The problem with Retexturing Hongyu's Cowgirl

I told you that retexturing some clothing gets to be a pain.  This is Hongyu's Cowgirl (A4 version).  It seems that I might not be able to do a female Hawai'ian or Aloha shirt with this outfit's jacket.  By coloring each aspect of the jacket with a color, I can find out where everything is.

I might redo the Cowgirl with Scottish Tartans instead. :P

Aloha Shirt textures

I'm working on some interesting Aloha shirt textures for the Hiro and David clothing bundles.  After getting David for free recently (I bought Hiro), I thought I'd get their clothing bundles and start working with them.  My next retexture project are these aloha shirts.  The design here is based on a surfing photo.

The Aloha shirt is a style of dress shirt originating in Hawaii. It is currently the premier textile export of the Hawaii manufacturing industry. The shirts are printed, mostly short-sleeved, and collared. They usually have buttons, sometimes as a complete button-down shirt, and sometimes just down to the chest (pullover). Aloha shirts usually have a left chest pocket sewn in to make the printed pattern continuous. Aloha shirts may be worn by men or women; women's aloha shirts usually have a lower-cut, v-neck style. The lower hem is straight, as the shirts are not meant to be tucked in.

Aloha shirts exported to the mainland United States and elsewhere are called Hawaiian shirts and often brilliantly colored with floral patterns or generic Polynesian motifs and are worn as casual, informal wear.

Aloha shirts, also called Hawaiian shirts, are shirts that were originally designed in the early 1930's by a Chinese merchant who sewed the original shirts out of old kimono fabrics.  The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper was quick to coin the term Aloha shirt to describe Chun's fashionable creation. Chun trademarked the name. The first advertisement in the Honolulu Advertiser for Chun's Aloha shirt was published on June 28, 1935. Local residents, especially surfers, and tourists descended on Chun's store and bought every shirt he had. Within years, major designer labels sprung up all over Hawaii and began manufacturing and selling Aloha shirts en masse. Retail chains in Hawaii, including mainland based ones, may mass produce a single aloha shirt design for employee uniforms.

When the textures are done, they will be sold on Renderosity as part of a Retexture package for Hiro and David clothing Bundles, and Aiko (4)'s cowgirl outfit by Hongyu.

Bonsai Swimwear RELEASED!!

In time for the beach season, Bonsai Swimwear has released it's line of Speedos for 2010.  The styles range from camouflage to an icy feel.  The styles are sexy as well as functional.

Translation: On Renderosity's free stuff, you can find my Bonsai Swimwear ready for download for use in DAZ Studio, and only DAZ Studio.  If you use Poser, it means that you will have to custom build the mat files yourself (pz2, and mc6 files). The textures are available here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=59108 .

AWESOME!  RADICAL!  TUBULAR!  DUDE!

Monstrous Gallery: Were Jackal

Were Jackal by ~Atlantean6 on deviantART

The first of my Monstrous Gallery: the werejackal.

Werejackal (a.k.a. Jackalwere)
Armor Class: 5 [14]
Hit Dice: 4+5
Attacks: Bite (2d4)
Saving Throw: 13
Special: Lycanthropy
Move: 12
Challenge Level/XP: 5/240

Werejackals are lycanthropes from desert realms where the Egyptian god Anubis is worshiped.  Often the result of a terrible curse of some ancient Pharaoh or Priest of the Gods of Egypt, the werejackal is cursed to become part man part jackal by night when "Nephthys shows her face during the night."  The form is in the express image of Anubis.  Werejackals are affected by the weapons of Nephthys: weapons fashioned of silver, taking lethal damage.  Other weapons stun the creature or do minimal damage.  They are often human at any other time of the day, except when the curse of Pharaoh or the priests of Anubis comes upon them.

Movies, What they should be

Everyone loves the movies.

With a movie, theatre is brought into a new dimension that is cost effective.  A movie, printed on celluloid, allows more people to watch a film than you can pack into a theatre.  With a movie, you can watch the tales of Haggard's hero Allan Quartermain; or Indiana Jones (which has little resemblance to Allan Quartermain); Tarzan, or any number of subjects.  Movies that include realistic items like Chicago, or Silence of the Lambs, or even When Harry Met Sally.

The problem with movies today is that Hollywood takes them too seriously, or they lost the whole idea of a movie's purpose.  Some still have these good ideas: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and more recently Avatar are good examples of good storytelling.

To me, the purpose of a movie is to either Entertain or to Educate.  In the purpose of Entertaining, a movie is supposed to be used to bring you into a whole other world.  For the purposes of Entertaining, a good movie speaks to the inner child and takes you a fun journey to discover a whole new world and to have adventures.  Movies have been following this purpose as long as movies have been produced.

Since there were silent films and talkies, films had been talking to the inner child inside of us.  The original Thief of Bagdad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's  The Lost World (which is one of the best books and recent films I've seen), and screen adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone under the hat all the way to Rupert Everet and Robert Downey Jr. spoke to our inner child.  There was many women's films, many films for young boys (including the all time movie serials like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Radar Men from the Moon); and films for young girls.  All of these had their purpose to entertain the human being and speak to his or her inner child.

The other purpose of films is to Educate.  Films have been used to educate, through entertainment, about a wide variety of moral and social issues.  Many of these moral films are given the rating of R by the MPAA.  Films like the Godfather, Other People's Money, and The War of the Roses are social critiques and moral tales.  Some films are taken from Shakespeare and are also social critiques, as Shakespeare wrote to critique his own society (Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, criticized the duel).

A good filmmaker would choose to make films in these two veins.  For the moral filmmaker, it is often better to tell an "R"-rated truth than to tell a "G"-rated lie.  For instance, to expose what happened at the foot of Sinai would attract Censorship: homosexuality, murder, adultery, rampant drunkeness, coveteousness, falshoods, disrespect to parents, choosing a different God to worship, creating an image of that God, and most everything you can possibly think of they did at the foot of Sinai.

Not only that, but history is full of unspeakable truths a moral filmmaker can explore.  The lives of Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and Julius Caesar all have done terrible things that parents would not show their children.  But they all make good moral tales through their actions and what they were trying to achieve.  Caracalla, for instance, was a cruel emperor who built a lavish Roman Bath complex in Rome.

To create a moral film and to water it down for families is the worst thing a moral filmmaker can do if he wants to impact his audience.  He's crossing into the territory of the Entertaining filmmaker, who makes movies for the inner child.  For while the moral filmmaker tells about reality and seeks to educate the populace about Social wrongs, an entertaining filmmaker must give up his quest for accolades of Oscar to tell stories that entertain and speaks to the child.  In the case of the Entertaining Filmmaker, it's better to speak to the inner child and to make a PG-rated dream than a PG-13 misdream.  An entertaining Filmmaker, after all, stands on the shoulders of those who wrote movies for children.

Adventure, fantasy, and comedy are the realms of the Entertaining filmmaker.  You make a film to tell a story that speaks to the child.  It requires deft storytelling and deals with the universal morals of right and wrong, love and hate, and all the tools of adventure fiction that writers had used ever since.  Although there is room for social and moral commentary, the emphasis is on entertainment.

However, mix these two aims, and you get bad movies.  Ferngully is a great example, and by all reports, James Cameron has learned his lesson and created a fantastic movie by the name of Avatar.  Avatar has strong parallels with Ferngully, but James Cameron used the premise of Ferngully and improved it with the tools of Science Fiction (Avatar, by many reports, brings you into a whole other world, while Ferngully was a propaganda piece).

There is a third way for filmmakers to work, and that is in Documentary.  A Documentary filmmaker is also an Educating filmmaker since he is making a film that documents something in the world.  A recent example is March of the Penguins and the various Nova programs.  Here, a good filmmaker relies on his prowess to tell his story.  While Nova's The Elegant Universe was superb at explaining String Theory, a documentary filmmaker shouldn't be at all perturbed but inspired by this kind of filmmaking.

But it's better off if the Documentary Filmmaker can check and recheck his sources when he writes his documentary.  Filmmakers who don't do this may find themselves in trouble.

However, whether the filmmaker is a documentary filmmaker, or an entertainment filmmaker, or a moral filmmaker they are all at once storytellers.  They tell stories on film.  They are also responsible in anything they do.  A good film may entertain or inspire your watchers.  A bad film tanks.  A good film is enjoyed by all.  Some people may recognize it for what it is (the recent Sinbad animated film has D&D written all over it), others will simply enjoy it.  It's the duty of the filmmaker to bring truth to light: whether their film is excellent (Avatar, Star Trek), good (Night of the Museum), bad (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Ferngully), or utterly unspeakably terrible (Mars Needs Women).  A good filmmaker always strives for excellence.  A bad filmmaker is just wasting a hard drive and celluloid.

B-MOVIE TIME!

Day of the Tripeds by ~Atlantean6 on deviantART

Everyone needs to have some fun now and then at the Movies!  This is a poster for a 50s style Sci-Fi B-Movie.

What do you think about this quote?

"Pornography is about possessing, using, and abusing the beauty you recognize."

Comments?

Payback

I need to work on a new render. 

Aquatic Humans

Aquatic Human by ~Atlantean6 on deviantART

So I finally got around to doing one of these.  Quite the looker, isn't she?

Writing a D&D Adventure is Easy!

Taking some examples from Feng Shui, a D&D Adventure should be easy.

THE UNDERSEA CITY

This is an adventure that shows how easy an adventure actually is to write.

Premise: The PCs are on a boat from the land of Killyronde to Caithness; however something goes awry and they are sucked down a whirlpool.
The Twist: The whirlpool is manmade, the PCs are the guests of Atlantis.
The Climax: The Evil of Dark Rapture shows himself and the PCs must repel Dark Rapture to save Atlantis and to learn a clue to the whereabouts of Spaceship America.

This Adventure can support the usual suspects of PCs.  A wizard, a Cleric, some fighters, and a rogue/thief might come in handy.

Backstory

In the Ancient Time there were several Spaceships that came from Earth fleeing something terrible. Takeover by hostile forces or Nuclear War.  The Spaceships that traveled to Galatea to colonize the planet were the Bretonia, the Kusari, the America, the Ys, the Tartessos, and the Rhineland.  The Rhineland, the Bretonia, the Ys, and the Tartessos landed safely on the Continent of Hyperia and the micro-continent of the Caithness Isles, and spread European Culture by conquering and subplanting the cultures of the Native Peoples.  The Kusari landed eastward of the land of Hyperia.  As for the America, no one knew where the spaceship America had landed.  Everyone assumed that it had landed on the Continent of Hesperia . . . but now Hesperia is lost.

It's thousands of years later, and the High Technology that the Europeans had brought with them was lost.  After two Dark Ages, the nations of Hyperia has built themselves back up into a Medieval Culture.  Little do they know that there are cultures undersea, beyond the orcs, the Amazons of Amazonia, the Mystics of Skara Brae, and even the whole archipelago of Caithness itself.  This civilization is Atlantis.

Atlantis itself is built by the descendants of the colonists who were on Spaceship America.  They had isolated themselves from Hyperia and built undersea colonies to monitor the Hyperians and the people of Caithness.  In order to work efficiently, the Americans mastered the science of Genetics and created humans capable of breathing underwater, they also created Dolphin/Human hybrids (basically anthro-dolphins).  Then they built their undersea colonies: Atlantis, Poseidon, Cleitos, Tartessos, Tritoneus, and Neptune along the Hyperian Continental Shelf in shallow water.

However, during the Second Dark Age, the undersea colonies lost their connection with their Masters.  The Dark Age was a terrible Dark Age.  And the Undersea Colonies were forced to unify and become a nation unto themselves.  Especially with enemies like the Sahaugin and other sapient, undersea life.  The government is Autocratic, and the current Autocrat is an airbreather known as Lycurgus.  Lycurgus rules over a nation of airbreathing atlanteans, waterbreathing atlanteans, and anthro-dolphins.  Lately, the incursions of Procuros: also known as Dark Rapture, has caused the Atlanteans some concern.  Also, paranoid concerns over the Surface World has caused the Atlanteans to capture "land men" to see if the Surfacers pose a threat to them.


Getting Started

Have your players create characters, and tell them that they should have a reason to be on the boat heading from Killyronde to Caithness.  Player characters may create air breathing Atlanteans, water breathing Atlanteans, or anthro-dolphins if they prefer.  Although playing an Anthro-dolphin may cause some concern among the NPCs and should be discouraged.  Some suggested backgrounds for Atlanteans.

The Atlantean might be a spy or investigating the Land Men or Surface dwellers to see if they bear the Undersea Kingdom of Atlantis any ill will.  So a good class for a Player Atlantean would either be thief if she is a common Atlantean, or a scholar (re: wizard) if educated as a High Caste.

Alternatively, the Atlantean could be an inventor (re: scientist) if he or she is educated as a middle class and has a curiosity of the Surface world.  He could also be friends with the captain and have a machine or two on the ship (GM's discretion: I suggest that this is a submarine of some kind).

Anthro-Dolphins default to scientist, but they could be fighters, wizards, or clerics.  Being underhanded and using underhanded techniques aren't really alien to Dolphins, so Anthro-Dolphins could be thieves or rogues as well.

Other player characters could include:
-- An Orc of the Horde out to see if he could make contact with one of the more moderate Orc Tribes in Caithness that did not join the Horde.  He could be a fighter or a shaman (cleric or druid) or a warlock (a wizard that trafficks with, summons, or enslaves demons to his will and uses Fel Magic).
-- One of the Man at Arms hired by the captain to guard the cargo.
-- An Elven Wizard (or Elven Adventurer if you desire) who is a diplomat ready to report on his contact with the wild elves of Killyronde.
-- A halfling thief or (Halfling Adventurer) who travels with humans because he happened to be in the wrong tavern at the wrong time.
-- A Dwarf who wants to see his homeland.  He can be a fighter, cleric, thief, wizard, or Dwarven Adventurer if you so desire.
-- An amazon Barbarian (Fighter) who grew up in Killyronde but wants to see new places.


Next:  The EVIL BAD GUYS

Or, Sahaugin and the mutant human being that leads them.

What the Hey?

Question:

What is this person, anyway?  And what is he doing dancing in a pink tutu in an Orc Infested forest?

Geeking out with Swords and Sorcery

I feel completely . . . well; I feel like I've been missing out on such a great game.  It's a shame that the original Dungeons and Dragons was released 36 years ago.  But curiosity had gotten the better of me.  I'm looking at Swords and Sorcery.

Looking at this game, it's everything that 4e isn't mechanically.  It's Rules Light, thats for certain.  No rules for skills, no rules for feats, no rules for powers, no Attacks of Opportunity, no this, no that . . .  It's rules light for a reason.  Lately, I found out that it facilitates creative thinking and problem solving.  Not that saying that 4e doesn't, but Swords and Sorcery gives you a chance at real imaginative playing.  Chgowiz, Endymion, Kuntz, and others have been stressing play lately, and I've beginning to see where they are right.

There's been a movement to computerize D&D.  The question is simple: why computerize D&D?  Why program the game?  4e seems to be the aim of this idea.  But the simple fact is: if you want to play a computer D&D there are [metric] tonnes of options available to do just that.  The simple fact is, roleplaying or playing in general opens up new ways of creative thinking.

Here's a video that talks about that point very well:






 I think I truly understand where Robert J. Kuntz, Chgowiz, and Endymion are going.  Probably enough to adopt Swords and Sorcery as the game of choice for Galatea.  Although, something's got to be done about that Vancian System if I do . . . (looks at D20 Advanced Magic).