It was a pain in the butt, but I finally got the dragon to wrap around the column. It only too me all day.
Its only a dragon wrapping around the column. What's so strange about that
It’s wrapping around the column
October 3rd, 2009
Playing with Lucia and the Lights in the Dark
September 20th, 2009So last night my D&D game was cancelled. I have 2 RPG related projects I am in the middle of, one is my new campaign which I woud like to start in December or January. The other is my Web based D&D 3.5 tools (Something which may never be publicly seen). So what did I do instead? I decided to play with Daz. What I decided to do was play with lighting effects a little because still no virtually nothing about it.
If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for my renders then don’t be shy.
For these renders I used Victoria 3.2 Base, Luzia Ice Queen morph (One of the few morphs which don’t require the V4 Morphs++ (which I still can’t afford)), Ella Eyes, Stily Outfit, Glamour hair, Ice Queen Rose and the PPackdrop4. With the hair, rose and backdrop I played with the shaders a little, and I used one of the poses that came with V4. I focused the camera in close on her. After that the only things to change is the lighting, whether it is type of lighting, color of lighting, intensity or number of lights.
The picture above is the rendering with no lights added what so ever. Next are links to all the renderings I did.
Below is the last rendering I did. I think it is my favorite because she looks like her eyes aren’t there. Gives her that cool, freaky Event Horizon Dead Zombie look.
Character Counts – Master Abjurer Saelion
August 6th, 2009The prestige class Master Specialist is from Complete Mage. It is actually 8 different classes, one for each of the arcane schools of magic. As you level up in this class you continue to gain new spell levels. What is even more important you gain special abilities based on your school specialization. For example as an Abjurer you gain a bonus to dispel checks, a Necromancer gives undead allies Fast Healing, Conjurer’s summons gain extra HPs.
Character Personality
Saelion is extremely friendly and kind. He hates to hurt others and uses his abilities to protect everyone he can. Even when battle he tries to encourage his allies to show mercy and not kill.
Character Background
Saelion was born to a wealthy Elven family. In his early childhood he lived a life of luxury. When he started his apprenticeship to his wizardry master war broke out. Saelion’s master was asked to help with an offensive and he took Saelion with him. Saelion saw the destruction that magic could cause. His master was killed during the offensive and Saelion vowed to use his magic to protect others.
Advancement
The two best ways I see to advance Saelion is to increase his wizarding levels giving him access to higher level abjuration spells. The other way is give him cleric levels. The cleric levels will give him the ability to heal which would work great with his personality.
Master Abjurer Saelion Spellbook
Character Counts – The Dread Pirate Simmoines
August 5th, 2009The prestige class “Dread Pirate” is from Complete Adventurer and as you are probably thinking is based on the Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride (or at least I am presuming so). What makes this class interesting, just like the character it is based on, reputation is everything. For all practical purposes alignment doesn’t matter. Many of the class features only reputation matters. An Evil character could have a good reputation and a Good character could have an evil reputation. A good reputation (Avoiding unnecessary bloodshed and honoring truces) would make it more likely for others to negotiate with him and give his allies bonuses to diplomacy and rerolls on failed saves. An evil reputation gives bonuses to intimidate and attack rolls.
Character Personality
The Dread Pirate Simmoines is extremely cruel and takes pleasure in torturing his victims. He is very intelligent and when in battle is tactically and strategically minded. He loves his reputation and uses it to its fullest potential to intimidate his prey and enemies. His crew on the other hand he treats fairly well.
Character Background
The Dread Pirate Simmoines was born to a semi-wealthy family though he doesn’t know much about it. When he was only 8 years old his family was journeying by sea. Their ship was attacked by pirates. All were killed except for the Simmoines who was taken captive by the Captain, the Dread Pirate Charlie. Simmoines was taken because Charlie wanted a cabin boy and another human onboard his ship. From Charlie he learned about seafaring and piracy amongst other things. He worked his way up through the crew to eventually become the second mate of the ship at the age of 16. His cruelty towards those ships preyed upon made Dread Pirate Charlie look tame and merciful. His cruelty made much of the Goblin crew fear and respect him. When he reached the age of 18 he led the crew against the Dread Pirate Charlie and the First Mate. As Captain of the pirate ship Lost Hope, he took piracy to the absolute evil it could be taken. When he attacks a ship he doesn’t just kill its crew and passengers. He tortures them; he rapes women and children before killing them. He quite often keeps one person alive, though mentally scarred for life to tell the tale. He has gone so far as to occasionally sneak into a port at night to secretly deliver the the lone survivors to ensure the tale is told. Because of this he and his ship are the most feared pirates on the sea.
His crew however he treats a little differently. He fears that one day they might mutiny against him. So he ensures that they receive an equal share of the spoils, though keeping the best for himself. However, any crew member who shows sign of weakness, or mutinous actions or thoughts is tortured or killed.
He shuns any type of organization between other pirate ships. He is not for hire and will only consider any type of negotiation if he feels the other party has something truly worth getting. After getting what he wants he kills the one(s) he negotiated with and leaves no survivors.
Advancement
This is a level 16 character so it is already pretty powerful. However, making the Dread Pirate Simmoines more deadly is easily done. Depending on what you need done there are several ways. The simplest method would be to improve his equipment. Gives his weapons additional pluses since they are only +1 items. Add keen to them to increase the critical range from 18 to 17 making it more likely to critically hit. Give him gloves of dexterity to increase his dexterity which would make it more likely to hit his targets and make him nimble thus harder to hit and improve his balance and rope skills.
Adding class levels is obviously a good way to go if you need his CR to be higher. Adding levels of Rogue would give you loads of skill points to make him extremely skillful as well as improve his sneak attack and give him Improved Uncanny Dodge. I would add to those Jump, Tumble, Use rope and Intimidate skills to make him most interesting. Adding levels of fighter would give him extra feats and greatly improve his combat abilities. Adding sorcerer would improve his will saves and add some low level magic to his repertoire. Adding Bard would give him many skill points and limited magical capabilities. Druid could be an interesting choice, especially with the aquatic animal wild shapes. However the druid’s necessity to not have metal would greatly limit him in the long run. Barbarian, cleric, ranger and wizard, though could be interesting really don’t offer anything. Monk and paladin are out of the running.
The most interesting way of improving upon him is to make him a vampire. Now I know what you’re thinking. “But Vampires have problems with traveling on the water and as Captain of a ship he may need to be out in the sun.” Well it is a simple problem to resolve. Give him a magic item or an artifact that allows him to cross water and be in the sun.
Prestige Class Series of Character Counts
August 4th, 2009If you ever played D&D 3.x you know that just about every supplemental book has a bunch of prestige classes. I don’t know how often you have ever used any of these prestige classes but I know my play group has never used them. I am currently running what I call Joey’s Infinite Dungeon. It is a high level game where all options from all books are available for the players to use. The sky is the limit. When they made their level 17 characters I worked with them and encouraged them to take a variety of prestige classes. All but one of my players just kept to leveling up the base characters. The player who did use a prestige class took the Dragon Disciple, though a great class, he has used it before.
Now as I said before, I don’t know how often you use prestige classes from the various sources out there, but I bet it isn’t often. So for the next few Character Counts articles I am going to focus on prestige classes from the various non core books. I will give the normal background and personality so even if you don’t play D&D 3.5 you can still use the character in your campaign.
To make the characters I will use PCGen to get the ability scores. It is set to Roll 4d6 drop the lowest. With the exception of that required to use the prestige class all skills, feats, abilities and items are from the core books and RSRD.
The Half-Blood Prince: A Good Movie That Pissed Me Off
July 17th, 2009I warn you now. This post contains spoilers to both the book and movie of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I did my best to leave things out that would spoil things for people who have yet to read “The Deathly Hollows.” I would also love to hear your comments about the movie.
So Thursday afternoon I went to go and see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was a good movie. Unfortunately it pissed me off at the same time. It pissed me off worse then the Order of the Phoenix Movie.
The Order of the Phoenix pissed me off because a great many things were left out of the movie that were in the book. I was able to forgive this for two reasons. First, is tha obviously not everything in a book can be put into a two and a half hour movie. The second reason is that when the Order of the Phoenix was being made Deathly Hollows (The last book) was not out yet so they didn’t know that cutting out some of the stuff they cut out might come back to bite them in the butt later.
With the Half-Blood Prince I cannot forgive them for leaving out just about 75% of the book. Again, yes I understand that the movie can’t have everything from the book unless they want to make a minimum of a four hour movie. However, Deathly Hollows was out before they were even writing the script for the Half-Blood Prince. They knew what was in the final book. This movie gave them a chance to correct some of the issues I had with the Order of the Phoenix, highlight how the Muggle World (Non Magic Users) and the Magical world interacted with each other in the meeting between Fudge, Scrimgeour and the Muggle Prime Minister. I believe that having Dumbledore’s conversation with Harry and the Dursely’s was important because Kreacher plays an important role in the Deathly Hollows and they should show why Kreacher has to obey Harry. People who didn’t read the book wouldn’t understand.
In this book they introduce another Death Eater (well, more of an honorary Death Eater for all practical purposes), Fenrir Greyback. In the movie, they show him, they a wanted poster for him, but they never explain who or what he is. They give him no development. Yes, he is not the most important Death Eater, but his background is what makes him important to readers (and movie watchers), but they totally ignore it.
In the book there are (Basically) two fight scenes. Potter vs. Malfoy, which they had and did a decent job with in the movie. But they didn’t put moaning Myrtle in, or the aftermath with Harry getting in trouble for using Sectumsempra, a dark magic spell.
The second fight in the book is a battle between Hogwarts Professors, some members of the Order of the Phoenix such as Tonks, Lupin and Bill Weasley and some of the member sof the D.A. (Dumbledores Army) such as as Hermoine, Ron, Neville and Luna who fought against several Death Eaters including Draco Malfoy, The Carrow siblings and Fenrir Greyback and Severus Snape amongst others. In the movie they basically cut out this scene. They just had the Death Eaters show up and wait for Dumbledore and Potter to arrive on the Tower. To make it worse they didn’t have Potter in his cloak and petrified by Dumbledore. They just had him standing there like an idiot.
To make up for the lack of the Hogwart’s battle scene they made a new battle, which took place at the Weasley’s during Christmas. The fight scene was horribly choreographed and lasted maybe 1 minute and ended in teh destruction of the Weasley household. It totally ignored the fact that in the book teh Weasley Household is probably the third safest place for Potter because of extra protections put in place by the ministry, as well as the fact as Voldermort had basically ordered Potter to not be touched because he wanted to follow through with his plans of getting rid of Dumbledore and taking over the ministry. It also nerfed Ginny Weasley’s ability as a fighter. Something those of us have read in the books, You don’t mess with Ginny because her combat spells tend to be very destructive.
Now in the case of Harry and Dumbledore’s trips into the memories of various people who, whether knowingly or not, had information on Voldermorts past they forgot to have the discussions about the memories. I understand, and agree that they didn’t show harry viewing all of the memories. It would have made the movie way to long. But what they have done was had Dumbledore say there were other memories after Harry found out about the Horcruxes and tell Harry what he believed, at least about the cup because Harry knew about the cup in the book.
Actually, I believe Dumbledore (and I don’t blame Michael Gambon, at least not completely) was misportrayed. Dumbledore is supposed to be, for the most portrayed as a somewhat carefree and very friendly guy, who even when serious has a nicness and humerous attitude. In the movie, the script has him portrayed as this always perfectly serious guy who has no joy and seems to have no feelings.
Snape was another big mess up in character development in this movie. They got it right towards the beginning when he made the unbreakable vow. However later, they actually showed the argument between Dumbledore and Snape, something not done in the Half-Blood Prince book, it is only mentioned by Hagrid that they were in an argument. And at teh end when Snape kills Dumbledore they had him show emotion, mainly to me what seemed more like guilt and sadness. In the book, he is virtually emotionless when this happens. For this, I do blame the actor, Alan Rickman. I think he forgot to read that part of the book when he was preparing for the role. They also never showed the buildup of hate and mistrust Harry had for Snape. Yes, it is not a secret and is shown in the other books, but even before Snape kills Dumbledore Harry and Snape are butting heads more and more throughout the book.
Now down to the relationship between Harry and Ginny. Yes it is important. It is a part of the book that shows Harry does care about other things other then just VOldermort. He is a 16 year old. Hormones are flowing. He wants to hook up with some girl, Ginny Weasley to be specific. Though they had the timing of there eventual kiss about right, (After he gets in trouble for using Sectursempra) but it was in the Room of Requirement, right next to the vanishing cabinet. They should have had him get detention from Snape and him missing the Quidditch match. It would have shown that Hogwarts business truly went on as normal. It would also had made the kiss a better and more meaningful scene, instead of this Ginny being kind of a mysterious tease.
My last major peeve with the movie they didn’t have Dumblefore’s funeral. It was one of the most touching scenes in the book. It also showed how important Dumbledore was in the wizarding world.
In short they basically one or two pages from like five chapters, amde a script out of them and added a lot of crappy filler content and cheapened out on on getting actors to play roles of Death Eaters and Order of the Phoenix members and hoped that the name “Harry Potter would bring in money for them, which unfortunately it did, and will bring in more.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Movie vs. Book
- The movie and the book were both good, but, the movie was better. (0%, 0 Votes)
- The movie and the book were equally good. (0%, 0 Votes)
- The movie and the book were both good, but, the book was much better. (38%, 3 Votes)
- The book was awesome and the movie sucked (50%, 4 Votes)
- The movie was awesome and the book sucked (0%, 0 Votes)
- I saw the movie but I didn't read the book so I can't compare them (0%, 0 Votes)
- I read the book, but I didn't see the movie so I can't compare them (0%, 0 Votes)
- Harry who? The Half-Blood What? (12%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 8
Loading ...Man and his sword – DAZ3D
July 16th, 2009
First DAZ creation
July 4th, 2009This is my first DAZ studio scene I have made (other then going through the quick start). It is using Victoria 4.2 and Shadow Dancer V4. Since the scene had no built in lights I had to add my own. I add one distant light which is located at the edge os the scene closest to you and pointing at her. The other light is a point of light which I added at the back of the scene and made very bright.
My first creation. Looks like she is running from an explosion.
So what do you think? Also if you know where I can any free clothes, props or Poses that work with Michael 4 or Victoria 4 please let me know. I am looking particularly for Fantasy clothing and props
New D&D Homebrew World
June 12th, 2009So as I said earlier, my weekly D&D game is disintegrating, and it is disintegrating quicker by the week. But does that deter me? Of course it doesn’t. I have begun work on my D&D homebrew world. I still haven’t given it a name yet though. Below I posted the map work I have done so far. I’ve done all of it so far in Campaign Cartographer 3. Please remember I just started but I would love to hear your comments on what I have done so far.
The first map is my world map. It is an extremely large map. The scale is 100K Miles by 75K Miles. I haven’t done too much detail work on it, and a lot of the detail you may not see because of the large scale.
World Map
The next is the Eastern Continent of the world.
Eastern Continent of the New Homebrew World
This next map is a part of the Eastern Continent. I have nicknamed it “Crescent Peninsula” for now.
Crescent Penninsula
This map is a section of Crescent Peninsula which I have nicknamed Point Harbor. It features two City States which control much of the area.
Point Harbor
This is the area around one of the City States which I am calling Trasaka
The Transaka City State Region
I am currently working on one of the two cities. I call it Transaka City and once I get a little more work done it I will post it as well.
Summer Movies
June 4th, 2009This summer has quite a few SciFi and Fantasy movies coming out. I know I am looking forward to the Half-Blood Prince and Transformers 2. What movies are you looking forward to?
What movies are you looking forward to this summer?
- Land of the Lost (0%, 0 Votes)
- Imagine That (0%, 0 Votes)
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (100%, 2 Votes)
- Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (0%, 0 Votes)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (100%, 2 Votes)
- Aliens in the Attic (0%, 0 Votes)
- G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (-100%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 2
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