#dashawnmahone

[deenabeck]

@dashawnmahone 

[bigbossrequiem-sfw]

Late B-Day gift for my bro @dashawnmahone!

Still experimenting with different approaches. I have yet to find a style of coloring i feel fits me...

[goldieloxart]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @dashawnmahone!! Here, have a costume swap of my favorite characters of yours!~ .ﾟ☆(ノё∀ё)ノ☆ﾟIm sorry if there are any nuances in their outfits

[forosha]

(proofread by @SandraDRivas; this is the last time I SWEAR)

HAPPY B-DAY (again) @dashawnmahone. READ THE COMIC GOD DANGIT http://www.cupofcomics.com/valoroustales/comic/pg1/ …

[bigbossrequiem-sfw]

My rendition of Yuu Doo from dashawnmahone Valorous Tales! Sorry for the bad coloring (someone help me), but I wanted to mess around with stuff, so I decided to upload less hideous versions as well. 

[breewolfstuff]

isthistakenalready said: I think you’re gonna have to watch Akibaranger. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just say that if you want to get deeper into this tangent, you need to check that shit out. go to over-ti.me and they’ll have it.

Putting this on my list, thanks for the recommendation! I dunno when I'll be able to start watching it, but I've heard some pretty good things about the series.

dashawnmahone said: This has always irked me. Man, it’s even more apparent in the game industry. Western games seem to be more geared toward realism. That’s cool and all, but I like the days back when games actually let your imagination fill in the graphical blanks.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad approach. The fourth wall mentality a lot of Western media uses can create an amazing immersive experience. In a stage show, it feels like you're really there with the characters, that the scene you're watching unfold is happening right in front of you. The approach can make the impossible seem possible- special effects-heavy films like Terminator and Star Wars brought whole new worlds to life. It extends to worldbuilding too- a lot of franchises these days are structured to make not just a convincing setting, but a whole universe of plausibility. Avatar, for all its scripts' faults, has an amazing setting, in part due to the meticulous research the writers and artists went through in designing an alien world. Wherever the franchise goes in the future (James Cameron wants it to be a trilogy and is already working on the next two), the universe that they've built will be open for all kinds of stories, just based on how cohesive of a world it is.

Now lemme go on a tangent about games and manuals.

What's interesting about early videogames isn't just how the graphics were simpler and more evocative. They had to be, by their crude nature, but that's not all they had going for them. You'll hear many older gamers wax nostalgia about the large packages that their cartridges would come in. The oldest games would have 'feelies', all sorts of tangible goodies like a full color manual, a cloth map, travel brochures for alien planets, or Dial-a-Pirate decoder wheels (also meant to be an early DRM tactic). What I don't think most realize is that those weren't just made for novelty's sake. They were absolutely necessary for the enjoyment of the game proper. Without the manual for The Legend of Zelda, the player would have no idea what their quest was about, or where they needed to go or even what buttons did what. They might figure things out after a bit of stumbling around, but that's only fun up to a certain point; after that, it just feels pointless and frustrating. It's how I felt when I was eight and tried to tackle the game on a grandparent's NES with no manual. Without a clue of where to go or why I should care about any of this, I became bored and switched over to Super Mario Bros.

In a sense, the feelies were the developers' way of compensating for what their consoles couldn't do. They offloaded the story and world-building and helpful guides all onto paper, an already-proven technology far cheaper to produce than an extra-bulky cartridge. And, with the power of the human imagination, much more effective in that all-important evocation. The difference now is that games are technologically advanced enough that the original function of the manual is basically useless. When a game can play cinematic cutscenes, there's no need for a book with narration and some pretty pictures. When a game embeds a tutorial into the main quest, there's hardly a need to hold instructions on paper. This is the real reason that manuals have practically disappeared from games; it's no longer as efficient in cost or emotional impact.

That's not to say that feelies have no merit. Rather, the merits of tangibility and evocation need to be properly understood and combined with a product that takes advantage of these properties, without ignoring the design lessons of the past, to create a complete experience. What I find interesting as a thought experiment is the usage of the human imagination to reverse the dynamic of the electronic and the print; that is, imagine a game that places its rules on the page and its visuals and story on the screen, instead of the usual vice versa. The player acts as their own referee, using the screen only for recording the results and watching them play out on-screen. This is more or less what happens with board game DVD hybrids, but I could see it being explored further. The relationship between the physical and the intangible is ever-changing, and far from fully understood.