Dear whoever is reading this

I don't know how you're still seeing this. You may be seeing it via RSS. If you haven't seen any of my comics going up in the last week then you're totally missing out. Check out izaksmells.com proper and make sure you resubscribe. What you're seeing here is my old blogger blog which is now deprecated.

xoxoxo

Tattoo Girl - ONFORM Sketch 2

Carrying on from last weeks sketch this has become a good way of keeping drawing without committing to anything big. We're preparing to move into the new house this Saturday. Last weekend was a blur of painting walls. I can hardly differentiate the days since they consisted of the exact same place except for an intermission for a 25th/Baby Shower/Engagement party. So half the people were getting absolutely smashed while the other half was ogling the babies room while looking at the engagement ring.

I have to say it sucks growing up. Were you aware that the internet costs money? Like, almost all of your money??

Happy Comments 8Bit Icon

We did an update to the visuals of what Happy Comments looks like when you disable it.

I also changed the little icons and changed them pixel for pixel. However I did still downscale them because I'm a dirty corner cutter. Matt needed 38x38 sized icons for hi res displays, so I did 'em. and then made a 19px version of that. Here's what they look like nice and big:

I did the lighter squares around the smiley one because without it the eyes looked like little freaky pin pricks, and that's just not the look I was going for. I was happier with crisp crosses on the dead purple icon because It was so small I needed the crosses to be as readable as possible.

You can still go and download the extension if you want to give it a whirl yourself. It's kind of nice having a little friend on the toolbar all the time.

Happy Comments Character Logo

So my mate Matt hates shitty comments. He also lacks all self control, so he can't help but read terrible things. Due to this lack of self control he suddenly sprung into action and built a Chrome Extension which blocks unpopular comments from wasting your time.

My contribution and claim to fame was making the logo for it. It's based on the quick one he made for testing purposes.

What your comment feed looked like before Happy Comments:

Anyway, if you're sick of reading shit comments online then prepare for this chrome extension to change all that for you.

Here's how it looks in the sidebar. The slider lets you set how anal you want to be with the comments. The lowest hiding only negative comments and when it's cranked all the way up it will only show the most highly rated.

Matt put a lot of work into the button and slider because he knows how to prioritize style.

And here's the icon in action in the extensions area of chrome.

Also here's a bunch of the assets used within the chrome extension store. The font wasn't my first choice but I couldn't get my hands on Serrano Black Italic which is a locally grown NZ font which is used as the BNZ logo and also on the Air New Zealand adverts.

Eventually I settled on Poetsen One.

I'm pretty proud of the little guy. If you want him around you can download him here. Or if you have any comments and suggestions send them to @happy_comments

Blob Man - ONFORM Sketch

Just submitted this little dude to ONFORM, a Tumblr that takes that old drawing game and turns it into a public thing for all artists to take part in, a bit like Sext Me All Your Nudes.

All My Friends Hate You - Blobby World Comic

I've finally put together the PDF of the third Blobby world book. Although the others aren't anywhere near as polished as this one. It's tempting to call this one the first, but whatever. Should look good on iPad if you have the Issuu app on there. Also you can go ahead and download the pdf for free.

I couldn't have done this without Becky, My girlfriend, Matt my boyfriend bro, and Kristof my Spellchecker. I also couldn't have done it without all the human beings that move around me like a constellation of drama and bullshit, you're the best and my constant muse.

Some of the lines in this stretch all the way back to stuff I wrote at uni. My first big payload of strips for this came from my trip to Melbourne, and others were just great lines people came up with.

Hope you dig it.

Tifa Lockheart - Final Fantasy 7 8Bit

It feels like ages since I've done one of these. Figure I may as well do the most famous Final Fantasy girl there is. Rivaled maybe only by Lightning.

Work on the new house is going well. We've now scrubbed every square inch of the inside of it, getting rid of any grease left over by the people who were there last. The walls have had their holes filled in and I'm currently filling in cracks. We have the undercoats of paint ready to slap on the wall (although we have a complete lack of dropsheets and paintbrushes at the moment that we're hoping my folks will provide.)

We've figured out rates and bills and things pretty much and we're left with a couple of dollars at the end of it to do whatever we like with. We'll still be living comfortably, like we're not skimping on food or anything, but buying a new graphics card or chucking bblenders out the window at people will be out of the question now.

Baby Shower Shenanigans - EP16.5

Filmed entire on the LG G4 I reviewed in my last post.
This was taken at our mates Josh and Rachel's Baby shower party. That's the sort of parties we go to now. Long gone are the 21st shindigs. But hey, that doesn't mean we cant do things you would normally find at a frat party.

Btw, the background image for the vid has Matt chugging beer through a baby bottle. It takes forever. Lou asked if she could "bite the nipple" which Josh said she could. She immediately bit the nipple off and shotgunned the beer. Cheater.

Hands on with the LG G4

For work I got to try out the LG G4 and write about it. I thought it would be cool if I mirrored my opinions here. I write all day at work, but there's very few things that I feel happy enough with to share. This is one of 'em. I also recorded a video on the phone which you can see here.

By the way, all photos on this post were taken on the G4 (apart from the product shots of course).

LG sent us a G4 to play with for a week, and I have to say I'm impressed. It's full grained genuine leather back cover instantly lent it a touch of class, and I could never quite get over the curved screen, which was gorgeous.

Specs

First of all let's get the specs out of the way, as you can find these pretty much anywhere.

Screen Size	5.5"	Rear Camera Megapixels	16	Processor	Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 808 processor with X10 LTE
Resolution	2560 x 1440 (Quad HD)	Aperture	f/1.8	Speed	1.8GHz 64-bit Hexa-Core CPU
PPI	538

The front facing camera is 8 Megapixels and the battery lasts a decent amount of time, managing to get me through the day, even after a hard thrashing of music and web browsing.

That Curve

When I first started up the phone I couldn't tell if it was my imagination or not that it had a curve. It's so slight. Showing it to friends they'd often eyeball the curve, or stick it on a table face down to see the gap. It's hard to spot at first. But as your using the phone you can really see it.



It makes browsing feel expansive and luxurious with a hint of depth. Although that could be the 5.5" screen talking. I was hoping that it would have a wrap around effect while watching movies. But the curve wasn't immediately apparent while watching films. The video quality of a standard movie looks nice and crisp though, and the screen can be 30% brighter than it's predecessor with no loss to battery life.

The Build

It's a decent weight, but feels fragile, less dense than my old Nexus 4. The buttons are another great talking point. As LG has eschewed from putting the volume and power buttons on the side and top, and have thrown them to the middle of the back, just under the camera. Some reviewers found it a bit awkward taking screenshots with it, but gripping the phone and holding the volume down and power button at the same time in one hand is a breeze. Those other guys just need to toughen up.



Double clicking the volume down button brings the camera up, even while locked. Reaching around to unlock the phone can be a bit tiresome, but fortunately you can double tap the screen to wake it up.

I was curious as to whether having buttons on the back would lead to more accidental clicking or pocket dialing, but nothing adverse happened to me during my week with it.

The back of the phone is customizable, and snaps off, allowing you to change the back of your phone. I went straight for the leather back, opting to stay away from the smoothness of the other back.

The Software Letdown

Before you think I'm gushing too much about this phone, the preloaded apps are mostly rubbish or useless to me. Lollipop itself looks great and operates like a dream. I didn't experience any lag while using it. I found myself slipping back into the safety of the Google apps over the course of using it. The LG keyboard felt unresponsive and the gesture writing suggestion were unintuitive, hardly ever getting what I was trying to write right. Fortunately the Google keyboard was loaded on there so it wasn't a great pain to swap over to my preference.

Nothing on the software side is a game breaker, as you can customize to your hearts delight, but it was a wee bit of a disappointment in an otherwise impressive device.

The Camera

back to the gushing. No one cares about megapixels or apertures at the end of the day, it's about whether the photos and video look great. The answer is, they do. I didn't dive into the intensity of manual shooting, which gives you all the options of a standard camera. I stuck to the paddling pool of quick shooting, where most normal people will spend their time.



Using the front facing camera you can see a bit of grain, but the back facing one comes out great, with things looking incredibly vivid and crisp. Perfect for crunching down, compressing and chucking of Facebook.

I took a bunch of videos as well, which came out at 1920x1080. One I shot in the late evening came out better than I expected, as the G4 handles low light extremely well.

The Sound

The phone I was lent came with a pair of QuadBeat 3' ear buds. I wasn't impressed at all with the sound of them and abandoned them quickly. The loudspeaker on the phone works quite well though, and if your an audiophile your headphones of choice will make whatever comes out of the G4 a lot better than the Quadbeats.

At the end of the day this is a great top end phone and you can't go wrong getting it. You certainly won't regret it, as it'll spank the pants off just about all other Android phones on the market currently. I'm disappointed I've got to give it back.

In NZ the RRP is $1199 and you can pick it up from Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi & 2 Degrees.

Pixel Art Trees

Because I know how enthralled you all are with scenery I decided to post my two favourites. Becky said I didn't know what trees looked like but I think I proved her wrong. The y usually look like cracked mosaic things right?

We Own a House

Izak Smells - Hayden's Stag Do - Ep16

It's been a while since an episode came out, but I was privileged to record Hayden's entry into marriage. What wasn't recorded was us trying to make Xbox's talk to each other so we could play Halo and a drunken walk to Wendy's.

We were supposed to go into town, but there was no way we were going to be allowed anywhere.

It should be noted that the marks my saggy white body got are still clearly visible and have now been renamed "scars".

Rhianna Pratchett Muses about Mirror's Edge: Catalyst

Rhianna Pratchett (yeah that Pratchett) writer of the original mirrors edge game has been tweeting since E3 about her thoughts on Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. I've recently turned into a bit of a ME:C apologist on the Reddit due to concerns about the games direction. It's kind of refreshing having an "official" point of view on the matter.

One of things I was most pleased about with the first game was coming up with the Mirror's Edge name (which is still there, so yay!)

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 16, 2015

One thing I was wondering about and Rhianna mentions, is the more grungy look that will rear up. Someone mentioned during their E3 playthrough that fans may not be used to the grungier look on the streets, so it's good to know that there were allowances in the original vision.

Interested with this open world look whether they depict the Old Town slums, which are outside the gleaming city.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 16, 2015

They appeared in the comics (a few trackers live out there) but never made it into the game.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 16, 2015

If anyone is so inclined the Mirror's Edge comics I wrote with @DCComics and @matthewdowsmith depict the story I would've like in the game.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 17, 2015

Because of her name dropping the comic I've gone and got my go-to comic book store to order me in a copy of the collection. I'll also have to pick up the one that's coming out for Catalyst as well when it's out.
And then there's the more obvious complaint that's popping up, that the city is to futuristic and not as near future as the last one. It's easier to be immersed in a world you recognize as being so close to your own. It's because of this game I gained such a love for architecture.

Interestingly Mirror Edge Catalyst looks much more futuristic than the original (which was meant to be very near future.) Quite Deus Ex-y.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 16, 2015

Would have actually preferred to go more futuristic with the original actually. Near-future is damn tough to write.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 16, 2015

You can never bend things as much as you'd like.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 16, 2015

Although far fewer fans have complained about this next bit. Guns. Most admit that they didn't use guns but they liked the choice. In ME:C the option has been dropped completely. I'm a huge fan of this decision.

BTW Faith was never keen on guns in the first Mirror's Edge. So dropping gun combat is Catalyst is completely in line with her character.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 17, 2015

Although we absolutely would have done things differently given more time/budget we built the narrative of the world Catalyst now stands on.

— Rhianna Pratchett (@rhipratchett) June 17, 2015

I haven't addressed the slight switch in focus that the story has made, which a lot of people are unhappy with. But I will when I formulate some words worth reading. I just don't think that there's much of a difference between "faceless Totalitarian government" and "faceless Conglomerate of companies".

Images from Dead End Thrills

Aloy - Horizon: Zero Dawn

E3 2015 has seen a decent lineup of Female Protags this year. Ass Creed, Recore, Beyond Eyes, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst and Dishonored 2 are all notable entries. Shouldn't take me long to draw them all.

Horizon and Recore seem to have similiar themes. And by themes I mean, post apocalyptic world with robots and kick ass girls.

PyxelEdit and some Little Running Dudes

I haven't done a proper post about PyxelEdit yet. I started to early on and then dropped it into drafts. I'm glad I did. My knowledge about the program at the time made me look like an idiot. Perceived flaws and problems with the program were only due to my own ineptitude.

Anyway, as I fiddle around with it I'm starting to build up quite a nice little spritesheet of pieces you could use in a Platformer. I'm thinking it may make a nice resource for new indy devs who want to get something whipped up quickly. No doubt cases of this already exist, but having a little choice never hurt anyone right?

Hyping Mirror's Edge: Catalyst

Here's some recent screenshots I've taken of Mirror's Edge, to pad out my fan trepidation and roundup of recent hype.

So it hasn't been hard to guess that we'd see more Mirror's Edge at this E3. The last two E3's have had teasers, so at the very least we'd get another little developers diary. But there was no way. ME appeared for pre-order a while ago (albeit without legit or finalized box art) and the EA financial statement listed ME as a breadwinner for next year.

The current state of things has Mirror's Edge: Catalyst as being listed as playable on the showroom floor and the official site saying "Thank you for your incredible passion and your patience. I'm excited to tell you that it's paid off — by this time next week, you will have finally seen more of the game at E3."

So at 8am on Tuesday morning I expect I'll be on a bus, burning through my data like I was that time last year. However my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that this time last year Sara Jansson's words were "I know many of you probably wish we would show more of the game, but we’re still pretty early in development". The DICE team was also held up during the release of Battlefield 4 which was released in a horribly buggy state. They (reportedly) put all hands on deck to fix it, including teams working on other projects. It's unconfirmed how involved the ME team was with all this, but how long does it take to produce a solid triple A game? Is a game that's in "early development" fully playable a year later? Can a creative vision be realized in the time-frame set by bean counters and financial quarters?

Can EA through DICE fuck a game I've been hyped for the last 6 years about? Yes. But I hope they don't. Edit: DICE, you pulled through, the game looks amazing. You've done us proud! And no guns, holy shit. 0_0 nice!

Sakuya - Ōkami 8Bit

Suggested by Jeff. I'm just gonna have to quickly congratulate you on suggesting a girl that isn't on my extensive list. When I ask for suggestions it's normally a game of either A. Suggesting one I haven't already done or B. Got on my list but don't really want to do until someone makes me.

I've got a new pixel drawing app (which I'm probably not going to use to draw my pixel girls, just purely for consistency) but I'll probably go into it later. It's called Pyxel Edit for those that care.

Here's a song from my teenage years of playing Burnout 3.

#Zeroplace Chapter 2

I was stoked with the support I got for chapter 1 (which you can read here) that I'm back with the second chapter, their first actual adventure on the road. This is all a hodgepodge of true stories and events.

Hope you like it. I'd just like to also thank Matt and Jo for being mint enough to source me the real life images of the actual locations. The chapter 2 image was taken by Matt in Whananaki and Jo took the signposts shot.

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Cirilla - The Witcher: 3 Wild Hunt 8Bit

I've previously done Triss Merigold from the Witcher series. I really should play that game again. Give it a decent fair crack. In fact I'm downloading Witcher 2 from gog.com as I write. I like the fact it's all DRM free. But it kind of sucks I have to download 13 different .bin files. Apparently I can get the gog API but if there's one thing I don't need it's another game client launcher. Opening Steam to open the Ubisoft whatever-the-fuck to get into the launcher for Farcry is ridiculous enough as it is. Back in my day there used to be just little .exe's you'd click on and the game would appear immediately. Kids these days have it tough.

Johanna - Heroes of the Storm / Diablo 3

Heroes of the Storm sent me an email today to let me know that its like "totally free and stuff" and that it's now open to everyone to play. So I guess it's out of Beta or whatever? Also they've got a new character from Diablo 3, Johanna. I probably won't play her. Melee Warriors are not my deal.

Fiona - Tales of the Borderlands 8Bit

I have it on good authority that Tales of the Borderlands is a great game. I mean, it's made by Telltale, so why wouldn't it be? Those guys have built up a good reputation these last couple years.

Matt and I have been goofing around with Smash Bro's on the WiiU. Every game mode is confusing. What's even going on half the time?

Inkling - Splatoon 8Bit

I've been seeing the girl inkling popping up a lot recently and I had no idea the game was an actual thing till yesterday. It looks good though! If you've got friends, and a second WiiU.

I can tell you right now that WiiU lost the console war in New Zealand, I presume it's global. Last weekend Matt and I went to look for an extra WiiU controller. There was nothing to be found anywhere. The best we could do was find a couple budget bins with the WiiU games chucked in there. We found a couple peripherals shamefully tucked in behind some XB1 stuff. Eventually we went to JB-HIFI who was the only place stocking decent WiiU stuff and got Smash Bros price matched with Harvey Norman (who didn't even have it on their shelves, but had it listed online.)

Why did you buy a WiiU Matt? What were you even thinking? How did you even find it in the first place to be able to buy it?

Self Portrait - 8Bit

This will be going on my CV so people roughly know what to expect when I crawl into their office for interviews. The Goatee will of course be optional.

It's been ages since I've looked at my CV. I never really even used it when I originally got my job. I mean, I gave it to them, but they didn't bother with it. The fact I had done interactive design stuff at uni was enough for them.

I feel like I shouldn't like this song so much, but right at the 3 minute mark it drops and is so freaking awesome.