*Pretty sure this is a cliche phrase at this point
[As a bonus, I'm playing Mass Effect and will randomly remark on what I'm doing as I write this.]Mass Effect random comment #1: I can't help but thinking "Nobody gives me the raspberry!" whenever my radar says it's jammed.
THE PLAN
1) Help around the house (I'm living at my parents over the summer, I just got out of my second year of college).
2) Teach my little sister how to drive.
3) Volunteer- do stuff with the hippie church I go to.
4) Work on online projects, so I can pretend I'm actually working but can still sit at my computer most of the day. That's where you come in, perhaps.
Why? Last summer sucked. We moved out of my childhood home, which we accidentally sold to asspants crazy people and went to a nearby city where I had no friends. My best friend goes to the US Air Force Academy and is therefore completely out of communication for weeks and I'm stuck in my new room sans air conditioning pumping out figures and text for an admittedly awesome book. Oh, and my xbox died. Because it overheated in my room. Because it was too hot. I almost died.
Okay, so it wasn't Gitmo, but it still wasn't like a real summer.
Current digs: Lappy w/spare monitor, nice TV, ghetto model workshop.
Successes so Far
Well, as I explained last entry, I am playing through Mass Effect. I got the "Majority of the Game Completed" achievement last night, so sadly I think I'm better at RPGs than I thought. Next up I'm going to reinstall C&C 3 and try and beat that damn Scrin campaign (in true Command and Conquer style I got stuck on the "one commando vs. the entire goddamn enemy everything mission"). Also gonna try and keep up my Halo skills, sk1lz, $|<1|_|_5, etc. God help you if you actually scrutinized the last one there. If you want to play or whatever my gamertag is Prinz Eugn (suprise). Put "gamedev" or something in the message lest I assume you're just a random 12-year-old and just need internet friends... or friends in general.
Mass Effect random comment #2: Jesus, Kaidan, don't try to dodge those rockets, we're only, like, 2 km from where they're being fired from. Christ, I should've brought Wrex, he at least knows how to take a rocket to the face with dignity.
One other thing I'm getting back into after a 6-month hiatus is model-building. I think my last big entry was choc-full of robot models, but I'm changing the pace with some airplane action.
I generally avoid aircraft modeling because it is a huge pain in the ass, you just have to make them so perfect. Tanks are utilitarian enough that they're supposed to look dirty, messed up, and rough around the edges. Gundam models are just easy and fun- you don't have to paint much and you can spend waaaay to long posing them.
Planes... you have to paint them no matter what, and copius amounts of gluing and sanding are required to get the parts to look somewhat coherent. So, while choosing to ignore all that, I bought a few on sale at Hobby Lobby. They were just so cheap... 4 bucks apiece. Sure, they're the tiny 1/144th scale ones, but that's what makes them fun! They're also the same scale as a lot of my Gundam models so incredibly dorky juxtapositions will probably ensue.
An F-15 and two F-14's, compare size with the 360 controller, warm from side-questing.
Mass Effect random comment #3: Screw the elevators, half this game is driving uphill... good thing you have rocket boosters! Oh, wait, they just throw you downhill. Fantastic.
I'm also trying to get some big photoshop drawings done. Okay, one: the MiG-51S, a gratuitously detailed drawing of a fictitious airplane I made up. It is, by most accounts, reasonably pretty:
Vector-looking "just started" Version:
Click for huge version
Partially shaded "work in progress" version
Click for huge version
I'm thinking when I get it done I'm going to write a long and heavily illustrated journal entry dissecting the layers and getting into the meat of some Photoshop trickery. Anybody interested?
I'm interested! There's a fair chance I'll make a game with either aircraft, spacecraft or super robots in it, so it'll be good to see how you go about making sprites for them.