/. News 2

I received one of my DVDs. It was Chet ZAR's. I quickly opened the packaged and slipped into my drive, and was entranced by the tutorial that was making it's way through my skull and into my brain...
The DVD was great, and the techniques I learned were invaluable and I've already pretty much memorized all the important info. (Or at least what I felt was important.)
But I'm somewhat upset that my Keith Thomspon DVD hasn't come in the mail yet! They were both set at 2 day shipping, and were ordered on Tuesday. I received the Chet ZAR DVD on Thursday but did not recieve the Keith Thomspon DVD. And I didn't get it Friday or Saturday. So I'm looking forward to Monday, of course.
This sucks because Keith Thompson is not only a great artist, but the way he draws in pencil is very similar to the way I draw, or at least the final render (minus the painting) looks very close to my work. I don't mean in conceptual form, but in the look and feel of the penciling.
He also covers the traditional side of his art, he starts from a sketch on pencil and paper, then scans it into Photoshop and talks about how to clean up the image for Digital Painting. This is an important section to me. But of course it's not near as important as his painting techniques, which I'm excited to learn, because I really want to paint many of my concepts.
So I anxiously await Monday.

In news related to the development my mod Ruiner: We're getting very close to finishing up the work to release the first three levels of our mod. Things are really looking great and it's definitely fun working on the project. But to be honest, I can't wait until it's done; not just to see how people enjoy the work that has been done, but also because I really want to get work on some my own personal projects I've been constantly thinking about.
My personal stuff consists of things that I'd like to make in my 3D/2D programs, and take them into game engines. I've been thinking about working with the Unreal Engine, but I've worked with id software tech for such a long time that I may just use that. Many of the stuff I have in mind is environment art (even though I usually do characters), and a character (maybe more). It's all sci-fi that's been bouncing in my head for the past few months.
No matter what, I can't wait to get plugging away at those ideas.

Merry Christmas post!

I know it's not Christmas yet, still 4 days away. But I wanted to make sure to say Merry Christmas in my next post, because I probably won't make another one before Christmas! I'll be too busy doing family stuff!!!!
So, last time I made a post, I said I was in the middle of reading Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell novel... Well I finished that. Then I went and picked up the next book in the series, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda, and I finished that last night. Operation Barracuda was even better than the first book, I loved it! I'd talk about it but I don't want to give anything away, in case anyone ever wants to read the books =/.
The next book in the series is Splinter Cell: Checkmate. I don't have a clue what its about, but who cares? It's Splinter Cell and Sam Fisher is the star. That's all that matters!
Although I have seen on the internet, (specifically the Amazon reader reviews) that the book has some serious typos and grammatical errors all over the place, especially in the beginning. I have no doubt about this, since the author was allegedly given only 2 months to write the book! I don't know how those guys do it! Errors or not, I'm a huge fan of not just Splinter Cell games, but now the novel series, and I am getting this book and reading it, regardless of errors. I'll just power read my way through them and ignore the mistakes :).
It's actually pretty confusing about the authors; The writer's name is labeled on the front of the books as David Michaels, but this is just pseudonym. The author's actual name of the first two Splinter Cell books was Raymond Benson. Benson is best known as the last official author of the 007 series novels. Well, I read his Splinter Cell work and I must say, I'm impressed and I am now a fan. But the last two books of Splinter Cell, Checkmate, and Fallout was written by another author, so far unknown, going by the same pseudonym, David Michaels.
And the first two Splinter Cell books were written in the first person (which is the writing style I enjoy most), while the latest two books are in the third person (not written by Raymond Benson). Due to some of these changes in the books since the switch in authors, I am worried about the quality! I'm sure I'll enjoy the next books though.
I'm going to wait on Christmas, see if anyone got me the books. If not then I have to buy them :(.

Next up in my update... Duke isn't dead!!! After quite a while, 3DRealms has released a Teaser of Duke Nukem Forever... I think the last big news I saw on Duke Nukem was in 2001.
When I was a kid, the Duke Nukem was one of my first games ever. I played and loved the side-scrollers, and I really loved Duke Nukem 3D. So I was excited about Duke Nukem Forever... At least for the first 4 years it was in development, but since then the game has been under development for 10 years. After a while I forgot, then people started realizing that it hadn't come out yet and started laughing at it.
It looks interesting, but it's only a teaser and doesn't show much. I'm not really super excited for Duke anymore, but I am looking forward to it's release if it ever comes out. Heh, I was wondering if they were going to delay the teaser before it released :).

I've been continuing work on the modification for Doom 3, Ruiner. Everything is looking good and our work is really progressing! I can't wait to release this baby and see people's reaction!