come on Bioware, stop pussing out. You let our male characters have a roll in the hay with a dude elf in Dragon Age. Though, again, a bisexual dude elf (is it really that hard to depict full-on gayness guys?) Though according to some it’s not gay if it’s an elf.

Anyway, enough about gay gamer issues, how does the game hold up? Very well, I think. Though I’ve heard some complaints about the ending I’ve yet to get there, I’m a sidequest junkie and would like to make my experience last. Not to mention the game is so massive it’s stored on two discs.

This isn’t a sequel you can dive into without playing the first one, though apparently when creating a new character you can check off key decisions from the first game and see the results in Mass Effect 2. And you can only import your Mass Effect 1 character if you beat the first game. Going through this epic with a legacy character is very satisfying and I think with a character you’ve designed and characterized yourself you just get drawn in all the more intensely.

Digital Ink Timelapse 2: The Artist’s Bane

Sai — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:21:21 +0000

I was really struggling with this drawing. You don’t see the very beginning of it because I thought I shouldn’t record it. But then it occurred to me: timelapses make people look far more competent than they really are so it might be fun to watch me messing up and erasing and getting frustrated as artists do (also didn’t help I was working on that arm like an hour and a half before I had to go to work.) So that’s basically the beginning of the video. This one comes in at a whopping 6 1/2 minutes as the rest of it is nearly the entire drawing so it’s twice as long as the last two, but it’s also funnier so I hope you enjoy it!

I’m really hammering these videos out aren’t I? Like I’ve said before they’re pretty easy to make and quite fun, I spend the most time selecting the damn music. Shout out again to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com who freely offers his awesome music to internet goblins such as myself who would otherwise pilfer commercial music for her own selfish needs (though even trying to choose from my own music collection for the first video was difficult.)

I like doing this because it gives me a reason to update the site more often and actually keeps me motivated when drawing. When struggling like this I may have gone away from the inking process and goofed off instead, but realizing I could entertain people with my frustration made me dive back into it. I’ve also been watching/listening to (not pictured) a lot of the behind-the-scenes and commentary stuff on the extended Lord of the Rings DVDs while I work, which has been quite inspiring. I’m a whore for commentary tracks, what can I say.

Anyway a few notes: I made the part where I’m inking the hair slower because a lot of people comment on the way I draw hair. Lately I’ve been realizing that less is more when it comes to rendering hair as most cartoonists either East or West tend to draw hair in big, chunky, clean shapes. That’s not to say I haven’t seen people also successfully contrast fluffy, detailed hair with clean, open character lines but it’s not for me. At least not on these elves.

I also finally made a good Sai’s Asylum logo bug! I kinda liked my fancy cut-out text in the last two but it just wasn’t reading well, so this will be the logo from now on.