tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76693195977989671022024-03-12T12:36:30.093+00:00The blog<Insert arbitrary description here!>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-91358490785963625312024-03-01T19:30:00.000+00:002024-03-01T19:30:13.410+00:00Bowser Amigurumi<p>After the Mario film came out I asked my son which character he would like a toy of, and he chose Bowser.</p><p>This is pretty much the reason I started learning yarn craft in the first place, so I made him one.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglH5EXu30-MYx8L26rYedUTyQC-C3Fwm2JDvjE1DDZkaIFyeptHw1cWzfNIyM2TblLc1Ubq8iQ66AUiOVb0gzHbxhMtGLtqy3X3XtXGZSqaJ6UYN136vWYOD-QkB8ilJA5FqaLWhSSCR9SJ056bPEUlYViXlmjUsMaX8VC90bAVD3tN4SlacDXBnE7HuE/s3043/IMG_20231218_070536.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2224" data-original-width="3043" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglH5EXu30-MYx8L26rYedUTyQC-C3Fwm2JDvjE1DDZkaIFyeptHw1cWzfNIyM2TblLc1Ubq8iQ66AUiOVb0gzHbxhMtGLtqy3X3XtXGZSqaJ6UYN136vWYOD-QkB8ilJA5FqaLWhSSCR9SJ056bPEUlYViXlmjUsMaX8VC90bAVD3tN4SlacDXBnE7HuE/s320/IMG_20231218_070536.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The pattern I followed was from this particular blog post from 2011 https://epic-yarns.com/2011/10/04/bowser/</p><p>I submitted a comment asking for some clarification, but didn't get a response. I think the blog is somewhat abandoned.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, you could consider this post as a supplement, as I have some suggestions on how to improve things.</p><p>1) First of all, the instructions for putting everything together are not the best. Even the follow up edit with photos doesn't make things much easier. As such, I will put some diagrams here (as they are clearer than photos)</p><p>2) The mouth is made of 10 pieces - 4 big balls, 1 small ball, 2 small tubes, and 3 big tubes. These all get stitched together using their tails. I'm not the best at stitching, and I would worry that things could come apart (I'm definitely not good with cutting the loose ends)</p><p>An improvement would be to combine the pieces together. For example, rather than 4 balls where there are 2 pairs of 2 connected with big tubes, instead, do the following:</p><p>Follow the ball pattern and stuff it. Then sc 3, inc, sc 3. SC8 for 7 rounds. Stuff the tube. SC3, decrease, sc3. Follow the ball pattern from round 2 onwards. Stuff the ball. Dec 3. Finish off.</p><p>If you do that twice, you now will have two bar-bell shapes, and have drastically reduced the amount of stitching required. Perhaps you could even put some sort of nubs (just keep stitching into the same stitch to create a lump) on one of the final rows of one of the balls to indicate where to attach the bottom jaw.</p><p>Regardless of if you do that, here are some diagrams showing how the parts of the head fit together</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="An svg diagram of how to put the head together" src="https://aradiel.co.uk/images/bowser/bowser.svg" /></div><p>3) Personally, I wanted to avoid using felt, so they eyes and inside of the mouth were made entirely with yarn.</p><p>To make the inside of the mouth I did the "lower jaw flap" two more times in pink (though I think they were a round smaller). One was attached directly to the open part of the head, the other was stitched onto the inside of the lower jaw flap.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf5mLdqpXHoa_5RZETNRgMhh0Y7-tyhiGgnTT-8VT-mGKxrt751XPRW-xmU-WmhBdosjB5dBSUHVJivHILvLzpNWbdP7vxf_OksBdOwmrWX7uSxglsAbC_iV8CN_HYovrh_r6RgnOAoKQLx-nHJNbkAlCAgNX6smnjbjqa7M-agXXDZdRoL4XQgugLlZU/s3381/IMG_20231218_070440.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3381" data-original-width="3072" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf5mLdqpXHoa_5RZETNRgMhh0Y7-tyhiGgnTT-8VT-mGKxrt751XPRW-xmU-WmhBdosjB5dBSUHVJivHILvLzpNWbdP7vxf_OksBdOwmrWX7uSxglsAbC_iV8CN_HYovrh_r6RgnOAoKQLx-nHJNbkAlCAgNX6smnjbjqa7M-agXXDZdRoL4XQgugLlZU/s320/IMG_20231218_070440.jpg" width="291" /></a></div><p>4) The shell is the wrong size. The instructions state to make the green piece, and then to make the white tube to equal the circumference of it, but doing that makes it too big for the body, and I had to stitch it really tightly to cover those gaps. I'm not sure how to fix this apart from making things smaller, or the instructions clearer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVk6679pO1_BKuT_NVFa03u747T6gKxDu4pMc_fmsoP7maGsZpoyuzU8pIS54NHZnfxMouh38se830qyFSHAkhIWd_uHqw4Qeeu6FAfBnXX7Wyd36GxTjolBVejYJutA33Ac4xYkuq8h5LkpwHgw9Fj8cQ4s_9G4lLORrUbOttVvfM8MliEh4tddqfuts/s4096/IMG_20231218_070452.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4096" data-original-width="2437" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVk6679pO1_BKuT_NVFa03u747T6gKxDu4pMc_fmsoP7maGsZpoyuzU8pIS54NHZnfxMouh38se830qyFSHAkhIWd_uHqw4Qeeu6FAfBnXX7Wyd36GxTjolBVejYJutA33Ac4xYkuq8h5LkpwHgw9Fj8cQ4s_9G4lLORrUbOttVvfM8MliEh4tddqfuts/s320/IMG_20231218_070452.jpg" width="190" /></a></div><p>5) Following on from that, the instructions mention putting the legs on before the shell and tail. I'm glad that I put the shell on first, because once I did so it vastly reduced the available space for the legs and tail. It was difficult to get everything balanced and in the right place. This could definitely be cleared up, though fixing the shell size issue may make it a non-issue.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIZGxyAZK-231Wy-AMBBGm8UCNJ3PsJdChmpTFLDZ8DllSg5cKo3BduQ9ZMIBzkKysFLbD9nZnTAFAUE6kFCL3u9IATaEAFqYTiLSZ3GXw0D6SnJwixKlT5HbEs7n4CuFaDSyyZsMzxsDE66eBZVkeqJ1I2hDWS4Kr-uWBMNwK_NT4_YL4SfFcTv6tDfk/s3796/IMG_20231218_070523.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3796" data-original-width="2655" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIZGxyAZK-231Wy-AMBBGm8UCNJ3PsJdChmpTFLDZ8DllSg5cKo3BduQ9ZMIBzkKysFLbD9nZnTAFAUE6kFCL3u9IATaEAFqYTiLSZ3GXw0D6SnJwixKlT5HbEs7n4CuFaDSyyZsMzxsDE66eBZVkeqJ1I2hDWS4Kr-uWBMNwK_NT4_YL4SfFcTv6tDfk/s320/IMG_20231218_070523.jpg" width="224" /></a></div><p>6) The instructions are not clear as to what needs to be stuffed and what does not. The hair, for example (which many other people have asked about, but not had their questions answered) - when I was putting it on, I felt that it was better to not stuff those pieces, otherwise they would struggle to fit on.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9uG-G-IY1_qoAAm8LProeZqYpnEev9uK3JIs8Oa4sDUO0sgi_k1_qDF2eZaPaLsH-vnYrhrsFwBq5P50PA_QhbGe6WsRKOgTBlFn3Xa98MeWOOuqsHdgF33DQ-jrN7iTxcRM6HVXBxo6vXmRGo1iJNWkJYiJk12zBpZLZ2DA-p1u2tPANPZFu10Foc0/s3072/IMG_20231218_070507.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2858" data-original-width="3072" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9uG-G-IY1_qoAAm8LProeZqYpnEev9uK3JIs8Oa4sDUO0sgi_k1_qDF2eZaPaLsH-vnYrhrsFwBq5P50PA_QhbGe6WsRKOgTBlFn3Xa98MeWOOuqsHdgF33DQ-jrN7iTxcRM6HVXBxo6vXmRGo1iJNWkJYiJk12zBpZLZ2DA-p1u2tPANPZFu10Foc0/s320/IMG_20231218_070507.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>7) The eyebrows. Honestly, this was easy to figure out, but not from the description or the pictures - funnily enough, it's hard to tell the difference between one layer of orange and another layer of the exact same orange in a photo. Diagrams (or photos with pieces in different colours) would help massively. Here are some more.</p><p><br /></p><p>Finally, my other additions were a tongue for the inside of the mouth, and eyes. These were mainly done freehand, so I do not have patterns for them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Next, I'm moving onto something self indulgent and hopefully easier, because this one was a nightmare!</p>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-59698669842389669412023-11-15T21:50:00.003+00:002023-11-15T21:50:50.493+00:00Godot - Rotating a Camera in 3d space<p>For the past couple of years I've been dabbling about in Unity, but due to their recent PR disaster, I've shifted over into dabbling with Godot instead.</p><p>The project I'm trying to create is a turn-based strategy game, which would include terrain. As such, units might be hidden behind terrain, so the user should be able to rotate the camera.</p><p>To this end I've been following the Godot tutorials, creating a 3d plane, and putting a box in one corner so that I can see how the whole thing would rotate (if it were a plain plane, I wouldn't be able to tell it rotated). I didn't bother putting in a player character yet (as the concept is quite different to the example in the tutorial), but I did follow the <a href="https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/first_3d_game/03.player_movement_code.html#adding-a-camera">steps</a> for implementing a camera.</p><p>I wanted the camera to rotate by increments of 90 degrees (so there would effectively be 4 positions). Unfortunately, most of the maths in the documentation is about radians, which doesn't seem useful to me for this case, as it makes the maths more complicated (and less precise due to pi having [as far as we know] infinite numbers after the decimal)</p><p>Eventually I found that I could use "rotation_degrees", giving me the exact precision I wanted and without requiring more complex calculations. I didn't want the transition to be instantaneous, so I used "lerp" to make the camera rotate over a series of frames (apparently this is an abbreviation for "<a href="https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/math/interpolation.html">linear interpolation</a>", which makes sense) - I got this from one of the Godot samples (but it didn't have much annotation)</p><p>I also wanted to make it so that inputs are ignored during rotation, that the user can only do one rotation at a time. To this end, I wrote the code so that when it starts rotating it sets a flag, then when finished it resets it. If it receives another instruction to start, while that flag is set, that instruction is ignored.</p><p>Below is the code I had for that point, before things get particularly interesting.</p>
<pre>extends Marker3D
const ROT_SPEED = 10
var rotating = false
var targetRotation = 0
func _ready():
targetRotation = rotation_degrees.y
func rotate_left():
targetRotation = targetRotation - 90
if(targetRotation < -360):
targetRotation = targetRotation + 360
rotating = true
print(targetRotation)
func rotate_right():
targetRotation = targetRotation + 90
if(targetRotation > 360):
targetRotation = targetRotation - 360
rotating = true
print(targetRotation)
func _process(delta):
if(!rotating):
if(Input.is_action_pressed("camera_rotate_left")):
rotate_left()
if(Input.is_action_pressed("camera_rotate_right")):
rotate_right()
else:
rotation_degrees = Vector3(rotation_degrees.x,lerp(rotation_degrees.y,targetRotation,ROT_SPEED*delta),rotation_degrees.z)
if (rotation_degrees.y == targetRotation):<br /> #Re-enable when finished
rotating = false
</pre><p>However, this didn't work as expected - the rotation would stop, but not finish, before reaching a 90 degree change. Since the starting rotation was 45 degrees, if the target was then 135 (45 + 90), the rotation would stop at 134.999969482422 degrees (which changed to 135.000015258789 when I moved the window)</p><p>This meant that I had to round the current rotation value to compare to the target, and rather than an equals comparison use a "greater than or equal to", in case it rotated slightly too far.</p><p>As you can see, the "rotation_degrees" property is a Vector3, which is a structure that uses 3 floats as the values. But all number types (int, double, float etc) all have a maximum value (which differs for each type) - once that is reached, if you add 1 to that number, the result is then the minimum possible value (this is called "overflow"). What would happen when this number is reached for the Vector3? I have no idea, but with the code as above it is possible to just keep rotating until you reach that point. Since I don't know what would happen, and the numbers could be absurdly huge, it makes sense to restrict it to smaller numbers to avoid this and make debugging in future far easier.</p><p>The next step was to adjust the values so that if it goes below -360 degrees or above 360 is then adds or subtracts 360 to keep it within a reasonable boundry.</p><p>When testing this out, though, it looked like it was acting like a coiled spring - when the target value got above 360 (which would be 405, so it would then be set to 45) it would suddenly "spring" back rather than smoothly animating. Putting in debugging, it seemed to be rotating twice at once.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT6Lhih9p3CQcXymsAndaXeFrJQfI6E9yvQYZ1gIwJYt4H_-j6spts10HEy5N7oJTRMP2qHL717yLPxJkjB_EuEoFapjX3XnJjKFKSSmjsxRhgAoxFkSp_8SDhog4NfG5jAkqOayHudbinBkhWobflRhJbGr_wAA1ZI_tRg6outvCi_C16GUnnvwsDfqU/s1192/Buggy.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1192" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT6Lhih9p3CQcXymsAndaXeFrJQfI6E9yvQYZ1gIwJYt4H_-j6spts10HEy5N7oJTRMP2qHL717yLPxJkjB_EuEoFapjX3XnJjKFKSSmjsxRhgAoxFkSp_8SDhog4NfG5jAkqOayHudbinBkhWobflRhJbGr_wAA1ZI_tRg6outvCi_C16GUnnvwsDfqU/s320/Buggy.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>This is apparently from using the "Input.is_action_pressed" function, as it seems to keep executing the action repeatedly. Perhaps, despite the flag trying to prevent this, it was picking up the instructions across two frames? Maybe there is a race condition, and the function was executing asynchronously? Regardless, switching it to "Input.is_action_just_pressed" seems to restrict it to only one press at a time.</p><p>However, still the change is rather sudden, the final change not having any animation to it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_2hKGn8-ixNHkPLuoLWjPmZEEcmq9bWnoZ6tPzDhcrdPr-0EZ4D5SJ7_EXOlZK9zgviavEWHMD5rJCqjSm8QmtVFXAXsEbNEjtOROMP1ejQirCHW355no4UgOoywz2nqnec2AN-SYUNphxSbwvJljODdBsNKHyrhufUzFIwyjeSdVMJwnmBTshkpOsA0/s1154/Sudden.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="1154" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_2hKGn8-ixNHkPLuoLWjPmZEEcmq9bWnoZ6tPzDhcrdPr-0EZ4D5SJ7_EXOlZK9zgviavEWHMD5rJCqjSm8QmtVFXAXsEbNEjtOROMP1ejQirCHW355no4UgOoywz2nqnec2AN-SYUNphxSbwvJljODdBsNKHyrhufUzFIwyjeSdVMJwnmBTshkpOsA0/s320/Sudden.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>The ultimate solution was to allow it to overflow for the purposes of animation, and then to adjust the value <i>after </i>the rotation has finished. At least for rotating right, where the numbers are increasing. When decreasing, because of the check (greater than or equal to) it meant that the rotation was finishing early. So the comparison needed to change depending on a switch with 3 states - an enum rather than a boolean flag.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZcLRAGnGX_WExexdbecqGFO7Pz4SBX9aTnB5Rg3zJUCc8qD-DaBhqdIFqzSDxbQGGM1m4TGoMM6Ikpz0LpvNUaAKJPWhyphenhyphen4inMmRkrjxgNjaEj664Lg6vfrg6x157hHDuTZBdBpXBQxiknwBegQl17pYHtFNoE8wfWI_EpJgRmIgn39ipQlVoDRcJTBQ0/s1146/Smooth.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="818" data-original-width="1146" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZcLRAGnGX_WExexdbecqGFO7Pz4SBX9aTnB5Rg3zJUCc8qD-DaBhqdIFqzSDxbQGGM1m4TGoMM6Ikpz0LpvNUaAKJPWhyphenhyphen4inMmRkrjxgNjaEj664Lg6vfrg6x157hHDuTZBdBpXBQxiknwBegQl17pYHtFNoE8wfWI_EpJgRmIgn39ipQlVoDRcJTBQ0/s320/Smooth.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>The final code for this is below.</p>
<pre>extends Marker3D
enum RotationType {NONE, LEFT, RIGHT}
const ROT_SPEED = 10
var rotating = RotationType.NONE
var targetRotation = 0
func _ready():
targetRotation = rotation_degrees.y
print("Starting, current rotation is " + String.num(targetRotation))
func rotate_left():
targetRotation = targetRotation - 90
rotating = RotationType.LEFT
print("Setting target rotation to " + String.num(targetRotation))
func rotate_right():
targetRotation = targetRotation + 90
rotating = RotationType.RIGHT
print("Setting target rotation to " + String.num(targetRotation))
func _process(delta):
if(rotating == RotationType.NONE):
if(Input.is_action_just_pressed("camera_rotate_left")):
rotate_left()
if(Input.is_action_just_pressed("camera_rotate_right")):
rotate_right()
else:
rotation_degrees = Vector3(rotation_degrees.x,lerp(rotation_degrees.y,targetRotation,ROT_SPEED*delta),rotation_degrees.z)
var normalised_y = rotation_degrees.round().y
if ((normalised_y >= targetRotation && rotating == RotationType.RIGHT) || (normalised_y <= targetRotation && rotating == RotationType.LEFT)):
#Re-enable when finished
if (normalised_y > 360):
normalised_y = normalised_y - 360
if(normalised_y < -360):
normalised_y = normalised_y + 360
rotation_degrees.y = normalised_y
targetRotation = normalised_y
print("Finished rotating, target rotation = " + String.num(targetRotation))
rotating = RotationType.NONE
</pre>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-29265688853802242802023-05-19T09:27:00.002+01:002023-05-19T09:27:32.692+01:00Kain Amigurumi<div>
<div>
<p>This is one I started working on pretty much immediately after finishing my previous doll - the namesake of the Legacy of Kain series: Kain (in his Elder Vampire form)</p>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYmiN2QJgj37zJ0TZLFNyUUAE7iwes9qEpF_8wW90FuwJz0gfrFcazbcEISuJ_i8gwUTG3ADKLGVHhwQ58_wZ04ul_blpFj4D8wQH_bBI61Yr9LLJmw-_Y6P-w5CJOEfmcbYsbv01BdybdB95awbVNifU0fBG0eCiUnHBexrrmov0Q5HsmUI8M7rS9/s4624/IMG20230426125555.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<img alt="The Kain Amigurumi doll" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYmiN2QJgj37zJ0TZLFNyUUAE7iwes9qEpF_8wW90FuwJz0gfrFcazbcEISuJ_i8gwUTG3ADKLGVHhwQ58_wZ04ul_blpFj4D8wQH_bBI61Yr9LLJmw-_Y6P-w5CJOEfmcbYsbv01BdybdB95awbVNifU0fBG0eCiUnHBexrrmov0Q5HsmUI8M7rS9/w240-h320/IMG20230426125555.jpg" width="240" />
</a>
</div>
<p>It's been quite hard to work up the motivation for typing this up, in part because I sort of <a href="https://mastodonapp.uk/@Aradiel/109670698631478969">live-tooted it over on Mastodon</a></p>
<p>Nevertheless it's been a bit of a long journey - we have a puppy who would probably try to eat whatever I make, so I was only working on it during my lunch breaks when I'm in the office (so at most a couple of hours each week)</p>
<p>Through into that my getting an abscess on my back and getting it surgically removed, there's been a lot to get in the way (up-side though is that I now have a hole in my back that I could hang crochet hooks off of if I were a complete lunatic)</p>
<p>This one used the same base as the others (<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmiguruME-Allison-Hoffman/dp/1454703970/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1644952699&sr=8-2" target="_blank">AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman</a>), but of course, with some adaptations. The flesh was done in a dark green (I couldn't find anything to accurately be the sickly-vomit-green-and-yellow of his flesh in the games, so this was a good abstraction in my opinion) and the legs in plain black.</p>
</div>
<div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Legs/Feet</h4>
<p>I used the same technique for the feet as I did with the <a href="https://blog.aradiel.co.uk/2019/08/janos-audron-amigurumi.html">Janos</a> doll, but used a sort of off-white acrylic yarn to give it a sort of ivory colour. This was also to try to make a clear distinction between the claws and the hair.</p>
<p>The grieves were done right at the end - using the "traverse root" method (just doing a bunch of slip stitches into existing stitches as a basis for more) I made them using some yellow acrylic to make them sort of golden. I wanted to do this to make the legs more interesting. Despite measuring them against one another, I didn't remember the number of rounds/rows, so they ended up slightly different heights. I'm quite annoyed by this whenever I look at it. You could call me <b><i><u>a-grieve-d</u></i></b>! (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3OM2MA1pic&ab_channel=extremeLyme">I'll get my coat</a>)</p>
</div>
<div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Arms/Hands</h4>
<p>As mentioned, the flesh was in a dark green acrylic yarn, changing to a brown alpaca wool for the sort of leather wraps, then finally to black for his gloves.</p>
<p>Following the <a href="https://blog.aradiel.co.uk/2022/08/commander-sterling.html">Commander Sterling</a> doll, I discovered that Allison Hoffman had created a pattern for hands with fingers, <a href="https://www.craftyiscool.com/product-page/doll-arm-with-hand-and-fingers-pattern">which is sold on her shop</a>.</p>
<p>Of course I bought it, so that the fingers would be in better proportion. It took me ages to get around to downloading it. In fact, I had waited too long, so the link was invalid. However, Hoffman re-enabled the link for me once I emailed her about it - top tier customer service.</p>
<p>To make the claws I joined the fingers together into pairs and then used decreasing to make them pointy. I made the thumb twice as wide on the hand and did the same thing to decrease to a point.</p>
</div>
<div>
<h4>Body Accessories</h4>
<p>In terms of the body, there were a few accessories to make.</p>
<p>First of all was the cape. I absolutely obsessed over this. I wanted to see if I could get the symbol onto it by doing colour changes, and minimise carrying across stitches (because that looks messy)</p>
<p>I created a tool in ReactJS in order to visualise this... and found that if I were to do it in the size I want, I would have to embroider it instead. Oh well. (Note, I'll make the tool available eventually)</p>
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<img alt="The back of the doll, showing the embroidered cape" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQfd7R8S3_jufZrnlq6gXq12xceiBBqYEF8dUsyGoS-kGmJ18HFRNtOUNQH1wkXapns1Z4wYxgjXmQbG05WSRoECEktM_MSWUdZZm1lJEVw7VUur_mt40PCmnxTdvmElLvj6CGES4Yst0yV3KeuASgrJBnr7n36kwux_WrM4s85_UQVaWuy90p8fgH/w240-h320/IMG20230308153038.jpg" width="240" />
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<img alt="The front of the doll, showing the cape was too short" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqG6Knbas-fnrjqhUHpBL2ddqH30SVElzR2wARcMWVJZZkGMpI0bcZfONXax3m9IlaEmdS7I1Udh1wzep2wpHi-AIcbkJPwu0HT2ya1c944aEGj_BmJ3_RPLVF66Nm8d9Fr5Q3C7FpcglYTgCbfMA5sqH-0e3YQMIDOUdRkk6EYx-94pUHIaeAHPFQ/w240-h320/IMG20230308153022.jpg" width="240" />
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<p>I also made the cape a bit short - in my head, it went to the centre of the chest (under the medallion), and the rest is leather straps, so I worked to that.</p>
<p>Then I decided to use the toy as a reference, and found that the cape should wrap right around the body, and instead the leather strap just sort of floats there, not connected to anything other than the cape. Weird.</p>
<p>So I did the rest of the cape, and the leather strap.</p>
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<img alt="The doll next to the action figure, with the paper pattern for the codpiece" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyAUrdcDL1H2cz9KqbD3ptQPdoCs9a2Ao7lyOU8CFI1ZN6UwWTWEWLI7aMXixfV2OEQLKW1edeOumXroKldET6UpDd7151OJyGbSO4hcMKBVvXagiuclKSAkKRa3EebsNhwlkqUae1_fJ9vPvZ52BZJimfUHLTcs1Kc40b01q3b36zfOqvdX-3NY0n/w240-h320/IMG20230403212003.jpg" width="240" />
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<p>The final part was the "Plunging Codpiece (TM)" - I realised that if I were to place the bottom of this at the top of the leg/waist section, it would be too high. Thankfully, I could use the gold/yellow internal section to sort of hide this, make it look like the waist was lower than it was.</p>
<p>I drew the pattern on paper, and went by that rather than a pattern in terms of stitches and rows. I'm pretty pleased with the result.</p>
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<div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Head/Face</h4>
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<img alt="The in-progress doll, with a paper pattern for the crests" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrcRj_T633aQxt7-0DALfai7NiVhyqXvzYhKJ7RpsYtzGxL-ZujO5OcRAGqnDb5YVuy_uFA7b06WGFJbN-SIzq8oMGjAsFv_WlakfSXYznZi-EwENgnCTnyECe0z9FYUiZw5zZW6_5mP1qWhA2Umcw84H_JhGrfdSR_JwTaz4bLq3MQqCmqyM0WGlP/w240-h320/IMG20230403211655.jpg" width="240" />
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<img alt="Close up of the action figure, showing the crests" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD0F7LnNuUsu_xh-X0anXZXXzvweXQhRmwppLFNIKe1B0ZZKEWNHZ0lSy4OfZcIyF0C8Fna1mNcbN_TKDjZHMyAtKQ91dGRwqcKqrPhiq9Tm0B8Q-sbQrsHJuZ_xUCykvyhuIvlQ1RFRXbCWfndOISW0qBvZbewCupPihSImXFd1QmVkpk1_6kA8Sz/w240-h320/IMG20230313183959.jpg" width="240" />
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<p>The face was relatively normal, following the pattern and using white acrylic for the hair. Looking at the toy I was using for reference, I tried to draw the crests. They looked to be in three parts, but had to be distorted because the doll's head is stretched in comparison to the more realistically proportioned toy. I think it ended up looking a bit strange, and not so much of a scowl, but it did hide issues with the hairline. The earring was a very simple thread with a knot at the end, stitched into the left ear.</p>
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<img alt="The back of the doll, showing that I cut the hair far too short" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQXA3ldOqzRWn4s7ITp5-uZj2nnP1w-zdf_v-Q2qqYeoEjEUIue65Rw5m0EwE1gjQttwmRmf9bWukA5OpzxowM7hMEs8-gv3Z0fcyaA77XGc4unpKUUP3IZU41WpqxY3qYNCOcFddY4B_B_nWlrRH9qldw-pWRhwwstZjzyk4J9Au7fNgNIxx2WoFa/w240-h320/IMG20230426125614.jpg" width="240" />
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<p>In terms of the hair, I made it extremely long in order to get it to the right length, and then cut it down. However, when I ended up cutting it, I definitely cut it a bit too short, because some of the strands would have been loose (they were too short). I just have to keep reminding myself that this is an abstraction.</p>
<p>To quote a famous dog that lives in a burning house, "<a href="http://gunshowcomic.com/648">This is fine!</a>"</p>
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<div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h4>
<p>There are a few changes I would try to make were I to do this again, but overall I'm happy with the result, despite some niggling little issues that annoy me.</p>
<p>I may eventually have the patience to try to make him a Soul Reaver to hold, but I don't know how to make skulls, and I also don't know how to make the kriss blade without making it too floppy.</p>
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</div>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-37078988309345447872022-08-22T09:13:00.000+01:002022-08-22T09:13:06.917+01:00Commander Sterling<p>I've been keeping this one under my hat, a wee bit.</p>
<p>It's fair to say that I'm a fan of James Stephanie Sterling's work - I remember when they started publishing videos on the Escapist, and at first they weren't for me, though eventually I went back and got hooked.<br/>
Seeing their transformation, and hearing their explanation about it, has definitely helped me overcome a great degree of ignorance when it comes to LBGTQIA+ issues.<br/>
Since they started wrestling not just in England, but local to me, I wanted to make a doll of them to give as a present, which I managed to at the debut of Avant Garde wrestling:</p>
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<img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUByIXENkdyZprTBbUHGm7iR1iL0a65OrIFEvq9CLVxUjVJFgtu7G0w-WbuIaVc0rdgQ7sh8vmicKYOUxRDaX4kbPth1ADTFv157_RgtI12dMUH4HbyXqpm6gEIc2n71-DOmwNDTs2d5OolqfzAZpentuA-fRoHjingnlZsrZoUUcnWQfSpFW7iCe/w640-h480/IMG20220820215854.jpg" width="640" />
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<p>On a separate note, it was my first live show - I may do a bit of a write up, though I'm not familiar enough with the art to go much further than "I enjoyed it!"</p>
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<img alt="Picture of the finished doll" border="0" data-original-height="3906" data-original-width="2996" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja81Rp3r3rYdd_vsybOCr5l0o42W6Aqcg0vdb63uoD3t9AxD-a5f9yAGE3l0-o3I5r7STeWBJrbktqznb1LqmT-4aUSu6GgRkR84Or0o8HNbcBmF5SP2zS7c88t1rz2F3K-hApmFnkID51u9jaqiITWBNmfvf49eXmnU-kydllYP38x3D0pDT9bHVY/w490-h640/IMG20220812190809.jpg" title="The finished doll" width="490" />
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<p>The doll itself is, like the other dolls I've made and intend to make, based upon the patterns in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmiguruME-Allison-Hoffman/dp/1454703970/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1644952699&sr=8-2" target="_blank">AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman</a>.<br/>
The main differences to mention are:
<ul>
<li>The Mask</li>
<li>The Cape</li>
<li>The Arms</li>
<li>The Body</li>
</ul>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">The Mask</h4>
<p>For the mask I followed the main wig cap pattern, but when I got to round 15 (around where the nose is) I would start with a ch1, reverse, inv dec, sc until the last two stitches, inv dec. I then kept decreasing until I ran out of space. The downside to this is that it neglects the chin strap, though that was difficult to see in the material I used as references.<br/>
After then squeezing that on top, I made a star out of some yellow yarn (the closest I had to gold) to stich in place. Attaching the safety eyes after this was nothing short of a nightmare, but I got there in the end.</p>
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<img alt="Side view of the doll" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVjd-h-07B3rbJLDJAtSMEJw_r6DnLYt2eQ7H-qxH5dRmUQ5SwyMnvmHb6oJVnNbKIlIjuaH4xSb8uGcIHatJMlUM-ET3Cbxn4_AObr4lREbB-cvKrZRlVvCjiE_f7GIQ9L7HXdQ8VL-NM1yxrZDjdgP7Fi1FoTRLaZUAU5MEqxf9p4Dj2kOzMB7Zy/w480-h640/IMG20220812190856.jpg" width="480" />
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<img alt="Close up of the mask - front view" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBwWHGglMdDoUwL1sX-z-aLuFsFStg6rtAtFTiQyzZMIsHB8asLWyUIdH7uRpSuRlFY3x-FkrYQCRS9vT6UMJH7hR6vkKIUaGALJJaiiW5mPF8lgiRWj7QDUiXVLKnfjPg4ccGaCsks6B2qn2sGFnD8-AIUVve4u1Krr3O_mFhxu4PwXGZe9DKOOn/w480-h640/IMG20220812190815.jpg" width="480" />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">The Cape</h4>
<p>For this I effectively made two capes - one using a colourful rainbow-esque yarn I had (it would be lovely if there were some "space" yarn, but I thought it was nice and suitable) followed by the same in a metallic grey (to simulate silver).<br/>
I then stitched the two layers together, for the final effect.<br/>
I think I used the blazer pattern as a base, but just kept expanding outwards until it was wide enough, but I can't fully remember. I keep thinking that maybe I should have made the cape a bit longer, but I am happy enough with it.</p>
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<img alt="The back of the cape" border="0" data-original-height="2253" data-original-width="1981" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzZJqxYfGuQ0y0MlDp_rWzneFwvtSPvw4fKV1fhr-kt01AsGStrM0VAUv0mg742qMSBZAadXLjLY8Y7c1MSII8bbJxxbQcB4365sOaabqdRDcZI7SKO4qUeDjsUAa6c1Nn_J1RqkwvtwK9b38usduA0OCemcvEApg0Qcs3s5cfkRZWBjabUU7jv8Nc/w562-h640/IMG20220812190838.jpg" width="562" />
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<img alt="The cape flipped up to reveal the underside, and a star on the back of the doll" border="0" data-original-height="4013" data-original-width="3467" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZQibAJp4EHD6DzBVhar4xt3i2oGZ3fS2x3thooKXpHFI399OU8JugD0V6IRnJ5Jnf4vN0y6s2RSk5wELdRqBj4_PT5urGxQ6W86hPc0IlcEEY9uAHS52M1FbekOKq_NQDB1jxtGdk8pwW5YjHlAAugdMKtIWSxZelebhFC5XEd7XkHMXydmwDfLb4/w552-h640/IMG20220812190843.jpg" width="552" />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">The Arms</h4>
<p>This was a major deviation - the arms in AmiguruME are rounded, without any fingers, and I wanted to branch out a bit. To do this, I followed the patterns from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edwards-Crochet-Doll-Emporium-match/dp/1911595059/ref=sr_1_11?crid=3DEPPASXI08VU&keywords=kerry+lord&qid=1660919616&sprefix=kerry+lord%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-11" target="_blank">Edward's Crochet Doll Emporium by Kerry Lord</a>. The issue was that the arms in that book are longer than those in AmiguruME, even before you factor in the fingers.<br/>
This taught me quite a lot about the nature of crochet - I tried using a smaller hook, for example, but I crochet so tightly that it doesn't make much of a difference. The overall size of the work is a combination of the size of the tools, the tension, the size of the yarn, and the number of rounds.<br/>
The arms ended up slightly too long, so in future I will try to cut out a few rounds. Either that, or use the (very misleadingly named) "traverse route" technique into future works where I want fingers. I suppose I could try to integrate them in more naturally, but the patterns in the books start from different ends of the arms, making that even more challenging.<br/>
When it came to the gloves I switched to a non-metallic white (a bit more on that later) and worked backwards a little bit in order to create the layered effect.</p>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTy9vzUDaqLZEn-5eBLvguOTvChhmP7S8sW6zSwPkfBoaGAXHcs86N6lR7AgZgQf_vszgUhfm5aRMla6zyx4mXCSS-fqY5w0wjXBjJppQq0Nx3g9THpkkNmmbC6ube8RDexGhKPUluUZ5F8LlFKetjaispq9I1Hac7nxJ3d7GwoVx8D2mnZHeCw7M8/s4624/IMG20220812190831.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Close up of the arm and glove" border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTy9vzUDaqLZEn-5eBLvguOTvChhmP7S8sW6zSwPkfBoaGAXHcs86N6lR7AgZgQf_vszgUhfm5aRMla6zyx4mXCSS-fqY5w0wjXBjJppQq0Nx3g9THpkkNmmbC6ube8RDexGhKPUluUZ5F8LlFKetjaispq9I1Hac7nxJ3d7GwoVx8D2mnZHeCw7M8/w640-h480/IMG20220812190831.jpg" width="640" />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">The Body</h4>
<p>I followed the "curvy body" pattern, but largely ignored the pattern when it told me to decrease - this meant the breasts lost a bit of definition, so were I to try again I think I would try to increase everything proportionally.<br/>
The majority of the body legs and arms are done in a metallic white, with other parts (gloves, boots) done in plain white, in order to represent their wrestling costume.<br/>
I did not realise when I started that the jumpsuit is actually grey, but so shiny it looks white in all of the videos and <a href="https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/1400561647383678980">pictures</a> that I had seen. Were I to try this again, I would change the body suit colour.<br/>
I put stars over the body, but the yellow I had used for the face-star was too thick to make stars that small. As such, I used some thin threads which were much paler, hence they are completely different colours. Once again, were I doing this again I would invest in matching colours for this.</p>
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<img alt="A close up of the legs and boots" border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9-Arp19ZWmSWE5C4IyquK1c10KCWlO8fa-jzmYdSzVBM6Q1b4cQVTFuP46AomYod7fJ_vlk3GB79B3X0ze6_C1hXEOfOnpmxqP9ee9XUKv_YID1xBk6hNM48PuaeI1fY3h0ymZANo8I9dYacC3XcoPQEZwLd20xhB8mXBA8V9y2zx85iVXLVvmMao/w480-h640/IMG20220812190823.jpg" width="480" />
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<h4 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Time taken</h4>
<p>It's difficult to calculate the exact amount of time it took - I specifically remember being in the very early stages at the start of March, in the days surrounding my Granny's funeral. I can't remember exactly when I finished it - I showed it to people, but only on camera, so I cannot trace the exact date. I had definitely finished it by early to mid-June. So that was 13 weeks, round down to 10 for going to a conference etc, working for on average 8 hours a week (in the evenings and during lunch breaks at work), so in total at a guess it was 80 hours of work. No where near my current record of 2.5 years for <a href="http://blog.aradiel.co.uk/2019/08/janos-audron-amigurumi.html">Janos</a>, but still a lot of work.</p>
<p>Before publishing this blog Steph <a href="https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/1561147383697838081?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">tweeted</a> about it, and the comments in the thread were heart-warming to read.</p>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-40515114559350079522022-02-15T19:56:00.001+00:002022-02-15T19:57:50.011+00:00Janos Audron Amigurumi<div>This one has been in the works for a very long time, but last weekend I finally finished the amigurumi of Janos Audron that I've been working on for (no exaggeration here) - around 2 1/2 years!</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's get into the details.</div><div><br /></div><div>First of all, it cannot be understated how big this thing is:</div><div>1 foot tall and with a 2 foot wingspan tip to tip!</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/height_thumb.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="400" height="385" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/height_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/width_thumb.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="400" height="225" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/width_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This was, like the Sunny doll, based on the patterns in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmiguruME-Allison-Hoffman/dp/1454703970/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1644952699&sr=8-2" target="_blank">AmiguruME by Allison Hoffman</a>, though there were a few adaptations.</div><div><br /></div><div>The most obvious one is the wings. When I started these off I was using a <a href="https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/magpie-cal--ekster-cal" target="_blank">Magpie pattern from Hanneke's Designs</a>. However, the free CAL (Crochet A-Long) period ran out while I was working on it, and I didn't have a backup. Rather than buying it, I reflected and felt that the pattern just wasn't quite right.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually I managed to find this <a href="https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pegasus-5">Pegasus by Crafty Designs</a>, which I felt would result in something large enough with enough detail to satisfy me.</div><div>I really am too much of a perfectionist, but not so much that when I found the wings were slightly different sizes (due to my differing tensions) that I was willing to start again - this part alone took up the bulk of 2 years!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/reference2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="623" data-original-width="800" height="249" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/reference2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>Another change is the feet. From the reference photos, you can see that Janos doesn't have shoes - he has exposed feet with two large claws, then wrapped in a sort of foot-wrap that goes around the balls of the feet. Another book I have, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmiguruMe-Pets-Make-Crochet-Animals/dp/1454709782/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">AmiguruME Pets (by Hoffman again)</a> features a pattern for a dinosaur, where the ankle is the same width as for the human patterns! Perfect, except the dinosaur features 3 toes. As such I had to do some maths to resolve it (I'm hesitant to post the exact instructions, though, as since it's based on someone else's designs I'm not sure if that crosses a line)</div><div>The end result works very well, though!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/feet_thumb.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="272" data-original-width="400" height="272" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/feet_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>The next big issue was the tunic. Following Hoffman's pattern for a blazer, it didn't quite fit due to how I had attached the wings. As such I did each of the three sections according to the pattern, but effectively doubled the arm-hole piece (HDC across a row, then do the increase or decrease) - I also made one of the sections one row longer than the others (and didn't finish it off).</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/side2_thumb.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="400" height="357" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/side2_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Once each of the three sections was done, starting with the part that I intentionally made longer, I effectively continued the stitching into the bottom of the back piece and then into the other side - as a result, they were naturally joined together rather than needing to stitch them with a thread and then continuing onwards. I added many more rows to make the tunic as long as needed.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then came the collar piece. Despite looking up patters for capes and pauldrons, I could not find anything appropriate, so I had to sort of free-hand it. I made a "model" out of a piece of paper, and then just stitched using it as a template. That also worked rather well!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/collar.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="495" height="595" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/collar.jpg" width="495" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/collar2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="369" height="378" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/collar2.jpg" width="369" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/back_thumb.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="400" height="715" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/back_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The final flourishes were a bit basic - a golden belt, a sash over the shoulders, and the face (including tiny stitches to be the fangs)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Over all, I'm happy with the result. I hope to never do wings ever again, but still want to do more Legacy of Kain characters (eventually)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">To finish, here's a close up of the face, and the final resting place: My display cabinet, with a Raziel toy for scale.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/face.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A close up of the face" border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="400" height="225" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/face_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/cabinet.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="In the cabinet" border="0" data-original-height="343" data-original-width="400" height="343" src="http://aradiel.co.uk/images/janosdoll/cabinet_thumb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div><br /></div>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-7634191470200170262020-09-07T12:06:00.002+01:002020-09-07T12:06:12.512+01:00Re-design & the interactive timeline<p>A lot has happened in the past couple of years. I got married, had a child, switched jobs, and the apocalypse started. So many changes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Similarly, I've changed the site a bit.</p><p>I've updated the Legacy of Kain Timeline to use Vue rather than the mix of Bootstrap, Jquery and Knockout. The end result is that there is less data to load, so the page should run faster.</p><p>Doing a calculation on the folders involved, the new page is almost a full Megabyte smaller than the previous. In modern times this payload difference probably doesn't mean too much, but it helps a bit, and it means that the libraries for making the page function are also smaller. Fewer calls, fewer complications results in it being outright quicker to run and respond to changes, even on my terrible laptop.</p><p>For example, changing the colour or toggling entries on the old one would take a few seconds for everything to be recalculated. In the new version, the changes are nigh instantaneous, because it is just changing the elements that have changed, not the entire page.</p><p><br /></p><p>Part of the complication was changing libraries - I switched from using bootstrap to using vuetify. Both of these use similar layout methods (e.g. a 12 grid layout) but vuetify uses flex. Changing this meant that I had to adapt the whole page layout. Though this took a while, it was worth it - it's quite obvious that I had no idea what I was doing with the old layout (I put in column declarations, then overwrote them all, so what was the point of the declarations?)</p><p>I then filtered those changes through to the entire site, including this blog. I also removed redundant files, so my site should take up less room on the server for now.</p><p><br /></p><p>All in all, it was a long arduous process, but hopefully worth it both for myself and for whomever navigates the site.</p><p><br /></p><p>There is more content coming, but life is full-on.</p>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-91633542557881211002018-09-27T13:40:00.001+01:002018-09-27T13:40:26.766+01:00Potential Predator screenplay<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Somewhat inspired by a video titled "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKUhrRj6Ssk" target="_blank">Stop trying to make us like the Predator</a>", I've come up with a rough idea for how the next Predator film should go.</div>
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In the near-ish future, the Earth is in peril. The environment has been badly damaged, and to try and compensate for this we reduced our farming of animals for food, but that hasn't helped enough.</div>
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We have expanded to have outposts on other planets, starting to abandon Earth. Nearby to one of these colonies, Weyland-Yutani have found a planet that is resource rich, a<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">nd populated by extremely docile animals. A situation somewhat like when we discovered Dodos, there are no apex carnivores, so the planet is brimming with herbivores.</span></div>
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Of course, the company wants to take advantage of this situation, mining for resources and shipping these animals back to the colony for food. There is concern from some that they may be over-zealous, ruining the planet like we did Earth, others claiming that it's a gift from God and should be fully exploited.</div>
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Unbeknown to the company, the planet was essentially a Predator/Yautja farm.<br />Seeing us as a menace, some of the Predators follow the company ships back to the colony, and the hunt begins.<br />This group of Yautja ride some kind of live mount, and they control Xenomorphs using some kind of sonic technology.<br />They don't hunt us themselves, but instead watch the Xenomorphs do it to us.</div>
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Yes, this is a fox-hunting metaphor. In the interests of being balanced, well-meaning protesters will also get slaughtered.</div>
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Just to be clear:</div>
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Humans = foxes</div>
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Predators = humans</div>
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Mount = horses</div>
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Xenomorphs = hounds</div>
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Eden planet = hen house</div>
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Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-4914325974000824802018-06-21T09:35:00.003+01:002018-06-21T09:35:34.755+01:00Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"Character development? Good writing? Dramatic tension? Pfft, who needs those?" - The screenwriters.<br />
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In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom/Jurassic World 2/Jurassic Park 5, the island (Islar Nubar) which the Jurassic World theme park was on turns out to have a now active volcano, which is going to result in killing all of the dinosaurs on the island.<br />
Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is now the head of some "Save the dinosaurs" group, including the only two members with speaking parts: Cowardly screaming black nerd, and angry female vet. Neither of them are at all likeable, and both are extremely annoying.<br />
The US government is unwilling to try and save the dinosaurs (maybe after having this go wrong so many times in the past, their hesitance is justified? Nah, that won't get explored at all.)<br />
Instead Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) has bought his own island, and wants to have the dinosaurs shipped there for the sake of conservation. So he enlists the help of Dearing, who in turn gets Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) so they can get the velociraptor "Blue" from the previous film.<br />
Of course, things are not what they seem, and things go wrong.<br />
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<br />
Overall, the film is atrociously bad, even worse that Jurassic World 1 (which was terrible) but to help explain why I'm going to need to go into spoiler territory.<br />
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If you don't want that: This is a badly written film, which tries to be meaningful and emotional, but fails in every aspect. The special effects are nice, but that is literally the only compliment I can give it. The writers have no idea how pack animals work, nor how to write a good screenplay.<br />
The opening scene sets it up like a horror film, but the action is utterly bloodless, and the story utterly toothless.<br />
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SPOILERS</h3>
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First of all, Lockwood didn't need his own private island, as the company that owns Jurassic World (which Dearing was an employee of) also owns Ilsa Sorna, which is volcano free. But this was required to keep the idiotic plot moving forward.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
In Jurassic World 1 the park had engineered the "iRex" (coming to an Apple store near you) - a hodge-podge of different dinosaurs and animals, with some velociraptor thrown in to make it even more intelligent and dangerous.</div>
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In this one they take the "iRex" DNA to make the "iRex 2" - it's the same, but has more velociraptor in it, in order to make it yet more intelligent and dangerous.</div>
<div>
The conclusions are obvious:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>The more velociraptor DNA a dinosaur has, the smarter and more dangerous it is. Therefore, in a few films time, they'll make the most dangerous one possible: 100% velociraptor! (Oh, wait, they already have that, it's called a <i><u><b>FUCKING VELOCIRAPTOR</b></u></i>!)</li>
<li>The writers love raptors so much that these films are obviously a way to make money so that they can eventually make a 100% film-realistic raptor sex doll that they can share.</li>
</ol>
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This "iRex 2" eventually gets loose (of course), but only after literally mugging and winking at the camera. This isn't a scary film, this is a poorly written cartoon.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Throughout the film the characters are constantly trying to stop the dinosaurs going extinct again, ignoring the fact that <b><i><u>PERFECT CLONING TECHNOLOGY EXISTS</u></i></b>, so <b><i><u>THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOING EXTINCT ANYMORE</u></i></b>.</div>
</div>
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This because insufferably annoying at the end where, rather than letting these completely disposable, replaceable, and dangerous animals die, they decide to let them loose in populated urban areas. This makes literally no sense to do, and is a terrible idea.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
A sequence when trying to capture Blue results in her savaging one of the soldiers who, despite being told not to, shoots her with a gun. Owen then gets angry and ATTACKS THE MAN WHO SAID <b><i>NOT </i></b>TO SHOOT as if it's his fault. The man defends himself (completely understandably), which then angers the angry vet. She raises her gun, but is surrounded by other people with guns, and tries to get them to lower them (as if they are the aggressors, which, again, they are absolutely not). She eventually lowers her gun, which mysteriously disappears from her hand in the next shot.</div>
<div>
A little bit later Dearing complains about being double-crossed, with literally 0 evidence that she has been.</div>
<div>
The whole sequence of being on the island makes absolutely no sense, is atrociously poorly written, and has some pretty awful direction.</div>
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Also, Lockwood's grand-daughter is actually a clone of his daughter. This information is not really important, but the film treats it as if it is, including a lingering shot on her eyes at the very end of the film.</div>
Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-47379973092658043662017-07-15T07:41:00.002+01:002017-07-15T07:41:34.815+01:00Sunny amigurumiJune was a busy month for me, and as I result I didn't get to go to the cinema - hence there being no film reviews.<br />
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They were rather sparse in the run up to June, too, but there is a reason for that.<br />
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In June each year there is Sunnycon - it's gone through a few name changes over the years (Sunderland Anime Convention, the Sunnycon Anime Convention, and now the Sunnycon Anime Expo) but there are a few consistencies. Namely that the mascot is a red-haired cat-girl cosplayer called "Sunny", and that the last day features a charity auction.<br />
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One of my hobbies is knitting and crochet. Often at work you can see me on my lunch break, either writing a blog post film review, or working with some yarn.<br />
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Late last year I was struck with inspiration. I wanted to make a doll of Sunny, and have it sold at the charity auction. I got to work, doing a bit here and there, occasionally getting bored at taking a break. But, as time wore on and the deadline approached, I had to dedicate more time to finishing it.<br />
That is why the reviews largely stopped.<br />
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It was worth it, though. The doll sold for ÂŁ40, and to someone who does seem to appreciate it (he created a Facebook page, featuring the doll touring various locations in the North East)<br />
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The pattern was mostly adapted from "AmiguruME" by Allison Hoffman, so it would feel wrong to make it wholly public (buy her book!)<br />
Nonetheless I would like to describe what I can.<br />
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<br />
Basic body:<br />
The head, body and dress were all patterns in the book, except I added some red edging to the dress.<br />
I also made a collar with a bell, using red embroidery thread, and a tiny bell.<br />
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Legs:<br />
This was the pattern from the book, using white for the pants and flesh for the legs. At round 19 I switched to my own made-up pattern for the socks: It was the same pattern as before, but two rounds of white, two of black, repeated until the end.<br />
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Shoes:<br />
I followed the pattern from the book, but I felt that the shoes weren't long enough, so I extended them by another 5 or so rounds. I used red yarn for the laces.<br />
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Tail:<br />
Similar to the basic arm pattern, but smaller (6 stitches rather than 8) and no decreasing to make sure it's just a tube.<br />
Stitched onto the backside of the doll around where the coccyx would be.<br />
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Skirt:<br />
Following the pattern as in the book (except maybe increasing a bit more), except stopping half way and changing direction. After attaching to the waist, making sure the split is at the tail, sealed up the skirt above and below the tail.<br />
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Ears:<br />
I spent weeks trying to get these right, but finally I figured it out - each ear consists of two triangles (one in pink and one in black) which are then stitched together using black yarn. Finally they are affixed to the head roughly along the line of where an alice band would be.<br />
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<br />
Arms:<br />
These were the basic pattern, but ignoring the thumb.<br />
The gloves were the same pattern, maybe with an extra stitch or two to make it a tiny bit larger (to fit over the existing arm)<br />
The fingers of the glove were the fingers from the <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/simons-crochet-cat" target="_blank">Simon's Cat pattern</a> but roughly half the size.<br />
I did try crocheting the pads, but found the finger ones were too small and fiddly, and the large one ended up adding too much depth. It's also for this reason that I didn't do colour changes to make the pads (i.e. on the fingers it was a single stitch, which looked out of place)<br />
As such, the pads were pink felt stitched on with normal thread.<br />
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Bow:<br />
This was the belt pattern, but extended both in width and length. After attaching it to the body, I formed it into a bow at the front, and stitched it in place.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-81312106981119951802017-06-07T13:18:00.001+01:002017-06-07T13:18:34.002+01:00The Fast & The Furious 8The Fast & The Furious 8 is (shockingly) the 8th film in the Fast & The Furious franchise, and was marketed as F8 (FĂȘte) of the Furious in America.<br />
<br />
Despite the marketing, and the fact that it features a fair number of British actors (and actresses), it does not unfortunately feature Vin Diesel winning a coconut shy, or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson correctly guessing the weight of a fruit-cake.<br />
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Instead you will get:<br />
Hilariously impossible car-based stunts;<br />
Car chases;<br />
Vin Diesel mumbling about the importance of family;<br />
James Bond-esque escapades (esquepades?);<br />
Wonderfully self-aware jokes;<br />
Intentional comedy;<br />
Maybe unintentional comedy;<br />
A Paul Walker tribute of some kind;<br />
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I'm not even joking about the James Bondness - at one point the film even pulls the same plot twist from Spectre, except in this film it is convincing and makes sense.<br />
This is a better James Bond film than the most recent James Bond film!<br />
<br />
The expansion of the cast is not as problematic as you might imagine - by having as many different action stars from different genres as the film does, it allows the film to appeal to many different tastes. You want martial arts? We've got that. You want wrestling-style action? That's in there, too! Guns? Yeah, we've go loads of gun action!<br />
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<br />
As always with this franchise, this film is not the most intelligent, or even most believable, but it is exceedingly good fun, and entertaining as hell.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-80249931218691439752017-05-25T13:37:00.002+01:002017-05-25T13:43:05.302+01:00Alien CovenantDo you remember M Night Shyamalan? He made a big splash with The Sixth Sense, the twist at the end shocking a lot of people. Not only that, but on subsequent watches, the twist continued to make sense - yes, there are some scenes where it's a bit of a stretch, but it mostly worked.<br />
He then did another film with Bruce Willis - Unbreakable. It was not based on a comic book, but was very much of that genre. It was a great pseudo-comic book film at a time when comic book films were mostly awful. It, too, featured a twist. While the twist wasn't great, the film beforehand was, so it was overall a really good package.<br />
Then he continued to make films, relying on the concept of having a surprising twist at the end. The stories became a method for delivering the twist, rather than being good stories. He even made a navel-gazing film, which was infinitely less meaningful than he thought it was or intended it to be.<br />
He went from amazing, to awful. From intelligent to stupid. It was hugely disappointing.<br />
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<br />
This is now how I feel about Ridley Scott.<br />
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<br />
Alien Covenant is the latest film in the Alien/Prometheus "totally not an Aliens prequel... ok, it is" franchise.<br />
It is terrible, but to describe why I'm going to have to go into spoilers.<br />
Before I get to those, I will say that there are a lot of phenomenally good practical effects. Some of the visual effects are absolutely amazing.<br />
However, there are a lot which are also unbelievably bad. Especially when it comes to the titular Alien(s). The issue is that, even if the good effects outweigh the bad, the bad are far more noticeable and memorable.<br />
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Is it scary? Not even slightly.<br />
Is it tense? A little bit.<br />
Is the acting good? Yes.<br />
Is the script good? Hell no.<br />
Is it worth it? Absolutely not.<br />
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The first half hour or so is fantastic, and then the film takes an absolute nose-dive. The strength of Alien was that it was a horror effecting the characters despite them (mostly) being sensible. This film involves horror effecting the characters because they have all been lobotomised, presumably. I definitely do not recommend this film.<br />
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<br />
<b>SPOILERS:</b><br />
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The film starts off with a scene of David (played by Michael, the Bender of Fass) first being activated and interacting with Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), with heavy-handed metaphors a plenty.<br />
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We are then introduced to David's next iteration, Walter, working on the colony ship Covenant (with a crew of 15)<br />
The ship is hit by a disaster, and after repairs they receive a signal from another planet. Their mission is to head to one 8 years away (which has never been visited, but was found via scans) and this new one is a week away (missed by the scans). Considering their predicament, they decide to head to the new planet.<br />
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They land on the planet and go exploring <b><i><u>without any form of hazmat suits!</u></i></b><br />
I honestly cannot describe how utterly, ridiculously, unbelievably moronic and unrealistic this is. Unfortunately, the film just gets worse from here.<br />
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Before I pointed out the crew number of the ship. I would say this is important, but apparently the film doesn't think so. Once the characters start dying off, the main actress mentions how many deaths there have been so far (which would put the crew count at 14)<br />
Not only that, but later on there is a picture of the whole crew, and there are only 14 people in the picture! Maybe I miscounted, maybe the 15th is the camera man, or maybe one of the crew got killed so hard that they were retroactively wiped from history. I guess we'll never know.<br />
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After getting infected by tiny organisms that eventually hatch into Aliens (yes, really) - which is something that would have possibly been avoided had the crew taken even the tiniest of precautions - the surviving crew meet David/Blatant Satan metaphor who takes them to a massive space jockey temple. The temple is littered with corpses, would have been easily spotted from the air (but wasn't), and <b><i><u>no one asks any questions about it!</u></i></b><br />
<b><i><u><br /></u></i></b>
David arrived ages ago, killed all of the jockeys using the virus-vase things and then settled down in the temple. He murdered Shaw from Prometheus in order to experiment with the virus. He even goes so far as to "cross-breed" the pathogen... with itself, which doesn't make much sense at all.<br />
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He's finally managed to develop them to the point where we have the eggs like in Alien, despite not having a queen to lay the eggs.<br />
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Despite admitting all of this to one character, said character still trusts him when he says the eggs are safe to put his face directly into.<br />
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Later, it's left mysterious as to who survived a particular fight - David or Walter. Except it's not mysterious, it's incredibly predictable and cliched.<br />
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[edit]<br />
The final annoyance is related to that "reveal" - David now has to somehow get tons of the eggs onto a space jockey ship, have it piloted by a space jockey, have it crash on LV-246 and have it stay long enough for the jockey to mummify, for the other films to make sense. Unless this is a reboot. A really bad reboot.<br />
<br />
Seriously, it's difficult to describe exactly how unbelievably awful this film is.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-15411159506918417922017-03-30T13:52:00.001+01:002017-03-30T13:52:33.715+01:00Pete's Dragon (2016)I only recently watched the original Pete's Dragon, a technicolor musical about an orphan sold into slavery and his pet dragon. Upon escaping from his captors Pete and the titular creature go to a sea-side town, getting into mischief and befriending the lighthouse keeper. However, Pete's owners are looking for him, and there is a greedy snake-oil salesman who sees a money making opportunity in capturing the dragon.<br />
The songs were good, the acting was not subtle, and the villains were moustache-twirling (in one case, very literally) - but it was a thoroughly enjoyable film, very much of it's time.<br />
<br />
Disney's odd fascination with remaking it's classic films to be "grittier" continued with a 2016 version.<br />
The film is immediately more on-the-nose, as we meet Pete as a very young boy, orphaned by a car crash, and then lost in the woods for years. Cut to a few years later, when the forest is being cut down by a logging company, and Pete is discovered.<br />
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The characters all react fairly naturally - Pete's taken in with the caveat that he'll be handed over to social services; Dr Judge Bones (Karl Urban) is initially curious as to what could be knocking down the trees (that haven't been cut) and eventually evolves it into a money making scheme, without being over the top.<br />
<br />
In essence, the characters are written believably, and the acting is definitely not hammy (much as I enjoy ham).<br />
The special effects are a weak-point, but I was absorbed enough in the film that it eventually stopped bothering me, looking more like moss than polygons.<br />
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It's very different to the original, such that by seeing one you don't feel like you've seen the other. If you get the time watch both, but maybe not in a small timeframe.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-84367913428432385482017-03-14T13:41:00.000+00:002017-03-14T13:41:17.304+00:00The Lego Batman MovieThe Lego Batman Movie is, I suspect, a pseudo-sequel to "The Lego Movie", which was awesome.<br />
Will Arnett (Job from Arrested Development) reprises his role as Lego Batman, the arrogant loner who graced us with the greatest song ever written:<br />
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The story is multi-faceted, but largely boils down to Batman needing to learn the importance of teamwork, family, and hatred.<br />
Hatred? Why, yes. One of the driving forces behind the story is that the Joker's relationship with Batman is metaphorically almost sexual in nature, and it is utterly hilarious!<br />
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Part of the joy of the writing of this film is how it is aware of the inherent silliness of Batman, while also crafting an interesting and emotionally engrossing story.<br />
The silliness is also enhanced by factors that make me think of it as a pseudo-sequel to the Lego Movie. Those facts are that Gotham is described as being built upon a delicate platform above a void (i.e. a table) and that when characters shoot guns the voice actors make "pew pew" noises - almost as if it's people playing with toys, but it's not explicit.<br />
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There is also an odd fascination with Michael Jackson, having both in your face and subtle references. For example, see the choir of children singing "Yeah, Charmone!"<br />
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The only real negative point that I can think of is that some of the jokes don't mix well together. A specific example is a point where Batman excitedly asks if he will work with the Suicide Squad, and then around 20 seconds later says that the concept of bad guys being used to fight bad guys (e.g. Suicide Squad) is a moronic idea.<br />
<br />
This is a wonderful, exciting and hilarious film. The jokes are relentless, and are mostly brilliant. It's not as good as The Lego Movie, but is still amazing fun.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-13145023476352813612017-01-30T13:29:00.000+00:002017-01-30T13:29:01.976+00:00Hacksaw RidgeHaxx0r Ridge is the latest film by Mel Gibson and tells the story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), the first conscientious objector in history to get the Medal of Honor (sic) for bravery while under fire.<br />
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Desmond is a devout Seventh Day Adventist from Virginia, brought up by a loving mother (Rachel Griffiths) and an abusive alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving) who is an understandable mentally scarred World War 1 veteran.<br />
Due to a series of violent incidences in his life, Desmond has become a pacifist. This causes confusion when he signs up to take part in World War 2, especially amongst his regiment, who regard him as a coward.<br />
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The sergeant of his regiment (Sgt Howell) is played by Vince Vaughn, who is obviously trying to channel R Lee Ermey from the Kubrick masterpiece "Full Metal Jacket". Despite this, he manages to be hilarious, and makes the role his own.<br />
There are quite a few actors, many of whom are recognisable, and all of whom are excellent. However, listing them all will take ages, so I won't do it.<br />
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The film can be considered in three acts: The first is before he signs up, when he starts his relationship with Doroth Schutte (Teresa Palmer)<br />
The second is while he is being trained, struggling with how he is treated by the people he wants to help, and how that affects his relationship.<br />
The third is once he is finally goes to the front lines as a medic, without any kind of weapon.<br />
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I'm not sure how much to describe, as the basis of the film is historical fact which you can look up, but it might spoil some of the gravitas of Desmond's deeds. I imagine that there was some poetic license taken, but regardless of that the bravery of the main character is frankly unfathomable.<br />
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Wracking my brains for any negative aspects of the film, all I can think of is that the war scenes feature a lot of quite obvious CG, which does detract from how brutal and visceral the battles are.<br />
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Overall I think this film is incredible - the acting is fantastic, and the story is one which I think deserves to be known by everybody on the planet. If this doesn't win an Oscar I'll be shocked.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-89508210789575668102017-01-25T13:43:00.001+00:002017-01-25T13:43:58.700+00:00MoanaMoana is the latest film by Pixar, with a story based on Polynesian mythology and a cast made up largely of actors from the region.<br />
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The story is that in the beginning there was only ocean, but then the goddess Te Fiti created islands and life, before going to sleep as an island herself.<br />
Later, the shape-shifting demi-god Maui (Dwane "The Rock" Johnson) steals Te Fiti's heart, but gets defeated by a demon while trying to escape, losing the heart.<br />
Due to the theft, a black miasma is spreading throughout the world, and will eventually envelop it all.<br />
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Moana (<span class="itemprop" itemprop="name">Auli'i Cravalho) is the daughter of the chief (</span><span class="itemprop" itemprop="name">Temuera Morrison) of a self-sufficient island with a policy of isolationism, surrounded by a reef that means the sea around the island is peaceful. Encouraged by her grandmother (</span><span class="itemprop" itemprop="name">Rachel House), and magically chosen by the ocean itself, Moana goes against her father's wishes to leave the island, find Maui and return the heart.</span><br />
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<span class="itemprop" itemprop="name">The songs throughout the film are fairly good, though the one that is nominated for an Oscar is not to my tastes. I greatly enjoyed Maui's introduction "You're welcome!", and felt a little bit disappointed by Jermain Clement's "Shiny" - in that case I found the music drowned out the lyrics, but that might have just been an issue with the cinema.</span><br />
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I cannot find any fault with the actors in the film, but I will say that Dwane Johnson brings his usual incredible charisma to the role.<br />
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The script is full of brilliant jokes, including a wonderfully self-aware reference to the fact that Moana will inevitably become a Disney Princess, despite not being a princess. The story is touching, and since I didn't know anything of the mythology involved, the story was fascinating to me (though I imagine there was some artistic liberty at play.)<br />
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The actual rendering and character designs are fantastic - they are obviously stylised, yet the skin textures (including the tattoos) are extremely convincing.<br />
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I'm not sure what else I can say - it's absolutely a top-tier film, well worth watching.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-20472002314371224792017-01-23T18:00:00.004+00:002017-01-23T18:00:58.263+00:00PassengersPassengers is a film about the starship, the Avalon, which is on a 120 year trip to the colony of Homestead 2, carrying around 280 members of staff and 5000 passengers, all of whom are in suspended animation.<div>
However, 30 years into the journey something goes wrong, and Jim (Chris Pratt) is woken up.</div>
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Being the only human awake on a ship, unable to go into suspended hibernation, and being very restricted in terms of luxuries (such as non-bland food), where your only social interaction is an android barman (Michael Sheen) is an utterly frustrating, hopeless and terrifying concept, which I think the film carries across very well.</div>
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It would be enough to drive someone completely insane, which is why is understandable why he eventually elects to wake up Aurora (Jennifer Laurence) - an ethical dilemma that is dwelled upon at first, but somewhat dismissed at hand later on.</div>
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It's difficult to discuss too much of the film without spoiling what happens, so I'll leave the story description there.</div>
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The film is part psychological horror film, part romance, and mainly sci-fi. The unhelpful artificial intelligences on board, unable to reflect on the cognitive dissonance of the two narratives (pods cannot malfunction, someone is awake too early) were a refreshingly accurate representation of both how difficult it would be to create an AI and how arrogant some people are when it comes to their creations (i.e. completely ignoring the fact of "mean time to failure"); While relativity had no place in the story, it was also nice that communication with Earth was represented realistically.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Basically, what I'm saying is that the film was not only accurate (or at least convincing) when it came to the majority of the science involved, but it was also very accurate to the human aspects of that technology. There were some excellent scenes to do with the consequences of space travel, especially when the artificial gravity fails.</div>
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The characters were (mostly) believable, and very well acted.</div>
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The story was gripping and moving.</div>
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The CGI wasn't distracting (with the exception of a very brief attempt at fabric, which we still suck at), possibly because the rest of the film was good enough to maintain my suspension of disbelief.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I loved it.</div>
Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-62952415338733189762017-01-17T13:41:00.002+00:002017-01-17T13:41:35.511+00:00Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed is a film based upon the video game franchise of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremey Irons and Michael Kenneth Williams.<br />
<br />
I have only played some of the first game, so I went into this with only a slight familiarity.<br />
<br />
If you have absolutely no knowledge of the franchise, don't worry! The film is here to treat you like an idiot, and tell you the entire plot to the film via a text crawl at the start!<br />
<br />
The plot is that the Templar Knights are searching for "The Apple of Eden", which will allow them to eradicate free will in humanity. The only people who know of this and are trying to stop them are a guild of assassins, imaginatively called "The Assassins"<br />
<br />
In modern day, Michael Fassbender is killed by lethal injection, but it turns out that it was faked and that he has been "not imprisoned" by the *mumble* company. I'm sure that the company has a genuine name, but no one in the film can say it clearly.<br />
<br />
This company has a device called "The Animus" which allows Fassbender to relive the memories of his ancestor, an assassin who guarded the McGuffin. The Mumble company hopes that through this process, Fassbender will lead them to the free will McGuffin, so that they an eradicate violence from the world.<br />
<br />
I think that the general plot of the film is actually very good, with lots of interesting and not-completely-unbelievable ideas to explore.<br />
However, my main problem with the film is the opening text crawl. Had that not been there, the story would have evolved fairly naturally. Cotillard talks about eradicating violence from the world, but there is obviously something sinister and underhanded about the company she works for. This builds, until we see scenes where Irons explains about the McGuffin controlling free will.<br />
This could have been a fairly satisfying reveal - the sense of something sinister building into a climax of moustache-twirling villainy... had it not been for the text crawl explaining it at the start of the film.<br />
<br />
That's not to say that's the films only problem:<br />
Towards the beginning there is some strange editing choices, especially one scene where it flips between four or five different shots. About half are in a yellow colour, the other half in teal. Of those, one of the teal and one of the yellow shots are extremely bright (including lens-flare), the others are darker. The shots each last for a bit over a second, but it is very disorientating to switch between drastically different colours and brightness levels, repeatedly.<br />
Normally disorientating the viewer is done in order to distract them from something (hence shaky-cam being used in lots of action films), but this seemed pointless. Even more so because some of the shots were also unnecessary.<br />
It's a bit like Battlefield Earth, which uses dutch-angles all the time without understanding what purpose they serve in film-making.<br />
<br />
Also during the first act, some of the stunts characters perform are CGI, but it's almost unnoticeable. In a way that's not a good thing, as it creates a little sense that something is wrong, but it was better than normal.<br />
What is fair less forgivable is quite a few shots in the same action scene which are meant to be quick (e.g. riding a horse full-pelt to catch up with a speeding wagon) are quite obviously much slower, and then sped up to give the illusion of speed. Which they fail at. Completely.<br />
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My final major complaint is that, in order to service sequel-baiting, a character does a <b>complete</b> 180 degree turn at the very end. The change in attitude is not built up to or earned in the slightest.<br />
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<br />
I did enjoy myself, and I think there is a very decent sci-fi film in there, but unfortunately it's book-ended by sections with complete and utter contempt for the audience, ridiculous ineptitude at film-editing, and a distinct lack of ability at convincing writing.<br />
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Forced to give a score, about 6/10Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-30546079467914190952017-01-02T18:11:00.002+00:002017-01-02T18:11:43.276+00:00The Interactive Legacy of Kain TimelineA few months ago (back in July, actually) I added an interactive variation of the Legacy of Kain timeline, which might be more readable than the tabulated version.<br />
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So, why am I posting about this now? Well, I've added an FAQ to it, which will hopefully compensate for some of the questions that people have asked me, as well as covering more general questions about the lore.<br />
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You can find it either in the side menu, or <a href="http://aradiel.co.uk/lok/graphicaltimeline.php">here</a>.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-42666262309083766962016-12-28T08:44:00.001+00:002016-12-28T08:44:27.117+00:00Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryRogue One is the first Star Wars spin-off film in out post-episode-seven world. It bridges the gap between episode 3 (Revenge of the Sith) and episode 4 (A New Hope), telling the story of how the rebellion gets its hands on the plans for the Death Star.<br />
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The first thing to note is that the opening and music are both noticeably different and similar to the core films, helping cement the fact that this is a spin-off.<br />
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The film has 3 distinct acts, each of which is focused on a different planet, though there are more than 3, the others bridging or being repeated through the acts.<br />
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The first criticism of the film is that I spent a lot of the first act trying to decide which was less convincing - the lead actress, or a particular CG homunculus.<sup>1</sup><br />
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The overall Nazi imagery has subtly increased again - "They have a child, find <b>it</b>!" cries the villain.<br />
I greatly appreciate the addition to the Star Wars lore that the film provides - e.g. the Empire are mining Kyber crystals (which power Lightsabers) in order to power the Death Star (so is it essentially a moon-sized Lightsaber?)<br />
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There is a huge attention to detail evident - from the fantastic sound design of rain pinging off of weapons and armour, to the changing ranks on the uniforms of soldiers over time. There was a lot of perfectionism involved in the production.<br />
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The actors are all good (even if some of them take a while to warm up) - the villain is particularly excellent, and it's fantastically refreshing to see Mads Mikkleson cast as a good guy.<br />
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The script is a brilliant mix of drama, tragedy, and hilarity. Though everyone gets a fair share, the comedy show is undoubtedly stolen by the droid H2-SO. I don't think anyone could watch this film without laughing.<br />
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You may notice that I'm mostly referring to the actors rather than the characters - it is in part because, despite seeing it twice, I can barely remember the character names. I in fact noted that Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang's names are only mentioned a handful of times, and are difficult to hear at those times. Which is a shame, as they were great characters who deserve to be better known.<br />
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On the note of Donnie Yen, his fight scenes are particularly impressive and visceral. Unlike some ignorant professional writers, I appreciated that some of those staff blows could shatter bone, even through armour (which was also visibly breaking apart under the barrage of attacks.)<br />
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There is some aerial combat, but the vast majority of it is from the perspective of people on the ground. You may recognise this style of direction from the 2015 Godzilla film, which I also liked and was directed by Gareth Edwards as well.<br />
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Despite the stellar script and direction, there are some definitely predictable cliches that occur, and on my second viewing I noticed some blatant continuity errors in relation to Forest Whitaker's costume.<br />
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Overall this is an excellent film, despite some flaws, with an utterly brilliant ending.<br />
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A very strong 8 out of 10.<br />
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<b><u>SPOILERS</u></b></h2>
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<sup>1</sup>The aforementioned CG homunculus is Peter Cushing, evidently being dead is not the disability it once was. It's just a shame that the textures are so completely unconvincing.<br />
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Another issue that I feel I have to state is that C3-PO and R2-D2 have a cameo towards the end, on Yavin-4. This means that Princess Leia would have to travel there to specifically pick them up, and then rendezvous with the fleet at Skariff. I'm not convinced that the timing for that actually works. To me, it's a humongous plot hole that could have been avoided by not having the cameo in the first place.<br />
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My final major criticism is that there is absolutely no Kyle Katarn cameo, despite the fact that the beginning features a shot that was very reminiscent of the Dark Forces box cover:<br />
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0 out of 10.<br />
<br />Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-54700161763619997352016-12-21T13:15:00.002+00:002016-12-21T13:15:34.069+00:00Fantastic Beasts and Where to find themFantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is a Harry Potter spin-off where Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander (who I really want to call Scaramanga) visiting New York in 1926 with a suitcase full of magical creatures.<br />
Due to a mix up with a wannabe baker (Kowalski, played by Dan Fogler), some of the beasts escape, and Newt needs to get them back.<br />
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Also in New York at that point in time is a religious cult, some almost-Amish people, referred to as "The Second Salemers" - as you can probably tell from the name, they claim that witches and wizards exist, and they hunt them.<br />
At the same time, the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) have rules to prevent normal people (NoMaj-es) from finding out about the magical community. this division is under threat due to the dark wizard Grimwald and his followers, who are causing havoc that is difficult to cover up.<br />
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As such, it's rather critical that Newt finds the beasts, both to prevent muggles finding out about magic, and to prevent the creatures getting hurt by people who don't understand them.<br />
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The film has a lot of interconnecting plot-threads, all of which get a decent amount of pacing and development. It's quite full, yet never feels particularly rushed. Rowling did extremely well, thanks largely in part that this was written directly as a film rather than adapted from a book.<br />
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The acting is excellent, with both a lot of drama and some extremely funny lighter moments. The special effects are fairly good - as is often the case with CG, it's not convincing itself, but the rest of the film is so enjoyable that my suspension of disbelief was not broken.<br />
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The only real weak point, in my opinion, was the ending. It had hardly any foreshadowing, and was blatantly done to set up for the next film.<br />
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Overall, it was a very good film. The ending feels like a let-down, but largely because we don't have the other films yet. As a standalone film, the ending is poor, but everything else was hugely enjoyable.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-91494382174045636862016-11-14T13:49:00.000+00:002016-11-14T13:49:26.236+00:00The AccountantThe Accountant has an excellent cast, led by Ben Affleck as an autistic savant. Using his skills he's become an accountant, often using an alias and being hired by criminal organisations.<br />
As JK Simmons (as an agent for the US Treasury) puts it: Imagine that you launder huge sums of money. You keep a record of transactions, but most of it is hidden behind codes and euphemisms. Then suddenly you find that some of the money has gone missing somewhere. Ben Affleck is the man you hire to come in and look at your accounts to see where the money has gone.<br />
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He gets hired by a robotics company (owned by John Lithgow), after Anna Kendrick has noticed something strange about the accounts.<br />
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Amongst this JK Simmons has put another agent (played by Cynthia Addai-Robbinson) in charge of the investigation into exactly who the accountant is, and That-guy-who-was-in-the-walking-dead-and-is-now-the-punisher (Jon Bernthal, I had to look that up) is a mercenary involved with businesses of some description (his first appearance is about him trying to restore the pension funds of the company who hired him).<br />
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The mysteries of exactly what is going on are fascinating, the villain's plot is coherent and extremely interesting. The acting is unbelievably good, the action is absolutely incredible. There is a lot of dark comedy, most of it derived from Ben Affleck being unable to understand emotions (so either not understanding someone's reaction, or not reacting in the way you would expect).<br />
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This is an intelligent, witty, funny and extremely exciting action film. Go see it.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-17542380975023606692016-11-09T13:47:00.001+00:002016-11-09T13:47:14.946+00:00Batman vs Superman: Ultimate EditionWhile I do swear more than I should in real life, I try to avoid it here. I mention this because I want you to appreciate how sincere I am when I say: This film is <i>fucking </i>awful.<br />
It's really, unbelievably bad.<br />
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During the events of Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne (played by Ben Affleck) was rescuing his employees from collapsing buildings in Metropolis, which has planted a seed of fear and hate for Superman in his mind.<br />
Lex Luthor has found some Kryptonite off the coast of some tropical location, and is shipping it to himself in Metropolis.<br />
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Bruce Wayne, somehow knows this (but, hey, Batman is meant to be the worlds greatest detective, who avoids killing his opponents as much as possible) so goes to a party at Luthor's mansion, and hacks into his computer to find out when the shipment is (keep in mind, he's hacking into the computer of a private citizen who has, as far as he knows, committed no crimes)<br />
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What follows is an exceedingly long sequence of Batman trying to get the Kryptonite, only to find it was a trap, and Superman kills him.<br />
Turns it was all a dream, and he wakes up to the Flash talking to him through a portal, saying "You were right, don't trust him!"<br />
Not only is this a missed opportunity to inject some humour, by making the Flash pretend to be a ghost, but that is also a dream.<br />
Batman later tells Alfred (Jeremy Irons) about how he fears and hates Superman. This renders the preceding two dream sequences <b>completely and utterly pointless.</b><br />
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Not only that, but if the Flash's warning was meant to be real, then who does it refer to? Certainly not actually Superman, as he is a hero throughout the film.<br />
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Anyway, Batman then tracks the Kryptonite shipment to the docks and plants a tracker on the truck, Rather than tracking it, he chases it in the Batmobile, and outright <b>murders several people</b> (who, as I said before, as far as he knows have committed no crimes) <b><i>including actual innocent civilians</i></b>. Not only that, but he doesn't get the Kryptonite from the chase, instead using the tracker to get it. <i>Off screen</i>.<br />
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So eventually Batman fights Superman, they bond over their mothers having the same name, and unite to fight against Doomsday. Doomsday was created by Lex Luthor using some machine in a Kryptonian space ship to resurrect Zod's corpse. You know, at least Marvel actually try to keep the origins of their characters true to the comics.<br />
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They fight him with the help of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot - I hear the shooting took so long because she was often late. They kept waiting for Gadot) in the most boring climactic fight sequence of a comic book film ever.<br />
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There is some foreshadowing for the Justice League, in the form of Aquaman and Cyborg (as well as the characters I've already mentioned)<br />
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Overall this film is incredibly long, with a lot of the run time being completely wasted on scenes that go nowhere or serve absolutely no purpose. Meanwhile, things which should have been developed are rushed or ignored. The characters have the bare minimum resemblance to their comic equivalents, and I would challenge anyone to find a likeable one in the bunch (apart from Alfred).<br />
The writing is so poor that it can only be described as amateurish, and the action is ridiculously boring.<br />
If I hadn't seen Suicide Squad first, I think this would have made me swear off DC films altogether.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-3473591373054717562016-11-08T14:01:00.002+00:002016-11-08T14:01:56.049+00:00Dr StrangeThis latest Marvel entry stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Dr Steven Strange, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon, who gets maimed in a car accident, ending his career.<br />
Desperate for a solution, he eventually comes to a temple in Nepal, where Tilda Swinton portrays "The Ancient One". There he learns to open his mind to the concept of magic, and trains to master it.<br />
The temple was recently victim to a theft by Mads Mikklesen, who hopes to unleash eldritch horrors upon the world.<br />
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Essentially, it fits the same mould of some other origin stories where an arrogant person needs to learn humility in the face of something spiritual, except rather than anything religious it's black magic and utterly mind-bending special effects.<br />
Seriously, it's as if Inception was mixed with LSD, somehow. For the most part they are brilliant, but there are a small handful of effects which look poor, and could break your immersion.<br />
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The acting is excellent, with a script that is witty and laugh out loud funny. It was actually very nice to see Mads Mikklesen, who I've only ever seen in serious roles, have a few funny lines and evidently enjoy himself.<br />
Rachel McAdams is also notable as being very funny, in how she reacts to the weirdness going on.<br />
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The action is brilliant, though a bit difficult to follow at times, due to a fair amount of it not really taking place within Euclidean geometric space.<br />
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While the framework for the story is generic, as it tends to be with these origin stories, the content was more than enough for me to thoroughly enjoy the film.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-64521633682911482672016-11-06T07:48:00.001+00:002016-11-06T07:48:06.079+00:00InfernoYou may remember the previous two Dan Brown films - "The DaVinci Code" and "Angels and Demons"<br />
In The DaVinci Code, Tom Hanks solved some puzzle left be Leonardo DaVinci that lead to a great secret that had absolutely no effect on reality or society at all.<br />
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In Angels and Demons, Ewan McGregor distracted Tom Hanks so that he could use a visible amount of anti-matter to blow up the Vatican (as well as, presumably, the entire Eurasian continent)<br />
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Now after a 7 year gap, Tom Hanks reprises his role as Professor Robert "Layton" Langdon in Inferno.<br />
The story is that a billionaire who gave a non-copyright-or-trademark-infringing Ted talk stating that humanity is facing a huge problem due to overpopulation has died after jumping from a tower which he was chased up.<br />
The professor has woken up with amnesia, and is unable to remember the past few days, but what is evident is that there is a solution to the overpopulation problem put in place. Is the professor going to be able to stop it, or is he perhaps there to ensure it does get released?<br />
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So it's all a bit silly, and doesn't really consider anything to do with the morality involved (the bad guys are the bad guys, it's all black and white), and the use of religious art both as a metaphor and as the puzzle seems a bit of a stretch, but Dan Brown has a degree in classical art and he'll be damned if he doesn't get to use it!<br />
There are a few odd choices for dramatic effect (we need to film this scene during the day, and this needs to happen at night, so we need to say it takes hours to travel the 5 meters between locations), but the film is fun overall.<br />
However, that is in large part due to Tom Hanks. He simply carries the film, elevating it from average to entertaining. It's not a must-see, but is entertaining.<br />
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Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7669319597798967102.post-86867342077062184672016-11-02T14:17:00.000+00:002016-11-02T14:17:05.747+00:00Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"Ja, Kreacher!" is a German Harry Potter spin-off, about house-elves managing a the household of one of the higher-ups in the Ministry of Magic.<br />
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On the other hand, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a film starring Tom Cruise and Colby Smulders. Jack Reacher used to be a major in the army (which he is constantly reminded of) and Smulders is his successor. However, two of her subordinates have been murdered, and she has been arrested for the crime. Now it's up to Jack to figure out what's going on, and sort it out.<br />
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While the story is itself a bit generic, a usual failing of similar films is that they don't flow. This film flows very well - all of the events make sense and lead into one another, without any leaps of logic, or characters mysteriously teleporting or knowing things they shouldn't.<br />
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Tom Cruise is charismatic as always, while also playing a character who is a bit of an arsehole (presumably due to spending a lifetime in the military) - Smulders' character is similar, so it was enjoyable to see them butting heads, even though it did mean that there was a bit of a lack of chemistry (but that could in part be blamed on the characters being stoic and disciplined)<br />
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The film was well-written, exciting and witty. I would strongly recommend it (and since it is a sequel, I really must watch the first one!)Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00031985767167992777noreply@blogger.com0