DID SOMEONE SAY CATHEDRAL?

If you're looking for pictures of a minecraft cathedral (and surrounding village) LOOK NO FURTHER. This is the result of an off-and-on project of mine spanning over a year. have a looksee:

here's the download link for the map: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/u990756yqv07p/Cathedral

Illuminated manuscript

According to Wikipedia, illuminated manuscript is " a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders (marginalia) and miniature illustrations. In the most strict definition of the term, an illuminated manuscript only refers to manuscripts decorated with gold or silver, but in both common usage and modern scholarship, the term is now used to refer to any decorated or illustrated manuscript from the Western traditions. Comparable Far Eastern works are always described as painted, as are Mesoamerican works. Islamic manuscripts may be referred to as illuminated, illustrated or painted, though using essentially the same techniques as Western works.". Basically, decorated letters and words. One of the more famous examples is The Book Of Kells, a new testament Bible so heavily decorated that it is near useless for the general purposes of a Bible. Here are some examples of illuminated manuscript:

Mosaic Completed

I started my mosaic and well... there were nowhere near enough white tiles for Gomez so instead i did an Invader tribute piece, didn't turn out quite as good as i wanted but it's recognizable, at least:

Strange Video

I came upon a rather strange video on youtube recently and thought I'd share it. It appears to be a video editing test, however it's a very weird one:

Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Theros

Magic Pro Tour Theros was this weekend. Held in Dublin, Ireland, it was a great event hosting pro players from around the world. The new world champion Jeremy Dezani of France won using a mono blue deck (that means the deck used only blue cards, for all of you who don't play Magic) filled with new Theros cards like Master of Waves:

Thassa, God of The Sea:

Jace, Architect of Thought:

And Cloudfin Raptor:

Other decks of note include Makihito Mihara's Green/Red aggro deck, featuring new cards like Xenagos, The Reveler:

And Guillame Wafo-Tapa's Esper Control deck, featuring only one creature in the entire deck, Aetherling:

Overall, it was a great Pro Tour event, showcasing the abilities of the new cards in the set, and showcasing how much of a broken card Nykthos, Shrine To Nyx is:

Magic: The Gathering Card Art

Magic: The Gathering is a TCG (Trading Card Game) with over 12 million DCI registered players (and many more unregistered). it is well known for rich, detailed card art, easily accessible rules and community, and being the first Trading Card Game ever created (the original Alpha set debuted in 1993). Since the game's inception, the card art has been very well done, from the rich landscapes of the game's land cards:

To the detailed portraits of the creature cards:

As you can see, both the card design and art quality have improved over time, what started as a small team of artists has branched out to a large community of its own, with the use of computer technology becoming more and more viable for use in art, as technology (and the card game) continues to advance. The game has had a resurgence in recent years, becoming increasingly popular and branching out to video games, novels, and other media. This may be a result of both social media allowing for better notoriety, combined with the resurgence in "geek culture" as of late. Whatever the reason, it's great to see more people join the Magic community and see the game continue to grow. The new Booster Set, Theros has been doing some very ambitious things, in terms of both the game itself, the art, and the lore. Hopefully Magic will be around for another 20 years, and the community will continue to grow.

Garry's Mod

Garry's Mod is a ten dollar sandbox program running on Valve's Source engine. Being a sandbox, it has great potential for making art like what i have shown in a previous post, as well as movies, and also functions as a game through the massive amount of user-generated content, game modes, props, and maps, in addition to free online multiplayer via Steam. It started from humble beginnings, as a free sandbox mod for Half-Life 2. As Valve expanded their Source engine and it's repertoire of games, the mod expanded with it, eventually being officially licenced and supported by Valve, leading to it being sold on Steam for $9.99 USD (it goes on sale a lot too). All that's required is an installed source game (Team Fortress 2 is available for free) and the mod itself. the mod also includes most of the content from Half-Life 2, without requiring it to be installed, however for content from Left 4 Dead, Half-Life Source, Counter Strike Source, and some other games, a purchase of those games is required. All in all, a great value for ten bucks.

and the winner is...

my last post was about the mosaic ideas that I had, I've narrowed it down and the winner is:

Gomez, from FEZ

you may be thinking: "why did he choose Gomez, hasn't he posted enough about FEZ?" well, yes and no. yes I've posted enough about the game, however in terms of mosaic art this was by far the easiest to do, I also happen to be a big fan of FEZ, and indie games in general, with FEZ being one of the newest and most interesting games in my collection, it was an easy choice. plus, look how cool this guy is:

That's the sunglasses you unlock for beating the game. they add (the mostly useless) first person mode. beat it again and you get 3D mode:

Mosaic Art

In art class we are currently doing mosaics. I'm thinking of using square tiles to do a gaming related mosaic, similar to the work of Invader. I've narrowed it down to a few different ones, so here they are:

I'm gonna be picking one to do. Leaning towards the Black Mage or Mega Man.

Phil Fish

Better known as Phil Fish, Jacques Paul Phillipe Poisson is the man who created the majority of FEZ by himself, for four years, with barely enough money to eat. (for more on that watch Indie Game The Movie).
Anyways, Phil Fish (pictured below) created FEZ more or less by himself, which skyrocketed to great critical acclaim when it was released on XBLA and later Steam. Everything was going well and FEZ 2 was on the way, so what happened to him?

Well, Phil had made some controversial (but well founded) comments about Japanese Games, and the way Microsoft nickel and dimes Indie developers, even forcing them to pay reportedly "tens of thousands of dollars" just to patch their games. When asked about the state of Indie games on the controversial Xbox One, he refused to comment. Gaming "journalist" (we use the term loosely) Marcus Beer, from the AnnoyedGamer series on GameTrailers' Youtube channel, started hurling insults at him and Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid). Fish responded on Twitter, demanding an on-camera apology. This elicited more insults and other horrible things from Beer, leading Fish to respond with a rather inappropriate quote from Futurama, (which seems relatively tame compared to Beer's comments). Beer then went on to insult and threaten the reputation of Fish, who responded with "im done. FEZ II is canceled. goodbye." and then locked out his Twitter from the public. shortly after he posted on his company Polytron's website, "FEZ II is cancelled. i am done. i take the money and i run. this is as much as i can stomach. this isn't the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win.". Polytron later tweeted confimation of the cancellation of FEZ 2, saying the were sorry for disappointing their fans. Phil Fish was trending in the top ten worldwide topics on twitter at that point. Later on, former Gears of War developer Cliff Bleszinski posted an open letter to Fish on Tumblr highlighting some of his own struggles with the industry and the way he'd been treated online, as well as asking him to return to the industry, and that Fish returning may be the jump-start he would need to return to the industry. At the end of the day, be it temporarily or permanently, the industry has lost a great visionary and pioneer. Who knows? Maybe he's taking a break like Steve Jobs did, and like the late tech magnate, will come back to create another revolution? Maybe he's really going to live in the mountains, offering his wisdom to those willing to seek it? Maybe he's upset because there was some really obvious secret meaning behind FEZ that no one understood? Maybe...

Mosaic Art

According to the extremely credible and always accurate Wikipedia, a Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, mostly roughly square, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae, (diminutive tessellae), are used to create a pattern or picture.
Mosaics have existed since the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and well before, some dating back to 1500 B.C.E., and are still made today, by artists such as Invader.
Mosaics were often used for religious purposes.

Here are some examples of mosaics:

Note the heavy religious influence, as well as the emphasis on yellow, brown, and green.

Humble Bundle 9

Humble Indie Bundle 9 has been out for a week now, and the four hidden indie games were revealed. the highlights of the bundle include artistic puzzle-platformers FEZ and Limbo, strategy-puzzler Faster Than Light, heavy metal influenced hack and slash Brutal Legend, beautifully designed stealth platformer Mark of The Ninja, and detail driven action-RPG Bastion. also included are puzzle platformer Trine 2, puzzler Eets Munchies, action platformer Rocketbirds: Hard Boiled Chicken, and action-puzzler A Virus Named Tom.

The bundle includes the soundtracks for the games and both DRM-free download and Steam versions of the game (I recommend the Steam versions due to the achievements, cloud saves, and other features).

Also, be sure to pay more than the average (around $5.00 USD) or you'll only get Trine 2, Mark of The Ninja, Eets Munchies, and Brutal Legend, and their respective soundtracks. You also need to pay at least $1.00 USD for the steam versions. Humble lets you choose how much of your money goes to the game developers, charity, and the Humble organization, so you can give more or less to whatever recipient you want.

The bundle will become unavailable soon, so its a good idea to get it now. The total price of all the games and soundtracks is well over $100.00 USD, so it's a good deal for 5 bucks.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (or AR for short) is a technology used with a digital camera to create a visual effect over a photo or video. Here is the definition from dictionary.reference.com :

augmented reality

noun Digital Technology .

1.

an enhanced image or environment as viewed on a screen or other display, produced by overlayingcomputer-generated images, sounds, or other data on a real-world environment. Abbreviation:  AR

2.

a system or technology used to produce such an enhanced environment: With augmented reality, you can get relevant extra information about what you are looking at. Abbreviation:  AR

the #Niprockart students (myself included) have been using an AR application called ColAR for DOT day, and the best way to explain it is to show it:

The application takes an image drawn on a specially designed printoff, and creates 3D spheres, makes it rotate, and does other things with it. it looks really good with bright and similar colours:

I've had some experience using the AR applications with the Nintendo 3DS, as well as with other iOS apps (Action movie FX is a fun one) so I have a good grasp on how it works, but the ColAR App is quite interesting in that it can take any drawing and create a 3D model or animation with it, instead of taking a preexisting 3D model and texture (a texture is the visible outer layer of a CG model) and transposing it over a QR (Quick Response) code, symbol, or barcode. Quite an interesting app, and a lot of fun. 

Gmod Art

Art Questions Answers

1. I find art to be good for looking at, if nothing else. as for the class, I almost failed last year, so I'm not sure...
2.

art

1  [ahrt]  Show IPA

noun

1.

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful,appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

2.

the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures,or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.  See fine art, commercial art.

3.

a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.

4.

the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.

5.

any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art. 

(taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art)

3.i

my favourite thing about school is that i actually get to do something during the day, as opposed to doing nothing.

3.ii

my least favourite thing about school is the stress from exams at the end of a sememster.

3.iii

I dislike drawing, and long answer questions.

4. It would be more open-minded.

5. I need to draw better.