Time off!

Sorry guys for the lack of updates, but I'll be gone for a few days more. So I spent like 10 minutes on the bib until I realized I started the 2nd yoshi off center.  It's bugging me, should I restart it?  I'm so lazy I think I'll just continue, what do you think?

FFXI Music

Got something pretty awesome today by Noriko Matsueda which is widely known for his great compositions in the Square Enix (Squaresoft) games.  I thought I'd take a step away from old classic video game systems and give you a piece from Final Fantasy XI called "Dolphin".



This is probably the most well known song for any FFXI players since it greeted you everytime you would login. Despite how much I hate HATE HATE Playonline for its stupid convulted account services,  I find this song puts me at ease...while I smash my keyboard against a wall. Hope you enjoy this song and be glad you probably never dealt with Playonline.

Bib progress

Been busy lately, but I made some good progress on the bib.  I'm extremely happy about how this turned out.  I've only ever worked on 18 count fabric so I was very skeptical about working on 14 count cloth.  The bigger pixels meant it would have much more noticeable gaps in between each stitch but the good side is that smaller art will be about 25% larger than it would be on 18 count cloth and this works wonderfully in my favor at the moment. So here's 1/3 of the bib! I ditched the old crying Yoshi because who wants a depressing baby bib!? Bad idea so I just swapped for a more cheerful pose.

   

I used a very dark grey around his eyes and mouth for shadows but quickly switched to a light grey for the body curve shadow.  It also looks like he has a squashed bug on the bottom of his shoe but that's just because my stitches are not as consistant as I'd like them to be.  I like how the sprites have double layered outlines. I wasn't sure if I wanted to make the outline thinner but I did it in Paint.net and it made Yoshi look shallow.  It still bugs me now with the thick outline, but the thin outline would've bugged me much more. 

I LOVE how this is going so far. Don't worry, I'll update sooner this time since I'm on a roll for stitching. 

Ultima Online

Once upon a time in the early times of the internet where AOL reigned supreme and NetZero was a respectable 56k ISP dial-up provider the MMORPG genre was just getting it's first legs and growing.  Long before anyone thought that Blizzard would make monstrous game behemoths (World of Warcraft duh) there were studios that were paving the way into what would be the modern MMO games of today.  There are a few worthy of mention: Everquest, Never Winter Nights, Nexus: The Kingdom, MUDS, and Neopets (haha).  But one really took to a whole new level...and that was....

ULTIMA ONLINE!

*cue music*

(Nifty Song, eh?  All noble and shit!)

Ah yes, back before when "Player Versus Player" actually meant killing someone that looked funny at you rather than killing someone for some abitrary point system, where thieves weren't preying on those stupid enough to give their passwords but were ACTUALLY stealing within the game's mechanics. Where Murderers roamed outside the city limits for the purpose of being a dick.  Where players pirates roammed the sea and openly attacked Fisherman and stole all their treasure. In Ultima Online the world was ruthless and with a real sense of loss on the line whenever you played, you grew attached to your character and goods.  I've revisited Ultima Online thanks to the In Por Ylem Shard that recently opened.   And letme sum up my experience in one picture:

If you're not really into MMORPGs, I hope you appreciate how "noble and shit" this song was.