Day Off!

School will be back in session come Monday. Tomorrow I will discuss Giclée prints. For today's entry, Ross and I are going to tell you what we have done on our day off.

I'm beginning to love Sundays. With my new work schedule, it is the only day of the week where I don't make an appearance at the store. Our power went out last night, so everyone in the house slept late. When I finally slithered out of bed around 10, I shoved some cereal in my mouth, threw on a clean shirt and grabbed my brother to head out to Wal-Mart. After picking up a balanced diet of Brown Sugar Pop-Tarts and fruit snacks we headed over to GameStop. When my brother was little it was a far more convenient excuse for me to play games and watch cartoons without it looking as though they were things I wanted to play or shows I wanted to watch. The older he gets though I am finding fewer occasions for such an excuse so its just come down to me admitting that I like to watch Dragonball Z and asking him if we can go to GameStop while we are out. Gladly, he obliges. Since he was in middle school we have been looking at the game Kingdom Hearts (yes if he was in middle school it meant I was in high school...whatever). Its a critically acclaimed game that was released in 2002 for the PS2. Never being able to justify a $49 price tag for a video game I buy all of mine used (unlike some slaves to the new, like the one I'm marrying), so I was pleased to see the game we had long since wanted for only $16. We bought it.

Taking turns with this one player game, my brother and I spent 4 hours after lunch playing in this beautifully animated, Disney themed world while my mom sat on the couch and knitted. If i didn't know better I would have thought it was 2002 and at any moment my mom was going to ask me if I had any homework for Mr. McLetchie's class. The gameplay is fairly simple with little tasks to accomplish and you meet lots of Disney characters who are breaking the rules of their respective universes and showing up in unexpected places. I think the biggest appeal of this game for me is the artestry of the animation. There are these giant stained-glass panels that appear showcasing each of the Disney princesses. The resemblance to some of the work by Czech Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha is just startling:

It was around six that my mom said the most interesting thing;

"You know what I'm craving?"

"What?" I responded.

"Nachos Bell Grande from Taco Bell."

And suddenly, I was too...

Best day-off ever.

my day was fairly similar to the Sauce's. i rolled out of bed waaay too close to noon. my parents would have been ashamed. to make up for lost time, i took part in the time-honored tradition called No Shower Sundays. also somewhat shameful, but necessary. after eating some grub with family here in oxford, i spent the majority of my day playing Red Dead Redemption on the PS3.

its a great game with a huge map to explore, a deep and tangled web of a plot line, and everything a gunslinging outlaw could want. i don't want to give away the ending, so i'll just say that today i rode all over Texas and northern Mexico, brandishing my trusty blue steeled beauty and pulling off hip shots, saving damsels in distress, mowing down gangsters, finding buried treasure, and shooting a guy's sombrero right off his head (which was not well-received). and that's just the stuff the game wanted me to do!
i also accidentally sent my horse flying off a cliff, twice. i had whistled to it so it would come give me a ride, and the stupid thing decided to just jump right off a cliff to get to me. dumb. AND i blew myself up shooting at a barrel of TNT. it was a bad scene.
carnage aside, the game is really fun to look at. the landscapes are beautiful, the plants look real, and there's wildlife just kickin around.

i'm not too sure how this game related to my design style, other than the cover art. i know is a vector image, but it looks like a linocut! and the font looks hand printed. the in-game wanted posters have that same feel. i think i just love the nostalgia of this game. the same way i love the historic nature of printmaking. there's something really appealing about being surrounded by history and reliving it.