Ninja Robot Dinosaur

Ever since seeing The Last Airbender on opening day a couple of weeks ago, things haven’t been easy. Sleepless nights, waking up crying, general saltyness. i knew it wasn’t going to be good, I just didn’t expect it to be the worst.

Then, while digging through some old files tonight, I found this gem:

The mock-poster was made by my friend Mike Smith (producer of what I firmly believe to be the greatest fishing game ever made – Creatures of the Deep) and it instantly brought a smile to my face.

Mike cast me in the role of the Sokka on the left and my friends Wade as Zuko and Benson as Aang (the Last Gamebreaker.)

Even M. Night’s travesty cannot ruin the original animated series and the pure awesomesauce it inspires.

(One day I will have to tell the story of how ‘Havadog: The Last Street Vendor’ made it into a kids game on the DS.)

Kevin Dart’s wonderful creation, Yuki 7, finally has her own webpage!

Yuki 7 is a fictional movie franchise – a fictional, female version of James Bond if you will. The Yuki 7 book “Seductive Espionage” is written in a documentary style, chronicling Yuki’s rise to popularity and the careers of her creators.

The pulp style and flavor of Yuki is one of the main influences on Ray Ardent (the original back-ground mock-ups were done in a style similar to Darts) and I’ve been a huge fan of Kevin Dart’s work ever since I stumbled across his table at Comic-Con four years ago.

Absolutely brilliant and inspiring work!

G-Force is not a gerbil armada – no, G-Force were the heroes in Battle For The Planets, the western name for Gatchaman, an anime series from the 70’s. And while Ray Ardent might insist that he is the only Science Ninja around, the full name for Gatchaman was ‘Science Ninja Team Gatchaman‘

A substantial amount of work was done on an updated Gatchaman movie before production was stopped.

Now, we only have this early promotional trailer, which only hints to the awesome Science Ninjutsu that we could have seen.

Now – bring on the live action Starblazers!

To say that I like my Moleskine would be an understatement. My Moleskine is my right hand, an extension of myself, it is the depository and reference point for all of my ideas, grand or small. I take it with me everywhere. If I’m upstairs at our house, my Moleskine is with me. If I go for a walk to the park to play with my daughter, my Moleskine is with me.

If inspiration strikes, I’d rather be prepared than count on myself to ‘remember it for later’.

My Moleskine is a riddled mess of notes, sketches, sticky notes and random ideas. It is held together with duct tape because my pen also needs to be with me at all times. (no point in having a notebook without a pen…)

4 Year's of Moleskine

I have lost two Moleskine’s in the past 4 years. Both were tragic events. One was left on a plane as the family was flying from Vancouver to PEI. By the time I realized it was gone, the plane had been cleaned. On the inside page of each of my Moleskines, I offer a reward of $100.00 if it is found. It still infuriates me to this day that the damn cleaners couldn’t bother to look inside the front page of that book.

I love my Moleskine.

This morning, while checking out Raincoast Book’s Blog, I stumbled across something that has the potential to replace my beloved Moleskine:

I present to you, the Designers Notebook:

Designer’s Notebook (Amazon.ca)

This book looks absolutely incredible! Wonderful bits of inspiration, handy visualization tools and more.

One question – if someone were to make this the ‘Game Designers Notebook’ and included notes and reference points from consoles, handy frequently used LUA and AS3 commands or other things along those lines, would people interested in something like that? What do you think? Leave a comment.