The Panda and The Boo

Creating … Jack Wolf

by The Panda on January 5, 2012 at 11:04 PM

So as you saw today, the comic we posted is actually an old one, the first exclusive comic we did. We’ve had more problems than benefits with the exclusives, so we dropped the idea, and will be posting these in the next few days.

I’ve been working on a little project for our resident wolfy. A few months ago Jack asked me if I could do a commission for him and I promptly agreed. We agreed there was no rush and I could start whenever I had a bit of spare time. I decided to get started on it yesterday and I got into it really bad, working on it for about 7 hours straight. It was the same thing this morning, so much so that I couldn’t think of anything for a comic. So as my apology, I’d like to share this project with you guys, step by step.

The first thing I did was contact Jack and ask him what he wanted, what he wanted his eponymous character Jack to be doing, pose ideas and such. He was rather lenient on the pose thing, so I quickly sketched a few quick poses to show him and see which one he’d like. He did mention that he wanted Jack to hold a gun and be all gung ho and stuff.

Here are the quick sketches I did:

Upon seeing those, Jack said he liked the third option, the one where the character is looking up slightly because it made him look rather James Bond-ish. Once we were settled on that idea, I scaled the sketch up, and started doing a cleaner sketch over it. Notice how the gun looks crappy on the above sketch? Yes, I suck at drawing guns. We’ll see how I deal with the problem in a few moments!

Here’s the beginning of the cleaner sketch:

I spent quite a bit of time on this part alone. I was a bit afraid with this pose at first because of the perspective on the face because getting the muzzle right was very important. If that wasn’t perfect, the whole thing would look off.

After I got the head sketched to my liking I sketched in the rest of the body.

As you can see he doesn’t have a shirt on yet, and both his hands and the gun are looking wonky. His neck is also way too short as well, but these are all details that I worked on after drawing the main sketch. I did add Jack’s mandatory smoke though! Onward!

The sketch is being more and more refined here. The waist and jeans have been tweaked and detailed, and I’ve lengthened his neck a little bit. Notice I’ve also sketched in his right hand proper, and Boo even helped me sketch in the gun with the proper angle. Yes, our resident Boo has experience drawing guns!

The next step is where I concentrated on the gun itself, a USP 45 upon Wolfy’s request. You can also plainly see how I get around my non existent ability to draw guns…

The trick is to look up reference images of the item you want to draw. Most of the time I need to find many images, and then try to sketch something that looks good and somewhat like what it’s supposed to look like. I did get lucky this time, both Jack and I were hunting around for references and he found the above reference that I promptly put in Photoshop over the character’s hand. The angle on this reference was perfect, although this happens rarely for me. I usually have to tweak and skew the image before I can start sketching. Anyway, next step!

Here I simply added his other hand. Not much to say about this step.

The time came to put a shirt on the wolf. I didn’t know what Jack wanted on him at the beginning, which is why I drew him shirtless (it also helps to draw a character without clothes at first, and then draw the clothes over the body). Jack said he wanted something tactical and sleek looking and gave me the reference you can see below, along with the jacket sketched on the character.

Now we have the complete cleaner, detailed, sketch. The next step is to start cleaning, or inking. It’s a fairly simple process though time consuming when you want to get your line looking nice and neat. There isn’t much to it, just trace over the sketch nicely with a round brush, applying thicker lines in places and thinner lines in others. Here’s what the fully inked character looks like.

For this drawing I wanted a more comic book shading style. I’ve used this style a few times before. It consists of applying ‘blocks’ of black shadows, following your light source. Here’s what it looks like:

I try to never put too much black on the character. Too much of it might hide some of the finer details. The next step is applying some flat colors. Fairly simple process. I did apply one change to the character upon Jack’s request. In the comic, Jack Wolf’s eyebrows are a dark grey, implying that his hair is dark as well. However, Jack asked me to make his hair a lot paler, almost white (no worries, it doesn’t age him a bit!). Here is the character with the flat colors applied, along with a simple gradient in the background.

He looks a lot more alive already! Our next step is the shading process. With this style I tend to use black gradients, on a separate layer. I then set that layer to either multiply, overlay or color burn, depending on which blending more fits the underlying color best. I sometimes need to use several layers (it can get confusing when you don’t rename the layer straight away, let me tell you…). After the shading is done, I then do some minor highlights, usually a thin line on the character’s ‘edges’ and some highlights in the hair and other shiny bits. I use the same method I use in shading, using a round white brush instead of gradients. Here’s what the shading and highlighting looks like at this stage:

At this stage the character looked nice and all, but I thought the clothing could benefit from a bit of texture. This is where a simple Google search can help you save hours, as there are plenty of free texture packs, patterns and brushes available online. For the jacket, I though a nice mesh-like texture would look great and add to the overall tactical look of the garment. I couldn’t find the exact type of fabric mesh I wanted, so I went to the next best thing, metal mesh. I found a nifty pack with seamless textures that could be used as patterns. Here is what the jacket now looks like with the texture added, along with a bit of bevel and emboss tweaking.

It gives the fabric an armored feel, which is what I was going for. Next I wanted to find a nice denim texture to apply to the jeans. Again, a Google search saved the day as I managed to find another pattern pack, with seamless denim textures. Here is what the spruced up jeans look like with the texture on.

The jeans look much better with the texture on, as more depth is added with some more bevel and emboss tweaking (NOTE: The above picture is purely a demonstration of the texture, not a shameless crotch shot.). We now have our fully colored, shaded and textured character. It could be left this way, but the overall piece would look much better with a background, so let’s work on a background.

The first thing to do for a background is to think of a setting. I discussed this with Jack before starting. With the pose of the character, jack thought it would be cool if he was on the corner of a wall, ready to jump out and shoot at the dudes who stole his hat and his last pack of smoke (Panda is the primary suspect).

I started scouring Google for some images of street and building corners, and once I was satisfied I stated building the corner wall. I did this simply using blocks of color shaded with gradient layers, as well as overlapping some texture images (for this wall, a stained paper texture worked wonders).

For the next step I simply kept on building the background, using some premade brushes of chain link fences and barbed wire. I then extended the wall to the left, and added some more grime and even drew some graffiti to add to the bad neighborhood feel.

I could’ve left it at that, but thought that some more shadows and lighting would add to the image. I used several gradient layers, using different blending modes to create the shadows and lights. I then created a layer that I color filled with dark blue, and set that to overlay mode with a 20 to 30% opacity to give the overall image a blue tint. At that stage I just tweaked the details, I duplicated some shadow layers on the character to add a bit more contrast, added even more grime on the wall, put in the character’s drop shadow and added the smoke from the cigarette. The overall tweaking is well worth it, as you can see the difference between the above image, and the following, final version.

And so that’s pretty much it. That’s how I go from an idea to a finished image. This one must’ve taken around twelve to thirteen hours over the course of two days.

I hope this is enough to compensate for the lack of comic today. Do tell me if you enjoyed this read, and if you did, I’ll try and do some more in the future! Thanks for reading!

Peace, out!

PS: Jack’s hat and smokes are still missing, please contact him if you find them. And don’t smoke his cigarettes, it’ll only make him mad.

2 Comments

Saints Row the Third Review

by The Boo on December 19, 2011 at 12:01 PM

Posted In: Game Reviews

Saints Row the Third. The third in the series. Ironic huh?

So this was my first time playing a Saints Row game. I hadn’t played one before mainly due to the fact that… Well, I just never was that interested in them.

So the quick rundown of a Saints Row game (according to me). If you’ve played a GTA game (the 3d titles EX: 3, Vice City, San Andreas) then you’ve played a Saints Row game. How so? Simple, the mini map is the same, the controls are the same, you do basically the same things regarding shooting, driving, flying etc. You take control of a gang member/leader yadda yadda.

Story

My problem with the story is the fact that we’re on a quest of revenge for our fallen gang member, yet, all throughout the story, there’s no sense of urgency, no real emotion into getting that much needed vengeance. There are so many quests/missions that have you doing insane things, but they have no tie-ins with our main goal. I wouldn’t mind so much if these were side quests, but they’re not.

Non-stop action! Gets boring very quickly when that's all you have to do.

When you set up in the first 5 minutes of a game of a movie your ultimate goal. The rest of the movie/game should be a constant race towards that goal. Now if on the other hand, that final goal was realised much later on, those other missions where you’re running around naked shooting “ho’s” could actually be fun, since you didn’t have a prior pressing matter to get to.

All in all, the story, while at times funny, is incredibly boring. They throw in a few things like zombies, giant freaks of nature, wrestling and Burt Reynolds for the insane and funny factor. But none of it really ties together, and by the end (After you’ve completed and watched both endings) you can’t help but say “So that’s it?”

Gameplay

This section will be really quick. It plays like any other third person GTA style sandbox game. In my opening I said if you’ve played GTA, or even Red Dead Redemption, you’ve played this. It really does play almost the exact same, with the exception of a few Quick Time Events thrown in. So if you’ve played (again) a Rockstar game, you’ll be able to play this with no problems what so ever.

Deny it all you like, GTA and Saints Row play the same.

The biggest problem with the gameplay is simple. Within the first five minutes of the game you’re using guided missiles, blowing up tanks, jumping in and out of aeroplanes etc. It starts off with a bang, but in doing so, has no where to go after that. For me, a game has to have a starting point, and rise from there to keep me interested. With this game, it blew its load in the first five minutes, and had nothing new to offer afterwards.

Also, I hate how you can’t enter 99% of the buildings in this game. I kept looking for ladders, or ways to get on top of buildings without needing my helicopter, but alas, there is nothing for the explorer in this game. This is something I think these games could do more with.

Sound/Music

Ugh. Okay, I know this is a “gang life” type game, but damn. There was only one radio station in this game I could listen to. The Heavy Metal one of course (Rock being a close second). All the other stations just drove me up the wall. My real problem with the music though? Later on in the game, my metal station started playing classical music. Now I like classical music, but when I’m driving through the streets being chased by gangs, armies and random zombies, I’d like my music a little more on the “DRIVE DAMN IT, DRIVE!” side of things. It may have been a bug, or just the point of the game where things change, but oh well.

The good point about the music? The end game. This was by far the best part of the game for me. When you’re doing the final mission and “Holding out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler started playing. It was the only time in the game I felt pumped to do anything. Unfortunately, there was nothing new at the end to do that you haven’t already done within the first five minutes of the game.

Believe it or not, this is the best part of the game.

Also, “You’re the Best Around” By Joe Esposito during the wrestling match brought back wonderful memories of The Karate Kid, deserves a nod in the right direction for this game and getting me into a nostalgic state.

Overall

Sadly, this is a rental game. You can be done with it in a weekend. Once you’re done, you’ll have no desire to keep playing. The side missions/activities are the boring same old stuff over and over again. The story is nothing great and at times seems like the writers kept changing their minds halfway through. The final endings are incredibly disappointing, there’s no feeling of accomplishment once you’ve seen both endings. None of the characters are really memorable, in fact, I can only remember Killbane’s name, and that’s due to the fact it’s a stupid name.

Did they misspell his name? Killmane?

While it did hold my attention long enough to finish the game, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buying it, as it’s very much a niche game and only those who think swinging a giant purple dildo is funny would enjoy the five minutes of entertainment it brings. Speaking of which, a game with so much insanity and giant purple dildos, it actually felt quite tame compared to other games I’ve played. Guess my mind has been warped too much.

Disclaimer: I am in no way a GTA fan. Nor do I think either franchise is better. But both brands play so alike, you can easily mistake them for being made by the same people.

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Okami Retrospective

by The Panda on December 14, 2011 at 12:29 PM

Posted In: Game Reviews

What can I say about this game that people don’t already know? Maybe a lot, since what some of our readers might know about Okami is that I really, really, REALLY love this game, as is apparent by the Ammy character in the comics. Let’s start with the basics then!

STORY

The legend goes that a hundred years ago, in the tiny settlement of Kamiki, the warrior Nagi and a white wolf slew the eight-headed serpent Orochi.

The victory came at a terrible price, as Shiranui, the white wolf, succumbed to its wounds. The Moon Cave, Orochi’s lair, was sealed using Nagi’s sword Tsukuyomi and statues of the man and the wolf were erected to honor their heroic battle.

A hundred years later, darkness once again descends upon the land. The spirit residing Kamiki’s sacred tree turns to the wolf’s statue, calling upon the entity sealed inside.

That is where the adventure starts, as Amaterasu, the lupine Sun God and reincarnation of Shiranui appears.

GAMEPLAY

Kinda epic looking, isn't it?

The goal of the game is to rid the world of the curses upon the land and bring back peace. You do this with the help of the Celestial Brush, which is an integral part of the gameplay mechanics.
The mechanics themselves are very easy to understand. The game was originally released on the PS2, at a time where the next gen consoles were fairly new. A port to the Wii was released around a year later. Personally I’ve tried both versions and found that the PS2 version controls much better than the Wii version (for me at least). My problem with the Wii version is that in battles the Wiimote swings sometimes don’t register (I tend to get nervous and swing the thing too fast). I haven’t tried it with the Wiimotion Plus add on though, as that might help slightly.

It’s fairly easy to navigate through the different areas. Just move along with the left analog stick, control the camera with the right one and adjust the camera angle with the L1 button.

There are several ways to interact with the landscape as well. You can tackle objects, jump to higher areas and dig in the ground. A lot of the interactions will be done through the use of the Celestial Brush, giving you more ways of interacting as you discover more techniques (there are 13 total in the game). You can slash objects, go on water, open special chest and so on. You find 12 of the Brushes throughout the game (being the sun god, Amaterasu has the Sunrise brush technique by default), each ‘God’ you find representing one of the Chinese Zodiac animals.

As you roam the land you will undoubtedly spot what look like living scrolls in your way. If you walk too close they will rush you, triggering a battle if they touch you. Battle is fairly simple. Jump and run around to evade attacks, use the square button to use your weapon, the divine instrument, to attack. You gain several more weapon as you progress through the game, and you can equip two at a time, one as a main weapon, one as a sub weapon. Sub weapons will act differently depending on the weapon type (Reflector, Beads or Glaive). For example, the Reflector will act as a shield from enemy attacks if you press the triangle button at the right time. I’m not too sure what the other types do, as I don’t really use the equipped sub weapon.

Amaterasu using a Rosary as a weapon

You can also use the Celestial Brush in battle of course. Enemies will sometimes become immune to attacks for a short time. A Power Slash will usually solve the issue. Just draw a straight line across the enemy when this happens, pressing the square button as you hold the R1 button.

You can increase your ‘stats’ by using praise. You earn praise by doing certain actions. The stats are as follows:

Solar Units: Amaterasu’s ‘HP’, if this goes down to nothing, you die.

Inkpots: Used when using the Celestial Brush. Every drawing action depletes your inkpots. No worries as they refill after a short period of time.

Astral Pouch: You fill this pouch by gathering food. Food is gather by interacting with the world. Reviving trees, feeding animals or digging it up. If the pouch is full and you die, your Solar Units are replenished and you can keep playing. Basicallly an extra life.

Money Pouch: The amount of yen Amaterasu can carry.

REPLAYABILITY

When you finish the game you’re given the option to save. It’s advised to do so since if you load this up you start a new game in the New Game + mode. Starting like this will allow you to keep the stuff you had during the previous game, save for the last weapons and some artifacts. You also get a few other nifty rewards. It’s a cool thing to do to find everything in the game so you can get maximum rewards in the end.

LOOKS

This looks awesome.

I love the look of this game. Everything appears as if it was painted on canvas. It’s very different from other games, even other cell shaded ones like Zelda: Windwaker. The animation is very fluid and the cutscenes are very enjoyable. Some cutscenes are interactive as well, requiring the use of the Celestial Brush. The overall look is very artsy, and may take a bit getting used to. I’ve heard some people have stayed away from the game because they didn’t like the art style, but if you’re one of those people, I say BLASPHEMY! But no seriously, I advise to give the game a try even if you’re not fond of the style, because the story pulls you in.

THE ONE CON

I have exactly ONE problem with the game. Just one.
When characters ‘speak’, it sounds like a jumbling mess. Maybe it’s done this way to represent how alien humans sound to a wolf’s ears, but you have the text to read as they speak. My one problem? You can’t turn the speech sounds off. There is simply no option to do it in the settings, which is a bummer because it can become a bit grating at length.

OVERALL

What can I say, this is by far my favorite game ever. The main character controls very well, the gameplay is very easy and the story is very engaging. If you haven’t tried it yet, please give it a shot, I’m sure you won’t regret it!

PS: Excuse my writing skills, I’m in no ways professional!

8 Comments

The State of Gaming (For Me)

by The Boo on December 12, 2011 at 11:03 AM

Posted In: Boo's Blog

So the other night Jack and I had a quick conversation about what games we’re waiting on, looking forward to etc. We quickly found out, that I may just not be a gamer anymore. Or at least, the state of gaming has changed for me.

I actually finished this game and enjoyed it.

It’s been a while since I’ve finished a single player game. In fact, the last game I actually played through until the ending credits was Red Dead Redemption. Now I know that’s not that old of a game, but the last one I actually finished before that was Legend of Dragoon. So what is it about games today that I just don’t have the drive to finish?

I still love this game, and will never part with my PAL copy of it. As it's worth a small fortune.

Possibly too much Epic for me.

I started playing Skyrim, it was late at night. So I got through the intro, made my character, made the first decision on who to follow, walked into the first fight, saved the game, and haven’t touched it since. That was about two or three weeks ago. Every time I look at the icon on my desktop, I ask myself, “Do I really want to play this?” often I move the mouse cursor off of the icon and move it to Angry Birds instead.

Ba Kwark! Crash! Boom!

So how can I go from wanting to play an epic fantasy so vast and rich with exploration and lore, which is something I do truly love, to flinging birds at random objects? It boils down to two things. Time and Age or Age and Time. I’m getting older, and finding I have less time with which to spend my leisure on, which isn’t a bad thing. It does still pain me though, as much as I want to play Skyrim, and other “big” games, I find myself on the thought that I could spend a few hours playing that game, chasing butterflies, looking at mountains, or, I could play a quicker game a few more times, and actually accomplish something.

That sounds silly. Surely I could accomplish something in Skyrim in the same amount of time? Or maybe it’s just this modern world I’m living in which has infected me with its need for instant gratification. *Sigh* I’m not even that old! Why is it that the games I would pour countless hours into, now just don’t interest me in the slightest? Are the games trying too hard to be more than they should be? Okay, let me think about this for a moment. I guess I should think back to when I started gaming, what games I played until my hands fell numb and limp, how much time I had back then, and then compare all that to what is happening in gaming today. (I’ll try and keep this short as to not bore people too much.)

One of the first games I ever played. Maybe I am old.

So thinking back to the early 80′s (Hehe, keep this short? Yeah right.) I remember my first experience with arcade games, it was at the local swimming pool, they had a few arcade games there, the one I remember most was Wonder Boy. That was back in about ’86. Back then, arcade machines used those coins that had the label “cents”, unlike today, if you can even find an arcade machine (In Australia most arcades have closed due to console gaming etc) they use those coins labeled “dollars”. Tom-Tom (The name of our hero in Wonder Boy) would run along in a side scrolling style throwing his mighty stone hammers at what ever creatures would come his way to rescue his girlfriend from some monster. That was it. I think with the amount of coins I put into that machine, I could have probably bought one. But why did I keep playing, even though I never finished it once? I think the answer is fairly simple, it was fun. Back then, games were still buggy, though fewer of them were, but the thing a lot of those games had for me was down right pure fun gameplay. As time has gone on, a lot of the fun has gone, and it feels more like work, more like I’m playing some epic story someone wrote when you could have simply made a movie for me to sit back and enjoy.

It's actually quite good, if you have the time for it.

I think this is where gaming has changed for me. To me, games should be about fun, about time spent relaxing, winding down after a stressful days work to mindlessly play a game to prepare for the next day. Now of course this doesn’t apply to all games today, but most of them feel so much like work, the amount of hours you have to spend in certain games makes it not fun, when all I wanted to do is relax and shoot something in the face, or laugh at a few quick jokes. It’s why when beta testing Star Wars: The Old Republic, I got that feeling of “I’m working”. I used to love MMO’s, I played City of Heroes for almost 6-7 years. That’s a long time to play one game. But I remember towards the end of my time with CoH, I found myself logging in, only to find that there was nothing I wanted to do in game. It was all the same. Sure they introduced a few new mechanics and a few new stories, but by this point, I wasn’t interested in the stories, I just wanted to spend some time actually playing with friends, heck, I think it got to the point where I only cared about my friends in the game, the game was only a means for us to use so we could spend time together even though we all lived thousands of miles from each other.

While I don't play anymore, it's moments like those that I'll always remember.

Now dont’ get me wrong, SW:ToR is actually turning out to be quite a good game, the only problem is, when playing solo, every time I received a quest, I sighed. I’m tired of running around for people for little reward, I just want to run at my own pace, which these days, is as fast as I can so I can get the feeling of accomplishment, without the tireless hours put behind listening to everyone in the galaxy’s plight. Does this sound lazy? I guess it does, but that’s my point. I don’t have time for a Twi’lek who’s lost his father. I just want to build a better lightsaber and smack some Sith with it.

So these days I find myself playing games, that if need be, I can play for five minutes, then stop. I found myself playing a few First Person Shooters again. Why? Because it doesn’t take long to get something done. I find myself playing fighting games again for the same reason. While I would love to play Skyrim and witness all it has to offer, it just feels too much like work, rather than a game. Hmm, I think I’ve worked this out.

Today, gaming for me doesn’t feel like I’m playing a game. Most of these epicly beautiful story rich wonders of art are simply just that, art. It feels like they left the games out of a lot of these new epics. Of course I’m not talking about all games today, just the big epic ones that I think I would have enjoyed years ago when I had more time and could have possibly enjoyed the so called gaming part of it. (Insert Final Fantasy XIII game/movie reference here)

Needed less movie, more game.

So have I given up on gaming? Heck no, it’s just I play different games these days, more of the Board Game variety. Why? Because they actually feel like I’m playing a game, and not working. That, and most board games, (Unless you’re going for some Monopoly world championship) can be done within an hour with friends and family and have a blast while doing it.

It's a board game, and it's awesome!

There was probably nothing interesting to read in this article for most people, and I probably jumped all over the place with no real sense of rhyme or reason, as I tend to do when just writing down my thoughts, so I’ll do a quick Too Long Didn’t Read version.

TL:DR

I’m not into big games anymore. My time is limited, and with that time, I need to have fun while playing a game. I need my games to feel less like work, less like watching a movie, and they need to have more “game” in them.

In saying all this, I can’t wait for Street Fighter X Tekken. Because it’s just mindless fun that I can have in little time.

Fists will fly! Epic battles shall be fought! As two worlds collide!

P.S. Apologies to anyone thinking they’d find something insightful in this post. It’s just me rambling.

4 Comments

Twilight Review

by The Boo on November 29, 2011 at 12:11 PM

Posted In: Movie Reviews

Sigh, I don’t want to do this, I really don’t.

So if you don’t know what Twilight is, you’re lucky. Me, I’ve had to watch this movie roughly 17 times over the past month in preparation for our new show along with having to go see Breaking Dawn Part 1.

Think it’s fun to run your own website? Think it’s fun to hate on bad movies? Well, it is, that is until you come across a movie so boring that all you loved about bad movies is stripped from your soul.

Twilight opens with the line “I’ve never really thought about death before”. Already I’m in pain. This is the opening line from our main character Bella, a 17 year old girl from Phoenix with a loving mother and step father. Emo is a term I usually reserve for those who dress in a certain style, and not so much a comment on their mind set, but in this case, I can’t think of a better term for this self loathing horrendous character that has somehow captured the hearts of millions of teenage girls the world over. Why is that? I know a few people who love Twilight, but yet, they’re happy in their lives, they’re not the self loathing introverted girls that Bella is, so what is it about this movie/story that they find themselves lost in?

The movie goes on to establish that Bella really doesn’t want to leave her mother and step father to be with her biological father in the town of Forks. So why does she move then? It makes no sense and we’re only 5 minutes into this movie? Surely there must be a reason for her having to move, but it’s never stated. Her mother even says “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”. If her mother gave her the option, is she such a masochist that she’d rather take the option to continue her miserable life rather than travel with her mother. Already I hate Bella. Never have I seen a character so boring and loathsome, that in the first few minutes of a movie, I already want her off the screen. But no, this is our main character, I’m going to have to endure this for the rest of the damn movie.

She gets to her new school, and to my surprise, everyone is her best friend immediately and somehow, everyone knows who she is. I know it’s a small town, but damn, I was the new guy in school a few times, and not once did this reaction from the kids there ever happen. I’m going to chalk this up to something I call, Twilight Lore.

Life's so hard when given a free truck and everyone likes you...

It’s at this point we get to see our other main character, Edward. A pasty white, massive eyebrow-ed ugly scruffy haired twat that within seconds, Bella is in love with. Now I know what love at first sight is, and rarely does it work out. For those that do, it is truly wonderful, but as we’ll soon learn, these two have nothing in common. How could they, they’re from two totally different time periods, not to mention the age difference, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Edward has what is one of the funniest reactions you’ve ever seen to smelling someone for the first time, and seems to almost become ill from her scent. Which of course we all know is due to the fact that it drives up his blood lust for her, wait, you didn’t know that? That Edward is a vampire? I guess it would be hard to miss considering he’s going to high school, and he’s out during the daylight, just remember, Twilight Lore. He quickly leaves at the end of class in a rush to get away from the Blue Cheese smelling Bella, to which she takes great offense. We then get a quick monologue from her about confronting Edward over his reaction to her, and to his sudden departure after class. Okay. This I don’t get. I could understand if you had actually talked to him before hand, but you had at least 7 people come up to you, and in a sense say “Hey there new girl, we’ll help you out since you’re new and be your friends without even knowing you.” surely your train of thought should have been, “Damn, what nice kids they are, even though I hate my life, they’re taking an interest in me already?” But no, she goes the route of, cute guy ran away from me, I must know why. Twilight Lore.

Yes, no, yes, no, maybe, um, no, yes...

I’m going to skip a lot of this movie. Why? It’s as boring as watching paint dry on growing grass. The quick version to keep you up to speed. Bella likes Edward. Edward distances himself to hide his secret of being a vampire. There goes 40 minutes of the movie. There’s a sub plot about animal attacks, but any person with a working single brain cell knows that it’s vampires. Heh, after writing that last line, I think I summed up this movie quite well, and why I don’t really feel like finishing this review. This is a love story with vampires. Let that sink in for a while. Sure we all know the attraction vampires can give to people, I used to love vampires, I actually enjoyed Interview with the Vampire, Lost Boys and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I even went as far as to playing the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade (First edition). Now looking at those four examples I’ve given of vampires, there’s a constant theme, all those vampires are cursed, that’s right, cursed to live forever and feed off the living. Sure, Louis fought for his humanity going so far as to live off of rats, but this was my point entirely. He wanted to fight for his humanity, while he knew he was a cursed monsters, he tried his best to keep what little of his former self alive. In Twilight, the Cullens do the same thing, but it doesn’t seem such a struggle for them, in fact, it seems like such an easy thing to do, that being a vampire in the Twilight universe has no side effects what so ever. They can walk in the daylight, as far as we know the only way to kill them is to completely dismember them and then burn the parts. Oh let’s not forget the sparkling in the daylight. I have no idea where that came from, and worse still, the movie never explains this and just expects you to completely forget everything you’ve ever seen or read about vampires in the past.

Twilight Lore.

With Twilight Lore, you too can sparkle.

I’m going to wrap this up, why you may ask, I haven’t even talked about the movie that much. It’s because it’s boring the hell out of me even thinking about this movie.

Bella and Edward finally after all their bullshit with each other get together, Bella somehow works out he’s a vampire even though she see’s him during the day (fucking Twilight Lore) Edward gets even more “emo” than Bella about him being a monster, even though he’s a vegan has incredibly rich parents and dear fucking god this movie is shit!

Who actually likes this shite?! I even asked one of my Twi-Friends what is so great about it, they didn’t even give me a proper response. I was expecting something along the lines of “Edwards cute” but not even that. I have not once seen a single reason for how anyone cloud like this steaming pile. I’m gonna do a list.

1: Vampires can walk in the daylight?

2: Vampires are supposed to keep their existence a secret, so why have 5 of your kind go to a public school?

3: Why is Bella so hateful of her life, when she can makes friends without even thinking, is not un-attractive and has half the boys in school wanting to be with her?

4: How the fuck did anyone read Stephanie Meyers draft for this shit and ask any of the above questions?

You know what, I’m done. Twilight is simply a pathetic love story with characters who you wouldn’t give two craps about if they hung themselves with their own entrails.

There is something positive I would like to mention though after all of this, I really like the characters of Carlisle, Esme, Alice and Jasper. I actually wanted to know their back stories. They were so much more interesting than the leads we were given. Carlisle reminded me of a vampire who had beaten his monster side, I wanted to see that! I wanted to see how he overcame his blood-lust, I wanted to see how he found Esme and how they started their family. Jasper was the newest vegan, I wanted to see his struggles with his own blood lust, along with his back-story. But no, we get none of that. We only got the boring tripe from two of the worst characters ever written. Twilight Lore. Years from now people will look back and go, “What the fuck where you thinking?”