I got a chance to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii with two friends a few months ago. I played it for about an hour or two and soon came to realize that, while stupid fun at times, the Mario Bros. franchise just isn’t tailored for anything other than one player action.
Let me expand on this.
It seems at times like the Academy created the Best Animated Feature Film category just to relegate animation to its own little corner of the Oscars and collectively forget about it so it’s refreshing to see UP running for Best Picture this year. I saw UP like five times and it truly is an amazing film and more than worthy of being called best film of the year. Whether UP could’ve broken into Best Picture with only five nominated films in the category as opposed to the ten we’re having this year is up for debate but stilll.
It was a pleasant surprise to see District 9 running for Best Picture also.
2009 has been over for a month but I still have some pages that need to scanned from my ‘09 sketchbook. I’ll be scanning the remainder of it in two sets and this is the first one. The second and final set will be coming around the end of the month most likely and it’ll probably be bigger than this one because I did some pretty good stuff towards the end of the year. Maybe I’ll throw in some “hindsight” comments in there too.
As always, you can find all of these pages in my Sketchbook 2009 page or you can just click below and see all the new stuff in a nice little table.
Meet the Kindle killer.
The iPad, the oft rumored Apple tablet/e-book reader, was finally revealed yesterday. It’s pretty neat and all but this is relevant to me and to what I do because of what it might do to digital comics distribution. There hasn’t been a truly viable device with which comic publishers can deliver content digitally and this might be it. I won’t be getting one but I’m excited for the implications it might bring to the medium. Whatever gets comics in more people’s hands is a good thing.
A picture of Apple’s own book store for the iPad after the break.
With all the God of Wars and Devil May Crys and Ninja Gaidens out there, it’s hard to recommend Sega’s Shinobi for the PS2 to action game aficionados. This is a game with simple graphics and repetitive combat that is very difficult and oftentimes cheap. It’s a game with a score of 71 one at Metacritic for “mixed or average reviews.” It’s a game that is mostly forgotten.
Still, there is one gameplay mechanic, or a combination of mechanics rather, that makes Shinobi stand out from the crowd. It’s something that I’ve mumbled to myself extensively but something that I never bothered to expand upon when asked because I just didn’t feel like getting into a lecture. I’ve mostly kept it to myself all these years but now I have a vehicle to get my thoughts together and throw this information out there for those three Shinobi fans in the world to read (the vehicle is this website, by the way).
Find out why Shinobi is the greatest action game that never was after the break.
The end of an (extremely short) era.
Love ya, Conan.
Looking forward to whatever you do next.
Fresh from the oven.
The reasoning behind me doing this picture is very simple:
Step 1: Draw Mario brutally fighting Sonic.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.
If that’s not clear enough, click below to read more (and for progress animation).
Let’s do this.
Click on any of the pictures to enlarge.
More Team Fortress 2 mayhem after the break.
The Maxx is an MTV cartoon from the 90’s which is based on Sam Keith’s comic of the same name. This was back when MTV was actually about music instead of nonsense reality shows and The Maxx was part of their animation line-up alongside Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead among others. The series had been in DVD limbo for years but a few months ago it was finally made available for pre-order on Amazon. It’s a strange release because you can only order it from Amazon and you won’t find it in stores. I got my copy in the mail a few days ago and I’ve watched the first few episodes already.
It’s a really good, unusual show that makes good use of its budget, i.e. there are long pans and zooms but what’s animated is usually animated very nicely. It’s been a long time since I watched this series so it all feels rather new to me and I can’t wait to see the rest of the episodes and listen to the commentary tracks.
Basically, The Maxx = Awesome animation.
The hardest part about making a top ten list of comics from over ten years is that you have no choice but to leave out a ton of fantastic stuff. So, before moving ahead, I want to make a special note of all the books not on this list that have blown my mind over the past ten years:
Brubaker’s Captain America, Top 10, I Kill Giants, Invincible, The Walking Dead, Thor by JMS, Invincible Iron Man, 52, The Authority, Desolation Jones and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t remember right now.
Let’s do this.
