Why I haven’t been updating; told in a single image:

I picked it up the day after my birthday, but, to be fair, I haven’t been playing it very much. What I have been playing are MGS 2 and 3, and I’m glad I did, because I didn’t remember half of the story. (You can download the Metal Gear Database onto your PS3 to catch you up, story-wise, and I did, and it’s well done, but it’s been a lot of fun going back into these games.)

I breezed through MGS 2 in about 15 hours, but I’ve been taking my time going through Metal Gear 3, which is simply a flawless game. It’s so immersive; the sounds of the jungle, the slow deliberate gait of the KGB soldiers scattered throughout the game, the rustle of movement from nearby jungle creatures, and that’s even playing it on my old RCA (so old I needed to buy a video converter to plug the PS3 into it) with just the one little buit-in speaker in the corner. I can only imagine playing on a system with surround sound.

The reason I’ve been taking my time with MGS 3 is that, with the help of 3 guides from gamefaqs, I’m attempting to capture all of the food items, snipe all of the Kerotan Frogs, and make it through the entire game without raising an alert. As such, it’s been taking awhile, and I’ve been keeping copious notes, so that I don’t lose track of what I need to do. Here’s a look at a typical page:

Once again, my geekdom knows no bounds. (There’s a T-shirt there, somewhere.)

So, I’ve had the Metal Gear 4 PS3 Bundle Pack for a month now and haven’t even touched MGS4. My friends are astonished.

Unfortunately, taking such intense care with MGS3 has made it seem a little like work of late, so I’ve been distracted this past week with another birthday present, “The Pixar Touch” by David A. Price.

It’s terrific. As a Pixar wannabe, I’ve gleaned a lot about Pixar’s process from watching the DVDs (which at their best are loaded with extras and therefore kind of a home film school, and at their worst, they’re the Cars DVD), but a lot, and I mean a lot of it, I didn’t know;particularly about Pixar’s early days (Ed Catmull is an extraordinary genius), the circumstances which led to Lasseter’s hiring (Lasseter is a staggering blend of talent and ambition), and the copyright infringement trials surrounding Monster’s, Inc. (I was completey unaware of the two separate trials at the time).

But ignoring my web log posting duties has been just a byproduct of the real procrastination at hand. There’s another big art show coming up on 8/8/08: The Crazy Eights and the Eighty-Eight Lesser Themes. My theme is one of the Crazy Eights, “Peanut People.”

That’s right, peanut people. You know, like the monocled, top-hatted Planters mascot. And I’ve decided to draw a lot of peanut people, so I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Better get to it.
screentone out