Last week we celebrated our first anniversary with our 50th episode! I'm honored to be part of the Taskforce: Geek community! In this episode, we bring back a few guests and reminisce over the ups and downs of the past year. I'm honored to be back in touch with old friends, meeting and making new friends!
I can't say this enough... Special thanks to Dirk, Scott, and Shawn for including me! Here's to a great year during some trying times and looking forward to another year of being a part of something, I feel, is bigger than me!
After an 8-year hiatus, I've been back at playing video games for a little over 3 years. My curiosity of three specific games influenced my decision to purchase a PlayStation 4. Those games were Spider-man and Ace Combat 7, which I purchased with the PS4. The third game, Gran Turismo Sport, I would buy a few months later.
Of the three games, Ace Combat 7, and Gran Turismo Sport are franchise games that I've played since their first versions for the original PlayStation game console (Air Combat, 1995, and Gran Turismo, 1997). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the makers of Gran Turismo Sport added a function to allow players to design their own liveries for game play into it!
liv-er-y noun – chiefly British: an identifying design (as on a vehicle) that designates ownership
There have been many games that allow such a thing but have been mostly limited to PC games. For instance Ace Combat 7 allows such creativity but only for the PC version, not on the PS4 consoles. Immediately, me taking time to actually play the game became unimportant. If you've wondered about the race featured in the masthead of my blog, it was created within the Gran Turismo Sport game, and I've spent more hours creating liveries than actually racing!
Depending on how much detail one wants to put into a livery, creating one for the game can be a time consuming process. The game itself provides a number of basic pre-made graphics, such as letters and shapes, as well as actual corporate logos of companies known for their involvement with motorsports. The best part is that the game allows you to create, upload, use your own graphics into the game! It also allows you to share your creations with other players to use for their own designs. But this is just the beginning... Now that you've got the look of your car, you might as well design the look of your helmet and racing suit to match!
After you've made your livery, it's time to go race! Here is on of my Taskforce: Geek liveries in game play action!
Need a photo of that awesome pass you made to take the lead of the race? There's also an option to take photos of the action from various angles! You can adjust exposures, shutter speeds as well as add visual effects.
The game also provides what they call "Scapes," which is a collection of landscape photos for players to take "vanity shots" of their creations.
If you'd like to know more about how to create liveries within Gran Turismo Sport I recommend watching this tutorial by Doughtinator on YouTube.
This past Tuesday night, on
this episode of Taskforce: Geek we talk about the
future of artificial intelligence in video games, our feature artist is
Moebius! Join myself, Savanah Martin, Shawn Wilson, our host Dirk Hooper, and our special guest, in Venezuela, LA Chavez!
Today, I received my first round of Covid shots and I've been thinking about all the symptoms people have reported afterwards. But what I'm mostly thinking about are all the jokes about "receiving super powers" from the vaccine. So, on that note, here's my joke after receiving the first round...
Remember in the very first Spider-Man movie and how Peter Parker was totally wiped out after that spider bite? That’s how I feel right now... I’m totally gonna be able to climb the sides of buildings tomorrow!
Last week, me, Shawn, Beth, and our host Dirk discussed the season finale of Marvel Studios' WandaVision and what it may hold for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Plus, the announcement that The CW is developing a live-action Powerpuff Girls television series and our "fan casting" of the iconic PPG villains. For our final segment, we spotlight one of my favorite comic book artist, Jill Thompson.
Be sure to catch the discussions on Taskforce: Geek Tuesday nights.
I was commissioned to paint a portrait of a friends dog named Dakota. This was the first time that I had ever attempted to paint an animal of any sort in watercolor. The client was so satisfied with the painting that they commissioned a second painting, one with Dakota and their own dog, Azle, together.
Prints of Dakota are available for purchase from my Deviant Art gallery.
I'm sitting here looking at my watch and calendar and realizing that it has been over 6 years since I last placed a post here on this blog. Quite a bit as changed since then. I'd go down the list of events but I'd suggest watching Yakko, of Animaniacs, go through that recap (see the all-new episodes streaming exclusively on Hulu... This is a non-paid plug).
One of the new life changes came about as a result of this pandemic. I reconnected with a group of guys that I had collaborated with to produce a comic book way back in the early mid-90s of the 20th century. Many of us, at the time, were sidelined from our jobs due to "shelter in place" orders or furloughed due to all out lack of business. It's at this point when Dirk Hooper decided to put together a live-stream show with a group of "old guys" to spend time talking about "geeky stuff that we like" and let the public join in on the discussions.
Taskforce: Geek was born and has turned out to be a small hit and growing!
I'd like to go into all sorts of details about the show but I'd rather take this last bit to just give the guys and gal of the group my deepest appreciation for allowing me to be a part of the discussion panel! I always look forward to chatting y'all on Tuesday nights!
Next post: "Aren't you too old to be gaming?" or "What games are you playing?"
