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: