Forest Creature

Gosh it's been a while, hasn't it?

I have lots of WoW screenshots to share, but that's not what this post is about.

Gaming update:
These days I play Hearthstone (Finally out of beta, now to wait for the iPad version!) and WoW, in which I'm kinda just exploring and collecting pets while waiting for the new expansion, doing the things I usually don't take the time for.

New doodle:

This is what this post is actually about, my new drawing. Just a fun sketch (with pen, so little chance to correct mistakes) with a quickie coloring done in Photoshop. I imagine it would have been faster/easier if I had some sort of Wacom tablet. Someday, someday..

Feel free to leave comments, just remember this is not me at my finest or most refined. You can also visit my DeviantArt and leave a comment there! I'm also doing a $10 commissions promotion, so get 'em while they're cheap!

Thanks for reading!

sketch of the day 2

I sketched these.. what feels like a week or so ago, right before I fell sick. I'm recovering now, and finally got around to snapping a photo to post.

It's concept sketches for an idea I want to develop.

sketch of the day

I've been considering doing a sketch-a-day thing, and I'm gonna make this the first one and try to keep it up from here.

About this sketch, it is character development for a concept I have for a new comic. I'm going for simple and cute.

Hillsbrad Foothills

I think I once wrote that I would play WoW again when things stabilized. Well, things stabilized.

I went in and the first thing I did was look for a group on the Timeless Isle to go and kill the world boss Ordos, the Fire God of the Yaungol. After defeating the "final boss", and completing Wrathion's legendary quest chain and receiving my legendary cloak, this was the last item on my bucket list in the end game. With that out of the way I have gone back to the low level area of Hillsbrad Foothills, to catch up with low level story lines I skipped.

My Hillsbrad experience has been part disgusting an part hilarious, with a bit of awesome and lots of solitude. The whole time I was there I never once saw another player, but ironically some of the quests involved npc's that mimicked players, which was the hilarious part.

The "Jenny Awesome" storyline was especially funny because this crazy undead guy kept taking this elf dude for a girl, which is a joke I've seen before, but I can't remember where. Orcus the Kingslayer's story is another one worth mentioning. Saving him from shallow water reminded me of a scene in Robin Hood: Men in Thights, and when he died a true hero's death it was a little strange, because you kind of expect him to be able to resurrect like a player would, but since he can't it was kind of sad.

I just remembered. I actually have one last quest line to go finish there, the plants versus zombies one. Speaking of zombies, the undead can be really disgusting, like when they breed spiders in bears and your mission is to help collect the egg sacs.. Ew.

These are my thoughts for tonight, if you have any thoughts to share on the subject you're more than welcome to do so in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a pretty awesome game, especially considering that it's free to play.

I started the game with a Duelist character, which is a melee class. The character introduced himself as having been exiled for killing a nobleman that was insulting him, so he as defending his honor. Sounded nice enough, and the class played nicely enough.

At one point I acquired a skill that belonged to the Witch class though, a fireball spell. Suddenly I had range and when it hit it exploded and damaged nearby enemies as well! It was great! And even later on I found a spell for raising zombie minions, also belonging to the Witch class, and it is at this point that I asked "Why am I playing a duelist again?"

So I deleted the Duelist (I didn't have to, but I like to only have 1 character most of the time) and rolled a Witch, went quickly through the zones I'd already cleared before and finished the first major zone of the game.

While I enjoy leveling the Witch, and following the story, I'm starting to find the game grindy in the sense that it's just the same thing over and over. Enter zone, kill everything, find exit. Since it's free I will continue playing if I feel like it though.

Laffie strip 2

Sorry if your mobile device doesn't see the flash object. If you click the link it should take you to the image at deviantart.

comic 3 - Laffie 2-01 by dxantonio on deviantART

Hello! I am recovering from being sick over the weekend and I can't think of a better way to celebrate than sharing my newest comic strip! I've changed the style a little from the previous strip, and intend to change it again for the next strip. The next one will be a simplified version, or I will at least try to keep it simple.

On the topic of drawing, I've been meaning to do a "doodle a day" thing, but keep forgetting to do it. It's too bad, because I could use the practice, not just for my hand, but also for my creativity.

Game Samples

Don't let my previous post fool you.. I have not reactivated my WoW account yet. It was just something that occurred to me while reading about private (aka. pirate) WoW servers.

EVE ONLINE
No, I'm also not playing Eve Online, even though I've advanced enough in that game to be able to play for free, It demands a certain consistency and time spent on "upkeep" and not really playing the game, for as long as I want to play for free, which is always.

DIABLO 3
I'm giving the free trial of Diablo 3 a shot, didn't make it very far yet though. Took a little walk to town, killing some undead on the way, and logged off in town. I haven't formed an opinion on it yet, since I've barely played it so far.

STARCRAFT 2
Another freebie I'm trying from Blizzard is the Starcraft Starter Edition. I did the tutorials and first mission. I'm completely unfamiliar with the terms and abilities, but since I have experience playing Warcraft 3 it's pretty intuitive. The characters and story are interesting enough for me to come back at some point and continue.

HEARTHSTONE (BETA)
Then there's Hearthstone, the upcoming "card" battle game from Blizzard. I signed up for the closed beta and got in. I liked it a lot, and did my duty as beta tester, sending a crash report to Blizz. For now I don't think I'll be going back to play it again though. You see, at the beginning you get a "starter deck" which happens to be a Mage deck. Each deck has a Hero character that acts as your avatar in the game.

I have nothing against mages, but I wish I could have chosen my starter class. I would have picked Paladin, because that would be in line with my WoW character. Anyway, once you do the tutorial, you're ecouraged to play Practice games, where you can challenge the different classes in easy difficulty, gain points that eventually unlock more cards specific to your class, and unlock the classes you win against so you can play them as well.

So, I challenged the Paladin first, of course, and after refining my strategy I eventually beat him, but by then the Mage had a good deck set up and had many unlocked cards. Instead of switching to Paladin I decided to waste no time and just use the Mage to defeat the rest of the classes, which I did, and some on the first try. I then collected my rewards and wondered what to do next. I could go try the classes on "expert" difficulty, or go challenge other players, each would help me unlock more cards and play modes I reckon.
Well, this is where I decided to just leave it. It felt like having killed the last boss on LFR in WoW, and thinking "What now?" The last boss is dead, and you can go try it on a higher difficulty, but it will still be the same boss. It's either that or PvP. And PvP can be nice, but it has no story, and I like a good story.

PATH OF EXILE
Yesterday a friend told me I should check this game out, it's free, and so I did. From playing it about 1hr 30 mins I can say it's like an instanced open world Diablo MMO. It's dark and gorey like Diablo and has a similar hack n' slash gameplay. I do like it and will play this occasionally, until I reactivate WoW.. most likely a few weeks before WoW's next expansion gets released, so I can kill Ordos (unfinished business).

That's in a nutshell what I've been up to game-wise.

Have you tried any of these games? Do you like them? Have any questions? Let me know in a comment!

Thanks for reading!

"Old" WoW Servers

This picture depicts the final bosses of the 5 versions of WoW so far.

This post is about something that Blizzard (the company behind World of Warcraft) has said on their official forums they will not do, but is something I would like if they did it with their game, World of Warcraft. I also think it would bring back many players who left the game over time.

WoW is a nearly 10 year old game and has changed drastically since its release, and with an upcoming expansion it will change even further. Over time many patches, but especially expansions have changed the game a lot, and many players lost interest when things changed in a way did they not like.

Now, it is my perception that there is a large and growing nostalgia amongst not only the older players, but also ex-players for the older versions of the game. I even considered trying a "private" vanilla (Original WoW) server myself, but I don't see the point if when I'm done with the content there I can't move on with my toon to a BC (Burning Crusade: first expansion) server to continue my journey there.

Right now most of Vanilla WoW is just gone, and replaced with an upgraded version in Cata (Cataclysm: the third expansion). It was lorewise "aged" 10 years, with updated zones and quests and such. Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful in itself, but I can never go back and experience the original game now, unless I go play on some private server.

You can totally still buy Vanilla WoW though, only thing is, there's no Vanilla server, so what happens is, it gets patched into compatibility with current servers and you still have to play in the "aged" Cata version of the game. Here's the thing: I don't think it would be hard for Blizzard to open up some "older version" servers.
They:
- know the hardware specs
- have the software
- have the know-how

All they need to do is:
- build an "old" server (can be for Vanilla, BC, WoTLK, Cata..)
- install the last version of the game before a new expansion (again, can be Vanilla, BC, WoTLK, Cata..)
- give people the option to have separate installations (in different folders) of the game for the different versions they want to play.

Right now the battle.net launcher has a section for each of the 3 major games (Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo), they will likely add more for the other games, but for WoW they could also add a sub-section for each old expansion, which will have a slightly modified install in that it will not patch past the specific expansion, and will connect only to their respective "old" servers.

The one thing I would want in addition though, would be to be able to transfer my character to any server, be it a an "old" server of the next expansion or directly to the current servers. I think it should be obvious though, that you should only be able to transfer your character to a newer version of the game, and not to an older version. I expect this would not be as easy as moving characters is now, since I expect the character databases of the different versions are incompatible, but it is not something that can't be figured out.

The reason Blizzard has for not doing any of this, from what I've seen from my search on the subject, boils down to "We want the game to keep moving forward.", which I can respect, but I think that a huge amount of players would love to have the option to play on "old servers", and it could mean a huge influx of nostalgic ex-players, increasing the playerbase, which means a ton of more subscription money for Blizzard. So even from a business point of view it makes sense. Unless, that is, somehow, I'm underestimating the costs.

In conclusion, I respect Blizzard's stance on the subject, but am hopeful that someday they will change their minds about it, just like when they said "We will NEVER add pandas to the game!". Probably the best way to actually gauge interest would be for Blizzard to put a poll on their website with the question: "Which of these would you prefer:
a) "old" servers
b) dance studio
c) some world event maybe
d) well, you get the idea.."

I am curious about how others think about this, so please leave a comment is you have one, and thanks for reading! :)

Pen or Pencil?

I usually draw with a pencil so that I can erase mistakes, but sometimes when I don't care about the end results a pen suffices, and I just draw whatever my brain poops out.

Today, mostly just to stay awake, I used a pen to draw this picture of a bug-man:

I like it so much I posted it on my Deviantart and decided to share it here as well :)

Super Jewel Quest

In this post I'll tell you about a game I play simply because it's convenient. It's a super simple cell phone game called Super Jewel Quest (cheap phone version), and looks something like this:

The pixelly graphics are actually nice considering it's on the cheapest phone in the world. The worst thing is the controls. Moving the cursor around one thumb-click at a time is a pain, but again, cheapest phone in the world, so it's really not the game's fault.

The point of the game is to turn each brown square gold, and you do this by activating a jewel in the squares. Activation happens mainly by lining up 3 of the same color either horizontally or vertically. When you line up 4 or more they also activate nearby solitary gems of the same color, which is useful for those hard-to-reach squares.

When gems are activated they disappear and the columns shift down, and new gems appear from the top to top them off. Sometimes gems will be buried into the squares, and need to be activated multiple times before activating the square, and while buried they are frozen in place, which holds any gems on top of them place as well. This can be useful for strategic shifting of gems into the voids that can be created by activating the gems under the gems that are buried.

Levels have increasingly messed up layouts involving static green squares like the 2 in the picture above. In that level for example they make it harder to activate the gems in the bottom corners.

I only ever play this when I'm out and have to wait, and have reached level 31 so far. I don't know how many levels there are in total.. I hope there's many more, otherwise waiting will get a lot more boring!

Thanks for reading! Do you have a favorite game for when you're out waiting? Tell me in the comments!

Laffie

Currently starting on Laffie strip 2, and considering making him a "regular" giraffe, like the original concept was. It would cause a continuity issue, but I think it's probably best just rip the band-aid off..

Here's the previous (the first) Laffie strip:

Here's the original concept:

And two concepts I did in between:

I'm leaning towards a male version of the one in the very last picture.

This post is not just about sharing, but also so I can get my thoughts organized to make a decision. It helped! :)

Thanks for reading!

A Poster

Currently my main source of income is from freelancing with my wife as a webdesigner and graphic designer. If we manage to get a steady stream of new projects it could eventually sustain us, but for now that is not the case, that is why we are both looking for jobs. I'm also drawing a regular comic strip, which through ads should be able to generate passive income, at least if I can generate and maintain traffic. That is the plan!

What I wanted to share today is a poster I made for a client recently. Sometimes I'll find the things I design to be boring or even ugly, because sometimes that's just what the client needs. Not in this case though! I enjoyed making this, using elements from previous work done for this client and some new elements as well, and I drew inspiration from a design my wife made before this. For more information on my graphic and webdesign services please visit: rockyourpower.com

WoW

As far as I can remember it all started when one day a schoolmate showed me The legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on his SNES. I became not only a fan of the Zelda series, but also fantasy games in general. Come to think of it, I already liked fantasy books and cartoons, so that was only the beginning in the sense of gaming.

I dabbled into many other games after that, and one day my cousin showed me Warcraft 2 at his house. At this point I became a fan of the Warcraft series, which culminated in me starting playing World of Warcraft shortly after it came out, and even though I am currently technically not playing, I still consider myself a player. I keep in touch with my WoW guild on their facebook page, and intend to return to the game when my financial situation has stabilized.

The downside of my "WoW career" is that in retrospect it has taken from my development of an actual career as an accountant, which is the direction my life was/is going in, but let's not go into that. I got my addiction under control eventually and when I play now it is super casual, which means I can't do any "serious" playing, but I still managed to do some cool things. Thanks to WoW becoming more and more casual friendly I actually managed to get my legendary cloak!

It is by Playing WoW that I came across somewhat of a rolemodel though, someone I aspire to be like. I'm speaking of +Scott Johnson, a cartoonist and podcaster, who did and still does the podcast The Instance, amongst other things on Frogpants.com. He just seems like a great guy, a great father, a self-employed cartoonist, and a WoW nerd like myself! He is an inspiration and I just wanted to express that here.

Athough I have other priorities for practical reasons right now, as soon as possible I will make drawing my first priority, for a man should have a dream of greatness, and although I've deluded myself a long time that I could achieve greatness in WoW, I have awoken to the fact that being a pro gamer (the only real way to achieve greatness there) has never been my real dream.

It was a pleasure to write down a part of my history and thoughts down, and I hope you enjoyed reading it! Come back again, because I intend to write regularly.

Introducing Myself

I'm first and foremost a husband and father of three. I live in the Netherlands, and I'm technically unemployed, and looking for work. My financial situation is actually quite dire, and until I have some stability I will not be playing  the games that I usually play, since they are time sinks for time I need to spend on stabilizing my finances. Don't expect too many posts about my personal life, I don't like revealing too much to people I do not know.

My main source of income is currently my freelance designing and building of websites. I will link my website here in the hopes that someone who reads this will buy something :) : rockyourpower.com
Me and my wife freelance together and we give really good value for a good price, so check it out!
My wife already runs her own blog on that website, so you can read all there is to know about this part of us there. If I have anything specifically mine I want to share about our freelancing I'll still x-post it here though.

As the title of the blog implies, I am a gamer, and even in tough times a true gamer will find ways to play! What I mean is that I take a little time now and then to play a little something here and there, super-casually. I'll post some screenshots of games I play, with context, and I'll try to keep it interesting.

Last, but not least, I'm a cartoonist. I've loved drawing cartoons since I was a wee lad, and still do. I aim to draw comic strips, and illustrate books, and maybe even make my own comic book! *shoots for the stars* I should be posting lots of drawing posts, even if they are just sketches.

So why do I write? Well, mostly I just want to get my thoughts out there, where they may touch others. I also think it may be therapeutic for me, and that it may serve as a partial journal or chronicle of my life. If you decide to follow this blog you will learn more about me, what and how I think, and the things I do. I sincerely hope you will come back and read more, since that will keep me motivated to write!

~DX

ps. "~DX" has been my sig for ages. I started using is first as a signature for my drawings (without the "~"), but nowadays I don't even sign them anymore. I've seen at least one more person use it, but that's okay, when I started using it at least it was original!