Landscapes

Landscapes are probably the thing I love most about art and games, because a landscape sets the scene for a game a gives off a "feeling" whether it be horror, action, adventure, calm, angry or anything else the setting of the game and its landscape is what makes you get that feeling. A good example of a game which has beautiful landscapes that feel real is Skyrim, this game is huge in terms of how much there is to explore and it has nearly every type of landscape ranging from snowy mountains and lush forests to large oceanic areas and large caves, I think one of my favourite and most memorable area in Skyrim was when I was exploring some Dwemer ruins and it lead me down deeper and deeper into caves until I came across Blackreach, a huge underground Dwemer village which had gigantic glowing mushrooms which looked like jellyfish and the air was a teal sort of colour with little white specs floating around, it looked like what you'd see if you went into the deepest pits of the ocean. I think that Bethesda (the developers of this game) got the idea to create Blackreach from the James Cameron film Avatar as they share similarities such as abnormal plants and it was like the place was alive.

Blackreach, entrance area

Blackreach, mid towers

Blackreach, birds eye view

Blackreach, main towers

Blackreach, waterfalls

Blackreach, concept art

Blackreach, watchtower concept art

Prototype 2

There's a game that I used to play called Prototype 2 which involved a man who became superhuman through an infectious disease that normally turns people into creatures, one of the things I loved about this game was its art style, it had large populated city areas with different settings for each such as the Red Zone which was a large mutant and military battlefield, it had the infection growing on buildings, had a red sky and had a very large presence of military and mutants, the Yellow Zone had a large military presence with some mutant breakouts but it was full of quarantine zones and gateways put up by the military, the Green Zone was the safe area for the most part, yet still had breakouts. Another thing I loved about this games art style was the cut scenes in the game, everything was black and white but anything that was a bold colour such as blue, red and orange such as explosions, LED's and clothing that were in the main focus of the shot in the scene remained the original colour, I imagined that this art style was inspired by the film Sin City as that also was in black and white but highlighted red areas.

Alex Mercer, Cutscene

James Heller, Cutscene

Alex & James, Cutscene

Alex Mercer & Soldier, Custscene

Destiny

So Destiny is a videogame that I play and put a lot of time into, it's a great game and has very good character design which intrigues me. The way the alien races in this game are designed by the developer is based off of historical mythology.

This race is called The Fallen and they're designed around the pirate age with the Captains often wielding dual sabers and having smaller ships compared to the Kells. Kells are the highest ranking amongst the Fallen and have very large Skiffs compared to Captains.

Dreg

Kell

Captain

Vandal

Skiff

The next race I'd like to talk about is the Cabal, this race of aliens are based off of the old Roman Empire so they have similarities in ranks such as legionaries, phalanx and centurions, they are the heavy hitters of the races with heavy armour, large weapons and they use a lot of explosives.

Phalanx

Centurion

Legionary

Psion

Harvester

Ok, next race. So the next race are called the Hive, these are off and inspired by the medieval era, the Hive look like undead and skeletons, their ranks are similar to that of a medieval army so they have acolytes, knights, wizards, ogres, thrall, princes and kings. There are a lot of named Hive enemies such as Crota, Oryx, Ir Anuk, Ir Halak, Ir Yut, Baxx, Urrox, Gulrot, Alak Hul etc. there's a lot of named hive as you can tell.

Thrall

Acolyte

Knight

Wizard

Crota, Son of Oryx

Oryx, Son of Osmium

The Vex are the 4th race in Destiny and they are based off of Greek mythology, they are a robotic race that were once created by the Traveler but they turned against him and became their own race that can teleport through time and space.

Goblin

Hobgoblin

Minotaur

Harpy

Hydra

The Taken are the 5th race in Destiny which are the normal races which have been possessed by Oryx, they have more abilities than the other races and they behave very twitchy and often move quicker, a lot of their abilities and shields are also the opposite elemental burn to the normal race that they originally were, meaning if an enemy previously had a solar shield and dealt arc damage they will then deal solar damage and have a void shield when they are Taken.

Taken knight, phalanx, captain, goblin, psion & thrall

Social Media Isn't Bad, It's The People!

Social Media Isn't Bad, It's The People! Is the title of this blog, within this blog I wanted to talk about a lot of the controversy over social media and a lot of people's views views on social media. So to start of it seems like a lot of the older generation and parents think that social media is bad and that it promotes bullying but this isn't the case, in fact social media is a very safe place for the most part and I say for the most part because friends and family can have fall outs and it can cause a lot of upset but there are more than enough options to make your profile as private as you want it, of course there are some exceptions when it comes to people commenting on your posts at first but that's what blocking people is for, social media is an amazing place and you can often meet very interesting new people on their. I'm going to us Xbox Live as an example because this is what I use a lot, a lot of my friends that I know are from meeting them on Xbox Live, we play as a clan on a game called Destiny and our clan is called GBR we all know each other pretty well and we talk outside of Xbox on other social media such as Twitter, does it mean they aren't proper friends? No. Does it mean that I can't trust these people? No. Fact is these people are a lot friendlier than most people I know in real life and it's a good thing meeting new people but just because I haven't met them face to face doesn't mean that I can't call them my friends, of course I have friends that I have met and go to college with but it's shocking how many people still have the same old stereotypical views on people who meet others online, of course you do have to be careful still as at first they are strangers and you do need to get to know them properly before you can put trust into them.

In this section I'll be talking about popular social media and what happens on them to give them a bad reputation for bullying. So Facebook is one of the most used social media sites to date, it has millions upon millions of users so it's no wonder that forms of bullying appears on there, however, since the start of Facebook there have been various updates and features added to it tovmake it a better and safer environment for people, you can adjust your privacy settings on your profile to the point where people who aren't on your friends list won't be able to see your wall and there is also a block option for people who keep harassing you, these same features also apply to Twitter, another very popular social media site but there are some sites that are classed as social media but don't have as many options in terms of blocking or privacy such as YouTube and Twitch, on these social media sites absolutely everyone can see videos you've uploaded and can comment on them with either good things or they can comment abuse which can be stopped but if a lot of people are doing it then it becomes a much harder task to delete these comments as there is no option to block people, this is where social media gets a bad reputation and why parent think that as soon as their child logs online that they'll immedialty get bullied or stalked but this isn't the case, in fact its fairly rare nowadays that cyber bullying happens as a lot of people just ignore it these days and move on, there are options to block, ban, delete and mute people on social media and in videogames so there isn't much reason to let these things get to you.

In this final section I'm going to talk about the brighter side of social media, so all these different sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, etc. Are really great ways to connect with people across the country and even across the world, it also allows you to talk to a community which are similar to you and you can share opinions on things whether it be art, videogames, film, music etc. There is so much that the internet offers us nowadays and even more so, social media. More importantly it's a great way to keep in touch with friends and family that might be too far away to ring, text or visit, see social media isn't bad at all it's just the way is humans behave that can change what kind of environment it is but with all these options for stopping it, it really isn't bad at all, all you have to do is not let anything that anyone says over the internet get you.

Batman & Joker

I found this image of some Batman fan art whilst looking online, I really like this as it shows 3 different styles of Batman the first being very futuristic and space-like, the second being more of a medieval look and the last one being more of a realistic style of a modernised Batman.

In this image there is a picture of Heath Ledger playing as the Joker in The Dark Knight, i really like this image as it can be used for editing easily, I would like to use this for a huge text mask of all the Joker's quotes and words that relate to him as a character.

Impressionism

Impressionism was a type of art that was frowned upon in Paris, France in the 1870's and 1880's it was seen as rebellious art such as graffiti is nowadays, to be called an "impressionist artist" was classed as an insult. Impression is a type of art where the artist would use bold colours and brush strokes to create a realistic painting, impression has grown to be a lot more popular and it also inspired other types of art such as expressionism which was a way to get the artists feelings onto the canvas. A popular and very famous example of expressionism is The Scream by Edvard Munch in 1893, The Scream symbolised Edvard's troubled mind and showed people what he fealt like was going on inside his head.

The Scream - Edvard Munch 1893