Category Archives: Art & Lit
In-depth Book Review: Hunger Games
Izzie’s Rating: 3.5-4/5
Characters: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Pacing: 3/5
Ending: 3/5
Spoiler-free review up to the jump.
I ended up with Hunger Games when it was being passed around dinner among my friends. A whole load of them had read it and they all thought it was really, really good. After they described it as Battle Royale meets Battlestar Gallactica with a touch of Lord of the Flies, I decided to give it a go.
The premise is a bit complex; some time in the future, a natural-disaster & post-war ridden North America has fallen into a a new nation called Panem. It’s a totalitarian system of the luxurious, indulgent Capitol, the privileged inner districts, and the impoverished outer districts. A revolution breaks out, but due the the Capitol’s strategic location and superior weaponry, the rebellion fails and the 13th district completely obliterated. As punishment, the remaining 12 districts are forced into a blood-sport each year called the Hunger Games. Each must send two children, one male and one female, from the ages of 12 to 18 to a televised fight to the death. 74 years later the trilogy begins.
Through circumstance our protagonist is sent to the games and we follow her story of survival and defiance, and how it transforms her, the people around her, and the nation as a whole, for better or for worse.
I have to say; I really could not put this series down. I devoured the first half of the first book in one night, and the second half over the course of the next day between reading on the bus and at my desk when I should have been doing work. I ended up buying the set and finishing up the rest by the weekend. Since then my feelings on the series have varied greatly.
A film adaption comes out March 23, 2012.
I’m a sucker for post-apocoypic Orwellian revolutions with a touch of sci-fi, and the Hunger Games delivers on these fronts. I also admit I did get caught up a bit with the love-triangle, perhaps for the wrong reasons, but that enjoyment started to fade quickly with the second book as it became aggravating. The trilogy is targeted for a younger audience… older teens / young adult readers, so the style isn’t up to speed with, say, A Song of Ice and Fire. Collins plays up the romantic melodrama a lot. It’s also written in 1st person from the point of view of protagonist Katniss Evergreen, so our views of the world and events are through the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl. It’s believable to a point. She is mature and cynical due to her circumstances, and she’s certainly no Bella, that’s for sure.
If I had to sum up the series, I’d give it a solid B+/A- rating. Over all, the story is really intriguing and unexpectedly addicting. The characters each carry their own unique personalities and rarely falter from that. For the most part there is a good mix of drama, action, suspense, and yes, even romance. The three books feel solid together but each carries it’s own theme and mood (something I imagine would have been distracting when waiting for the next one to come out, however, in one go it works). Now the ending is.. well, hotly debated among fans. Many people aren’t happy with it, myself included, but the whole adventure is still worthwhile.
I’d still highly recommend it to most, especially those interested and informed on the subjects of social issues and discontent within society. Panem and its situation strikes a little too close to home with the recent surge of demonstrations worldwide and it’s hard not to compare the two. Could this be our future? The sudden burst of popularity for the Hunger Games during these hectic times is something to keep a keen eye on. And despite its target audience, it’s still mature enough to handle for most readers and touches those little guilty pleasures with just the right amount of sway to give us a wonderful world to disappear into and reflect upon.
Spoiler Warning: The rest of the review is going to include some major spoilers, including character deaths. I suggest you stop now if you haven’t read it. Warning: comments may ultimately contain spoilers.
Open Forum: For those of you who’ve read the series, what do you think? What are your views on Katniss as a protagonist? How do you think the film will affect, if at all, the recent uprising of protest? How did you like the ending?
Tools of the Artist Part 01: The Canvas
I’m a hoarder. A hoarder of art supplies.
I’m sure you’ve heard all those rumors about how crazy artists tend to be. Well, it’s pretty true. We each have oddities that make us who we are. Call it a different perspective.
We all share a few traits, too, and compulsive hoarding of art supplies is one common habit you’ll find. You see, artists revere their tools as an extension of themselves. If you think of art feudal wars in ancient Japan, and artists as hulking samurai following the code of bushido, than the tools and mediums we use are akin to our katana. That came out way more poetic than I meant it to be, but it’s fairly accurate.
Anyway, putting it that way, you might see why we pretty much never, ever throw out our art supplies. I still have bottles of india ink that I stole from my high school art class, afterall. Dried up and everything, and I can’t seem to throw them away. It’s like blasphemy.
Anyway, today I pooled together my sketchbooks, specialized papers, reference books, and cavases to show the world, and to remind myself next time I get the urge to buy a new one.
If you hear me mention it ever… STOP ME.
Exibit 1) Sketchbooks & Specialized Paper
This is probably the worst of it. In all, I have 11 sketchbooks in the first 2 columns. Eight of those are pairs. The last 4 columns are all specialized paper. I’m in love with the grey graph paper with white lines (newest additions). Green notebooks were given to me in highschool and so they have about six years of random doodles. The progression from terrible to not so terrible is fun to see in one notebook. Not sure where the cat one came from, though.
Exibit 1a) Pairs
I don’t even know what this is all about, but if there’s a baby version, apparently I must have it.
Exibit B) Instruction books
These are my top 9 instruction books. First column is an amazing collection of reference photos!! I swear by those for dynamic images. The second column is basic drawing instruction. Fashion helps me with poses and clothing. Drawing helps me with basic anatomy, and the anatomy is another good source for poses. Last column: Artist’s handbook is an overall reference for different media and technique. Virtual pose has alot of naked people, and style school is a Japanese (backwards!) book on color technique!
Exibit C) Canvas
Once upon a time I used to paint, a lot. And I bought a whole bunch of new acrylics and canvas during a phase. That was about a year ago, and I have 2 finished paintings and about 15 half finished ones XD.
Way back in the days of yore (my freshman year of college) we had to make our on canvases. Which mean, buying a roll of canvas, getting the wood, frakking STAPLING that shit together, AND PAINTING THE GESSO ON DX!!!
Next time I think I’ll go through my supply box (markerssss!!!!) and get some lulz out of how much of those I own, as well.
Photoblog 016: Grand Central Eats! Nomnom.
If people didn’t know any better, you’d think all I do in New York is eat (well.. that’s kind of true.)
Grand Central Terminal (AKA Grand Central Station) is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city. It’s a mix of classic architecture and design with modern-day functionality. Which makes it awesome.
I’ve always been a fan of the zodiac and astrology, and the ceiling of Grand Central is a giant painting of the constellations.
On each level, you have tracks (metronorth and the LIRR) leaving for Connecticut and Long Island. I decided to grab lunch today down in the dining concourse, which is in the “basement” so to speak. It’s home to a huge variety of food; pretty much any classic ethnic meal you’d want, you can find (I went with falafel today!) And a few popular chains like Juniors and Hale & Hearty Soups.
The station itself is pretty huge. Several levels and lots of wings, I always end up finding someplace completely new every time I go just to wander. I’ll have to go back and take pictures of the shops you can find (the fresh market is EPIC).
Stuff I have coming up: Port Authority Bust Terminal (ugliest building in NY) and Bryant Park!
The “I’m Writing a Novel” Phase
So yeah, I’ve been writing a novel… I started it for NaNoWriMo and got about four chapters in before work destroyed any chance at me fishing. I’ve picked up on it lately after reading Hunger Games and being dissatisfied.
Anyway, I decided I wanted to try my hand at actually illustrating my characters so I went ahead and drew about five of them, scanned them in, and I’m hoping to get them all colored.
First one is Kayla, which is technically cheating since I’ve used the same character for RP purposes about a billion times, but whatever. She’s not the main character in the novel, and I might end up changing her name at some point. Who knows?
This is Kayla:
Everybody loves redheads, right?
Other sketches of Jaycee and Evan. They are the main characters. I realized that my fully shaded drawings look like those criminal renderings from shows like COPS. I promise when colored she won’t look like a creepy axe murderer. The other sketches are too embarrassing to post so I’m just gonna wait til they’re completely finished.
I will probably never publicly post my novel cause I’m a complete wuss.
GM Island / PTR Business
3.2 PTR so far is proving to be AWESOME for casual PvP.
Knowing that WSG will eventually end has made my excursions into the BG seem so much less like resigning myself to voluntary Chinese water torture for 45 minutes to an eternity. I was surprised I hopped on to test it at all, what with BG grinding on both my toons on LIVE making me want to deathgrip myself into oblivion.
AB and EOTS being shortened has been a subtle but appreciated change as well. This excites me greatly because 90% of the time, I enter EOTS with horde losing 55/1537. This only means my free mark will come within 10 seconds of entering as opposed to waiting a minute. The only con is not having enough time to tell everybody how fucking terrible they are at BG’s that involve even minor strategy.
That said, the new Wintergrasp system is proving a terrible failure, ironic since the major nerfs were ‘needed’ due to it’s overwhelming success.
Understandably, even with the ‘weekly’ quests being implemented, the first few days right after reset still see massive overflow of people. Has it helped the lag? For sure. But seeing “epic world pvp” being diminished to a poor man’s battleground is heartbreaking.
Other things to look forward to: built in quest helper. ‘Bout time, then again I remember back in the dinosaur ages when shit you needed to pick up didn’t sparkle.
Way back in the day I hit up the PTR for 3.1 before the devs shut down open console commands. The results was mobbing GM island, which turned out to be pretty damn boring.
Either way I made a vid of it to share:
Arts
I’ve had art stuff for a while, but never bothered to post it. so here goes.
First off, my attempt at doing a complete armor set, based on roman/middle eastern/ south asian styles for the most part. I have tons of sketches and a few digitally rendered pieces, so here goes.
First set: ranger/elementalist/monk
The ranger’s getting a tweak soon enough. Her chest design is going to be changed to look something more like the male ranger I have (posted below) to get out of the canthan-feel, and the grey will be brown to keep with the natrual/leathery motif for rangers.
Monk and Ele staying pretty much. Ele, trying to go with sexy but not skanky. The holes on the side still kinda make it revealing but compared to the
Male ranger and elementalist. I had a tough time with the ele, in trying to figure out a “male version” design of the female outfit. In the end, it’s totally getting scrapped
