Metal Gear Crimson: Death of Liberty

It's been a while since I last saw this, just got flashback's of when we filmed it at college. It's not the greatest thing in the world but we were just given a camera and told to go film something, and with no previous experience I don't think we did that badly.

Hope you enjoy it.

Gameplay

Gameplay is what make the game playable in the context of the games core theme. This sometimes boils down to the control methods used for certain genres of video games, i.e. RTS games like Command & Conquer are mainly mouse and keyboard interfaces for the controls there as fighting games may require a joystick or control pad. This is important for how the game is supposed to be played and how the player is supposed to conduct their playing experience. Mindless button mashing and combo’s are the bread and butter of Beat’um up’s but would not suit an RTS because there are usually lots of thing going on the screen at any one time and too much to take into account when trying to play, although the image of someone going insane at an arcade RTS does make me chuckle. I do think that these divisions of control style between different gaming genres is important as some games just would never work and it keeps the playable experience for different games varied. I doubt anybody would like to keep buying new games only to find the same controls being used on every title again and again. With the advent of the Nintendo Wii we are seeing for the first time on a large scale how the control methods used actually are actually designed specifically for each game. The Wii mote gives us for the first time the real ability to manipulate what we see and do on screen in real time without it just being a set of commands to go left, right, up or down. This new way of playing I’m sure is going to influence other consoles and hardware and the way we play games in the future.

Story and Character

A good story makes a great video game but it’s the characters that carry us through the story and in some cases become the most memorable part of the experience. Examples of characters becoming more famous than the story they came from is something relatively new in videogames but it’s something that has happened time and time again in the film industry weather it be from a comedy, drama and even horror. For me, the most memorable is the alien from the film Alien (1979), which may not be most people first choice but bear with me. It was a character designed before the visual effect to carry it off fully did not exist so they came up with a compromise which actually added to the character. If you have ever seen the film you will notice that the alien it’s self is not seen on screen for more than a few moments, this was actually done due to the technology constraint but this actually adds to the tension of the screen. Now this may not mean much to some, but ask your friends about the film and I bet they would each say something different about what they saw in the movie when in actual fact they may not have seen it at happen at all. This is because that the mind will sometimes fill in the blanks to make more scenes of the scene and this creates moments that the person would swear happened but actually never took place. A good example of this fact is in Reservoir Dogs (1992) in the scene where Mr Blonde cuts the police officers ear off. Many people would swear to actually seeing this gruesome scene take place but in actual fact the camera pans to the left at this moment and all you hear are the screams of the victim before the camera cuts back to Mr Blonde holding the ear. In the case of the alien I think this effect of the mind creating its own idea as to what happened enhances the mystery and the darkness of the character, its visual appearance when you seen the creature is very shocking too. With its large head and slimy, scaly body and dark textured skin make it a very intimidating and threatening looking thing. You know just by looking at it that it is very animalistic and can’t be reason with, this and the fact that it reproduces by using humans as unwilling hosts and then burst out of the chest cavity at birth killing the poor person who was infected. Every aspect of the creature seems to point to the fact it’s a remorseless killing machine and we have no hope. The best thing about this creature is that it does not rely on a script or dialogue to make it such a formidable on-screen presence, everything that it is and will do is conveyed by its mere presence on screen, all the other characters fear it and we don’t have to be talked into why that is, because for the brief moments it’s on screen we know why. I think any character that can make such a landmark impact and evoke such strong emotion from the actors and fans of the film is truly something special. Not a single screen icon since the silent movie era has ever made such an impact on viewers until the alien was created and I doubt there has been one since. Its movies like this that I enjoy the most because they make us think about what may happen or we try to piece together what is exactly happening before our eyes, I’ve always found they idea of a villain who can’t be reasoned or bargained with and would kill you without thinking to be the most powerfully you can get on screen as they seem to have been born from your own nightmares. James Cameron’s ‘The Terminator’ (1984) was a perfect example of this idea and it was actually conceived when the director had a nightmare about the machine travelling back in time to kill him and this lead to creation of this iconic film. I suppose in short, the films I like the most are 9ons that take my real fears and emotions and presents them to me and make me empathise with the characters that have to go through these ordeals and make you imagine what if you were in a situation like that; Scary.

Game Technology

Over the years I’ve play many different consoles and computers and used many different methods to control the games I’ve played. I think back to the ZX Spectrum I used to play as a child and having to learn keyboard controls for the first time, an experience that put me off pc gaming until just a few years ago. Also with that was a joystick I think was actually meant for an Atari 2600 and a light gun that was identical to the one that came out for the Master-System and Mega-Drive a few years later, the games I played with them were pretty basic as you could imagine but they were cool none the less, but I really remember the first time I used the light gun for the SNES and not playing anything else for a few months, mainly because I was young and shooting stiff on the screen still seemed cool and the other reason was the gun it’s self, whoever decided to design the gun as a shoulder mounted bazooka was a genius.

Other things like the unofficial turbo pad for the Mega-Drive made the games a bit more fun after I’d played them all to death and an official resident evil pad I had for the PSone made the game much more controllable and fun with one half of the pad shaped like a gun handle with trigger making zombie fights a bit faster to react to and the other grip shaped like a door handle… it was an odd thing. Zip forward the Xbox and a game I bought called Steel Battalion which came with the largest game controller ever released for a console, with two giant joysticks, over 40 buttons and switches and a 3 pedalled unit for your feet, it truly was an epic piece of kit and although it wasn’t the easiest thing to set up, it really helped make the playable experience more entertaining as you were literally in control of every aspect of the giant robot/mech you were controlling.

But the best pad I’ve ever used is by far the Xbox360 pad, it feels so nice to hold, like it was molded to fir your hand perfectly. All the buttons are in easy reach and don’t get in the way during game-play, and even attachments like the MSN keyboard fit perfectly to the pad without hindering its use and still be easy to use during game-play. I remember seeing a video before the console came out about how they designed the pad to make it as comfortable as possible and put so much effort into making it the best for the player and now I look at pad’s for the ps3 that is essentially that same design they’ve had for 15 years and I just think to myself they really must not car about how people play as long as they are buying there game. I think anyone who has tried to use the trigger buttons on the ps3 pad knows exactly how poorly designed and rushed it seems.

Consoles themselves have changed greatly just like controllers over the years. The ZX Spectrum was nothing but a keyboard and a tape deck and the only the original NES was… well a box. I remember seeing the Mega-Drive 2 for the first time and thinking how different and cool it looked with its curved shaped and curved control pads that seemed to be the first attempt to make a controller more comfortable to hold as I suppose people were in general playing games for longer amounts of time as they become more mainstream and more a part of everyday life. Then the PSone hits the shelves and it looks like we’ve taken a step back to the box look and then fast forward to the ps2 and it’s even more of a box than the first one. We look at the consoles today and it’s a much different story (except for the Wii), It’s back to the curves and Xbox360 and PS3 are the key examples of this. I like the overall design of the 360, it’s pleasing to the eye and looks nice next to anything on your shelves, the PS3 is good but it does have its drawback, like it being the size of a small house and the fact you will be lucky to fit it on any shelve you may have at home already, and if you do fit it on it will suck every ounce of dust your house has as cover it’s nice shiny surface, mean you have to polish it about one every 20 minutes. I think when they come to design their next console, Sony may take a little more care, but given their track record of doing what they think is right and not listening to the fans about what they think is better I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.

Story Telling in Games

For me, story’s in video games are the most important aspect of the playing experience. Of course the game-play mechanics need to be up to par so the person can play without being hindered by awkward controls but if the story is poor then it shouldn’t have been made in the first place. I like to feel a part of what I’m playing, I want to feel shock and awe as I enter a giant temple as the character does on screen (Tomb Raider as an example here). The best playing experience a person can have is if they feel they are being led on a journey and they feel a part of that journey, so many times I’ve seen people buy games and not be satisfied because they picked something generic like a sports title and if they do have anything good to say it’s usually about the graphics or the controls. Now in my opinion I don’t want a game because the controls are good… I want something with substance, depth and emotion that makes me want to play it again because I actually enjoyed myself.

Now we get to the trick one... MMO’S. Playable experiences such as Second Life (because it’s not technically a game) don’t have any story; they actually rely on the social aspect of the experience to create its own story between its users. There nothing but empty space and land that players purchase and then go about building their own buildings, shops and landscapes that other player can then visit and experience. This kind of freedom is cool, but with the content being completely generated by the players some things may not be suitable for all audiences. World of Warcraft on the other hand is a world that is built and controlled by Blizzard Entertainment (now Activision/Blizzard) and is a very in-depth world with themes and characters; both NPC’s and User’s, to interact with. It is story based, but the way you go about completing this story and the how long it takes to do it is completely controlled by the player, some don’t even choose the story route and rather use the landscapes to interact with other people much like a social website. (FaceBook come to mind).

Now MMO’s aside, you can look at games like Call of Duty. Now the main single player campaign is set during the second world war (excluding 4 from this) and you as the player must experience all the horrors that this sort of battlefield may contain. Now, is it a war story…? I would say not entirely. Yes its set during the war but each of the games are putting the players in control of a character that must experience the war first hand. I think the story is more about the persons experience during the war rather than just the war itself, Some may not agree but I think that the war was not just between the country’s that fought it, it was about the people involved and their experiences during that time and I think that what the game is trying to convey more than anything.

An Introduction to Art Direction for Games

The job of an Art Director isn’t as glamorous as its title perceives it to be but that doesn’t make it any less important. They coordinate all the visual artists from concept artists to 3D modellers and track the process and guides the projects constraints and deadlines. A lot of people would presume that a position such as this would be a basic administrative job but it would be impossible for anyone without art knowledge and experience to do this job. An Art Directors job is not only administrative but it’s also to help and mentor younger artists on the correct ways to produce and finalize their work so it is ready for the next stage in the design process and this would be impossible without an art background to begin with. Some companies have gone as far as to create to separate positions, one of which is the Art Director and the second is what is known as a ‘guru’ who doesn’t deal with all of the management stuff and concentrates only on the artistic mentoring to other artists on the team. If I wanted to become an Art Director in the future I think that some of the key things I would need to improve or better my understanding of would be my organisational skills, a better understanding of team dynamics and my overall knowledge of different genres and styles of art. Although I am not particularly enthusiastic about administrative jobs since I am more of a hands on creative individual who loves to draw as a hobby and not just as a job. I would much prefer to be a guru so then I could pass on and advise others on new ways to do things.

An Introduction to Game Design

Unlike the early 80s, video games are no longer the creations of one or two people in their bedrooms programming basic games. These days teams can number in there hundreds and budgets in millions; but the vision of what the game can become and the direction of that vision can still be in the eyes of one person. Hideo Kojima and his Metal Gear series are a good example of this and more recently Cliff Bleszinski with the Gears of War series. Both of these men created strong narrative driven games with stories that actually make you care about the characters and controls which ironically made you feel more in control and apart of the game. Another good point about these games is that the look and feel of both titles are very different from each other but are held together by good narrative and solid game play. This proves that design principles for different gaming genres can vary so long as the story and game play mechanics are strong enough to carry the title in the vision it was originally conceived. There have been many games in the past which have had great promise and stylish presentation but have lacked the fundamental control and story to make it worth playing. (Too Human on Xbox 360 is a good example)

In my opinion, I much prefer story driven compelling games than simple platform titles. I love how narrative based games can draw you in and make you feel more a part of what you’re experiencing as it happens and this makes you feel more a part of the overall experience. The most memorable moments in my gaming life are from games that made me feel a part of the moment that evoked emotion from me; made life and cry, get apprehensive or just plain scared. For me this is what gaming is all about and it’s something that a lot of people seem to have forgotten and would rather buy a game because it has superior graphics than another similar title. I feel sorry for them…

Reviewing Videogames…

I think that NGL is good but it can be a double edged sword sometimes, I would much rather listen to someones opinion on a game as to whether it is good or not rather than some in-house employee of the game makers company writing a review statement saying all things to everyone and it just turning out to be rubbish. But the one issue I would have with personal opinions in video games is whether or not the reviewers’ opinion is valid in the first place, by this I mean ‘is this person without objective or biased opinions or is he a ‘fanboy’ saying that the game is better for one certain console and rubbish on the others because that is his/her preference. A good games review for me would be one that lists the key features of the game as well as any issues that it may have and a personal deconstruction of the game itself informing me which elements throughout are good and bad. This would tell me (a) that the person has actually played the game and knows what it actually contains as opposed to relying on guess work and what he may have read in other game press and (b) that the person’s opinion is based on what they have experienced firsthand.
Personally I am not a huge fan of ranking systems, all this ‘8.2, 9.7’ score jargon seems a little bit petty to me; almost like ‘nit-picking’. By this I mean that a product could be seen as less of a game because it didn’t score well when in fact it might be an excellent game, or that a game with a high score (Kane & Lynch springs to mind here) is undeserving (which may lead people to getting fired...)

Out of all of the reviewing styles I far prefer a subjective style, provided it’s done in the right way; an example of this is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw from ‘Zero Punctuation’. He methodically deconstructs a games good and bad points, its social impacts on players and the gaming community; whilst still keeping his opinion straight forward and precise all with a pinch of humor(you can see an example of whch here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/213-Too-Human ). I think this format appeals to others is proven by the how fast his popularity has risen over the internet and how his ‘Yahtzee’ persona has become such a cult character among gamers.

A History of Videogames : Part 3

Now the recent history of videogames has been full of changes, in technology and in console dominance. With the Launch of the PS2 in 2000 Sony continued to push forward their dominance that fought hard to win with the PSone, and they succeeded once again. With new polished visuals and the move to DVD Technology Sony once again showed the future path that future consoles would follow… at least in the most part. This new technology lead to more cinematic titles moving to the forefront of the games industry, and this was lead by “Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty”. This game took the Hollywood blockbuster style and showed the world that games could be more engrossing, more powerful and better produced than most movies. This style went on to influence later ‘Interactive Movie’ style games such as “Fahrenheit” and “Max Payne”(although the film could learn a thing or two from the game… like how to be good…). The main that DVD Technology allowed for the first time was the ability to constantly stream large amounts of data rather fast and allow games to present large open worlds for the first time without slowdown or clipping issue. The game that showed us all this was possible was Rockstar’s “Grand Theft Auto 3”. This game revolutionised gaming as we know it giving us for the first time a fully inhabited living city the player could freely roam around and do as they wished outside the constraints of the main story, this came to be known as ‘Sand-Box’ gaming. This premise would culminate with “GTA: San Andreas” where the player was able to move around an entire State at will without any restrictions or boundary’s (excluding the giant ocean that surrounds it). It still holds the record for the largest in game world generated on a console that didn’t require loading times for moving from place to place.

All the fun didn’t just belong to Sony, Microsoft introduced themselves into the console market with the ‘XBOX’ and the stage was set for the third console war. Xbox presented mainstream titles and a new selection of exclusive games that Sony weren’t able to produce and thus were able to reach a new audience. Xbox became known as the gamers console with the Play station focusing on selling any game they could to anyone who would by them (this lead to some of the more horrible games in recent history… Crazy frog racer I’m Pointing at you…) where as Microsoft limited there catalogue and focused on spending more time on making key games for certain demographics and this lead to better quality of games with far better visual presentation. To counter the ‘Metal Gear Solid’ licence that was exclusive to Sony, UbiSoft built “Splinter Cell”, a stealth espionage game that was set in a more realistic setting than metal gear and was enhanced buy real time lighting, amazing enemy AI and movable materials such as curtains and drapes. This was a great showcase for what the Xbox was capable of. The best story based game of this was the now cult classic “Knights of the Old Republic”. It was another great game that helped push the Xbox forward and showed a lot of people that heavy story games were here to stay. Its massive world, great cat of character and fantastic story were praised by fans and critics all over the world even to the point where many consider the game to be the best Star Wars story of its entire expanded universe series of books and comics that have been produced over the Last 30 years. The makers of this game, ‘BioWare’ would later set out to show us that this type of story based game-play would work in a game that didn’t have to rely on the Star Wars fans, this experiment would lead to ‘Mass Effect’ on the Xbox 360.

This for me shows the direction the games industry is heading, back in the eighties and early nineties story based games were the some of the most popular games on the systems as the world could be large and story’s long, but the graphics weren’t up to high standards so they didn’t take up much room on the cartridges they were sold on. As tech advanced, graphics became better but the medium of which to sore this information hadn’t could up so story games visuals got butter but the stories shorter to compensate the medium they were sold on. This lead to companies focusing one simpler games such as sports titles and beat-um ups to carry the people’s desire for more games to play and this lead to story games falling out of favour with audiences. With the advent of DVD and now the key Driving force Blu-Ray, story games can have fantastic visuals but are now also able to be much longer and more in-depth as they used to be. Games such as ‘Metal Gear Solid 4’ and the yet to be released ‘Heavy Rain’ are giving us the long, in-depth playing experiences that a few years ago just weren’t possible, and as a whole will push the industry forward. As budgets grow to their highest levels ever, games companies can I’ll afford to make, simple poor quality games that are too short or have bad game-play as the money they would lose from a poor selling game could devastate them finically. This has been evident recently in the news with ‘Midway’ who had huge success in the nineties being sold off for less than one million pounds after money lost on poor games. I think that this way of making games maybe more risky and time consuming but the quality of the finished product we are getting now is second to none and poor 3rd party titles will disappear into the mist. Where this will take us in the next generation of consoles I’m not sure, I have a feeling as World of Warcraft have showed us and ‘Knights of the Republic’ will show us upon its release is that the future will be online. Xbox have laid the groundwork for making multiplayer online on consoles a main part of the everyday use of a console, along with the interactive services it provides on its dashboard. If this means that in the future if we play the future GTA:5 title, the cities we are driving around in may very well be populated with other players around the world and in war games such as call of duty, rather than having NPC soldiers in you platoon as your enemy, they may be players on the other side of the world fighting with you. I think that the future of games will rely on more on the gamers who play them to inhabit these in-game worlds and create the experiences for each other, either way the new era will be something very special.

A History of Videogames : Part 2

The 1980’s saw the games industry as we know it today to begin to take shape; it was an era of massive change with new companies being formed, change in Hardware and the first mascots of videogames being created. One of the first big changes was the way games were made in terms of new features and graphics. “Defender” was the first game to implement a radar system to tell the player what was approaching ahead of them and “BattleZone” became the first ever game to create a 3d world with the use of newly developed wireframe vector graphics.

In 1983’s “Dragon’s Lair” became the first ever game to feature ‘Full-Motion Video’ or FMV’S with the thanks of the large laserdisc it was released on, for which it was also the first. It was a landmark game as for the first time in a videogame there were no animated pixel characters or flat backgrounds, it instead used cartoon animation and ‘Hot Points’ where the player would have to click in time to advance the video or face a grizzly death.

In 1985 the ‘Third Generation’ of consoles began with the introduction or the ‘N.E.S.’ (Nintendo Entertainment System) and the ‘Master-System’ from SEGA. With these new formats game a string of games that would become forever identified with these systems and laid the groundwork for the first franchises in the games industry that still last to this day. The most notable of these new franchises were ‘The Legend of Zelda’, ‘Super Mario Bros.’, ‘Dragon’s Quest’, ‘Final Fantasy’ and the first ever stealth-based game ‘Metal Gear’. The 1980’s would become the decade that Nintendo showed the world that games had truly arrived to the masses and was now an everyday part of life. In 1989 they cemented this fact by releasing the first hand held console, the ‘Game Boy’. It became the best selling hand held unit of all time and gave the world the phenomenon that was ‘Tetris’ which has sold over 33 million copies and is second only to ‘Super Mario Bros.’ which sold 40.2 Million.

The 1990’s saw the games industry explode into a global powerhouse, Budgets became larger, production teams became bigger and Music and Cinema began to work together to create some epic stories and engrossing environments. The ‘Fourth Generation’ of consoles was ushered in by the Sega Mega Drive and the ‘S.N.E.S.’ and the mascot for this new generation was SEGA’S ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’. Design to be a flagship character against Nintendo’s Mario, the new high speed platform style of sonic became a driving force of a heated battle between the two companies. In 1996 Nintendo would re-secure their dominance (all be it for 12 months) with the introduction of the N64 and its flagship Launch Title Mario64, the first full 3D platform game which became a cult classic . Other key N64 titles of this era were ‘GoldenEye 007’, ‘Perfect Dark’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’. With the advent of CD technology being utilised for the first time in dedicated consoles, such as Sony’s PlayStation, the stage was set for the biggest game of the 90’s, ‘Final Fantasy VII’. Now a lot of people argue this point and I’m not really a diehard fan of it as most seem to be but I still think it’s important, it opened the gateway for a wave of Japanese games to flow into the us and Europe for the first time and as we see the results today, the Asian influence is very noticeable in today’s society. It also showed how large film type storylines and FMV’s could work together to make an enthralling experience, Although I still prefer the ‘Broken Sword’ type of storytelling in games. It became the game that cemented the PlayStation as the leader in the videogame industry; dominance that would last until the mid 00’s.

Now I seem to have gone on a bit long here so I’ll try and keep this short, for me the best games came in the late 80’s and mid ninety’s, I remember as a child playing a ZX Spectrum when it was brand new and waiting for games such as ‘Fantastic Dizzy’, ‘Hungry Horace’ and ‘The Oracles Cave’ to load on its loud and colourful loading screens for 15 minutes before playing and just enjoying it for just the game it was without the worry of graphic being the selling point of a game, it was just more enjoyable. Queuing up with my dad on the Launch day to be one first people to get a Nintendo GameBoy and playing ‘Tetris’ for hours and never get sick of it, and I still play with the same enjoyment today. And then the mega drive, playing that for the first time and finding I couldn’t understand the language of the games because my parents had gotten a Japanese import and all the writing was in Japanese but still loving every minute of it. Games were so much simpler back then but way more enjoyable, I remember my dad sitting there trying to play Sonic 1 all day and night just so we could see the last level because as children it was a bit of a tall order, I don’t think any parent without much experience with games could sit there for 5 minutes these days and be able to get far in a game because they are so overly complicated. But the highlight for me was getting Broken Sword, this beautifully drawn game with compelling story and fantastic sound and animation was the biggest eye opener for me. I had always been interested in art and to see a game that looked like it had been drawn was the point when I thought that one day my art could get me somewhere, that I could be able to make games like this one day, it’s a possibility I’ve always hung onto and am now able to put into practice.

A History of Videogames : Part 1

Gaming dates back further than most people may think and here are some of the key titles that set in motion the birth of the videogame industry. When people think back to the earliest games most people would stop a ‘PONG’ from the 1970’s, but you would be wrong. The origins of gaming actually stretch back to the 1950’s where the first basic game was produced. “Tennis for Two” was a simple as its title, a two player tennis game that was played from a side angle rather than an over the top view. Next up, we move to 1961 where some MIT students developed a the ”Spacewar!”. The player would control a spacecraft that would fire missiles at hazards that were created by a black hole in the centre. It was built into a unit called the DEC PDP-1, very original… it is the size of transit van and the game itself is played on a circle monitor and controlled with a basic keyboard. I had the lucky opportunity to see it in the flesh at the ‘Game-ON’ exhibition in 2006 and it’s amazing how things have changed in 50 years.

The game went on to inspire later efforts like 1969’s “Space Travel” and 1971’s “Galaxy Game” which became the first ever coin-op videogame and was built into a very unique looking cabinet.

Now we come to gaming genesis, in 1972 ‘ATARI’ was founded and its debut effort was “PONG”. The classic over the top format tennis game went on to influence the look of most tennis and sports games all the way up to the mid 80’s. PONG was the stand alone arcade success for most of the 70’s and the cabinet it was built into became the standard design for most arcade machines to this day. I wish I had the opportunity to play it during the height of its popularity rather than many years later on the Atari 2600.

In 1978 Taito’s “Space Invaders” ushered in the “Golden Age” of arcade gaming. ‘Space Invaders’ offered a more complex gaming experience with many objects on the screen at one time and the introduction of a ‘LIVE’s/Credits’ format made the games more competitive especially in bars and arcades where these cabinets were placed and extra features like top scores added to the experience and help people part with their cash. The first colour arcade game “PAC-MAN” added to the popularity of the arcade machines and he became recognised as the first icon or mascot of the games industry and led the way for future titles to adopt mascots to represent their games.

It Begin's...

Well lady's and gentlemen, I guess it all starts here. My name is John Haddock and this is my blog page. Over the next 3 years it will become my diary of sorts of my work and ideas for projects I am working on as part of my Game Art course at De Montfort University. This is a new experience for me. I have maintained and commented on public/social website before but never had a proper 'blog' that concentrates on my work and experiences on a certain subject that is important to me. I am looking forward to being able to create something i can look back on and for others to look at as regards to how i work and show the progression of projects from start to finish. I know it is mostly going to be work orientated but I'm sure it will become a great tool for me and to others who can look at what I've done and be able to comment and advise on what they think is the best direction to take my ideas. It will allow us all to be able to track each others progress and even help us compare the quality of each others work and push us to improve upon what we have done and create higher standard final products. I do apologize if I have repeated myself a few times, I'm not used to writing like this but I guess thats also a point of doing a blog.. to learn.

I look forward to the work that has yet to come and get started on making this blog full of my ideas and work...



Let the good times roll -