Elephants and Video Games

Elephant Fact # 34: Elephants go through menopause.

Just been playing a lot of the game 'The Last of Us' lately. It's one of the best 'zombie' games I've ever encountered-- the graphics are stunning; I've never played a game that looked so real before. It is a major step from the last game I played which was Resident Evil 3, I think. It's amazing how we've gone to pixelated breasts to ridiculously detailed and expressive designs on both the characters and the environments in this game. Don't even get me started on the character development. There are only two games that I've ever cried over-- 'The Walking Dead' and this game, I mean jeez. Not to mention I finally have a new favorite character after seven years of Harry Potter. 

I tried drawing one of the 'Infected'-- 

It didn't come out as well as I hoped, but I still kinda like it. Edited the shadows a bit to go for a whole 'Silent Hill' thing, heh.

Oh, and the theme music is gorgeous. Haunting and melancholy yet incredibly simple, it perfectly fits the post-apocalyptic world the story is set in. Ugh, so many feels about this game. Like, lately I've been rushing to get home so that I can finish my homework and then spend the rest of the night playing this game. Yeah, I've got it bad.

I think that the simplest criteria to determine whether a game is good or not is basically 'Would you want to play it again?' 

Jeez, would I ever.

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Owwwweee

Elephant Fact # 33: An elephant's trunk can sense the temperature and size of an object it picks up.

Ugh, I need a little pity. Had TKD today-- we did takedowns-- and I can't even sit down properly at the moment because I discovered that I somehow have a knack for landing on my unmentionables. Here are some of the bruises that I'm able to show without rating my blog NC-17:

A Haiku about Pain:

Ouch ouch why god why

Did not know i could bruise there

Shit, fuck, regret life

Ugh,

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Music

Elephant Fact #32: Elephants, humans and Neanderthals are the only animals known to have death rituals.

Ugh, my internet has been astoundingly slow lately, but I wanted to post something on my blog. Still on holidays; it's been an unbelievably long time, I know, but I guess this is part of the whole college thing. I'm going back in little more than a week, and I seriously cannot wait for it.

For this semester, I'm doing a couple of weird (well, not science or math) subjects as my electives: art history (which I'm super excited for) and religion. Religion! I remember when I used to fall asleep in those classes in high school. But what I'm technically studying is a subset of religion; the supernatural. I was trolling along the course lists for what to do as an elective and bam! "World perspective examinations of vampires, fairies, angels and ghosts." Completely useless but undeniably fascinating. I can't believe that subject even exists, what the heck are they going to examine us on? Still, it's definitely a nice change from being boxed in by science subjects-- as interesting as they are, it's good to take a break from time to time.

What else...oh, it was my mom's birthday on the 4th. Here was my card to her:

Also have been dicking around with my watercolors lately:

I've been watching a bunch of movies lately and occurred to me how important costume designs are to a character. A character is basically defined by the clothes they wear. Look at Superman in the recent 'Man of Steel'. Shit movie, but amazing costumes and an interesting new revelation-- the emblem on Supe's chest is the sigil of his family and means 'hope'. As one of the last of a dying race, he represents the idea of peaceful cohabitation with members of a different planet-- in other words, 'hope' for a better, kinder future. 

I have a lot to say on this Superman movie because I've been a long time fan of the character, and not all of it is good, but I don't want to take up the whole of this blog post. I will add this, though, my main problem with the movie: what the actual hell is up with the music? There's too much fanfare and not enough atmospheric changes to fit the mood of a scene. I felt like I was being blasted with action music the whole time. Superman didn't even have a theme-- I know the movie aimed to be different from its predecessor so they couldn't use the original music, but I think that they could have spent just a little more effort on a proper, non-action related theme that defined the new resurrection of such a beloved character.

I wish people realized how important music is, in any type of media. Look at 'The Man in the Iron Mask', 'Forrest Gump', 'Braveheart', 'Jaws', 'Lord of the Rings', video games 'Legend of Zelda', 'Heavy Rain', 'Silent Hill', and the latest and best zombie game on PS3 'The Last of Us'. Hearing the music in any setting takes you back to that game/movie. It's an instant connect. It's what defines a franchise, a character, but more importantly, it's what creates the atmosphere and the mood. It's the cheatcode to the audience's emotions. 

Here's an example: remember the ending scene of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, nineteen years later? And how it was an echo of the music used in the very first Harry Potter movie? It was the most perfect way to end the franchise, this music that brought us back to our childhoods and reminded us that that journey was not over; that, for this new generation, it had only just begun. I swear, I had never cried so hard in a movie theatre when I heard that theme again (a record only broken later on by the 2012 'Les Miserables'). 

Argh, I admit, I am such a sap when it comes to cinematic music, but still. It shouldn't just be disregarded, or treated like 'background noise'. If a movie were a person, its bones would be the storyline, its meat would be the characters and its animus, its soul would be the music. Music is what breathes life into a story on a screen.

Faaaaaar out, I really did not intend to babble so much about this. This was supposed to be a short post, but I guess it's hard to stop the flow of thoughts once they start.

Till next time,

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Misogyny

Elephant Fact # 31: Smell is an elephant's strongest sense.

So, the first semester of university has finally ended and I am now on school holidays. It's all been going good so far; I've been getting a lot of stuff done and I visited the City library for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Why have I not gone there before? It's incredible. I must make a note of coming there more often.

On another topic, I really miss drawing comics on my computer. I wish I'd had the foresight to ask for a tablet instead of a laptop! Oh, First World problems. I mean, it's fun coloring using standard art stuff, but it's so much messier than painting digitally. Maybe I could actually use a proper painting program this time instead of Microsoft Outlook.

What else? Oh, I've been looking at a lot of stuff online, and been feeling really PO'd lately about the way women have been written in comics and stories. What is with all the damsels in distress I'm seeing? We don't need a hero; we are our own heroes. Boys, talk to me about being 'tough' when torrents of blood gush out of your vaginas every month.

And why must all the women be so scantily clad? All I see is ass and tits, ass and tits everywhere. I'm okay with nudity, really but it's the oversexualization of it that really gets to me. Look, if I'm going into battle (more realistically, with my blankets but that's not the point), you can trust me on the fact that my rear will not be hanging out like a goddamned sack of potatoes. The point of armor is to armor me, not emphasise how robust my cleavage looks in leather.

I guess a lot of these thoughts have come out in my doodles because suddenly (NSFW, a little):

It started out as anatomy practice (and also to figure out boob placement?) but somehow it became a really weird superhero genderbend. But look! They may be scantily clad, but it's not supposed to be eye candy. Get this straight: warrior women can come home and strip or fuck or whatever at their own discretion. The character can exude sexuality of their own free will without being sexually exploited. That is perfectly fine. What is not fine, is assuming that they must act 'sexy' and must be sexually appealing just because they're women.

For fuck's sake, people.

Have some genderbent Thor:

Whoah, this blog post went rapidly out of hand. I just have a lot of feels concerning this topic and I feel my blood pressure steadily rising whenever I see stuff like this floating around.

Anyway, more to come,

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Cartooning

Elephant Fact # 30: The African elephant can detect seismic signals with its feet.

Thought I should probably update whatever the hell it is I've been doing these days.

Been drawing people on the train. I've come to realize that it makes fantastic practice because everyone's so busy avoiding eye contact with each other that you can stare at them for extended periods of time without seeming like a total creep. And those that do notice tend to fall asleep anyway, so it's fair game!

Also tried drawing my SCIE1000 lecturer a few times (right pic). He never wears shoes and makes the most fantastic gestures to describe his graphs.

I tried cartooning again-- for some reason it's really quite difficult for me to exaggerate certain characteristics of a person when drawing; I just tend to NOPE whenever something is out of proportion. So I tried this thing where you put your music on shuffle and draw whatever the song inspires you to draw and that helped, sort of.

Ugh, sorry for the poor quality, my camera's really shoddy. In case you can't read it, the old miser/pervert was drawn while listening to 'Master of the House' from the Les Mis musical, the curvaceous babe from 'Transparent' by Porcelain Black, the backwards dude from 'Dead' by My Chemical Romance and the skeleton man from the 'Sweet Dreams' cover by Marilyn Manson.

Speaking of it, Les Miserables feels hit me the other night.  So here's Enjolras and Grantaire (probs in the Cafe Musain, I don't know?) done at around1-2 in the morning, after a few of my friends' joint birthday party.

Too lazy to write more.

Happy birthday to my friends!

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Fish

Elephant Fact # 29: Elephants have evolved a sixth toe.

Still playing around with my pastels. Was thinking of changing color scheme; I've been using too much blue and orange, I know, but they're my favorite two colors to pair together.

Fish are so cute. Shame my family keeps on killing them by accident.

More to come,

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Colors

Elephant Fact # 28: Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror.

So, I think it was last year, three of my friends gave me this set of soft pastels as a present. And even though I went completely nuts over them, I never tried them because I was more accustomed to pencil/pen, etc. and also because you needed a certain type of paper to use them on-- something textured and preferably colored, so that the pigment can cling to the sheet.

But a few days ago, I went to heaven Daiso in the city (by myself, shocker), this ridiculously pink place where motherflipping everything is $2.80 and where there really seems to be no order in their aisles (I went right from stationery to crockery, go figure) and bought a notebook of brown paper. Then I went home and tried out the pastels for the first time.

Good Lord.

At the moment, they are literally the best things I own. I-- I just-- I can't-- I love-- holy cow---

Anyway, in an earlier post I said that I wished I could go to a figure drawing class but couldn't due to money/time. Well, I managed to get over this problem thanks to the magic of Tumblr and found this site called Quickposes.com, where it basically gives you a time limit and bunch of pictures of models to draw. It is fantastic.

So I broke in my pastels by drawing a bunch of the poses. The results are below but I gotta warn you, this blog is rapidly becoming a little NSFW (if you're uncomfortable with this sort of thing). I mean, I just really like drawing people. Naked. woooot

No, but in all honesty (and I'm really trying not to sound like too much of a pretentious sap/loser) but there really is something beautiful about um, human figures. It's flawed, stuff jiggles, stuff stretches and flops but all of these things make up something that is so much more than its parts; something that can think and feel and create and just be. It's fantastic.

So even though the anatomy's a bit off and the colors are meh (this is the first time I've ever tried pastel, so I'm still experimenting with warm/cool color schemes and so forth), here is a bunch of the stuff I did:

And because I really love progress pics:

...and so on. At the moment, I've found that I'm completely fine with drawing women, no weirdness at all (hey, they're just tits, right?), but I haven't yet gathered the courage to draw men, at least without leaving this gaping white space where their peepee would be. I mean, come on. Omegle ruined me for life on that one. 

But urgh, I love these pastels.

More to come (probably),

The Unlucky Elephant