FYI

Hey everyone:

in case you're wondering what I've been up to, I'll have a new blog up soon. It'll be more focused on artwork and I'll show off things I've been working on and talk about different things that inspire me and whatnot. 

As for this blog, i probably will not be updating it. I'll still talk about video games occasionally on my new blog, but there are plenty of sites around for news, great reviews, and insight. For now, I've said the things I want to say and I'd rather not regurgitate what other sites are saying. For Nintendo stuff, be sure to check out my links in the panel on the right. 

Stay tuned! Thanks everybody!

Jesse

Barina's Got a Blog

Barina Boxkid

My best bud just started his blog, def check out.

Hey everyone, just wanted to give some props to muh bud Barina, who I've spoken of several times on da hallowed halls of dese pages. Barina just started a blog at boxlande.blogspot.com , so please check it out. Have some laughs, have fun, and be good. He's irreverent but it's top notch stuff. Check in with him and leave him nice comments as he builds up a backlog of postings. 

For those that don't know him, I won't say much except to say that Barina is my best friend and he lives across the street from me. We have somewhat similar senses of humor and share a couple interests. 

What's your take?

Wut da freak!?

Time Readers Vote Zelda Creator Most Influential of '08

Shigeru Miyamoto wins the popular vote in a landslide. Stephen Colbert gets third place, too!

Source: "Time Magazine Readers Vote Miyamoto Most Influential", Spong

 Time readers voted Shigeru Miyamoto, famed Nintendo designer, as the most influential person of 2008. It's honestly a little ridiculous, but I imagine it can be traced back to the popularity of Wii Sports and the Wii itself. Check out the results at Time's website here.

To Samm: I haven't played Mario Kart Wii yet, but reviews have been really positive. It's supposed to be really good and a lot of fun. Check it out and let me know what you think because I'll probably end up getting it!

Who do you think was the most influential person this past year, for better or worse?

Nintendo's President Speaks

Satoru Iwata Addresses Concerns Over Attach Rate

Nintendo claims Wii attach rate is good, better than DS, contrary to what some publishers and journalists are saying.

I saw this article, Iwata: Concerns Over Third Party Sales Don't Reflect The Fact, on Nintendo World Report yesterday. It was a really long analysis of some fiscal briefing Satoru Iwata gave about Wii's third party sales. Frankly, I didn't care enough to read it because it had all these great slides and graphs to illustrate it! 

Here's one of them:

This graph shows that while Nintendo sells many games on the Wii, they're not selling as much, at least in the latter half of '07, as third party games. Yeah, so? I still see one company comprising two fifths of the consoles software sales! Which means that even if the attach rate is somewhat higher than people are led to believe, it's still mostly Nintendo games. Nintendo is one company here, and all third party publishers are lumped together for this graph. 

This isn't all Nintendo's fault, except for the fact they make awesome games and you'd be an idiot not to buy them (if you like games and have a Wii). Third parties DO need to realize that Wii owners will buy their games, they just need to put more development resources into their Wii offerings. Third party Wii games suck (for the most part), and if third parties put half as much effort into their games as Nintendo does, maybe they could comprise a significant chunk of Wii software sales too.

Wouldn't you buy a good game, whether or not Nintendo made it?

A Great Influence

Nintendo Games Don't Just Provide Me With Simple Fun

As my favorite games excite my imagination, they've had a big impact on my art style.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is far and away my all time favorite game; nothing has shaped my character, personality, and,above all, my imagination so much as this one game. When I was in fifth grade, this one legend in entertainment obsessed me and gave me my love of games. But when I turned off the TV and went upstairs to get in bed, I pulled out my strategy guides and the instruction manual. And before I went to sleep, I pulled out my sketchbook.

 An old drawing from my late elementary school days.

When I was younger, I used to whip out my sketchbook every night before I went to sleep. Everything that made up my daydreams in school or made me restless during the day escaped onto the paper. The things that would inspire me the most could come from anywhere, but one thing that dominated my mind most often (as they do to this day) were the games I played. But Ocarina of Time was very special, so today I was happy to come across a neat interview with the game's lead illustrator: Yusuke Nakano. This is an old interview, mind you, and I found it here. It's taken from some issue of Nintendo Power a little before the release of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

This interview is great, for me at least, because Nakano discusses his time illustrating Ocarina in detail:

"When I first heard about the Ocarina of Time project, and the need to create a new Link, I knew it was the job for me. I put my name out there for the project by creating some sample illustrations of my ideas. Fortunately,Yoshiaki Koizumi, one of the game's directors, liked the drawings, so I was put in charge of the illustrations. I loved the project and drew constantly; it was almost like I was giving vent to all of my passions through those drawings."

"And I'll tell you one thing: drawing bad guys is worthwhile work. It felt great to draw characters like Ganondorf, exaggerating his fearsome, powerful presence." 

"But my favorite Ocarina illustration was of Impa, Zelda's royal protector: It was extremely rare that Nintendo had such a muscular woman in one of its games."

Since I don't read graphic novels or comic books much, most of my influence these days comes from artwork like this, and you can still see Nakano's influence in my drawings. Take, for instance, his illustrations of Link for Twilight Princess. You all saw the Shakespeare book covers I did, so compare the illustration I did of William Shakespeare and my Macbeth illustration with the lines in Nakano's Twilight Princess artwork:

Please bear in mind that I didn't look at these pictures while I was doing my illustrations! Certainly these images are already registered in my mind and create an influential framework within which I do any of my drawings. Truly, the similarities are almost a little embarassing to me; I thought I was more original! But honestly, I'm glad when I see my skills and style improve and adapt to the things I like. 

Years ago when I originally planned to go to art school, I used to spend a lot of time studying Michelangelo and Da Vinci's sketches. My style has been influenced tremendously by those two. Especially my prominent hatching technique.

How many of you enjoy drawing? Who or what would you say influences you?

It's All A Journey

Setting Sail for Philly (I hope)

Two and a half years after refusing to ever consider going to art school,  I'm hoping everything works out so that, in a few months time, that's where I'll be.

WARNING: THIS IS A RAMBLING EXPOSITORY POST. READ ONLY IF YOU'RE TRULY INTERESTED IN KNOWING ABOUT ME.

I've been drawing almost my entire life– from the time a college student showed me how to draw humans that weren't stick figures when I was in K-5 I've loved it. Even when I was young I could satisfy my imagination by drawing things out on paper. Many people never draw because they aren't satisfied with what they produce, but I've always been mostly happy with the lines I put down and it's always felt natural to me. 

Recently I decided I want to transfer to Tyler School of Art (Temple University's college of art) in Philadelphia. College has been an emotionally difficult thing for me from the beginning:

When I was in twelfth grade, I was at a portfolio review at Tyler when I decided, right there, that I did NOT want to study art. I did not want to spend my life competing for jobs with other artists and I did not want my profession to suck away my love of art. Art wears me out when I try at it, just like everything else. I was very nerve-wreaked by the whole college admission process to begin with, in addition to my senior year being a nightmare (academically speaking), and countless other things weighed on my mind as well. I just couldn't take it.

I started college as a freshman at Eastern University. I was an undeclared major, one of 24 students in their honors college freshman "cohort". For a variety of reasons, one of them being my still lingering, festering anxiety about college from before, I withdrew from Eastern within a month of arriving. Since then I've debated how much of a mistake that was. I was depressed, anxious, even anorexic. I came home and spent the semester working at Kohl's in Lebanon. That was the worst two months of my entire life.

Last spring I started at LVC. It was a great school close to home where I was given a great scholarship. I decided to attend LVC while I picked up the pieces of my academic career and decided what I wanted to do with my life. 

I love LVC, but I don't like being a commuter. I'm not the most extroverted person in the world (and I can't drive), so it's very difficult to forge any meaningful new friendships here though I have made a few. I also just don't like living at home. I come from a family with two siblings, and it's very strange for me not to have them around in a familiar place: our home (one's in college, the other just graduated). I feel stuck when I'm at home, like my wheels are spinning in place: it's hard motivating myself to do something about my life when I'm stuck in a place I associate with my childhood. And God I want to be a child forever. 

It's also hard to be motivated when I just don't care. Art may wear me out, but so does everything else. Everything else wears me out AND bores me. I've always been good at drawing, it satisfies me and other people appreciate it as well. College has been difficult, especially gen-ed classes, for this one reason: my heart just isn't in it –math, science, whatever- it just isn't me. That's why I'm an English major: it's the closest thing I have here to art that isn't actually "art". Writing papers is compelling enough for me to actually do, unlike regular homework papers in other classes, because I feel like I'm creating something. But it's not enough, and it's not what I want to do with my life.

I'm glad Bob had us make these blogs. It's fun to be able to create something personal and useful. It feels good when I click "view blog" and see how my efforts are realized. I love playing around with the type and finding good photos, creating my links to wikipedia (I love Wikipedia). These are the sorts of things I actually get excited about in my life and people appreciate them.

 Beyond that, I can be lazy and useless if something doesn't fulfill me. Though I didn't bother applying, I know I wouldn't have gotten the job I had last summer (working for the computer services department at Lebanon High School) because I heard from friends who go to school there that my bosses were upset I spent too long engraving inventory numbers on calculators and computers. You should have seen the way I engraved those four digit numbers! That was artwork; (and sorry I'm a human, get a robot next time you want some drone doing that shit). 

My sister is about to finish her second semester at Moore College of Art & Design in Philly, and seeing her go through the process has made me feel much more confident about it. The whole idea of studying art was daunting to me in the past. I've never felt comfortable being a leader anyway (not to say I can't be one, it's just out of my comfort zone), so I'm following in Sara's footsteps I guess (which isn't how I pictured it two years ago). 

Getting into Tyler shouldn't be difficult for me; I passed the portfolio review years ago, so the hardest part is out of the way. Wish me luck!

This post is getting really long, so I'm going to make another. This is all pretty much background anyway, so if anyone actually takes the time to read it– thank you. And also many thanks to all of you for your nice comments about my book jackets. I loved that project and it really felt good to see how all of you felt about them; it meant the world to me. I have a very loose style of drawing that isn't always conducive to finished pieces, but in that case it worked beautifully. Thank you very much! 

This is a book cover I designed several months ago. It was for a book I gave to my girlfriend, Michelle, which contained all of my letters to her. I publish my books using lulu.com. There are two illustrations on the design made out of construction paper. The first is on the back, and it's a scene from my short time at Eastern University: there's a pond with a stone structure jutting out into it. I used to sit there and read in the evenings. The front illustration is my profile combined with a flower blooming through a pile of rocks. This is taken from the first lines of U2's "Beautiful Day" (the heart is a bloom, shoots up through the stony ground), a song that reminds me of the first time I fell in love with Michelle (it was stuck in my head, and it was ironic because it was actually downpouring at the time). I put black boxes over some of the text on the cover for personal reasons!