The World Went And Got Itself Into A Goddamn Hurry

For the past few days, I've been producing pencil tests, lot's and lot's of pencil tests, so much so I need another file to hold them. Besides that, I did one in particular, a lip sync test. The script is rewritten and everything is ready to go, or is it? See, I've just wasted 70-odd pages on a 3 second pencil test and I've learnt something by it.

It get's boring real quick!

Over and over again I drew the same image until by the end, the proportions had morphed out of position, so I've thought, it would probably be better to just take a base mouth movement and just swap and change each mouth over when need be, it would save ALLOT of time and effort and it's a shame I realised this half way through production, but I thought, "well, I've made it this far, might as well finish it off" and I did, and made a god awful mess of the end result. What I did on a whim, and will no doubt regret after I upload this, is record myself visually recording lines, why? I don't know, I was bored but I figured that it might be good for entertainment educational purposes.

The procedure doesn't get any easier and I'm not well off enough to afford a fancy microphone which could knock out the noise so I've just got to play with the cards I'm dealt. It's been a while since I did voice acting and although I like to TRY and get into character, the fact is my bland, monotone voice over shadows any and all emotion but thankfully, for the character of Piper, it's fitting. This is the pencil test and quite possibly the worst animation I've ever done. It's terrible.

Apart from that, I've been messing around with Corel Painter again, I enjoyed it... Until I saved out as a JPEG and I couldn't go back into it, so this is what remains of an unfinished, unfunny Batman image, speaking of Batman, I've fallen in love with it recently, finally got round to seeing the conclusion of Arkham City and it does leave allot of things in the mist, open ended and hints at a 3rd, and hopefully final closure to the Arkham Universe. 

Why do I say that? Arkham Asylum was breathtaking, I thoroughly enjoyed what the island and its inmates had to offer, my gripe was that it was FAR too short in terms of the main story and the Riddler Trophies only draw out that time span by a few more hours but granted it does give you a sense of accomplishment. Arkham City on the other hand allows the player to explore a much more elaborate environment and meet more inmates... Maybes too many. I sat there, playing away going from Two-Face, Penguin, Mr. Freeze and before I knew it I was 3/4 of the way through by the time I bumped into Robin which Rocksteady have really done a good job at making a previously campy side-kick, "bad-ass". With the main story complete I realised I had only completed a mere 30% of what the game had to offer as a whole, side missions, riddles and puzzles alike, Arkham City is scattered with more to uncover and un-lockable's to find, granted it was the Arkham games which spurred a greater interest in Batman and since then it's a franchise which I've grown more and more fond of, the character of Batman or Bruce Wayne is that of a mere human, no super power's, no invincibility, just him and his will to protect Gotham city. With this said, it would be nice to see closure to the Arkham Universe so as not to milk it for all its worth, it's set itself up for a trilogy, hinting that the 3rd would most definitely see, "Gotham Burn". If you haven't played the Arkham games, you can pick them up pretty cheap and considering they're not incredibly long gives the casual gamer a decent excuse to just try it out but also gives the avid gamer to delve into the Arkham games and dig out every little secret the game has to offer.