Ponds and trees

 

Some environment investigation for the personal project; just trying to find a good pond area for the setting of the animation. Water, such a fun thing to animate.

That also means I get to do some trees!

Seriously, why do I always pick environments with trees in them? But there are some pretty weird looking trees out there;

Just have to figured out which one will fit best.

Maya ad-on

Found this hilariously awesome peacock moose;

 

It was on an article on Kostas, talking about some new shading ad-on for Maya, it's ."A Physically Based Lighting CGFX real-time shader for Maya which was originally created to be used by our students at The Game Assembly for their 3D game projects"

And some other nifty stuff, but I just really like the peacock moose.

Dark Souls

Now that is one interesting game. Now, I haven't gotten Dark Souls 2, mainly due to the fact I'm a poor student, but it's on my to-do list. Anyway, I'm talking about Dark Souls here. I'll ramble about number 2 when I get it.


Dark Souls is a game that is fascinating. I love it, it's so odd  and weird, with such a colourful cast of opponents and creatures within it. I mean seriously, wander in a forest and you get attacked by Giant Mushrooms for gods sake.

Besides the hostile fungi, you do get the more typical medieval knight characters like Artorias, who is a corrupted Knight-

And you kinda go back in time and kill him because he's gone mad after being Infected by the Abyss. And you can bro it up with his giant wolf-friend who you can rescue then you need to kill him as well in the future. Well that's DLC stuff but it is very interesting.

Not to mention giant butterflies! It also means you need to stratigize you combat or summon a friend to help shoot it down. It's so pretty <3 Also you can use it's harvested soul to make a new staff, as well. However you can also use it to make a new shield, it really depends on how you fight.

Also this game is fairly hard. As in you die repeatedly, slowly, painfully, cripplingly. You can even die during the tutorial.

Getting sniper shot;

Gang beaten by angry farmers

Killed during PVP

Falling off stuff;

Mauled by large steel boars;

Not checking all corners;

Environmental death;

How it does have an incredibly creative cast of characters, armour, locations and weaponry.

Weapons include swords, maces, bow and arrows and other run of the mill fantasy weaponry.

 Battle axes;

Two handed swords;

Clubs;

You also get tridents which you can dance with;

 Massive clubs made from a dragon tooth;

Gigantic bows that have arrows the size of spears;

Notable characters includes sword-fighting gigantic wolf

You do get the classic, medieval creatures of legend, like the Taurus demon,

Bellfry Gargoyles who breath fire and you can cut their tails off to use as weapons;

And the Capra Demon;

Giant Skeletons;

Then you get the creatures with a twist, like Seath the Scaleless, who's like a giant butterfly dragon with tentacle legs;

(He's also a scientist and known as the Grandfather of Sorcery and created the giant butterflies, crystal golems, and his gigantic Crystal Cave. Also, if you're playing online you can see other player's he's killed via petrification in the Cave, in the form of frozen granite statues.)

The Gaping Dragon of the Depths;

And Manus, lord of the Abyss;

With Dark Souls a lot of the lore is ambiguous; like we're never really told what Manus was, or even who he is. It is speculated he's the Furtive Pygmy, the original Human and thus the lord of Humanity Humanity is also an item you can use in Dark Souls to go from Corpse to Human. You even encounter hostile Humanity in the depths. Humans aren't the only species you encounter- you do fight human enemies and the PC is a human, however you get characters like Giants, Ornstein who is too big to be a giant, but he's taller than the PC. Smaugh, the hammer wielder, is even bigger than Ornstein.

Likewise the 'God' (or at least King of Anor Londo) Lord Gwyn, is barely larger than a human

while his daughter Gwynevere is utterly gigantic,

So a lot of the opponents vary in shape and size and you're not really sure what kind of 'species' inhabit the whole word. You get talking cats, giant serpents, talking mushrooms and invisible merchants who sleep in bird nests.

Though the end is fairly depressing; Gwyn, usually known as the Lord of Fire, is called Gwyn Lord of Cinder, when you are fighting him. He's a hollow husk, instead of the impressive God you see in the beginning, waging war with the Everlasting Dragons and heralding in a new age of Fire.

It's a fairly bittersweet fight, since Gwyn essentially let himself slowly burn alive in order to forcibly prolong the Age of Fire.

During the game, after ringing both Bells of Awakening, you find the primordial serpent, Kingseeker Frampt at the 'home base' of Firelink shrine.

However you can also encounter the primordial serpent Keethe, in the Abyss if you kill the Four Kings before giving the Plot Important item to Frampt. The two serpents give you different views on the ending and how you should go about it; Frampt is a lot more "go succeed Lord Gwyn and take his place" while conveniently not telling you taking Lord Gwyn's place means burning alive for eternity. Keethe tells you that the Age is ending and will lead to a new Age, the Age of Darkness and Man. Gwyn, wanting to keep his age and throne, forcibly prolonged the Age and thus is the cause of the Undead (which your PC suffers from). So it's kinda of a toss up between who you'll believe; though Frampt outright lies, what with him saying "enjoy your serepidity" before you leave to fight Gwyn.

Burning alive for eternity is a not 'serendipity' Frampt. >:I