Haven't been on here in ages.  Newest toy for the collection

Wanna trade the bike for some candy?

That's no moon... but it does illuminate things pretty well.

You were the Chris Columbus of homemade Hollywood!

Last edited by Abbie (2016-08-08 17:31:58)

what type of candy??  I have other bikes of a similar vintage

+5 points for the exact length of the vid being 1234

Stream is tonight. I'll throw a thing in the chat too.

Holy shit. I was in Half-Price Books and found a 1954 edition of Richard Wright's Black Power in the clearance section. Opened it up to page through and found this inside, all the way from 1960:

I have a huge love for "Art of..." books, but A) They're bloody expensive and B) I've been crazy fucking broke so I haven't been able to indulge. (I think the last one I got was the art of Weta Workshop for a birthday or Christmas like 3 years ago... (Which, it's a nice double book set, but it's almost all finished coostume and prop pieces, which sort of defeats the purpose for me.)

So anyways, got a bunch of Chapters gift cards this year and said fuck it I'm gettin me some Art books. The 2nd one was only available online so I have to wait a couple weeks for it to be delivered but in the meantime I managed to pick up...

This book is STUNNING. Not just in terms of the actual art and the printing, but in terms of being as much a 'making of...' as it is an art book without getting in the way of the art is FANTASTIC. Pretty much every page has a one or two sentence blurb talking about the thought process behind the development of this set or prop or character, what inspiration they were pulling from, why they designed it the way they did from a game mechanic pov, what emotions they wanted to invoke in the player, or how they approached the development of the universe, that are all deeply informative and transparent in a way you rarely see. And then on top of it all every page is filled with just, goddamn, gorgeous concept art and development pieces; I don't think I've seen a single still from the actual game in here at all; and they do a lot of progress comparisons showing the iterations and how things changed over time as they found the tone of the universe that are always interesting.

I mean, I was probably going to love this book regardless, what with my well known love of Art Deco and Sci-Fi, and specifically slamming Deco and Sci-Fi together in a particle accelerator and rolling around in what comes out the other end, BUT, this book is thus far surpassing all my expectations. The universe as seen in the game is fascinating and the universe as presented in the book with all the stuff we didn't get to see is even moreso, and the sheer amount of absolutely stunning design work that went into every single aspect of what did and didn't get put into the game blows my mind. 10/10 Would recommend.

Now the long laborious wait for the other book to come in, which is one I've been wanting for a very very long time now. UUUGGGGHHH.

EDIT: One of my favorite pages I've found so far. Just such an amazing little nugget of design theory, with references and everything.

Prey is like... 98% of the best game I've ever played, and 2% an incredibly disappointing ending.

It's basically haunted house on a space station, but that haunted house is an alternate history timeline where JFK was never assassinated and the space race kept going from the 60's so everything has that sort of neo-art deco mixed with lived-in-sci-fi aesthetic.

This is the full space station that page was talking about for example:

Basically everything about this game's aesthetic is like candy to me. (Also the actual like, game part of the game, is really great too... minus the whole... ending... bit.)

I doubt it, they've got a lot of early concept stuff in here that's like ISS 2.0 in style, and then slowly they added in more and more of the skyscraper look. So I reckon it's probably just a side effect of them wanting to keep the skyscraper feel, but also incorporate the random module's sprouting off the sides ala the ISS, but then also keep it symmetrical. (Also, in universe Talos I started as an ISS-esque station that was then built on and added to by it's various owners over time).

But yeah, now that you mention it, there is a distinct Serenity-ness to the silhouette. Missing the engines tho.

Pretty much par for the course for Serenity then.