Hot Reads

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Are Virtual Pet Sites Dying?

Neopets: A Virtual Pet Community
The introduction of Neopets in the late 1990's brought on a new era of the web: pet sites. Soon, Neopets copies began popping up everywhere, including Marapets and Power Pets, both competitors in the industry. I've been a long time player of Neopets and the latter, and have always enjoyed both, probably more than I should.

Over the years, the hype seems to have faded, but Neopets remains as the top in the niche, most likely for it's wide selection of flash games, and nostalgic tone. However, new ones are created all the time, which spawned an entire community for developers and players alike.

It seems like the sites' productivity is on a decline; users are becoming more fast-paced, and can recognize the unoriginal content on most pet sites. Even so, it remains a large factor in the [mostly] younger audiences for the stellar art and addictive properties.

However, it seems that the pet sites are changing their focus. While (like in Neopets) they used to be about the caring, feeding, and raising of your pets, they seems to take three different paths for the focus.

The first (that seems the most common) is to be a Human Avatar site. This basically means that they have pets, but have grown to the point of focusing on buying, selling, and trading clothes (which is a prestige sort of thing) for your 'human avatar'. This leads to an entire economy being created over this. This is generally looked down upon by Virtual Pet List, the virtual pet community.

The second is battling, in which your pets, much like Pokemon, battle each other and pre-made characters. This is an interesting take, but still ultimately much like the Neopets' battle dome.

The third, most likely original, is the breeding site, in which you have pets that can breed and create genetic differences in your pets.

All three of these sites have been done before, in great detail. I believe that any pet sites are generally on a downhill slope. While they were fun at the start of internet gaming, I think technology has outgrown that slow-paced kind of gaming. Unless you have an original idea, I wouldn't start one.

What do you think? Are pet sites dying? What's your favorite virtual pet site, and what keeps you coming back? Disagree with anything I've said? Tell us in the comments, and as always, have a so super faboo day!

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Movie Tuesday: Interstellar

The ships in Interstellar weren't CGI.
Interstellar, like almost all movies was a mixed bag of good and bad elements.  Unlike most movies, however, the mix was fairly even – almost exactly as much good as bad!  As this is a movie review, beware of spoilers.  Interstellar is a science fiction movie about Cooper, a former NASA test pilot who works as a farmer, in a time when widespread crop failure due to pollution of the atmosphere means almost everybody has to farm.  The premise didn’t threaten my suspension of disbelief, and the comments made by Cooper’s father about how when he was a kid they “invented something new every day” had real verisimilitude. 

So the movie continues, and asks you to accept that a wormhole appeared, implies that aliens put it there, and that they flew people into it and discovered planets.  This all was easy enough to accept, in a science fiction movie.  But then the professor tells us he is working to create anti-gravity machines.  Although it turned out to be a lie, at the time, it was just a little too much to swallow.  So Cooper gets launched into space on the (rather un-aerodynamic looking) “Ranger”, and we get our first good look at the best thing the movie has going for it – the visuals.  Specifically, the physical models of spacecraft built and filmed with real cameras.  And it looked amazing, better than any CGI spaceship.  <3

After the all-too-short intermission where the film is not straining credibility, they have the planets orbit a black hole.  Not that it’s impossible, just that the aliens who built the wormhole couldn’t build one that lead to a better solar system?  The real problem with this sequence is that they had absolutely no plan.  Apparently they just built this multi-billion dollar spacecraft and launched into a wormhole hoping the people would just figure it out.  Generally expensive expeditions of any kind, particularly space missions, are planned out in detail.  Like which places they are going to go to.  Also, why did the Ranger have to get launched on a rocket at the beginning, but it could fly onto orbit on its own later, on a planet with “130% Earth’s gravity”?

But once you get over that, the movie actually starts to get pretty exciting, with two genuinely intriguing revelations.  First that the professor never thought the gravity machine was going to work, and that the astronaut Mann lied that his planet was habitable.  The film picked up pace, raised thoughtful questions, and some of Mann’s dialogue in particular was excellent.  The docking sequences were thrilling, and I thought the movie might just make up for some of its weirdness at the beginning.  Unfortunately the film makes the decision not to come to an end.  It then continues not ending for a painfully long time, until it has been sucked dry of any mystery or profundity.

Final score: 6/10 Just About Faboo


What did you think of Interstellar?  What about space, science fiction in general? Tell us in the comments, and have a so super faboo day!

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Will deviantART be a Social Media?

deviantART: where ART meets
application!
There has been a recent influx of updates on the popular art-sharing site deviantART, ranging from looks to features. One of the most prominent is the Activity Feed, or Watch Feed, which shows everything the people you watch are up to in list form, similar to Twitter, as well as status updates. There has also been a number of selfies posted, some groups even dedicated solely to selfies. What does this mean for deviantART's future? Will things change too much for those of us who have been here for years?

Many years ago, deviantART made a major update from the old style, which did not quite capture the hearts of the current users of the time. This lead to a huge debate, which lasted until the next major updates, occurring just a few months ago. Now, people who have avoided Facebook, Twitter, and other means of networking, have this question on their mind: Will I have to leave deviantART?

Of course, deviantART is generally responsive towards their user base, and has taken this debate into their minds. However, the functions of users cannot easily be controlled, and deviantART can turn social-media with the new users joining.

Recently, more deviantART like sites have been popping up, aiming to retain the original purpose of deviantART: art sharing. Sites like Weasyl seem to be the most popular, however are being taken over by furries, similarly to Furaffinity, and most other non-deviantART art sharing sites.

This could lead to the growth of deviantART as well though, as furries are not everyone's cup of tea. Really, it's a matter of which happens first: artists, or networkers joining first.

What do you think of deviantART? Do you like the changes? Will you be continuing to use it, even if it changes to be more social-media focused and less art-focused? Tell us in the comments, and as always, have a so super faboo day!

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Movie Tuesday: Drive

Looks pretty good.

Hey everyone, and welcome to Movie Tuesday, a new series of movie reviews on popular (or not!) movies. This weeks edition is Drive, an artistic film starring Ryan Gosling as (according to IMDB) a 'mysterious Hollywood Stuntman.'

This is one movie I'm not going to sugarcoat.

Drive was somehow boring, and too violent at the same time. I'm not one to dislike violence in a movie; Fury was pretty enjoyable, and you see half a face sitting inside a tank in one of the first few scenes. However, Drive took this to the next level with a scene consisting of Ryan Gosling kicking in someone's head in an elevator for what felt like an hour.

Besides just being...violent, to say the least, it was also immensely boring. I zoned out sometime in the middle, and had to look up the synopsis afterwards. (Which happened to not sound anything like what I had seen.)

The filmography only emphasized this. The characters were too quiet, the actors showed no emotion (Besides the horrified expression of Irene throughout the entire movie)  despite Carey Mulligan's stellar performance in Never Let Me Go, a film adapted from the book by Kazuo Ishiguro. The constant color-correction (every scene is a new color!) just goes to show how it was meant as a crowd pleaser.

I did however, enjoy the - theme? - of the movie, or at least the subject matter. Crime is generally a good start to a film, however, the realism of this movie went too far. It seemed so real, it wasn't real at all anymore. (Sort of like uncanny valley.)

In my opinion, a movie should have a little bit of every genre. Drive could have been the gritty and dark indie film it was, while retaining some properties of adventure, or maybe even, dare I say it, a joke.

All in all, Drive was trying to be an artsy, deep movie, and they got artsy down, they just forgot to give it an actual message. That being said, I rate it...

3/10 Not Faboo

Regardless, my Movie Tuesday reviews are a work of opinion. A person could very well appreciate this movie much more than I, and like it for the reasons I dislike it.

Have you seen Drive? What's your opinion on the movie, Love it, Hate it, In-between? Disagree with this review? What movie should be reviewed next? Tell us below in the comments, and as always, have a so super faboo day!

Monday, November 3, 2014

How to Improve in 5 Steps

This is like following a tutorial.

In many places of the internet, you will see articles, videos, tutorials, showing you exactly how to do something. If you're anything like me, you'll get all riled up about being able to, for example, draw that Neopet, or collect Pokemon, or anything you want to do.

In that case, you read the tutorial, and somehow, you're not any closer to doing what you got so riled up about. Why is that, and how can you fix it? Here are 5 steps that should help you improve at anything you want to do.

5. Practice
Practice is a loaded word. Sometimes, practicing can only get you further from your goal, like when playing an instrument with the wrong techniques. Therefore, it's important to know what you're doing when you practice, which is hard to do.

4. Don't Practice
It's amazing to see what taking a break can do for you. And I don't mean an hour; a day, a week, whatever. I took about a year's break from drawing, and came back to find my anatomy, coloring, and lineart techniques were better than ever, simply from observation. However, I would not recommend this for things that require skills such as clicking really fast.

3. Actually Consider What You're Doing
Have you ever been playing, say, Super Smash Bros, and bombing really bad, when you realize you're just button-mashing? When that happens, take a second, look at your hands, and actually consider what button you need to press to kill that guy that is about to get you. Trust me, it sounds silly, but nothing could be more important.

This goes for other subjects too. I'm sure you've been told that, when drawing something, instead of drawing what you know, draw what you see. It's a great lesson to learn, but very difficult. It's important to practice this

2. See What's Working and What's Not
If you can look at someone else's work (whatever the subject, drawing, gaming, anything) and can find flaws, you're halfway there. See what's not working in someone else's work, and try and compare that with yours. Finding flaws in your own work (but try not to imagine flaws!) is the most important thing in improving.

1. Redo
If something doesn't look right, redo it. No matter what. Even if it looks worse, don't settle for 'okay'. If you think it's only okay, that's what everyone else will think too. This will take time to recognize and master, but it's worth it in the end.

Have these steps helped you? How long did it take you to get from amateur to professional skill levels at something? Have any suggestions? Tell us in the comments, and as always, have a so super faboo day!

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

5 Time Wasting Games

Alternatively, look at a picture of my cat.


Waiting on something? Life getting you down and you just wanna get it over with? Or do you simply
want to play stupid games? (Or maybe if you're anything like me, you just google 'how to waste time' on a regular basis) Well look no further! Here is a list of the top 5 online games that actually waste time.






That we are, Garfield. That we are.

5. Garfield Fun & Games

That's right; the games on the Garfield the cat website are great time wasters. Especially my favorite, Scary Scavenger Hunt! Don't take for granted the rest of the list based on this, though! The next ones are actually good!



Pure Awesome.

4. Super Monkey 2

Bloons has been common in the flash game time waster category for many years now, but none so much as Super Monkey! With tons of levels, upgrades, and powers, Super Monkey 2 wastes even more time than the original!






You know you want it!

3. BoohBah Zone

If you want to be freaked out, this is for you.
This website consists of the freaky creatures from the children's show BoohBah doing creepy things. In one, infinite of them are created by the mouse as you move it across the screen trying to escape. It's up to you to find out which bubble links to it.









This is what you came here to see.

2. Feedthehead.net

A surprising addition to the list, this game might not waste too long, it still is incredibly entertaining for a few-minute excursion.








Everyone is a winner.

1. QWOP

QWOP is one of the most addictive, time-wasting flash games of all time. Plus, you can entertain whoever's nearby with your antics. And there will be antics.








What's your favorite online game, for when you are bored? Have you played any of these before? Have you done QWOP without cheating? Tell me more in the comments, subscribe for more game, digital art, and pop culture news, and as always, I hope your day is so super faboo!

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

3 Merchandise Sources

Goodra is best Pokemon

It can be hard to know how to find the merchandise you're looking for when collecting Pokemon,
Animal Crossing, or whatever else strikes your fancy. For that matter, it can be hard to even know where to look to find out what you're looking for!

Here you can find 3 sources for news, info, and shops to buy merchandise of any of your favorite games.


Seriously helpful

1. Videogamemm.com

While it doesn't have every item ever made, it's a great start! It has tons of games listed on its database, as well as a database of fakes for those who are concerned. 







Super Duper Supercute!

2. Pokepolitan.com

This website is specifically for Pokemon collectors; it features all the recently released products of Pokemon, as well as the upcoming releases! If you're looking for new items, this is your place.

There are many more resources for Pokemon collectors, and visit the LiveJournal community PKMNCollectors to see more!







3. Racketboy.com

If you specifically collect games/consoles, this is the place to find them. It's a huge and renowned community that has many guides on collecting retro games. See /r/gamecollecting on reddit to see more game collecting links!




What do you collect? Are you going to start collecting more? Talk about it in the comments, and subscribe for more soft gaming tips, news, and more!
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