The Hits 2014

So here's the first of what I hope will be a new tradition, all my personal hits of 2014. 105 tracks equaling 8 hours of continuous play. If you were hoping to fill your entire workday with a pile of curated house then this is the playlist for you. While most of them came out this year others came out ages ago, I wasn't paying attention to when things came out, just whether or not I thought they were cool or not. You'll probably recognize a lot of these songs if you've been listening to the stuff I share at the bottom of my shorter posts.

Since I started using Soundcloud I started digging a lot of Deep House, and I realize that it isn't for everyone. If you don't find the beats invigorating you'll probably find them downright irritating. Also if you've listened to any amount of George.FM it's going to straight piss you off cause you've heard it a million times before.

I've tried to tap down on the amount of Tourist I put in here or I'd be dropping entire EP's in. Also I've stayed away from the hour long mixtapes and tried to stick to just single songs.



Have a mint New Years ya munters.

Blobby: Eat Glass

Sourced from actual words.
Christmas Eve last night meant we spent the evening walking around staring at Christmas lights, or alternatively driving around not seeing any Christmas lights at all.
Becky at one point mentioned that there had been no nativity scene christmas lights anywhere.
"Yeah," Matt replied "Not a single one of those things I've seen a million times before." as we trudged down a street that had at least 4 santas on every lawn.
Hey we got on a kisscam though.

Merry Christmas Face 2014

Christmas Girl: 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Looks like we all made it to the end of another year. This year the site was its second busiest its ever been, the only year it was busier was back in 2011 where I did a Doodle A Day everyday. The activity this year was spurred mostly by my 8Bit girls which I hope to continue throughout 2015. I'd just like to thank those of you who have stuck through this all with me, you guys are legends and you deserve more than I could ever mispell.

Since you've been so good, here's a secret from my year

That time I pissed into my pants. You see I didn't "wet myself" I just pissed into my own pants by accident. How do I rephrase that? I was purposefully pissing, but accidentally into my pants. That works. Yeah, so it's easier to browse your phone when you sit down to go toilet right? Why stand up to pee when you can do it sitting down like a girl king, amiright?

Anyway, unbeknownst to me I hadn't fully flopped myself out. Mr Johnston was still chilling in his clothy mancave when the order came to do his thing.

This happened at work, and is another confirmation that everyone should keep a spare pair of underwear in their draw for sticky/wet situations. That's my gift to you this Christmas.

Nariko - Heavenly Sword

So apparently there's a movie of this game that stinks out loud. That's a shame.
Riding off the experience of Enslaved I figured it'd be a good time to get Ninja Theories other female protagonist out of the way.
While researching all of that I bumped into Hellblade. I have a feeling this game is going to be pretty rad. Especially if the concept art is anything to go by. I don't normally share other peoples art here but I figure these images are going to get you more hyped about the game than the pretty trailer does.

Blobby Dream Catcher Pt.2

< Part One

Special thanks to Becky for helping me think of this one. It's interesting, the original series of blobby comics I came up with were done in isolation after I'd rush home from Uni, while this series has had input from a whole bunch of people. Hopefully it won't suck due to being designed by committee.

Here's some Enslaved shots. Kind of spoilers if you care about that sort of thing. I finished the game and I was quite pleased with the ending. It was brave and didn't mind ending on a big question mark that didn't include "To Be Continued?"
It was titillating, and the combat was fun till the very last minute.

Window Puns

I thought of this pun at work but Kristof didn't know what a clevage window was so I had to painfully explain it and by the time I was done this joke was no longer entertaining.

I'm going to the South Island the day after boxing day. This shouldn't affect you. I didn't buy you tickets, find your own island. In the last year of using Soundcloud I've Liked about 11 hours of music (conservatively). Time to figure out how much will be kosher for my 3 other companions. I have another 21 days worth of music on Winamp, so that should help.



If I knew how good the speakers were in our rental I'd know whether or not to bring any ambience  (like the song above), because this genre has an unfortunate tendency to get drowned out by road sounds and other real life ambience.



By the way the movie this is from "Die Welle" or "The Wave" in english is a fascinating take on a real life experiment, and I definitely recommend you go and watch it.

Blobby: Dream Catcher

Part Two >

That's number seven. Final Fantasy is surprisingly inspiring. When your battling it frees up a lot of your mental energy to go off and think of something else.
Also every time the story flares up I think to myself "I could surely do better than this." so that helps my ego somewhat.

My stuff has been appearing randomly round the net recently, mint to see some attribution going on. Remember if you would like hi-res versions of my pixel girls with transparent backgrounds for your ugly christmas sweaters you only need to figure out how to contact me. I'm more than willing to oblige.

Sarkeesian Postscript

It's terrifying to see how information moves through the internet. It's always lauded as a positive experience that everyone should chase after. Every boardroom in the planet is banging it's head against the wall trying to find the "viral" button on their keyboard. After seeing how my post was used in other places proves just how scary it can be to say the wrong thing. What if I told people the wrong thing? Gave them bad information as I was suggesting the petition and the useless fringes of the gaming press were? It's a thought that we should all take to heart, especially when it concerns another squishy human being.

After posting the Sarkeesian Mirror's Edge 2 stuff it quickly ended up on /againstmensrights/ & then /mensrights/ and a couple hours after my post went up an extremely similiarly formatted article went up on Lazygamer.net. It's sad to see people in the comments not fully grasping that what they know may be based on speculation and thin air.

I've issued challenges to several of these peeps and they don't come back with anything to substantiate their claims, so I'm calling this one case closed until Mirror's Edge 2 comes out and I see the credits rolling at the end.

Edit 19/12/14: Unbeknownst to me, at the time I posted this EA responded concluding that "This petition is based on inaccurate information. EA is not working with Anita Sarkeesian on development of Mirror’s Edge."
So I guess we won't need to wait that long after all.

Serah Farron - Final Fantasy XIII-2

So I got FFXIII-2 as a joke a couple weeks ago on Steam on a whim, as just something to have a quick play of while I was drifting between games. Turns out I had accidentally pre-ordered it instead. I've had an uneasy relationship with Final Fantasy over the years. I've seen other people enjoy it and spend literally hundreds of hours playing it. A couple years ago one of my mates got a PS1 specially to play FF7 again.
However, the lack of any gameplay or coherent storylines has warded me away for many years. My friends told me nightmare stories about how they were stuck on FF10 and couldn't skip a 5 minute cutscene they had to watch every time they had to retry the battle.
So despite not liking Final Fantasy, coming in half way through a story on a game that was apparently poorly recieved, the first two hours have actually been kind of fun. I mean yeah, the writing is terrible and full of those Anime cliches. I've already been told numerous times to believe in the healing powers of friendship & pretty much every step they take leaves a giant gaping plot hole that's explained away with "Lol Dunno ae!"
So yeah, pretty great. Here's some shots I took  so far. I tried to keep cutscene shots to a minimum, which is hard since the game is mostly cut scenes.

Sarkeesian Working on Mirror's Edge 2 + Blobby: Sudoku

I'd like to thank +Kristof Haines for helping with this one. I messed with the lines somewhat though. I always feel self conscious when mucking around with the work of people that I perceive of as "real writers". So here's the original script:
"What's your darkest secret?"

"I cheated on sudoku once. I've never told anyone that..."

If you're here for the comic you can feel free to stop reading now. Here, I'll even leave you some obligatory chillwave so you feel like you've reached the end of a regular post. I really recommend it, it'd make a great piece beside some Postal Service.

Anita Sarkeesian Wants to Fuck your Shit

is probably the title most clickbait sites would use if they ever get wind of this non-story. Here, let me explain. So there's a petition that's sprung up out of nowhere claiming that DICE has had Sarkeesian pushed onto them by EA to do whatever she says on the new Mirror's Edge game. You see I'm a hardcore fan & I have Google alerts for whenever someone mentions ME2.

Here's the petition here. Don't sign it just yet!

Note that the petition provides no links or references. However they do mention that "she went so far as to say that women needed a whole new "simplified" control set for this game, based on her personal experiences, passing them off as the opinion of the female gaming community."

The reporter who originally posted about it was horrified by the statements made by Sarkeesian, and so was I. But they seem conveniently inflammatory don't they?

As an aside, I don't want any games journalists getting near any game. Imagine if that dick from IGN went and slashed Alien: Isolation in half for the lols.

Ok, so going from the quoted text and shitty photoshop image at the top of the post from actiontrip.com we can trace these peoples thoughts back to this Destructoid article from 2012. Let us note again that the only reference or citation is at the very end noting that the writer has been "reliably informed that there are Tweets relating to this on the Femenist frequency Twitter account" which he apparently couldn't be bothered following up or linking to. Show me a smoking gun bro then your 1000 word wordcount won't go to waste.

Ok, since he did zero legwork, we will, skip to 6:15 and watch for about a minute.

Here's the archived post and screenshot that's been circulating (which was used in the above video.)



Edit: On the way home on the bus today I realised that these rumours cropped up long before ME2 was even officially announced back in June 2013. So for EA to have announced prior to that time that she was "officially working on the game" would be ludicrous to assume.

In Conclusion, No She Doesn't

So the old Destructoid post was acting upon information that was given birth to on 4Chan.
Being "reliably informed" is something you can become if you go to /b/. Unfortunately finding out that you have a kink for big hairy feet is about all you're going to be informed of.
So she did do a talk, but nowhere has it been stated that she works there.
Let's have a look at what you would look like if you hadn't done some research:

The really sad thing is that all these fans that are going on about this are damaging future sales. Alpha Omega Sin's memory is long and he'll be voting with his wallet in 2015/2016. EA will feel the full wrath of his money going into Battlefield 5, SO THERE. Take that! How does that make you feel EA? Do you feel the burn?
I love the Mirror's Edge community and it's just stink to see them taken for a ride like this.
If it's any consolation, the petition people already have their wish.

Also if you somehow find a credit somewhere or a DICE employee actually saying that she's working on the game and not just doing a presentation I'm fully willing to eat my words. Alpha Omega will help me I'm sure.

I'd like to thank +Matthew Rust for doing the legwork for me on this one. I had one of those days where I had to "work" or whatever.

Edit 19/12/14: EA responded concluding that "This petition is based on inaccurate information. EA is not working with Anita Sarkeesian on development of Mirror’s Edge."

Doom 3 Passwords

Anyone whose played Alien Isolation, or Doom 3, or just about any other game that randomly chucks passwords all over the place will finally understand that they aren't just being retards.
I'm not gonna lie. I have passwords written down on post its in my desk. No one's ever "hacked" them yet, as the media would say. Sorry, I guess I should say "as the courts would say" in this particular instance. The man and the media have it tough sometimes.
Guessing a password isn't hacking. Much like chucking wood chippings into your garden doesn't make you a lumberjack.

Blobby: A Little Longer

25% of the way through the series. I have yet to discover the overarching story that will blend it's way through these one off encounters yet. I'm sure production will slow down once I run out of prewritten strips.

Blobby: Worth My Time

The bottom of this strip was kindly painted in by Becky. originally the layer was chucked out cause it wasn't working, but after I coloured in the rest of the city I accidentally turned the layer back on and it worked really well with everything else.
Work has decided that doing iPad magazines are a total waste of our time. Which is true, the walled garden of the Apple store is really a ghost town in the magazine department, no one wants them. We could sell 50 issues and be in the top 10 earning apps some days. And if you aren't shmoozing up to Apple to be on the frontpage then you aren't going to get any traction at all.
My final project for uni in 2012 was about this entire subject, it's nice to be proven right 2 years later. I'll try and find the text for it and post it up here maybe.

Blobby: Same League

Crud, capital S in Sorry. Oh well. I'll have to go back and fix that. So the dude on the left is Headtree, a character I made up back at uni during a boring lecture. I wrote his entire little story during the lecture as well. I thought I was so cool. He's popped up occasionally in the blobby world to freak people out, but he's harmless really.

So mum just told me a terrifying story just now. Every two weeks her and Dad go to Waiheke to fix up grandmas old place on Waiheke. The house is fairly isolated and backs on to native bush and vines. Randomly one night at about 10 a woman walks into the house. Mum stares at her. Dad stares at her. She stares at everyone else. Mums standing in the doorway to the lounge and says to the lady "Are you ok?" "I will be" the lady responds "when I get past you."

The lady pushes past and goes through the lounge, round through the toilet for a while, then into the only bedroom and then back into the dining room.
Lets describe the lady a bit. Mid 40s. Nice businessy short hair, classy top. No shoes. No pants. Underwear where it should be. "Shapely legs"

They manage to shoo her out the door somehow and mum locks Dad outside with Pantless. Because apparently mum follows the pirate code or something. Dad was quietly trying to get back in but she was busy calling the neighbours to tell them to lock everything up.

Eventually the philanthropist parents of mine decide you can't chuck someone outside with no pants on when they clearly have no idea where they are.

So they usher the lady back inside and give her a blanket. She huddles next to the fire. She doesn't smell of alcohol, but how often do drugs ever smell like a silly thing like that?
Mum 'n Dad try and pry information out of her bit by bit. The lady said she had a son "whose been 21 for a couple years now."

Mum was a little nervous and laughed way to much at everything. The lady shot her a look at one point thinking mum was laughing at her and said "It could be worse. I could be totally naked." which made mum laugh more.

 Pantless mentions that she lived at "Number 20." Which narrows it down to every single road. also someone had dropped her off here & that she had a bright red letterbox.
Apparently Mum 'n Dad (MnD for short) have great letterbox memories and recalled that there was one up the road.

So they set off with torches in hand tailed by Pantless. They find the letterbox almost right next door. The two driveways look the same at night. Little narrow things on a moderate curve round the hill that cut down the bank & bush.

The next day Mum goes back to the house and the door is ajar, key in lock. No answer.
She went back the day after and Pantless came to the door, she didn't look as good as she had that first night, hair a mess, dressing gown and pajamas on. Still sort of out of it.
"I've just come to pick something up." mum managed to say.
"Ah yes, the chickens." Pantless came out with.
"Uh, actually no, a fluffy pink blanket."
"Right. I'll go get it." The lady stomped off before returning with the blanket, giving it to mum.
Then nothing. Pantless provides no explanation, NOTHING. No "I'm sorry I'm addicted to some crazy shit." Nadda!

Anyway, the only reason mum brought that story up was because our car got rifled through last night. Looks like we left the door on it unlocked. They didn't nick anything due to the fact the car is completely bare to begin with.
Remember kids, nowhere is safe. Live in fear always. Peace.

Blobby: Bear in the Woods

Bears sometimes need to be told where to go toilet. We could explain to them that it's due to a phrase that we use to explain how true and predictable something is, but they'd probably get upset about that. Bears have an image of themselves in their mind that they're trying to live up to, & if they found out that we mostly discuss whether or not they shit in the woods they wouldn't be pleased.
Unrelated music:

Merry Christmas Face 2013

Christmas Girl: 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Much like an abortion, it's better late than never. I figured since I've done it for four years I may as well make sure I do my fifth one belatedly.
Merry christmas everyone! I can't wait to see what 2014 has in store for us. Here are my predictions.
Kim Dotcom will start an internet party and totally sweep the floor in NZ politics. He'll probably become prime minister.
Kim Jong Un will finally prove to the world that he can fly, and also forgive all his detractors because he is a just and forgiving god.
Kim Kardashian will co-star alongside her own butt.
America will draw a direct connection between guns and death due to guns.
Tim Cook will go against everyone's expectations that Apple will be releasing a dumb smart watch because he's intelligent enough to know they would totally suck dick.
Gravity will continue to play in theaters all year long because it was Sandra Bullocks birthday wish.
Mark Zuckerberg will make an ambiguous post on Facebook saying "Such a bad night, I don't want to talk about it..." before shutting down the entire social network due to no one taking the bait and commenting.

Blobby: Feels Like Living

It's been a long long time since we've visited the blobby world, but we're back now. It's nice to see the style slowly getting refined and polished. I'm hoping to have twenty of these done so I can bundle them up into a little book and help bolster a table of little comics by my girlfriend. You can read more about that business here.
I've gone the rare course of actually planning out most of these comics for a change, which will hopefully guarantee a higher quality output. My early ones were normally done on the fly, and usually not fully figured out till the drawing was finished.
Writing the content has been particularly difficult, since I have a very specific idea of the tone that I want to create with the Blobby World. Normally it requires the sort of emotions that are tied to loneliness or newly discovered love. So not exactly the sort of thing you can shit on command. As such I've taken to asking people I know in these situations "Hey if you have any potent personal thoughts that I could broadcast to the world, totally tell me ok?"

Spanky Concept Art 2

I mentioned this time last month that I had done some concept art, well here's some more. I'm not totally happy with the brightness of the bottom one. Although I think her hair ponytail is rad, so it does have redeeming features.

It was the first piece I did for the commission so I don't think it was ever going to turn out as well as all the others.

It was fun drawing this sort of stuff though and being able to go crazy with the armour.

Sheik | Zero Suit Samus - Super Smash Bros

 There was a slight hiccup in the process of drawing Sheik where I was being informed that she might actually be a he, even though she's actually Zelda in disguise. I think the main muddle is whether or not it's a magical transformation and grows a doodle or not, since she gets all masculine and stuff. In the end I went with how the wiki describes her, and not with the fan hypothesis. And besides, I see no buldge. This isn't the first time I've had to make a call on a characters sex. Speaking of which I still need to do Leo Kliesen.
I went back on my word about drawing Zero Suit Samus. It had to be done. I really feel like Nintendo was scraping the barrel for decent female characters for the game. I mean, these two are technically double ups, and Rosalina is just dumb. I dunno, are we counting Jigglypuff as a girl? Or is that as unfair as counting all Ladybugs as girls.
Interesting thing I found out about Samus, in the original games, if you were super awesome at it you'd get rewarded by this at the end. Which is more of a carrot than the rocket ship on Tetris I guess.

Palutena | Rosalina | Lucina - Super Smash Bros

To celebrate Super Smash Bros coming out this Friday on Wii U I decided to do all the girls whose name end with "na". Fun fact, the Hyperlink on Rosalina's page is rosetta.html which is the japanese name she was given. Super confusing since I wrote the name down on the Google doc as Rosetta, but when I got to the profile it was telling me something different.
Previously I have done Princess Zelda, Princess Peach, Samus & Wii Fit trainer.
It looks like I'm gonna have to go against my stand about doing Zero Suit Samus, sigh. Also tomorrow I'll try and have Sheik done, then that will be everyone in time for the launch.
I heard that the game will have Gamecube controller support if you buy the adapter, that should be cool!

Squigly - Skullgirls

Yup yup, more pixel art, that's not as important as what I'm about to tell you.

So the other day I was at home by myself, drawing more characters. Suddenly there's a knock at the door. I bound down the hallway, could this be my girlfriend at the door? This is unexpected. To my dismay it's an insurance guy.
He looks up "wow, you seem happy today, most people are all grumpy after work."
He'd caught me off guard, if I had thought it was going to be some random on my doorstep I would have put on a bored and uninterested look before I opened the door. "Oh yeah man, well It's been a good week."
He launches into his spiel, noting that he isn't trying to "sell you anything" and that "I don't normally do this" while also noting that "It's my first day."

I asked to see who he worked for, he whips out a shitty card with his face on it and a little logo. With this motion he also knocks his iPhone out of his pocket. We both watched it bounce down the steps. If I was a quick thinker this diversion would have been a great time to close my door. But I didn't.
So I do the worst thing imaginable. I give him all my details. I write them down even! I don't care about free consultations about whether or not I have the best insurance plan.
He smiled and said I'd receive a call in a couple minutes to confirm all my details, he also asked when would be a good time for one of his people to come over and have a chat. After some deliberation in my mind I decided that 3pm would be a good time, since I work till 6pm.
We shook hands on good terms. Little was he to know, that we would end this evening as bitter enemies.
He left and I set my plan in motion. I turned off my cellphone and all the lights on my house. Adults don't play pretend as much as kids do. But when we do we usually pretend to not be home.

The landline rang and rang and rang. Ignore it Izak, you don't need to know what the people at the other end are going to say. at about 7:30 I had another knock at the door. I laid very still, my eyes swivelling like a lizards. Another louder knock. Nope, not going out there. Finally at 8:30 I had one final knock applied to my door. I knew at this point that I could probably get through this. It's not like I wanted to dick him around, it was his first day and I wanted to help him out. We had times together and I coudn't just break up with him.

Later that night when I turned my phone on I got 2 calls from a private number and 4 calls from my girlfriend. Collateral relationship damage, but probably worth it. She also sent a text which read "Why are you so hard to get a hold of, I want you to take something out of the freezer."
I texted back in the morning "You mean the chicken?"
Later on I asked her why she didn't just replace "something" with "chicken", surely that'd be easier than calling someone who had tried to drop off the technological radar. Also she had called the landline.
Later that next day I got another call on my cell from a private number. My blood ran cold and I stared at it, wailing, eventually it stopped and so did I.
On Saturday I got a call on the landline, I had foreseen this coming and had long since stopped using my usual greeting of "Hello, Izak speaking."
He asked to know if I was home and I told him in a very concerned voice that there was no one here by that name. He said my name in full, supplemented by reciting my darkest secrets. I was determined "Yeah nah sorry man, I think you've got a wrong number." He agreed that it was probably a wrong number somehow and dropped the issue.
And that's the story of how I couldn't say "no I'm not interested" to someone's face.

Double - Skull girls

Double, from Skullgirls, I was having a hard time deciding whether I should go for her transformed self or not, so I decided to keep it simple.

So I'm getting pretty ridiculous with Steam cards at the moment. I got 90% off a game that was already only worth a dollar. The cards it drops are worth 14 cents. What sort of world do we live in? Although apparently the devs get a cut of the transaction anyway, so I guess they'll be nickle and dimeing their way back to that dollar I owe them.

Vector Office Characters

The creative flow has been intense recently. My compatriot and I in the digital department of M2 have been let off the leash, or at least, if we haven't been willingly released we've managed to gnaw our way through it.

We're currently running around in the street chasing cars.

First order of business was to start creating clickbait. Second order of business, try and figure out a way we can do comics on company time. We have a vague concept at the moment, and the aesthetics are nailed down, it's only a matter of experimenting with the form and layout.

Well I say "It's only" but what I really mean is "this thing will instantly get chucked out if it fails to perform well.

I guess at the very least I can give the characters away as a free vector thing if everything doesn't work out. Or we could do it in our spare time for the LOLs. They're fully posable. You can't tell at the moment but they do have joints. Also my boss has been designed into one of these characters. May he live forever.

Valentine - Skullgirls

Valentine! From Skullgirls. She has a saw thing attached to her back but I decided not to include it for aesthetic reasons.
The other day I managed to pick up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West during the Steam Midweek Madness sale for 5 bucks. I've heard many things about this game, and one of the things I heard was that I should play it. It always had a certain allure to me. Unfortunatly, since I don't really "do" consoles (do = own) I never had an opportunity.
But someone was nice enough to create a shoddy PC port of the game. Now when I say shoddy, I mean changing the graphics options ingame literally does nothing. You need to change the .ini file to be able to even begin squeezing the goodness out of this game. Fortunately someone on Steam has a walkthrough.
I had to crank my shadows up a bit more and turn on some other misc settings that looked interesting. I didn't bother doing any screen refresh stuff other than uncapping the FPS. Also I haven't really bothered looking into Anti Aliasing much yet, but I'm sure if I did it'd improve my screenshots immediately.

Kris - Pokemon Crystal

Kris was the very first playable female in the Pokemon series. She also appeared the least, being cut from the rebooted Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Although apparently there are rumours this was a last minute decision, due to unused art assets for the Pokegear including an image of Kris.

The name Kris is only officially used once, on the boxart for Pokemon crystal, and also as the first default when you go to pick the name. I asked Becky while she was brushing her teeth a couple questions.

Were you ever gutted that there weren't girl characters earlier in the series?

"It was dumb it was called Gameboy, but I didn't have a problem with that. I just couldn't ever play as me."

Did you ever give yourself a male version of your name?

"I once called myself Barry, but I was mostly Gold." [Gold was the version she was playing at the time.]

What was your favourite Pokemon game?

"That's a tough question, everyone likes the game they started with. Gold? Although Leaf Green was really good... Are you interviewing me?"