Author: meartlove

From Rome at the Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, with the greatest artist that ever lived Michelangelo Il Divino “The Divine” Buonarroti, and truly yours.

My Christmas journey through The Vatican Museums, The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, and St. Peter’s Square with the Bernini Colonnades. Waiting for the Pope to come out at midnight, climbing the dome and visiting the magnificent interior of St. Peter’s.

I had never seen anything more magnificent in my life than the Vatican Museums and the St. Peter’s in Rome, crowned by the the Bernini Colonnades. The Palace of Versailles paled in comparison.

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This Reality check is a part of my State Of The Material World series of essays

Reality check

Well, it’s not that when I drink coffee in the morning I think about supernovas, or that I dislike wealth, or money, or material things per se, I used to love going into Victoria’s Secret stores for example, and checking out all the fragrances – it was an experience like in a Salvador Dali world with lingerie.

I love the small pleasures but they have become a part of a really large large world.

I like physics and astronomy because they keep me grounded in a reality that’s much larger than the small world we live on. I don’t want to be a worm with my nose down in the dirt. I want to be a pair of eyes fixed on the Stars.

I grew up with the foundation novels of Isaac Asimov,

I recently even re-listened to all seven foundation series, although I have to say that some of the, well, gender issues were a little bit dated.

But I dream of the day when our descendants are going to cover the Stars the way we just hop between the continents today, and they’re going to have or think nothing of passing by a planet or supernova.

But for this day to come, we need to utilize the resources of our civilization and, all human beings, the greatest resource of our planet. Unfortunately, a lot of kids grow up in terror and darkness, just the way I grew up – if it wasn’t for a little computer lab to give me extensive and free time with computers so I could realize my potential… I would have been stuck cooking for some dumb elf somewhere, sorry but that’s the reality for a lot of creatures on this Earth., If you notice many Hollywood movies immediately show a female person, a female human with an apron doing dishes near a sink usually in the kitchen.

So we have to change the reality for huge segments of humanity – first and most importantly is kids who are currently stuck and unable to contribute and grow because of their environment, and of course, freeing the brains of women to be used and work for the betterment of humanity.

Knowing of physics and astronomy grows my world to include the entire universe, and its entire lifespan, so I could measure my little life here against the entire reality of our world. When I get up in the morning I want to know that everything I do in the world is part of a very very large universe, so I don’t want to worry about the little things. I want to worry about the little things very little.

I want my work not to be just objects but to answer the biggest questions as to what is it like to be a human being, what is a beautiful thing that a human being can do in their day, and breaking down as many walls and barriers without actually demolishing anything.

So we live in a world with a Moon and many stars, and a can of paint is just a single wavelength of light entering our brains. Why do we like color?

I don’t know but I’d like to give it to you freely.

The Seventh Iteration of my Book on Video Games and My Life as Video Game Artist, tips and tricks of various kinds, working on Star Wars and all the wonderful things you need to know about everything

You can read my book here:

 

This book began a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. This is the second and greatly improved edition which I will keep improving and polishing with things whenever I can.

It is also epic, it measures 549 pages, over 100 memes and over 300 megabytes of entertainment.

I did not have enough cat pictures to illustrate the second edition so I am using instead screenshots of actual Video Game levels I worked on, glitches, photographs I took, boring documents I wrote and some frivolously Photoshopped memes which you can luckily skip –just swipe left. I never use images or levels I haven’t worked on myself.

Despite the lack of enough cat pictures, the book contains useful things that you can immediately use in your workflow – Tips and Tricks and Best Practices in how to develop great games, and how to get the most of your creative drive. Hard core stuff like Asset Spec Sheet templates. The Video Game Playbook gives you play-by-play on what you need to do to get your game done, as well as ideas on what to do before, during and after making your game.

Some chapters I devoted to my personal understanding of Video Games and Digital Entertainment, my experiences as a Video Game artist and how I tackled hard stuff.

The later chapters are very personal, some are lessons from my Star Wars afterlife as an artist and creator of many things, including photography, drawings, paintings, installations, animations and performance art. Some chapters towards the end contain my very own special productivity hacks which may surprise you. Don’t throw your Kindle!

I developed this book as a comic book because the pictures are as important as the words. What is amazing about digital books is that you can always make them better – their printing press is very light – just a button and the efforts of the Author.

If the universe is indeed a simulation it is probably the best video game ever. I am sure aliens fall off their chairs giggling whenever one of us falls through the world. There’s nothing you can do about it.

But there’s something you can do to play it the best you can, and I think being an artist, a creator, is the most fun way to do it. Just make sure not to fall through the cracks. Remember that The Game of Life is the best and most important video game you will ever play.

One of the best things that happened in my life was working on Star Wars. One of the greatest things that happened in my life was outgrowing my old life, and finding, growing and pushing with my own special Force.