For example, why not play as Alyx Vance?
Many more available here: http://snowman.quatroworld.org/skins.html
The strange part is that I had seen several of his textures before individually and loved them all, never realizing it was one single guy who had made them all. Snowman, I tip my hat for you.
Almost three hours of solid work to look through everything. Now it’s time to wait for some replies, negotiate prices, and see if the game can’t start looking much prettier. =)
Thank you everyone who offered to help!
Humpday
Two close friends meet again after several years apart. One is married and traditional, the other is free and rebellious. They go to a part with some very open minded and artistic people and start discussing shooting a porn movie for an upcoming porn/art festival called Humpfest. They all agree (while drunk) that a porno movie where two straight guys have sex would be very groundbreaking and artistic, so they decide to do so on Saturday.
During the next days, they struggle with their promise, struggle with their own self-image of who they think they are, and with telling Married Guy’s wife about their plans. It’s all very hilarious, very honest, and very realistic. I ended up caring a lot about the characters, thanks to very competent and subtle acting. A lot got said in just small changes of expression.
Last year, I saw Baghead at the Film Festival, and I really loved it. This movie was quite similar in style to that movie, and it turns out that the director of Baghead stars in Humpday, so I assume it’s a similar group of people who made this movie, seeing as how both are small independent films.
I’m telling you, keep an eye out for these people.
Best part: Soo much charisma and fine subtle acting makes you really feel like you’re a part of what’s happening.
Worst part: The scene where his wife found out, while hilarously funny, felt every so slightly fake.
Score: 5/5
World’s Greatest Dad
Robin Williams plays a teacher who spends his free time raising his son and writing novels. His great dream is to get published, but he’s never gotten anything published so far despite having written several novels.
His son goes to the school he teaches at, and is egoistic, rude and has a twisted sexuality. For example, early on in the movie, Robin’s character catches him choking himself with a belt while masturbating.
The acting was average, the plot was unlikely, and Robin kept injecting his small cute little jokes (“I’ll come over and put my penis in your vagina. That’s a single entendre!”), making it hard to focus on the character he was supposed to play. Oh, and you get to see his penis.
Best part: Very nice photography and very skilled craftmanship made the movie really easy to sit through.
Worst part: Lacking substance. If there’s a point to this movie, I missed it.
Score: 3/5
The Revenant
We got to see a slightly damaged screener DVD version of this movie, which was a shame. There were pretty bad green artifacts obscuring the image at times. Still, this is the best movie of the festival so far.
Bart’s been killed while serving military duty, and the movie starts out with his funeral. There’s some fast and funny dialogue to set the tone of the movie, which is intelligent and funny. Then Bart wakes up, and he doesn’t feel well. He crawls out from his grave and goes to see his friend, who obviously is shocked to see him. In what is probably the best scene in the movie, Bart tries to convince his friend that he really is there, and that he really is dead, and that he won’t hurt him.
Accepting just single unbelievable event (him being undead), the rest of the movie feels very realistic. That initial meeting is probably very similar to how people would react in real life, and Barts reaction to being undead feels very believable. It’s very refreshing to see a “realistic” zombie movie like this, even if it’s primarily a (quite funny) comedy.
There are a few scenes which i feel step too far away from the realism for the sake of what I assume is satire, but overall it’s more or less perfect. And the gore is beautiful.
Best part: I’ve never seen anything like this. Wow.
Worst part: A drawn out and unrealistic sequence of several innocent people dying. Fortunately, the rest of the movie is much more accessible.
Score: 5/5
White Lightning
I think for artistic reasons, this movie has the saturation turned way down, almost to the point of being black and white, is shot in 4:3 ratio, and has very grainy photography. The entire movie is narrated by the main character, who we get to follow from his troubled childhood up to the current day as he tries to explain why he’s recently murdered several people. The tone of the movie is interesting, as most of the world in the movie feels relatively good and wholesome while the main character repeatedly seeks out the worst, abusing drugs and being violent.
He claims there’s an evil in his blood, and that he tries to stop it. But it mostly seems like he’s just trying to sabotage for himself as much as he can.
Carrie Fisher plays a part in this movie, which was a bit surprising.
Best part: The actor who played the narrator as a child was very good.
Worst part: A bit inaccessible due to being too “artsy”, and too long winded.
Score: 2/5
(Initially, I thought it was a 1/5 when I first saw it. But that was 5 am in the morning. The movie’s better now in retrospect)
Phobia 2
This is a collection of five short horror movies, each one by a different director. They collaborated to try to keep a common feel in the movie, but each movie really could just be seen on its own. It feels a lot like the Twilight Zone movie in that sense. I’ll review each short individually:
Novice:
A young boy is sent to a monastery after having done Something Bad. He steals food intended as an offering to the “hungry ghosts”, and then gets haunted big time. And that ghost is SCARY!
Score: 4/5
Ward:
After a motorcycle crash, a young man spends some time in the hospital. He shares a room with a brain dead old man covered in strange tattoos. Except he seems awfully mobile for someone dead.. And who are these strange people visiting him?
Score: 3/5
Backpackers:
A Japanese couple gets picked up by a truck driver. I won’t spoil the rest.
Score: 4/5
Salvage:
Lots of confusion about what’s real or not when a child goes missing in his mothers used car lot. See my review of Hierro.
Score: 1/5
In The End:
This one is more comedy then horror, as we follow a group of young film makers shooting the final scenes of a horror movie. Many horror movie clichés get mocked, and the twist ending is both funny, self-aware and satisfying.
Score: 3/5
Best part: Backpackers! Yay!
Worst part: Salvage! Boo!
Overall score: 4/5
I got 27 replies to the artist ad thingie. Because of the Film Festival, I haven’t been able to go through them all properly yet, but I will do so over the next couple of days.
Some people asked me why I said I wanted to pay, and it’s primarily because I want to make sure it’s a proper business deal so there’s no drama later on. I’ve had that happen before with donated content. But also, I want people to dare charge for their work. I want to be able to do indie games for a living, and I definitely want to help support others to do the same.
If someone absolutely don’t want to get paid and make awesome graphics, I can live with getting it for free. ;-)
And, yes, you will of course get full credits for your art. I’d own it, but I wouldn’t claim to have made it myself.
Haeundae
In this classical disaster movie, Haeundae (in South Korea) is threatened by a “mega tsunami”. We follow the lives of several people as they struggle with personal problems and romance, and finally get to see everything get washed away by huge waves. The movie is similar in tone to The Host, relying on comedy, but still treating serious matters with a sense of respect and urgency, avoiding pure slapstick (although there’s plenty of that).
The acting is good, but almost every single character in the movie plays a comedic part at at least one point in the movie, so they all feel a bit hollow, making you care less about them when the disaster hits.
But you DO care about the disaster. It’s very well made, and drawn out, and rewarding. There’s much destruction without focusing too much on the loss of human lives (there’s almost no blood in the movie), and I will remember one action sequence in particular for a long time.
Best part: The entire movie fits together really well. You’re never bored.
Worst part: Characters sometimes make insanely stupid decisions just because it makes the movie more exciting.
Score: 4/5
Hierro
A single mother takes her child on a trip to an island, but he vanishes during boat ride. She spends the rest of the movie looking for him and seeing things, maybe.
A lot of effort is put into establishing some kind of “atmosphere”, with clips of waves crashing being played backwards, and children being seen playing behind rocks, but vanishing magically.
I utterly despise tricks like that. Repeatedly forcing the audience to guess what’s real or not is a very good sign that the movie is crap.
And Hierro is crap.
Oh, and there’s a double twist ending that makes no sense at all.
Best part: Err.. Well.. Hmm.. Oh, the ending I THOUGHT was going to happen was pretty good.
Worst part: The plot is absolutely nonsensical. Unconnected random events after another lead up to the most unlikely movie ending since 2001.
Score: 1/5
We’re seeing FIVE movies tomorrow and see Susan Sarandon live, followed by two more movies on sunday. I’ll try to answer emails as much as I can this weekend. :-)
The Limits of Control
I have absolutely no idea what this movie is about. Nihilism, maybe?
A man in a series of suits drinks espresso, trades matchboxes, does’t speak spanish, and is not an american gangster.
Jim Jarmusch, the director, obviously tries really hard to make a movie that means something. But in the end, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just flat, and boring, and repetetive. Then again, I’ve got a feeling that’s the point.
Once I gave up and just accepted the slow pace, the movie really started to blossom. The movie makes no sense at all to me on an intellectual level, but it feels like it should. Like there’s something there. Perhaps I’m just overthinking it? I like this feeling, and will see more of Mr. Jarmusch’s movies.
Best part: The audience was dead silent during the entire movie.
Worst part: They were probably sleeping.. It’s boooring.
Score: 4/5
Ong Bak 2
After Elin saw that Ong Bak 2 was being showed, I hurried to see the first movie. Turns out I didn’t have to, as this movie has almost nothing to do with the previous one. It takes place several hundred years before the events in the first movie, is about totally different people, and has a much darker tone.
A young (noble?) child witnesses his parents get murdered, and sets out to take revenge on the murderers. There’s lot of revenge and swords and bloods and malice, but the fighting scenes are almost as well choreographed and enjoyable as in the first movie.
As a Scandinavian viewer, I found many of the non-combat scenes strangely paced and didn’t understand much of the imagery or the cultural references.
Best part: A big bad mean guy whips his hair around his neck for no reason other than it looks cool. And it does!
Worst part: The good natured feeling of the first movie is gone.
Score: 2/5
I’m not sure if I’m going this route or not, but just in case:
Send me an email at markus@mojang.com. Include links to examples of your low res pixel work. This would be a paid gig, so let me know how much you charge. I’m not comfortable with free work.
Other things that would be good, but in no way are mandatory are experience with (extremely) low poly modeling, and hearing your own opinions on how the art could be done in Minecraft. Keep in mind that I want to keep the low texture resolution and simple graphics engine.
I’m drawing all the art myself right now, and I think it works fine. But after seeing some custom textures people have made, I have to say some of the stuff is really impressive.
So I thought perhaps it could be a good idea to pay someone to draw real actual pixels for Minecraft. It’d be everything from painting textures, modelling monsters, designing the ingame menus.
I’d only do it if I found someone Really Flipping Good(tm), and it’d be paid, of course.
Cons: The game becomes less of a one man project (although since C418 helps out with sound, it already is..), and it costs money.
Pros: Better graphics, less work for me. And I have money saved up from the earnings so far. Might be a good idea to re-invest that in the game.
I’d absolutely keep the low resolution and general design. Nothing major would change, just get a much nicer skin. Hey, perhaps you could even get a gold texture that looks not horrible. :D (The glass texture probably will still suck, though)
Opinions, rants, screenshots and demos from an up and coming indie game developer.
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