I don’t know, I wanted to title this “Above the Law” or something but I’m too tired to make that work. Get your funny elsewhere, sorry.

After Moebius, and Brandon Graham who started this whole meme. Don’t really have much to say, except that I am a huge, huge fan of Moebius and how he keeps showing up in everything I love.

(click for the embiggening)

So, uh, I am not a gamer proper, whatever that means. I shat my pants over both Portals and do thoroughly love me some puzzle games like ICO, but up until around the start of college the entirety of my clocked game-play could be summarized with fleeting bouts of Mario Kart  and several replays of Pokemon Silver.

Shadow of the Colossus was one of the first non-GBA games I played in my life, having grown up without one of the bigger consoles, and it hit a very particular chord in my head. It’s constantly brought up in the “videogames as art” arguments, but I feel like that is mostly for the sheer lack of effort it puts toward absolutely making sure you are, will be, and never not entertained. It is eloquent and minimal and incredibly depressing for none of the common reasons video games are depressing.

Every battle is a boss and every fight is like setting a Bernini on fire and openly sobbing over your actions. SoTC could be considered art because it drags you through a sort of history book, except you have to make the conscious decision to destroy a piece of culture in order to discover the rest. And yeah, I guess you’re saving your girlfriend, but whatever.

What I really love is how quiet the rest of the game is. Not a soul around aside from your familiar, which leaves a lot of time to run and survey the gorgeous landscape. You can get pretty far on the map without actually going through any battles, and some might consider it wasting time, but they are seriously missing out on a good chunk of the point. When you think of how long people spend level-grinding their pokemon, SoTC becomes more of an ambience than a long-ass haul to thy next foe— the journey and not the destination, etc. I could spend just as much time actually admiring the colossi designs (of course, this is half out of reluctance to stab ‘em; they make some pretty sad sounds), but I dunno. I’m a sucker for barren landscapes, playing with scale, and as few unnecessary characters as possible. This also is why I was so enamored with Marian Churchland’s game pitch, The Crossing, a while back and also why I appreciate the look of Journey. In terms of pure selfish wants for personal entertainment, these games are so up my alley it’s practically a euphemism.

So. There you go.

Burning your eyes since 1988.

But a business sort of “fwoosh”.

Well, this came out kicking and screaming.

Another one of these limited palette dealies. I’m a little worried that I’ve exhausted my lined up sketch ideas, which means tomorrow’s will contain a little bit of fan art.

My thought process for these has been picking three pretty tubes of gouache and not-caring all over a piece of paper. It’s liberating and left me feeling like I have even less of an idea of how to categorize my work, but that’s fine. That’s. Just fine.

I also feel I should mention that I’m offering commissions, to anyone who’d like my inky nonsense on their walls.