Once upon a time...

I've been a Disney fangirl pretty much since birth. Disney World is one of my favorite places in the world and certainly my favorite I've ever been to. So when I heard about this I was so excited I knew I had to blog about it.

In Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom a new castle is being built in Fantasyland.
Which castle, you ask? Only the one in my favorite Disney movie of all time... Beauty and the Beast.

Not only that but they are building a Be Our Guest restaurant, as well as Gaston's pub, Maurice's cottage and the list goes on.

It's set to open in late 2012.

You can read all about it in this article.

Thank you Disney Imagineers! I can't imagine a better place to go on my next visit to Disney World (whenever that may be).

Blog y'all later.


~Twethereal

Visions of Video Games past...

I'm having Blog block. I had a heck of a time figuring out what I was going to write about for this entry.

But I recently joined the anime club at my school and someone there told me about an upcoming exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Next March at the American Art Museum in Washington DC they are going to be having an exhibit on the Art of Video Games. I'm really excited about this because it shows that they actually consider video games to be an influential medium. FINALLY.

The exhibit will be there from March 16th to September 30th 2012.

Until April 7th this year, you can vote on what video games will be featured in the exhibit. Here is the link.


Skull Kid from Majora's Mask

 Some of my favorite video games of all time are on this list, namely Final Fantasy (VII, X and XIII), Kingdom Hearts II, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, and Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.

To hear more about this exhibit click this link.

I hope you all are as excited about this as I am. Twethereal out.


~Twethereal

There and back again...

You know, I swore to myself that I wasn't going to bail on this blog after my media class was over. How am I doing so far?  /sarcasm

iMac

So what have I been up to since the beginning of December? Well, for starters, my parents were generous enough to get me a new iMac for Christmas (kind of as an "investment in my future"). I'm typing this on it right now. It's so much faster than my poor abused laptop. They got me the Adobe Creative Suite as well. Thank you mom and dad! So hopefully sometime in the near (or at least not too far distant) future, I might snazz my blog up a little bit.

Macintosh SE

It's been a while since we've had a desktop Mac in the house. In fact the last one, and the only one I ever knew was the Macintosh SE. Boy do I miss that thing. Dad said it only had 20 MB on it, but somehow back then that was enough. (Compare that to the 1 TB that is on my current computer.)





But I digress. I had been saving up money to get myself a computer for a while, so since I didn't have to anymore, I bought myself a Wacom Intuos4 drawing tablet.

Wacom Intuos4 tablet

WHERE ON EARTH HAS THIS TABLET BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

Honestly. It's the best thing since sliced bread. I've been drawing like crazy. Maybe if all one and a half of you that read my blog are good, I might put up a few sketches sometime.

I also recently joined Zazzle. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a website that takes a design you've created and puts them on t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, etc. so that you can sell them and get part of the profit. So far I haven't sold anything, but I don't have anything too worthwhile on there yet. But I'm planning on creating more designs soon. Stay tuned.



And lastly, unless I've forgotten anything else, I've been keeping my eye on the new Mac App store. So you can probably expect a blog entry or two about that in the future.


~Twethereal

Let's mix it up iPad-style...

Did I ever tell you how much I love my graphic design class? No?

We recently got to talking about the iPad and some of the apps created for various magazines. My teacher then proceeded to show us these two videos highlighting what the iPad can do from a graphic design perspective. I was blown away.

Wired Magazine <- When going from print to the internet, an article might be taken and reformatted until it's just a bunch of words and maybe one picture. To me that is sad because the wonderful work that a graphic designer did for the print version is lost. This is Wired magazine's response to that.

VIV Magazine Cover <- Changing the way we look at magazine covers.


I really want an iPad now...


~Twethereal

Same difference...

For my Compare and Contrast essay in class I'm going to be comparing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time the movie and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time the video game.

The Game

Now I'll be honest, most of the reason I chose to do a comparison with a video game is because I get to play said video game and it counts as "studying". But I really am taking notes while I play it. Honest!

I've already watched the movie once through and I'm about 65% of the way done the game already. (Good grief, I forgot how quickly I finished the game before. I was only playing it for about five hours so far this time.)

The Movie

I think I've got plenty of evidence to write my differences paragraph, it's just things that are similar I might have a little problem with. I had forgotten just how different the two were. Did they even play the game before making the movie? I mean I like both, but I don't consider them part of the same universe. And it's funny, but even though the storyline for the game is straightforward and simple and should be cliche, I found myself enjoying it more. It's probably one of the best games I've ever played if not the best. Goes to show that you don't need to formulate a complicated and twisted plot for a story to really pull someone in.

Anyway, I'm off to get ready to see the latest Harry Potter movie, hoping it is as awesome as the trailers I've seen are.


~Twethereal

Second Media Review

So for my second media review I thought that I'd give you a little insight on my favorite TV show.

What show you ask?

Wait for iiiiiiiiiittttt...

Psych on USA Network.

Shawn Spencer (James Roday) has convinced the Santa Barbara Police Department that he is psychic. With his keen power of observation and his unsurpassable deductive skills, he and his best friend Gus (Dule Hill) start their own psychic detective agency and are hired as police consultants. Expect hilarity, plenty of 80's references, and maybe a little crime solving.

If you've never seen it, go watch it now. For some unknown reason this show tends to go under the radar. But I think it to be one of the funniest shows on TV. If you love parodies, this show has plenty of them. They are not afraid to poke fun at just about everything. The cast is fantastic and all are very suited for the roles they play. James Roday and Dule Hill in particular have a wonderful chemistry that makes them completely believable as best friends. Their relationship really makes the show. It's on season 5 now and no sign of jumping the shark in sight.

USA also has a good commercial campain going. They make original commercials starring their actors to promote their respective shows.

Here's a couple of my favorites from Psych:

If you want to tune in, new episodes of Psych are on Wednesdays at 10/9c on USA.

Anyway, I'm off to do the rest of my homework so I can tune in at 10.


~Twethereal


And on a completely unrelated note, they decided to keep my Wikipedia article. The author of The Dreamer even backed me up. So I win. Take that Wikipedia.

Wikipedia article

I wrote on the class wiki that I was going to do my Wikipedia assignment on Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, which is a video game I talked about a few blog entries back. But I did some more research on the subject of creating articles and decided to create a different article instead.

So I created an article on one of my favorite webcomics, The Dreamer.

Right now it is pending deletion, so it might not stay. I was having a hard time putting enough in there to get the article started without it being full of uncited information.

I posted it under my usual username Twethereal.

~Twethereal