ndhill

I just found this. It's the official Japanese site. The Soul Calibur III site itself has been translated to English but the "Soul Archive" is in Japanese. It's very much worth taking a look at.As for SCII, I absolutely loved it. Then again, I've never played the dreamCast SC and have no real point of reference. From what I hear from people who have owned both versions, they say not too much has changed or been improved upon. But they also said it's a case where the term "If it's not broke, don't fix it" can be applied. Since Soul Calibur 1 was so obscure, when compared to titles that were available for the more successful systems, it would seam appropriate for Namco to create a multi platform SC II and really snare that huge fanbase it has now. Including the console specific bonus characters like Link and Spawn made that seam even more blatant. Is there anyone out there who saw Spawn in their character line up and didn't do a double take and say "what the hell?" Talk about out of place. Maybe SC III exclusivity is a sign that NAMCO is no longer concerned with reeling in fanboys and they're making what SC II should have been. As for the new characters, The metal ring girl is a bit weird. I'm diggin the other two, though. Especially the Umbrella woman since it's so directly inspired by the old Japanese 'Lady Snowblood' movies.

Yeah. Signs had it's... Umm... Moments. It did have a nice 'Night of the Living Dead' thing going for it at one point. Anyway, speaking of books, I'd recommend anything by Arthur C. Clarke. He's the author of 2001, 2010, 2061, and finally 3001. These are an excellent series of books that portray space travel very realistically. Coming from a scientific background, Clarke has a pretty substantial well of ideas to draw from and nothing he describes is ever out of the realm of believability. You’ve probably at least heard of 2001 since Stanley Kubrick made a film adaptation, and of course it had the Famous Hal9000. The first was written in the 60s and it had very surprisingly progressive ideas towards computerization, artificial intelligence, space-born, propulsion and ideas on how to make space more livable like means of generating artificial gravity by centrifugal force. The last three books deal with the development of life on Jupiter's moon, Europa, and explore the idea that because Europa is pretty much one vast ocean with an icy shell, it may already be the host to complex multi cellular animal life. There’s a nice scene where a giant mollusk type creature emerges and tries to drag a lander undernieth the ice because it’s attracted to it’s lights. It deals with a lot of themes found in exobiological study. What does life need to perpetuate itself and what are ideal conditions, etc.

These are pretty effective I think. Nice, consistant color choice. Good thematic fonts. I love how it sort of resembles an old west wanted poster. I actually don't even see anything I think could be tweaked and that's extremely rare for me.Anyway, great work on these.

Tell me about it! You mentioned giant octopi... Check this behomoth out. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ This thing washed up on a beach and the diameter of it (arm tip to arm tip) measured about 200 feet! The body, I believe, was destroyed but the original cell samples are still preserved. Just look at the size of those suckers on it's arms.

Go for it man. Your ability to reproduce from memory will increase exponentially as you do. No one's memory is perfect and usually we'll instinctually try to fill in the gaps that our memory misses and we end up creating an image that is actually a composite rather than a coherent whole.You guys all ought to start posting drawings sometime. This forum isn't just for art created digitally. Traditional and digital work both come from the same source.

Uh-oh. Don't get me wrong, I love national geographic, but it's looks like they're bandwagon-jumping again. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ With all this specials like Alien Planet, The Future is Wild and That stupid dragon thing on Animal Planet, you really have to wonder if science is capable of selling itself anymore. It seems like these purely speculatory "specials" are designed for viewers who can't appreciate real science and only desire to see "cool stuff." I want my old discovery channel back.

Say you actually could generate a laser beam of that concentration, why would the beam stop at three feet in length? Wouldn't it just go on till it naturally started to gradually dissipate very far away from the source?

Of course. That's really the final determining factor. What it's all about is the path of the least resistance to your viewer. Their are a lot of artists who hire professional flash animators to compensate for mediocre work and all they end up with is an expensive site that no one really likes to spend too much time at. Flash animation in this sort of context will certainly drive me away unless the work is good enough and to make it worth enduring. For this reason, only the big wigs like Patrick Tatopolos and Sylvain Despretz can get away with it. But still...moonwitch: I actually prefer charcoal over graphite as well. Pretty much anything is better as far as I'm concerned actually. Graphite is hard to change once it's down. It's sticky and shows up as a sickly pale metalic gray next to a much richer black you'd get from Charcoal or Nu Pastel. But yeah, use whatever works for you. It's nice to play around with a lot of stuff. You ought to try Cretacolor aqua-monoliths too. They're solid sticks of water color pigment that behave like colored pencils when dry but can later be manipulated with a wet brush. You can alse dip them in water and get much more substantial lines out of them. Great stuff.

Thanks for the kind words. The best advice when it comes to drawing, I think, is to draw from life and do it often. Life drawing is a discapline that applies itself to any artistic pursuit and will not only help you achieve a higher level of realism, if that's what you're into, it lends itself to a variety of other styles where clarity of your own vision is essential. You learn to sinc up what you see in front of you to what you percieve in your mind. Soon, it'll start working the other way around and you'll be able to produce on paper a more clear interpretation to what your mind conceptualizes. You just have to put in the hours. Go to a park, subway or anywhere else people gather and draw them. Don't just limit yourself to the classroom environment because the outside world has a lot of cool stuff too. It's just a matter of the time you put in.I hope that helps. -Noel

I've been doing some searching in order to amass some great links from artists who use the internet to promote themselves. This stuff rocks plain and simple. Creating an online digital portfolio is by no means an exact science and that's why it's a good idea to look to exemplary sites such as these. Keep in mind, most of these fit into the concept art and illustration genres but their design format is pretty applicable... Either way, this is some pretty inspiring stuff. I'll add to the list as I find more. Done Seegmiller This guy is a prime example of how to apply traditional discaplines to the digital medium. Andrew "Android" Jones One of my personal favorites. His work is featured in the games Metroid Prime and Metroud Prime 2 by Retro Studios. Coro This guy kicks *bottom*, plain and simple. He's an incredably tallented painter. Craig Mullins This guy has been at the digital painting game since the beginning. He's the one that made everyone do a double take and say "What? You did that in PHOTOSHOP?" David Levy A very energetic illustrator. Very good with a pallet knife. Daryl Mandryk Kim Young-Sang Dusso Feng Zhu He worked Star Wars III. James Hawkins Hardcore-Pix Justin Sweet Vance Kovacs Wayne Barlowe Viag

Hey everyone.In about a couple weeks or so, I'll be moving and untill I can get myself situated on campus, I will be without internet access and my computer will probably even have to be packed up into a storage locker. This will probably be the case for the whole summer and I'll be returning in the fall at about mid-September. It's certainly been a pleasure contributing and seeing all cool stuff you all are doing. I'll see you in the fall.

ViRual: Haha. I never said they weren't disgusting as hell. Just look at the things! A huge, twisted mound of rotting fless with great big suckers and and huge eyeballs. I won't even try to discribe the smell. Let's just say that rotten fish and amonia do not mix well.

Well... It was on last weekend and... Well. It did not measure up. To be fair, it would've taken a summer blockbuster's budget to even scratch the surface and the budget limitations were quite obvious here. The environments were barren aside from a few scattered uniform computer generated trees and the creatures were jerky and unconvincing. Especially the larger ones. Ah well. Just another case of the book being better, I guess.

They are their own species. There are actually about twenty species of squid that reach sizes of over six feet in length. If you want to see something close to the giant squid, they have a close relative that we know a lot more about. It's called the humboldt or jumbo squid. You can view a few videos of them here. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ If you want to see something truly frightening, look at these. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-04-03-squid_x.htm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2910849.stm This is a much larger species of squid that exceeds the giant squid in size. It's not as long however. It's tenticles are much shorter and more muscular. They're also covered with hooks that allow it to more effectively hunt it's prey, the patagonian toothfish which reaches six feet in length... Just imagine. Those photos taken for these articles are of a young specimen that's not even two thirds of it's potential size!

That's the great thing too. Barlowe's 'Expedition' has been around for a quite a while. It's collection of paintings where he applies his knowledge of nature and ecology. He used to be a paleoillustrator; meaning that he used to paint dinosaurs and other prehistoric organisms for scientific publications. This requires more than a bit of artistic skill. Artists who do this need to know anatomy and animal physiology as well as the ability to interpret the wishes of know-it-all paleontologists who pay their commissions. Being a sci-fi and fantasy geek as well, it's only natural that he'd attempt to combine the too. In my oppinion, he did a masterfull job too.

Do you mean the Mariana Trench? I don't think anyone doubts that's there will be quite a few surprises for us there! Initially, it was believed that life could only survive in a narrow window of temperature. Yet in the deep, we've discovered bacterial and even animal life living in the near freezing and in the near boiling close to volcanic vents. If you're interested in this stuff, I suggest you take a look at a great special that aired on the Discovery Channel called 'Blue Planet.' It has seriously some of the best underwater photography I've ever seen. the second chapter, called 'the Deep", features some very strange stuff. Not only outlandish animals but footage of underwater volcanos and, as strange as this sounds, a "lake" within the ocean that has it's very own ecosystem existing at the shoreline. You will not be let down.

Next saturday (may 14) an adaptation of Wayne Barlowe's classic book of collected creature illustrations, Expedition will air as a Discovery Channel special called 'Alien Planet'. Click the link and see a little preview. The site itself features some of Barlowe's creature designs. With all the recent discoveries of extrasollar planet and advancements in aerospace technology, this seems like it could be an incredibly interesting program. Being a huge fan of Barlowe, I know I can't wait to see his creatures come to life. For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, I sugest you give it at least a quick browse at Borders. He basically creates a hypothetical alien ecosystem and renders it vividly with in-depth paintings and drawings. It's interesting how he applies his scientific background as a paleo-illustrator and thinks of almost everything. Morphology, dietary habits, evolutionary hierarchy etc. I'm not surprised that he caught the attention of the scentific community with it. It's an interesting concept to say the least and absolutely beautiful to look at.

I've heard various rumors about them and all I can say, if any of this is true, is WOW! Supposedly, the Sony Playstation 3 will implement this new technology while retaining some of it's backwards compatibility. I don't see DVDs being phased out though. Not anytime too soon, anyway. By now, they've sort of earned their place as a media standard and have made it past that shaky initial phase of their induction. They're as affordable as VHS used to be and are no longer viewed as a format for the elite, so to speak, as laserdiscs were.

Just because one has never been photographed alive does not mean that one has never been seen. There are many unconfirmed accounts of Giant Squid sightings, most of which sound very exaggerated but who knows? This is one recent account taken from a french fisherman. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2661691.stm Before the existence of the Giant squid was even confirmed, there were multitudes of 'fish' stories told by sailors of the mythical Kraken which bares a great resemblance.

lesmizzie: Thanks for the kind words! Yeah. Using a mouse is hell. I'd prefer even the smallest tablet over one. I'm using a 4x5 graphire which is pretty tiny by tablet standards and considering the size at which I work. It's a bit like performing brain surgery on a pigeon... Not that I'd know anything about that.Iarkalwen: Thanks! I stick mostly to painter though I am slowly apply photoshop here and there. I use photoshops handy realtime jpeg compression tools to keep my image sizes manageable while not sacrificing detail. The way I look at it is simple. Painter is a specialist while photoshop is a generalist. It can do a lot of things really well while painter focuses and excels in painting. I’d love to give open canvas a try, but I have to wait till the mac port is out.Thanks again everyone!-Noel

Yeah. Deep see life is constantly pushing the boundaries of scientific perception. It was once believed that all life need the sun to survive. It was once believed that survival was only possible in a narrow tempeture range. These principles have all since been shattered. It makes you wonder if we might actually find complex multicellular organisms on Europa.

Here's a shot of it's eye. The largest eye in the animal kingdom. It can reach the size of a volleyball.

Just being the sucker for weird stuff that I am, I was doing a search on Google for photos of Giant squid. I've always had an interest for deep see creatures, especially ones that live where light cannot penatrate. This animal however, is so other worldly that I can't see how anyone can not be fascinated by it. They have never been photographed alive and all we know of them is drawn from corpses that wash up on beaches. That and of course the distinctive sucker-shaped scars that are always present on adult sperm-whales. So far, the largest specimen that's ever been obtained was 65 feet long but scientists believe that they can possibly attain much larger sizes due to the fact that the beak recovered from 65 footer was about the size of a baseball while beaks the size of footballs have been recovered from the stomachs of whales... Meaning that it's quite possible for them to reach sizes of over a hundred feet in length. The beak...

Cool use of chiasascuro. The blur detracts a bit for me though. Mostly just as a personal point of taste though. I'm a stickler for sharp edges.

Yup. It's all digital. I use Corel Painter and a WACOM tablet. You can get an idea of how I work in this tutorial that I posted here a while back. http://forums.xisto.com/topic/81897-topic/?findpost=1064288723 Unfortunately not much has changed since then and I'm still way too eratic for my own good.