--11/22/24--
Wow, this year is kinda flying by... >.>
It's already autumn and when the weather starts to get cold and rainy like this I get an incredible urge to go out and view some landscapes. I used to live in an area where I could walk out my front door and hit some trails and be smacked in the face by beautiful mountain views, and this time of year the clouds like to roll in through the valley and drape themselves over the mountains. It's quite something. :)
So, I usually get in the mood to play some games with really beautiful landscapes. It started with Skryim when that came out over a decade ago (what the heck!!) but has since continued with games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Elden Ring. Any game I can walk a dirt path and marvel at a mountain in the distance (being mounted on a horse is a bonus).
So here's some beautiful gaming landscapes that I went and stole from google image search right now... ;)
Have a chilly autumn everyone!
Cheers!
-milo :)
--9/10/24--
I was gonna wait until October to post this stuff, but September is October Jr, and I'm seeing pumpkins and stuff everywhere already so here we go...
We get into Halloween over here. When time is available we put quite a bit of effort into our Halloween decorations. Usually it's just for us, but there have been a year or two where we hosted a spooky shindig and had a bunch of people over and really wanted to give the house a haunted vibe.
In 2017 we went out and hit the town Halloween night, but didn't want to leave the trick or treating kiddos hanging, so we left this guy out with a bowl of candy.
The next year we invited some more friends to hang out with him. The "guy" in the chair is just a foam modeling head stacked up on some stuff with some cleverly arranged clothes and a sheet. Definitely fooled more than a few people.
The year after that, some more friends came by and we expanded the decorated area bit.
A couple years later we invited a few folks over and decided to go kinda crazy with the decorations. We had moved houses by this point to a place with a bigger backyard and inherited a bunch of decorations so we kinda took advantage of the space.
We turned a big dirt patch into a spooky graveyard! The zombie guy had a motion sensor and moved around and groaned when people walked by.
Complete with a Grim Grinning Ghosts singing heads projection! These were animated and played on a loop.
"
Here's a classy statue that was already in the backyard. We gave her sort of a Medusa thing going on with some spooky snakes.
The inside got some decorations too.
Some spooky mad scientist props I made...
We also put a spooky lady up in the hill with a spotlight and she really scared the crap out of me at night. And everyone else... This decoration kinda was bordering on inappropriate with how much it creeped people out.
Also as a bonus, here's the astronaut costume I whipped together! This is the second version of the costume I've done and I plan to keep improving it. I first built it in 2016 and updated it in 2019.
Here's the original build plus the concept drawing I did when I was planning it.
The main things I wanted to do with the new version were update the helmet and the backpack. The original helmet was too big and clunky and got fogged up really easily. I set out to make a smaller helmet with a built in fan module for temperature and humidity regulation.
The helmest is just an acrylic bowl craft prop thingy and I rummaged up a computer fan to attach to it. Copious amounts of cardboard and duct tape were used in this project.
I built a "mother brain" into a breadboard that would control the fan plus all the fancy LEDs I planned to add to the backpack.
Testing out the fan module. It's a nice fit at the back of the helmet and as a bonus it lights up! Totally didn't intend that when I found that fan but it gives the whole thing a neat scifi look.
Here's the helmet mostly put together. The only thing I'll add later on is some black felt adhered to the inside.
The backpack is just more cardboard and duct tape with a bunch of craft foam covering it up. Here's when I originally put it together
In this updated rendition, I wanted to add some cool blinking lights to it. I tucked the breadboard mother brain into the top with the LEDs sticking up. I added some wax paper over the bright yellow one to give it a "glowing core" effect. The top section is actually a panel that opens up for maintainance and can be velcro locked shut.
Everything ready to go!!
Aaaaaand done!!! I was super stoked with how it all turned out. And it worked flawlessly!!
I had a small box attached to the left backpack strap with switches in it. One was a master switch that turned the whole system on and off and one was for controlling the fan. And the fan worked like a charm! Kept me cool in the helmet and stopped it from fogging up.
Next time around I think I'll try and add more stuff to the suit part of the comstume. It's not very exciting and is just a cheap coverall with a bunch of duct tape and a few patches. I'd love to come up with some scifi weaponry and flashing gadgets to add to it in the future.
As always, thanks for taking the time!!
Cheers!
-milo :)
--7/9/24--
Been drawing a lot lately, working on my comic effort which has got me into a mood to read some comics.
Also, I kind of accidentally wandered into the library, Alice in Wonderland style. Like... we were walking down a dirt path near the post office when suddently we emerged into the library parking lot and were like... hey what the heck, and went inside and got library cards and bunches of books.
One thing I checked out was Jeff Smith's RASL. It's a really great comic with some deep scifi elements that borrows a lot from film noir. Jeff Smith's art style is itself very cinematic and his linework lends itself to intense action sequences.
And while RASL is an amazing piece of comic work, what it really made me want to do was crack open and dive into his other work for the 132nd time.
Bone might be my favorite comic of all time. It's incredibly well written and so much fun to look at.
It stars the titular Bone cousins, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, who are essentially Mickey, Donald and Goofy. They are thrust into a Lord of the Rings style epic fantasy setting of ancient powers and political dramas.
The story starts out light-hearted enough, but as things unravel and everything unfolds, the stakes get higher and higher it gets to be an intense read. Jeff Smith's art is very animated and the characters move around the pages expressively and the writing grabs you and won't let go.
At around 1,300 pages, it is a veritable tome of a comic. The front cover calls it a "cartoon epic" which is apt. Whenever I sink into it it becomes a regular part of my routine that I look forward to every day, the loud thunk of setting the book down in my lap or on a table becoming a comforting, familiar sound.
(not my hand)
I really do love these characters. I feel like you have to have a certain appreciation of old-timey cartoons and a certain slapstick, Loony Tunes style of comedy. But I feel it works so well when you make characters like that take their surrounding a little bit more seriously (or make the serious surrounding act a bit more goofy). It's like a fantasy epic version of Space Jam, with funny cartoon animals drawn into the real world.
Anyway, just wanted to blag about this wonderful piece of work. It's near and dear to my heart and I'm glad it exists and you should be too.
Cheers!
-milo :)
--6/9/24--
I've been playing through some Sonic games lately...
Sonic has been my favorite thing ever for my whole life basically, so the days I'm not playing a Sonic game are few and far between. Lately I decided to see if I could get Sonic Generations running with mods on my Steam Deck, which was mostly a huge success! The mods ran fine, but I had to exit and restart the program if I wanted to switch between classic and modern or else the game would crash. Worth it, though! Vanilla Sonic Generations is fun, but modded is funner. ;)
Anyway, after I beat and had my fun with that, I moved onto Sonic Colors Ultimate and I realized how much I freakin' love that game.
As far as Sonic games go, I could take or leave the story... I don't care about Sonic's motivations, or his friends... All I wanna do is play a blue bouncy running boi who is a cool hedgehog. So one of my favorite things about Sonic Colors is its small, contained story compared to some of the other more, uhhhh... expansive narrative efforts from the series.
The writing is not bad, so the cutscenes are actually bearable, if even funny at times!
Other than that, I love the setting. A theme park is perfect for a Sonic game, which works best, imho, when the levels are disconnected from each other and serve only to be well-designed platforming stages. Each area in "Eggmanland" is differently themed and expertly crafted. I think my favorite is Planet Wisp. I really like the whole "overgrown machinery" trope, and this level has it in droves and it looks incredible.
As for the gameplay, it takes the "boost" formula introduced in Sonic Unleashed and polishes it to near perfection. The control and platforming is tighter than it's ever been and Sonic feels good to move around... which can't be said about all his outings.
I missed this game the first time around on the Wii, so I was super excited to pick up the Ultimate edition when that came out in 2021. Coincidentally, the game released a week before a trip to Disneyland, so I got to peruse a virtual theme park before setting out for a real one. Neat!
Anydangway... Thanks for reading my mini review of Sonic Colors. When I start posting full game reviews, this might be one of the first.
Cheers!
-milo :)
--5/28/24--
I've been hard at work in my spare time continuing to cobble the site together.
I added some art and games to their respective pages, so now there's stuff to look at!
King Gizz has been leaking potential new songs live and that's exciting so I'm gonna share one here with you now.
Cheers!
-milo :)
--5/25/24--
Thanks for checking out my little corner of the internet.
This site is born of my love of the old web, HTML, and of a need to start housing my creatove efforts and thoughts and such. It sounded like a fun idea.
At the moment, there are some games to play if you click on the appropriate button over there to the left. The rest of the links don't go anywhere yet, but that will change hopefully soon. :)
Thanks again! Cheers!
-milo