Xgor's Blog

The winds is not blowing on my side

2011-11-27T11:39:00.001-08:00

Both in reality and metaphorically.

Let me tell you what happened.
As I already announced before was my plan to buy a new computer today but there was some complications. A storm had started in the southern parts and west parts of Sweden and was getting worse and while there didn't happened anything to us, the place my little brothers was this weekend got a power outage so he had to went home earlier than expected (I even picked this weekend so he didn't need to join when I would buy it). So instead for just buying the computer early on the day we had to wait for him to get home, and boy did he take a while to come home, he even went shopping Christmas gifts. During this time we also got reports that the storm would get worse later and it's recommended to stay home.

After taking it sweet time he finally came home, we was a bit unsure if it was safe enough to drive but in the end we decided to drive to it and if it became too dangerous we would went home. The ride went well though and we arrived safe. There I started looking after it and when I finally found the shelf it was supposed to be on it was empty. Starting to panic I went to the closest computer that's used for searching products in the store and of all the pages it could be on it was on it was on it was on the page for the model I was planning to buy and it was written that it was in the store. I clicked refresh and.... it was no longer in the store and the store would stop selling it... By pure desperation I asked some in information if there was another computer model with an similar price and power and it turned out that it was! Buuuuut... that wasn't in that store either and they would ALSO stop selling that model. He suggested that I should order the model I was going to get from the start as the model was still in their main warehouse so I ordered it. So yes, this means that I'm still using my old computer.

I did buy some other things in store though, I bought a new mouse as the mouse I use with my current computer is crap and has recently starting to break. I also brought a wireless router so I can use it with my Wii, 3DS and my little brothers Ipad.

Oh well. Today is Advent Sunday, and according to Swedish traditions this is the day when you start hanging up Christmas decorations at home, let's hope this year's Christmas will be nice.

Last hours with my ol' computer

2011-11-26T14:42:00.001-08:00

Ahh, my old computer. it has been my trusty partner for over 5 years now and has played a large role in my life under that time but now it has to come to an end as it's clearly aged and when it takes 10 minutes to just start up osu! there is undoubtedly something wrong.

Well, today I was working on getting all the things I wanted to save and put them into dropbox so I can easily get them with my new computer. It was mainly offline osu! maps that either has nostalgic value or things that I might finish, old SMW hacks I did back in 2007 for the pure nostalgia (And maybe someday work on one of them again), Game maker stuff and music I made myself/classmates made as these are things that would just disappear if the computer memory is gone while games and other maps and so on can be re-installed/downloaded and so on.

I really hope the new computer will turn out great, due to the fact that I'm buying it myself means that I want to keep it not too expensive so it cost around half the price compared to the one I have right now when it was new. Thank god for Moore's law eh.

Fun, fun, talk about fun!

2011-11-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to the weekend, weekend!

Okey, enough with the Friday references it's blogging time.

I must say, school was more fun than usual today. We started off with a test about Photography, I'm not sure if I passed but at least I did it... unlike most 60% in my class that didn't even show up until later and have to do the test some other day.

After that we started to look at different aspects in the theme film, our teacher showed of the script of the intro to beetlejuice to show us how a film script could look like (Never seen that film though). He also showed of a script for a movie he made that had more detail how it was supposed to be filmed and so on.

After that he started show different videos that inspired him and things he thought was looked great. One of the first thing he showed was a music video I had already seen "Röyksopp - What Else Is There" but I can't deny that the video is impressive. I'll strongly suggest you watch my link to it.

He showed several others, including another one by the same guy that directed the What Else Is There (It had also the same singer), a blog video from a photographer what it is to be one and “Last Minutes with ODEN” a Documentary about a owner and his dog and the last minutes with it, I'm not even a pet owner and I cried.

We also saw VFX breakdowns and damn, when you see all those layers gather up you can truly see how much work that has gone into those effects. I know many people thing that CGI makes filmmakers lazy and they don't make them effects as good as in them old good days with stop motion and all but there is so much effort into CGI, sometimes even more effort than old movies.

I planned to take out some money after school so I could use it to buy the computer I planned to buy later but there was some complication as the straight route to the closest bank was closed of by the police (Information about what is was all about here *NOTE: IN SWEDISH*), so I took an longer route to it. I didn't know what was going on at the time so I was a bit paranoid if there was a crazy killer or something but nothing really happened.

I also took and bought the album "I Love You, Man!" Rebecca & Fiona, while I didn't like the music their music the first time I heard them but they grew on my and I enjoyed their songs a lot, especially their latest single "Jane Doe" (Video shown above). What I like about a lot about some of their songs that makes them stand out from a lot of other artists is that they are rarely longer than they need to be and tend to not run with the whole popular song structure, only a part of it and that makes them less repetitive and more interesting. Due to that I think they will end up as intresting osu! maps if I successfully map them (Although I guess most of them would work better as osu!stream maps)

This thing means that I tend to love the (short. ver) and (TV size) when it comes to songs because when it works as it gives everything the song has to offer.
That also mean I absolutely hate Extended versions as they give more of the same and if there is something new they are usually much worse than the shorter versions, although I've seen good extended ones that work well.

Well, I think that's it. This was quite a memorable day I must say....

Let's start this blog, for real this time.

2011-11-24T12:57:00.000-08:00

Well, sorry... I haven't really started off with this blog but I was waiting on information about how we are supposed to present the project I've been talking about and if I can use this blog as a logbook.

The answer?

No.

Don't worry, I'm still going to post information about my project but i will focus on bigger more interesting post about what's going on with it. With that being said I'm currently writing down my idea and everything and will write down my idea and how i should do it and I'll probably won't start working on it until after Christmas break.
Oh and if you didn't know, my idea for my project is to make a game. I have most of the game mechanic ideas ready so it's mostly a matter of writing them down and then make them work. I won't spoil what it's about but let's call it Project BTW for now.

I do have some other interesting things going on right now though.

First of all, I have another interesting school project going on. That one is to make the title of an faux film, film it with a regular film camera. We are also supposed to use at least one 3D model and it's strongly recommended to use more. I called my faux film Pixelman and you could probably guess already what's the special effect is, but we'll see how good it will be in the end.

I'm also going to get a new computer as my old 5-6 old computer is really showing it's age... It even takes like 10 minutes to start up osu! and not for long it gets really laggy. My computer doesn't take a lot of games well and I can't use Stream because if I do something else than that it's just sloooow.

Anyways, about the blog. As most of you have guessed by now I will talk about the projects I have something noteworthy that happened while i worked on them.
I also planning to talk about osu!, my main focus there will be that I will talk about my new maps and talk about the map and song but I will also talk about other things in osu! but mapping will be my focus.
Talking about mapping brings me to another point and that is that I will also talk about osu!stream as I'm a mapper/Level designer. I probably talk about how it is to work with it and probably answer questions about it (Although I won't answer everything ;) ).
Last but not least I will talk about video games. I will talk about games that I recent played and old gems I have/found and I will discuss about different things in the land of video games.

Well, I think this is what going on and what I will do in this blog, I'll hope you enjoy it and stay :)

GUYS GUYS HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT!!

2011-11-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

The new osu!stream pack is out!
It's VVVVVV and guess what, I mapped Pressure Cooker in the pack and trust me, it's much MUCH better than my old shitty osu! map. (Although it doesn't have a storyboard)
Yup, I'm a part of the osu!stream mapper team so expect more maps by me in osu!stream in the future.
Get it now, and please forget my old osu! one.

Intro post

2011-11-09T05:19:00.000-08:00

So today I got an exercise in school to start a blogg and post all the stuff I have done I have done in the subjects "3D Animering" (3D Animation) "Digital produktutveckling" (Digital new product development) and Estetisk Verksamhet (Aesthetic activity).

Anyways, here's some of the stuff I have done during my time at school.. I couldn't find everything but will post every picture I could find.

This was made with maya's PaintEffects tool in a exercise when you was supposed to do one of those and the end result was this... It ended up with this sunset drawing with lot's of (fake) strokes to make it look more like it was an actual painting.

This was my initial drawing for that exercise but didn't up being the one submitted due how simple it was to make it.

How was it done?

Combining hands with flames and then just paint.

Looks damn cool though and I think it's much better than my second one...

Simple exercise when I followed some steps to make a screwdriver... Unfortunately the rendering looks really really bad due to how little time spending on that.

Probably my biggest project in maya so far, made a part of the White house in maya.

Latest thing I made, and this was made in sculptris (And unlike Maya it's Freeeeee.... although my home computer probably can't stand it).

Anyway this is the things I have made so far I could dig up.