Fesoes.net

Just because I hate being inactive and not posting up blog posts so often because I’m lazy/distracted by other things/studying/getting nostalgic, I’m going to post a video that pretty much sums up how my brain is thinking at the moment.

In other unimportant news; I got my hair trimmed. It’s pretty long, but the ends were getting dry, so I pretty much got my ends trimmed off. Fun fact: The only time I’ll let a stranger touch my hair is when they’re about to cut/style it.

I remember a couple of years ago, I stumbled (somehow, since I didn’t have StumbleUpon back in those days – but that said, the internet seemed to be a much smaller place back then in the time of MSN Comic Chat 2.5 and Yahoo! Chat) upon a lovely place known as the Paper Doll Boutique. Since this was probably during the ME days (shudder), I lost the link upon upgrading to XP (and in the process, giving away the computer running ME to some unlucky people) but now, now I’ve found it!

Well, not exactly, but it’s a Paper Doll blog by the same person, and she’s even been uploading her old stuff! It makes me so happy looking at her dolls, and her imagination far outstretches mine when it comes to designing dresses and clothing! So yes, go look, admire, add her feed to your RSS Readers (What? You don’t have one? For shame.) and feel inspired!

I don’t know how many people this will be a surprise to, but one of my (many, many) dream jobs is computer game designer, but not just any computer games designer. I want to design the games that become classics/cult classics! Games that people enjoy and quote and have excellent gameplay and replay value, with the added bonuses of captivating storylines and attractive graphics.

This isn’t really what this post is about. It is slightly, but I’m more worried about the many many things I see on the internet now. No doubt, if you still have ads displayed (a requirement here at university as the HOSTS file is –mostly- unedited) and you visit various sites (mainly comic, anime, and video gaming sites) you see many many banners advertising many many free MMORPGs, which is where the point of this post begins. With so many free indie MMORPGs out there, it seems like everyone and their dog can make an MMORPG, although admittedly, each of varying success it appears.

It makes me wonder how I, as a games designer, would be able to do to make such a project, if I ever had to design an MMOG, stand out from all the others out there. I’m sure there’s an MMOG for everything now, although most of them tend to be your typical hack-and-slash fantasy (with added emphasis on the word fantasy for some typical character design) with most notable (yet common) variations being fantasy based off asian mythology (Conquer Online), superheroes (City of Heroes/Villains) or racing games of some variety. Those seeking traditional fantasy can seek refuge in WoW or Guild Wars. Even FPS games have been sorted for the online community, Halo Wars, CS:Source, TF2, etc etc.

And it’s not just the MMOs either, even online single player games (think flash games) are now getting to be point of copying each other, especially in the puzzle genre. The only genre at the moment, that to me, appears to be showing any signs of fresh content is the platformer genre of online gaming. Games like I Wanna Be The Guy, N/N+, and various difficulty-enhancing mods of classic games such as Super Mario Bros./Land all offer their own unique quirks that don’t leaving you feeling like you’ve played this game before.

Perhaps I am taking a rather pessimistic view of the state of online gaming, the games that can be built for online publishing are, after all, limited by the very machinery they run on, but as an aspiring games designer, trends in the online gaming world are an important thing to follow, if one wants to be able to offer innovative content when one has the chance.

PS: I didn’t really want to write this paragraph after my lovely conclusion-like paragraph above, but I gave it some thought, and what we’re lacking at the moment, is a good, modern, free point and click ‘detective’ adventure. It is in my plans to do one, but I have, at the moment, too many things on my plate, and I still need to read more mystery stories (although if I’m honest, I want to perhaps parody mystery stories and have the cases be about stupid/silly things – but not so silly that people think the thing pointless).

PSS: I think I ought to add that I am not pessimistic to the point that I think its impossible to make something worth more than two pinches of salt, and I’m not denying the success of predecessor games that have made it big. I should probably remind myself that success on the internet doesn’t exactly mean success outside the internet, as many attempted conversations about I Wanna Be The Guy has revealed to me. Naturally commercial games would be more well-known if advertised in public/displayed in stores.

This post is cross-posted at Fesoes.net and LiveJournal.com because I keep wanting to make the other blog aware of the other blog, even though I should be using the Fesoes.net one more than the LiveJournal one now.

Anyway, on to the list of resources that I find useful for people doing creative things. As some of my closest friends know, I want to do pretty much anything creative, although all the things I want to do can be summed up in the phrase ‘telling some stories’.

To do this, especially in the ways I would love to tell my stories (comics, cartoons, games(?)), you need the skills, and you need resources, and you need a good story.

Hmm, looking at that last paragraph, I can’t see where I’m going with it, so I probably just ought to get onto making these lists. I’m going to keep a focus on what is freely available as I like free, and there are indeed, a surprising amount of free things on the internet for the budding creative.

One last thing, this is just a general list, and by all means, doesn’t cover every site I’ve ever used (sites missed out might be due to link decay, or more likely, general forgetfulness from not bookmarking the place). Most likely I’ll keep updating this post or keep making smaller posts about sites and resources for more specific creative activities/genres.

World Creation

• Seventh Sanctum – Probably one of the most well known and largest generator sites known to the creative side of the internet. It’s useful for those times when you simply cannot come up with all those names and designs for attacks/locations/items/spells/characters/etc. and sometimes even forms a way to grab potential things for later use. Contains links to other high-quality generator sites, my favourites being Serendipity (Nine.Frenchboys.net), Majin Gajita’s Generators, and Namator. It also contains a link to an archive of (extremely good-quality) articles about World Building and what you should be thinking about when you make this world (if it’s not based on the current Earth of course).
• Wikipedia – Legendary Creatures – Should really be part of research resources, but fantasy worlds need fantasy creatures, and what better way to get an idea of what fantasy creatures would exist there would be to see what our predecessors have already come up with. This is already sorted into common catergories including the creatures based/associated with the animals of the world, artificial creatures and creatures associated with things like the sun, the moon, blood, etc.

Story Making

Sites

• Cool Bits Story Generator – Generates a brief outline of a story. Could be good for writing challenges, or if you suddenly cannot think of what happens.
• The Big List of RPG Plots – By S. John Ross (you should totally check out the rest of his website though – he is the creator of Risus and various other free things – he is a generous man! (PS: he is also very creative and has made lots of RPG campaigns that I’ll have to try one day)). Although this list was made for Game Masters of various Pen and Paper RPGs to have a base campaign, it can still be put to good use for either the base of a story, or perhaps a smaller story arc. Like the name suggests, it’s a list of plots.

Software

• Labyrinth – Supports relationship maps between anything (although characters are generally used), ‘annotations’ for ‘Elements’, which can be used to describe events, descriptions, or even to write brief notes about a possible idea for something, and has a timeline component. As its site says (probably better than I could at the moment); “Labyrinth is an integrated development environment for developing and recording storylines and plots”. I love this piece of software so much. Once you tackle the learning curve (the documentation is very very limited) it is incredible useful and efficient. The best thing about it; it’s free (Update: and it’s portable too!).
• FreeMind – Before I found Labyrinth, I used this to make notes on characters and individual elements of a story – rather than the story itself. It’s a mind-mapping program with potentially unlimited space (I haven’t quite written enough to see if there is a limit). It supports images and hyperlinks and is useful for splitting up components of your story into categorised sections (unlike Labyrinth which displays all the elements at once in alphabetical order).
• Ren’Py – Nothing like the previous two. Ren’Py is a free visual novel engine built upon Python. It’s akin to Blade Engine, which has a free, lighter version of its own engine, but the general consentus of the Visual Novel community is that Ren’Py offers more freedom thanks to the extendibility added with the Python programming language (which can turn Ren’Py from a mere visual novel engine to a game engine). Documentation for Ren’Py is adequate, with plenty of examples to learn from. Also, if you’re planning on writing a visual novel, you should take a look at the Lemma Soft website, which has a section dedicated entirely to Ren’Ai games.

Character Building

• NaNoFiMo – Although aimed at NaNoWriMo writers, the resource page contains a good number of plot sheets and character sheets, some with prompts, some without. Contains links to other useful sites for story making (including some of those linked here).

Artwork

Anatomy/Figure Drawing Reference

• Posemaniacs – A godsend for artists like me who didn’t take an art course/are self-taught, and thus, do not get the chance to draw from life. A site, constantly updated with models of the (average) human body. It shows the muscles to get a sense of why the body is shaped as so, which is good for getting the idea of the body’s structure – but not particularly good for learning how the body shadows with different light sources. The limited time feature is a really good way to hone your sketching skills with difficult poses though.
• Character Designs – Also another godsend, similar to Posemaniacs in that it is a really really good resource for anatomy and pose reference, but unlike Posemaniacs (which uses 3D models), Character Designs uploads high-res photosets of models (in various states of undress – so be warned if you’re offended by partial/full nudity) but under different lighting conditions. Plus benefits include artwork from industry professionals and upcoming artists, some tutorials, texture sets, and face shots of various emotions.

Other Reference

• Flickr – Amazing place for reference photos, it would be my best friend if I kept on remembering to go there. Remember to keep an eye out on the copyrights of each photo of course and be sure to drop a line to the photographer if you ever do use one.
• Kosta Trimovski – A photographer with plenty of beautiful photos that can be used for reference, but not to be used in work without permission.

Character Design

• Fashion sites, Catalogues, and even costume sites (there are far too many that I use to list here) are great resources for inspiring clothing design. Because people’s tastes differ, and the fashion style changes with the genre, I decided not to list the sites I am addicted to use. Places like eBay can be surprisingly useful, and Google is your best friend for this.

Programs

• GraphicsGale – Relatively unknown-esque, it’s a really really good graphics editor aimed mainly at animated sprite-making. There is a free version and a ‘shareware’ (you get a trial and then you have to pay for it) version. Naturally the shareware version supports more things, like .GIFs .ICOs, etc, but the free version, in my opinion, has enough features to aid sprite making (supports Alpha Channeled .PNGs) if you don’t mind doing a little bit of work yourself to convert things to .gifs.
• Blender – Open Source 3D modelling software that rivals the quality of many high-end commerical software (although is naturally, not as powerful as them). I’ve only just started to attempt using it again, but it’s free and is now well-documented, so that even people new to modelling can learn to use it.

Misc.

• Random Art Prompt Generator – From the same girl who brought you the Cool Bits Story Generator. Good for times when you’re feeling that lovely phenomena known as artists block.
• StumbleUpon – A plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that literally lets you stumble on to sites that you may have never ever seen before. A lot of the sites I use for reference, particularly the software sites, I have found thanks to StumbleUpon, so I guess I owe it this mention. You just tell it what categories you are interested in, then go Stumbling away!
• deviantART – It’s rare that I ever pick up on dA, it’s large community has pushed me away from the site. However, there is no denying that a site full of artists would have a category purely for resources. With some clever searching (or just patient browsing) you can find a treasure chest of resource delight, poses, anatomy references, even fashion designs to inspire your own fashions, not to mention plugins and addons for commonly used programs.
• TVTropes – An excellent site that records and explains various ideas or themes that are found not just on TV, but on the internet, in albums, movies, modern media, you get the idea. Not just a good site for information about tropes commonly used (which can spur ideas of your own) but also a good time waster (I can easily waste hours figuring out which tropes I’ve used in my own planned stories) and perhaps can even help strengthen your characters and story.

Remember to share the love with others (link them to this article, give me a stumble, etc), only feedback can make this article better!