In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
Take bioware for example. Before they were 'bought' by EA they made some of the (arguably, but almost universally accepted) best games of their particular genre. Baldur's gate 1 and 2, neverwinter nights....


Forgot about Bioware. They're on my list as well. They used to be an automatic buy, but DA2... EA is poison to game companies.

It's difficult to explain to young'uns who were raised on consoles why old-school PC gamers are so disappointed in the current state of PC gaming. This whole backlash that PC gamers are "elitist crybabies" is just so tired. I have a gaming mouse and a 104 keys, yet many PC games are designed for multiple platforms, and, unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is an ADD-addled console player with a gamepad. The result is cookie-cutter dross that is only made discernible in its genre by the textures and artwork that make up its world. I'm not saying great AAA pc games aren't being made any more, just that there are so few, and this move by developers towards always-online DRM for single-player gaming (Ubisoft, Blizzard) limits my choices even more, as I refuse to support that bullshit.

I still play through Doom and Doom2 about once a year and have a blast every time. I'm about halfway through yet another run of Diablo II, and I'm thinking I'll fire up Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate after that. So many excellent older games to play and replay, not to mention the large number of quality indie games being released. I don't miss Diablo III one bit.

I may have to contest with that argument. Germans were the first modern nation to fully conquer and plunder its fellow imperial European power. But they weren't the first to be plundering in any exceptional level. I mean what qualifies as exceptional, really, when plundering basically means killing everyone and taking whatever you want? India and Egypt were considered non-white non-European nations, therefore safe to be exploited without much guilt. China and India were exploited to an industrial level too, but the Brits were focused on land ownership more than the artworks at the time. The artworks they just took from China without documenting anything because it was the 'conquer's right' to take from these uncultured savages without having to ask for it or give proper document. But France and Britain were of 'equal-stature' amongst European powers. They were 'SPECIAL'.

And there's also the definition of 'industrial'. Germans were highly organized and documented everything they did, which gives the impression that they were absolutely thorough and milked their subjects dry. But other European powers did the same exact shit to their conquered people, except they never provided evidence of their plunders simply because they were dealing with non-Europeans, hence they did not have to treat them fairly and take whatever they wanted without signing anything. They all did the same thing. There is no difference when it comes to looting.

The reason why there's such huge backlash against Nazi Germany is not only because of the holocaust, but because Germans were the first to break the invisible rule between the European imperial powers, in that they were n't suppose to treat each other like they did with 'foreign non-equals'. Nazis took European racism to another level and self-proclaimed themselves to be the 'best-white-people-of-all' and started treating their neighbors as inferiors. Nazis were 'exceptional' in the way that they were the first to break the unspoken rule between 'European superiors' by fully subjugating France. Germany fully CONQUERED France like they did with their colonies, and that was the main difference.

That's when all of Europe knew for sure that "okay, these guys aren't playing by the rules anymore." So I cannot accept the argument saying Germans were the first to loot in an industrial level, but rather the first to do it to a fellow traditionally 'superior' European people. Britain and France didn't do shit about the holocaust before the war. They sat and watched. It was when Germany treated France like a inferior colony nation that got Britain and France pissed off the most.

Loved reading Watchmen, thought the film did it good service. Different perhaps, but I think the characters and the world they inhabited felt similar enough for me. Liked V too, but I never read it so can't really comment.

As for the decline of comics/graphic novels...I look to the internet. There are a lot of really bad webcomics, but there are some real diamonds out there with great artwork and writing and all they need is a succesful kickstarter to get into print.

I like them. None is fine too, but if you're going to get tattoos I say go big or go home. Pay more money for somebody decent, and get something unique on your sleeves. Unoriginal motifs/stamps are ugly as fuck. Much better to get a piece of artwork, even if its style is a little cliche'd.

Her speech impediment seems more pronounced in this video for some reason. Still remarkably articulate for somebody that hasn't been able to hear for most of their life.

Hear is to appreciating what you've got.

>> ^DrewNumberTwo:

Your car analogy is accurate, but misleading. If the car were newer, then it would in fact be against patent law to make one on your own. The SCO case is, I believe, patent law, not copyright.
I don't get your argument regarding publishing companies of various kinds trying to make money for themselves and not paying artists much. This is the old "artists deserve more money" argument. Frankly, they don't. And I'm saying that as an artist. If you're an artist and you give someone your art in exchange for whatever percentage, then you've agreed to that amount and you deserve that amount, and no more. The fact is, selling art is hard. It might not seem that way because we see it everywhere, but having art sitting in your house or on your computer and making money off of it is just plain difficult. The easiest route is frequently to let someone else do that for you, and to artists who can't afford a cup of coffee, making some decent cash sounds like a good deal.
Artists who don't want to go that route are free to keep their content and sell it themselves.


If the car were newer it'd be illegal to sell it. If you made one for your own use, there shouldn't be any legal recourse for the company to follow. It's been a long standing tradition that reverse engineering is allowed, only broken with the digital age and "no bypassing of countermeasures".

SCO is patent law, but they were selling licenses to "guarantee" people they won't be prosecuted once they won. They were selling something they hadn't even proven they owned yet...another aspect of the digital world that's broken. People without the legal rights claiming they do and infringing. Businesses do it all the time by taking other people's pictures and using them in their ads. Even Congressional members have been caught doing it....they don't understand why it's frustrating for a "normal" person who can actually be sued when it happens.

The publisher argument was to show that the traditional way of publishing is no longer relevant in the digital market. They are trying to muscle in after the fact, in spite of customers and in spite of self published authors to dictate what everything should sell for and how it should be sold. They are failing overall, but it doesn't change the fact that they are trying. They are also going after the libraries and trying to undermine the lending system the libraries have, after they've already sold them the goods. So here, the publishing houses are using their wealth and power to attempt to stop distribution channels they don't control much like the RIAA. NYT won't acknowledge self-published authors on their best seller lists, because of it's ties to publishing, in another attempt to discredit non-publisher affiliated authors.

The law is there to protect people, not the people who have corporate backing. A self pubbed author makes 70% of book sale price on Amazon, less than 15% if it's through publisher. The self-pubbed author pricing is usually less than 5 dollars...something around 3 dollars usually. And the publisher authors usually sell for hard back prices, 15 dollars or so. They want to force everyone to sell books at the 15 dollar mark, when self-pubbed authors have found that under 5 bucks gets them the most coverage AND money. So despite the evidence, the big pubs are attempting to influence the market and infringing on the rights (not necessary their copyrights, but I believe they are by attempting to prevent them from distributing it as the people want and the author wants) of the other authors to sell their works as they see fit by attempting to take over the market places.

The future of publishing houses looks like they will have to become small electronic based outfits that provide the author with an editor, cover artwork (relevant and beneficial to sales of book), and possibly facilitate audio book deals and other countries markets so the author can continue writing instead of marketing. For a 15-20% percentage of sales so they have an incentive to do it right and sell quantities at the popular pricing schemes instead of taking the lion's share and scooping up all authors so they get enough to stay afloat despite the content creators getting crumbs. But it still doesn't mean they should be attempting to prevent non-affiliated authors from being noticed and selling books as they see fit due to deals they make on behalf of all "book sales" they control or not.

Wait wait. I was with you up until you implied that Avatar: The Last Airbender was crap. It wasn't! Someone from the sift even worked on it, I forget who. Shamalama may have totally FUCKED the movie, but the cartoon was great fun, and actually quite poignant in parts. Not to mention, the artwork is gorgeous (see the fight between azula and zuko that I sifted, for example).

Of course maybe I read too much into your comment and you weren't implying that at all. In which case please ignore this comment entirely.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Cartoons are the thing most likely to bring out the grumpy old man in me.
Transformers (the original, not the rubbish bayhem or the anime crap), Thundercats, Ulysses 31 were all awesome. Hell, even later stuff like Animaniacs, Samurai Jack and Dexters Lab were excellent.
Kids these days with their yu-gi-mon the last air whatever! It's crap.
now get off my lawn!

>> ^gwiz665:

Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible.

I think we're talking about different things. Here you're describing people making "knock offs" of WoW by actually trying to independently create a new game from scratch without directly copying any artwork or code from WoW, but still kinda looks and feels and plays like WoW.

I'm talking about firing up the DVD-burner, and making a 100% exact copy of WoW. If that were legal, people would do it. In other words, the "private server" thing. Right now they're mostly script kiddies diddling themselves with Legendary items, because if they tried to actually replicate the WoW-server service and charge money for it, they'd be forced to shut down, and probably get thrown in jail too.

If that constraint weren't there, I'm sure you'd see an explosion of "competitors" for WoW "service". And I'm sure the market would explode with all kinds of people trying to differentiate themselves on service and price, but I'm sure the competition would force the average price well below what Blizzard's charging.

And that's the rub -- without being able to hold a monopoly over the monthly service charge, or even be able to demand $40 for the expansions, would Blizzard even bother with a Mists of Pandaria expansion?

I do think we could make things a lot better if they'd stop extending the time limit on things going into the public domain. Any content older than 10 years should be public domain, period.

The name of the piece is "Pony", and it's by Tim Lewis. There's a short blurb here - http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425478740/pony.html

I should've put "kinetic sculpture" into the tags.

Hey! Happy Christmas to you, too.

I love your artwork!

Happy Return of the Light.

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
Happy Christmas :

I stumbled upon the best inexpensive present this year....

A local woman is a big supporter of schools in Burma. She has worked to make the most wonderful cards, with a photo of Burma as the artwork on the front (she took all the photos.)Somehow, she got all the printing costs donated.

They cost $3.99 each. 100% of the proceeds go to fund a Burmese child's school costs. Two cards will fund a child for the year.

I don't usually do the massive buying of presents for everyone in my sphere. This year, I bought a bunch of these cards and have been giving them as remembrances of the season -- whatever season you celebrate. Even if it is just the fact that the days are getting longer -- that is a reason to celebrate, up here in the Pacific Northwest.

So someone gets a card they can use for whatever purpose they want, and I just helped a kid on the other side of the world.

Now THAT is fun to do! Puts me right in the mood!

Thanks for the quality! It was a pleasant surprise. I didn't think that video was going to be sifted.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
WOW, that is some *quality artwork there. You can tell they put a lot of thought into the use of the structure and the creation of virtual spaces. The *music of Daft Punk's excellent Tron soundtrack definitely adds to the experience imo.

>> ^mintbbb:

Just fantastic! I have always loved to draw, and I have done some stuff with charcoal and acrylic paints, but wow, you guys truly are artists!


Do you have any of your artworks to share online with us?

WOW, that is some *quality artwork there. You can tell they put a lot of thought into the use of the structure and the creation of virtual spaces. The *music of Daft Punk's excellent Tron soundtrack definitely adds to the experience imo.

I read this book in 1996 and fell in love with it. In 97' I got out of the military and was working at a psych hospital in northern AZ. Me and my wife decided to drive to Vegas. When we got onto the freeway I noticed this paper sign with "Fear and Loathing" printed on it. It had an arrow pointing in the direction we were driving. We got onto the highway and kept passing up these fake cacti. I told my wife "those look like the artwork from the book!" We passed up the production crew at one point. It was just strange being a huge fan of HST and driving right threw all of this scene on my own way to Vegas.

We kept waiting for all the artists to provide their artwork, which we still haven't received, and we've also been running a lot of contests. We're going to proceed "soon" with just the artists who've provided their stuff.

In reply to this comment by Samaelsmith:
Just wondering whatever became of the art show?