Here's something you probably didn't know: I don't usually color my own stuff. I'm pretty content with just coloring other people's characters (for whatever reason) but a few months back I did this pretty good drawing of a girl taking a sunbath. I wasn't even finished with it before I said to myself: "I need to put color on this," so I did.

I knew beforehand that I wanted the background elements to be flat and that the girl herself would be more fully rendered. What I couldn't predict was just how much more thought was involved in deciding what colors to use on what. Without any ground rules laid before me, I suddenly found myself questioning and going back and forth on simple choices I'd previously taken for granted such as hair color.

I already have the drawings for my next three coloring piece scanned and ready to be taken into Photoshop and all of them are based on existing character but this is something I definitely want to try again in the future. It was kind of fun to be in complete control like that. I just need to wait for the right drawing to come along.

I've long considered Chrono Trigger to be the pinnacle of JRPGs but it's been quite a while since I last played the game (via emulator) in high school. A few months back, I got an itch to play the game so I got the DS version and I've been completely floored once again. Not only is the game just flawless in terms of presentation but it's also way ahead of its time in terms of gameplay (which amuses me being how time-centric the story is). No random battles, swap characters anywhere without experience penalties, being able to move during most dialogue sequences, status effects removed at the end of battle, and so forth. Everything about it serves to make the experience as streamlined, nimble and enjoyable as it can be as opposed to most other JRPGs where playing can almost feel like a chore.

The Ocarina of Time has long been my favorite game ever but revisiting Chrono Trigger after all this time makes me wonder if it's not time for a change up.

It was no more than two months ago that I looked at how many blank pages were left in my sketchbook thinking how I'd never be able to complete it all by year's end. Fast forward to now and I'm wondering just how many months ahead of time I'll have it all filled in. Ah, the wonders of working the graveyard shift.

It's a terrible shift actually and if I'll be shocked if I don't end up pulling my hair out in 3 months time.

But I do get to draw a lot so that's a plus.

Below is the new stuff and here is the whole shebang.

Wait, what? Why am I reviewing a 10 year old game?

Well, because I recently played through it for the first time courtesy of the PSN. Simple, right? Actually, I'm only on the fourth and final disc so I haven't actually beaten it and I won't be doing an all-encompassing review of the title. Instead, I'll focus on a few specific points that managed to catch my attention over the course of my playthrough, so this is more of a look at FFIX through the prism of ten years of advancement in game development.

- First things first: random battles have got to go. If you're a Japanese developer and you're still putting random battles in your RPGs, you deserve to fail. They're archaic, intrusive, discourage exploration, and, bottom line, nothing in a video game should be ever random. There's no nostalgia to be found in random battles anymore. Expletives were freely passed at the start of nearly every battle over the course of my time with FFIX and it stands to reason that anything that frustrates the player should be removed from the game in question. Please stop this sadistic practice.

- On the upside, most developers worldwide have had no trouble incorporating checkpoint systems into their games. Thank you, Halo. Unfortunately, FFIX came out a couple years before that particular wave started and this has been the cause of a fair amount of frustration over my playthrough. I was actually late to work at one point because I wanted to squeeze in some 30 minutes of playtime and my next save point didn't arrive until after at least 90 minutes. Hey, I wasn't going to quit and replay those random battles and I wasn't going to leave my energy-hogging PS3 on for over 10 hours until I got back. Lesson learned: I never again played FFIX unless I had at least 2 hours to spare.

- I don't know how it happened but Vivi has become one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters ever. Much like Gohan of Dragonball Z, Vivi falls under the "powerful but insecure" archetype. Those characters have never really appealed to me but somewhere between his sincerity, his questioning nature and the almost ninja-like quality of his design and I fell in love. Vivi is awesome.

- Final Fantasy IX's Limit Break/Overdrive  system is called Trance and it's kinda stupidly designed. Each character's Trance bar fills up when taking damage and, when full, that character gets a stat boost, an appearance change and improved commands (Vivi, for example, gets to cast magic twice in one turn). You get about three turns while in Trance but the problem is that your character returns to normal at the end of every battle. Too many times did I gain Trance just before the last enemy was killed without having a chance to use it. That, coupled with the snail's pace at which the Trance bar builds, makes this a pretty unreliable and fairly useless system.

- One of the more pleasant surprises in playing this game was something I kinda knew already: a lack of voice acting makes bad dialogue much easier to swallow. When antagonist Kuja makes his labored speech, I took it with a completely straight face whereas I feel voice acting with that same dialogue could've induced some groaning. On the flip side, watching pre-rendered cutscenes without any voices is almost discomforting.

- Last but not least, the equip/skill system is odd. Basically, what magic and abilities you learn is based on what equipment you have so equipping weapons/armor is never about  having the highest stats or properties to attack enemies with (as it should be) and always about "what ability has this guy not learned yet?" I think the game could've benefited from splitting this into two separate systems but, then again, that might add needless complications to the game.

So what's my review of this game I haven't quite finished yet?

I like it. Some of the more dated conventions of the genre present in FFIX have caused a great amount of frustration on my end but the more classic Final Fantasy elements in this game have made this a really enjoyable ride nonetheless. I've heard people say that the throwback nature of this game is dishonest but I never felt that way personally. And, though perhaps obvious to many, it bears saying that Square can create some amazing art. A few of the characters designs are weak (Kuja, Zidane) but the artistry behind some of these worlds is just breathtaking.

I don't think I would hesitate to say that Final Fantasy IX is among my top 3 FF games.

I found this neat little thing that's going on over at deviantART. It was started by fox-orian and well, just take a look at it, it's pretty self-explanatory.

This is actually the second version of my Influence Map. What happened is that I picked mostly from comics and a couple illustrators in my first version, neglecting every other medium out there. I was OK with that until I glanced at The Complete Collection of Calvin and Hobbes on my shelf and realized I had made a terrible mistake. So I redid the whole thing, including Calvin and Hobbes, and decided to expand into films, video games and animation. The first one (which I've posted below) was about right in terms of which artists inspire me directly as an illustrator but the second one is much broader.

And, of course, a month from now I could feel very differently about any of these choices and I'm sure I must've forgotten at least one hugely influential thing.

Still, it was a cool little thing to pass the time with.

UPDATE: For completely blowing my feeble little mind when I first saw Dragonball Z as a kid, his unique take on character designs and for leaving an imprint in my work that still creeps out every now and then, I'm replacing Contra III with Akira Toriyama. I won't touch this map ever again, I swear.

More so than the source material or the Anamanaguchi soundtrack or the old school beat 'em up influence, it's Paul Robertson's sprite work that made getting "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game" a no-brainer. The exclusion of online play is deplorable but look at those sprites!

It's not "Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006: The Game" but it's probably the next best thing.

Big fan of Paul Robertson here.

It's been a while since our last episode and Mark and I have been playing a number of titles so, instead of the usual list or review, this will be a quick catch up episode where we lay down some quick impressions. There's Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, Limbo, BlazBlue and Final Fantasy XIII among others. We have a better recording setup now but it seems we didn't test it thoroughly so apologies if the audio quality is not on par with that of previous episodes.

Listen to the episode below and subscribe to our feeds here:

Let's talk about comic book costumes again.

DC has set the internet ablaze once again, this time by drastically altering the look of one of its most iconic characters: Wonder Woman. There's always going to be opposition against change in comics, even more so with a long standing character such as Diana, so I feel I have to at least commend DC for truly going all the way with such a bold move. The question (and raison d'être of this post) is whether this is a step in the right direction or not.

Click on the image above to see a beautiful Alex Ross rendition of the classic costume and click below for the new Jim Lee version.

It goes without saying that most people aren't too thrilled with the costume (to the right) but the negativity is coming from the internet where being cynical is the norm so the costume's true "approval rating" is still up in the air. I've surmised from some of the comments on the web that Jim Lee is taking the blunt of the attacks when story writer J.M. Straczynski had a fair amount of input in the design, perhaps most notably with the jacket.

The jacket is one of the bigger points of contention in this design and rightly so, as it's arguably the most noticeable change in the new outfit. I'm not completely averse to Wonder Woman wearing a jacket but I'm just not digging the design of it. I don't like the shoulder pads, I don't like how it's unnecessarily loose and I don't like how it's rolled up at the elbows. I'm actually curious as to how much people's opinion of the design would change without it.

The other elements are sort of a mixed bag. Her tiara has eschewed simplicity with perhaps too many angles and her wristbands are now needlessly complicated (and they supposedly leave a "W" mark on whoever she hits but that could be another discussion in itself) but I do like how less emphasis is given to the golden ornaments in her torso. I can't put a finger on what it is I don't like about those pants yet but I'm thinking it could be the way they just merge into her shoes.

And the choker? I have no words to describe how dumb and pointless that is.

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate some of the thinking behind this. Wonder Woman is a warrior that fights in a swimsuit, so give her some pants. Give her a jacket so she can actually have pockets to put trinkets or whatever in. That stuff makes sense (even if I could argue against the necessity to ground super hero comics too much in the real world), I just don't think the costume is a good one. And I could chalk it up to some desire of mine to stick to tradition but despite any attempt of mine to find the root of my dislike for this costume, I always come back to the same question: why Jim Lee? Why not Alex Ross? Why not J.H. Williams III? I think either of those guys could've done a better job with what was asked. Don't get me wrong, Jim Lee is one of my favorite artists in comics but a strong character designer he's not.

At least they're justifying the drastic costume change with a story of time travel and altered timelines wherein Wonder Woman was raised "in the streets" as opposed to Paradise Island so it's not something that's being done on a whim. It's also been stated that the story is finite so the possibility of the Diana going back to her old duds at some point does exist.

I ultimately feel that, while I may not be a fashion connoisseur, I've read enough comics in my lifetime to be able to discern between a good superhero costume and a bad one.

This Wonder Woman costume is not in the former.

This is another old piece that I uploaded to the site early on but one I never dedicated an actual post to. It's a piece that holds up rather well despite being many years old though why I gave dear old Prime such a tiny, tiny head still escapes me. The background, or lack thereof, is just plain embarassing also.

I'm posting this in lieu of a new piece because, well, I have had zero time to get some Photoshop work done at home. I have at least 3 drawings of stuff that I really, really want to get colored before I throw them on here, not to mention 3 other ideas for illustrations I want to get done but alas, zero time to do them.  

Have a progress animation of Prime in the meantime.

The sequel to Arkham Asylum is finally named!

With Arkham Asylum being one of the best games last year and definitely one of the biggest game-related surprises in a long time, there is little I can say to describe just how much I want this game. The fact that the only thing on my request list is "better boss battles" speaks volumes of just how good I think it was.

It's gonna be a long wait until fall 2011.