Kategoriarkiv: International

Sarah Àlainn – the queen of vocal game themes

Ever since she made her commercial debut singing the ending theme of Xenoblade Chronicles, Sarah Àlainn has become the uncrowned queen of vocal game themes, mostly in the JRPG genre, and for good reason. With an incredibly smooth, beautiful voice and a huge range, she can deliver excellence every time. Let’s take a look at her work in gaming.

I never ended up playing much of Xenoblade Chronicles (2010) on the Wii, but having been a fan of Yasunori Mitsuda ever since Xenogears, I made sure to listen to the soundtrack. And ”Beyond the Sky” made me an instant fan. It’s a soft piano ballad with shades of Mitsuda’s previous ”Small Two of Pieces” from Xenogears and ”Pain” from Xenosaga. While it was a brief disappointment that Joanne Hogg didn’t return after those amazing performances, I was blown away by this unknown newcomer. At this point Sarah was still studying at the University of Tokyo, and her only online presence was a rehearsal video from the university. But already at this point I was captivated, and bought her first album Celeste as soon as I could. Sarah would later re-record ”Beyond the Sky” on her second album, refining it even further. It remains a classic. ... Läs hela texten

Kotobukiya Artist Support Item: Hand Model

As any artist can tell you, one of the hardest things to draw is the human hand. In any wider view of a person, the hand takes up a tiny space but there’s so much detail that needs to be just right. There are the classic wooden mannequin hands, but they are extremely limited in their range. Usually the best model is your own hand – if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re probably busy using it at the time.

I’ve been using Figma and Figuarts figures for a long time to capture poses for my pictures, but although they come with a wide range of optional hands, they are really small and provide only a limited help. So most of the time if the hand is important, I’ve had to take a photo and superimpose that onto the model. Obviously, it’s also tricky to take a picture from many angles holding a phone in your other hand. So I was really excited to learn about the new ”Artist Support Item” from Kotobukiya, a fully posable realistic hand model in 1:1 scale. ... Läs hela texten

Sheng Long is real in Street Fighter 6

Sheng Long is one of the most classic hoaxes, originally created as an April Fools gag. ”You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance” was Ryu’s mistranslated win quote in Street Fighter 2, but it was quickly assumed that Sheng Long was his master and EGM ran with it, making fake pictures of this character and claiming that he was available in the game.

Well, it took thirty years but he’s now real in Street Fighter 6. After beating World Tour mode, you can return to the game and keep levelling up, taking on additional hidden fighters all around the world, like the Andore family. And Sheng Long appears, hidden at the top of the SIRN building (where another eventful battle in World Tour takes place). Just enter the building at night, take the elevator up to floor 7 and run past all the normal enemies in there. Sheng Long will be standing on the top beams outside. Of course, you can confirm that he’s on the map before you make the effort of running all the way up there. ... Läs hela texten

Lego Speed Champions Lamborghini Countach: Sunstreaker edition

The Speed Champions has provided a ton of classic cars already, and the Lamborghini Countach was very welcome when it released last year. But it was the wrong colour. In my book Countachs are interesting because Sideswipe and Sunstreaker transformed into the model, and they were red and yellow.

Obviously, since this is Lego I could do something about it. Luckily, Lego anticipated this need and printed the stickers on clear backing, which helped a lot in recolouring the vehicle.

Some changes were necessary as not all the parts come in yellow. The 2×4 wedge plates (65429) that are hidden behind the rear wheels are barely visible, so I changed them for black ones. The 1×2 panels (23969) could be replaced by two 1×1 ones. One trickier part was the windshield, which doesn’t come printed in yellow obviously. But there is an unprinted one, and I added a 4×4 modified plate on top. A spare sticker from another set provided the black detail. ... Läs hela texten

Tribute to the artist John Kim

My internet history began around Christmas in 1995. My mother worked at an education center that had access to the world wide web, and occasionally brought me there in the evenings. This was far away from the streaming social media thing the internet is today. Google wasn’t a thing. I’m not even sure Altavista was much of a thing. ”Surfing” was literally finding out one URL and then checking their link page. This was the time of blank grey backgrounds, of index.html:s, of ”under construction” gifs and of webrings. Sometimes the webpage wasn’t even HTTP, but just a FTP directory where you could download stuff to your heart’s content. I brought floppies to that place and downloaded everything I could find. ... Läs hela texten

Rating all the Street Fighter box art

Street Fighter VI is finally, after a string of excellent promotion, attracting controversy over a rather dull cover featuring rather dull protagonist Luke. And while we don’t know if it’s final (the first logo shown wasn’t), it would be a shame if such a promising game was let down by terrible box art. Because Capcom has been employing amazing artists like Akiman, Bengus, Shinkiro and Kinu Nishimura, so every piece of cover art in the history of Street Fighter has been amazing. Wait, it hasn’t? Let’s have a look. ... Läs hela texten

Review: The Lost Birds by Christopher Tin

After another successful Kickstarter campaign and a long wait, it’s finally here. The subtitle of Christopher Tin’s fourth major album is An Extinction Elegy, and that becomes very obvious when listening to this album. The previous ones have had different themes, but have generally celebrated humanity in different ways. Even To Shiver The Sky, which described the way flight was used for warfare, ended on a positive note with Russian and American texts talking about the wonders and possibilities of space. ... Läs hela texten

Lego MOC 1:1 Avdank Ultimate Collector Series 2: Niereth

It has been two years since I finished my 1:1 sculpture of my character Shaana. Since then I’ve moved, and having set up a brand new Lego building area I wanted to make something big again. And the choice was fairly obvious. Niereth is a much newer design of mine, having been created in 2018, but she quickly became a favourite.

After having already learned roughly how to make a sculpture of this size, the build took shape quickly. I made a 1:1 sketch to figure out how large she would need to be to scale with Shaana, who is 181 cm tall while Niereth is 175 cm. This time around I had the super useful Technic frames and liftarms with holes on all sides, which made the internal skeleton much easier to construct. So I very quickly had the general concept up and running, and could get started on the face. This time the head is separate and sits securely on the neck but can be removed. With all the frames it was much simpler to mount the outer layers, so I can remove most of them very easily which turned out to be helpful. ... Läs hela texten

Review of Storm Collectibles Golden Axe Tyris Flare

Golden Axe, in its Amiga version, was probably one of the first games where I got to play as a distinctly female character. Sure, there was Metroid, but there really is no comparison between the NES game and the huge, detailed Frazetta-esque sprites of the arcade game and its 16 bit ports. I probably played as Gilius at first, but soon discovered that Tyris was devastating with her screen-filling dragon magic. That she was running around in a tiny white bikini wasn’t a factor just yet.

So even though I’ve rarely played any of the Golden Axe games in a good thirty years, Tyris Flare is rather special as a game character, and I jumped on the preorder of this brand new figure from Storm Collectibles. The company makes a ton of game figures, but I haven’t had the opportunity to get any until now. She did end up being delayed for month after month, not to mention that she came packed with a blue dragon which bumped up the price even more, plus of course shipping and import fees. So while I’m not absolutely certain whether she was worth the cost and wait, let’s take a look. ... Läs hela texten

Sarah Àlainn and friends: Shionogi Music Fair – La Diva TV Live

Before One was announced, Sarah Àlainn performed in a live show with three other artists, which was released on CD with the somewhat cumbersome title Shionogi Music Fair – La Diva TV Live. Sarah was joined by Ryoko Moriyama, Seiko Niizuma and Ayaka Hirahara, neither of whom I had encountered before. Moriyama is a folk singer who has released some classics in her long career. Niizuma is mostly a musical artist, having performed in Miss Saigon and Les Miserables. Hirahara is a pop singer who performed the ending theme of Okami and has recorded a version of ”Inochi no Namae” from Spirited Away. ... Läs hela texten