Ouya F***ed ME!

So, I was one of early backers for Ouya since the damn project got to kick starter, I back for a console and an extra controller and I was following the news, updates and supportive to them and than all the shit hit the damn fan! the console was fucking released in the market aaaaaand! I didn't get my ouya! I said it is okay there are many people who are not getting it so it is not me, they are working hard and doing their best to ship to sooooo many people, it is okay, and I wait and wait and ah! I got my tracking number on May 25th as I remember and than I said ouh! this started to shape up!

3 months later after every darn day checking the tracking number ( it says the package is in HongKong airport ) and after lots of emails in that period here is the biggest let down in the history of ordering online!
ouh sorry we can get you a refund or send you a new console =_=

AFTER I FUCKING SUPPORTED YOU! THIS IS WHAT I GET? MORE WAITING OR GET YOUR MONEY BACK? I WANT MY OUYA WITH THE GOD DAMN EXTRA CONTROLLER! WITH MY FUCKING NAME CARVED ON IT! I WANT MY OUYA BADGE! SAYING AM A BACKER! I DESERVE IT DAMN IT! AND NOW WHAT?! AM GETTING MY MONEY BACK TO BUY THE FUYA FROM A FUCKING LOCAL STORE WITH JUST ONE CONTROLLER!

BRAVO! FUCKING BRAVO! AND FUCK YOU VERY MUCH! I GUESS I BETTER BUY A FUCKING 2ND HAND WII IN THAT MONEY AND ENJOY GOOD GAMES!

AGAIN FUCK YOU OUYA! FUCK YOUR VERY MUCH!

Sincerely Zaid Mohammed Jawad

video reaction regarding the subject https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=uYhalXbrza4

Underrated SNES Hagane the Final Conflict

I have noticed while talking to retro gamers that only few knows a game called Hagane, sidescrolling 2D action game that pumps up your adrenaline and never let you get your fingers off the joypad!

 Story : The Fuma and Koma ninja clans who live mainly in darkness have mastered the secret arts of ninjutsu and black magic. Although they look just like normal people, they have strength and spiritual power beyond normal human beings. Each clan consists of several factions. The Fuma clan is split into factions based on the Chinese zodiac. The Koma clan is split into factions by color; consisting of the white, the gold and the red dragon. In the case of the Fuma clan, members of a given faction know nothing more about any other factions except that they exist and their blood lines are cut off from the outside world and are destined to decline. The Fuma clan possesses extreme strength and spiritual power. Their duty is to protect the Holy Grail, which is said to possess power that can destroy the world. From long ago, the evil Koma clan had plotted to destroy the world using the destructive power of Holy Grail.

Eventually, they attacked a faction of the Fuma clan and stole the Holy Grail. However, they failed to notice that among the severely wounded, one man survived... On the verge of death, the barely living man known as Hagane was brought back to life by advanced cyber-technology performed by a mysterious old man named Momochi. However, none of Hagane's body survived except his brain. Already a powerful ninja, he now had the incredible power and speed of a human cyborg. With this power, he vowed to take revenge on the Koma faction.

At the end of the conflict and having destroyed the Koma faction's complex, Hagane overlooks the scene from a cliff outcropping, satisfied. His purpose fulfilled, Hagane's glowing eyes fade to black and he passes on. As the credits roll, time and nature claim his seated form and rust his katana as a nearby tree grows unhindered by the blackened land. ( source : wikipedia )

from my own experience the game has a very cool mechanics but it is just placed there to make the game looks cool and add more variation to the fighting style, the L and R buttons can make the player do a back flip L in the left direction and R in the right direction, it can be used for dodging some times but if you do a series of 3 perfect backflips you will unleash a special attack that kills the enemies in the screen ( it sounds easy ha? NOT! ) with all the bullet hell that you get in the game it is super hard to do that move! specially when the levels advance and you start getting platforms jumping and stuff.

of course the character jump, crouch, change into 3 types of weapons as i remember ( the sword, the bombs and the shiruken ).

it still holds as a cool action game to me since I enjoyed playing it when I had dreamcast ( I played it on my dreamcast since I never owned a super nintendo, it was rare in my country ) I enjoyed playing it and it was fun to play such difficult action game that brings the old school you will get your ass kicked and make you cry kind of game.

did I tell you  that it doesnt have save function and no continues? :D yes! it is seriously one hard game to play! but lots of fun

advancement?

Today I am dead sick, In bed and it sucks! the fever is a killer but still I had to get up and do something or I will put the day to a waste!

done some work regarding something I am working on ( am not allowed to talk about it...YET! )
do anyway I was in bed thinking about the past, from the year 2011 when I started my college project, I know am talking about it a lot lately since I finished but you just can not imagine how it felt, I was away from Blogger for a long time and people lost track of me in here cause of that work, it was horrible all the way cause I had no idea what to do or what am I doing and even when my friends asking to help me I tell them you can't cause I don't have a proper planning am just doing based on my feel, using After Effects for the 1st time in my life! GOD! I was so lost but not too lost thanks to my friend kshitiz ( you may rest in peace bro, you saved me ) he gave me a tip to work on it and if it wasn't for that I would have been doomed cause the project wouldnt have been done! and I would have failed my course and no graduation and the worse thing from all of this, the personal shame that I would have lived in! and also thank God and adobe for giving that amazing option of saving the file if the software crashed, just imagine animating everything perfectly for hours! and BAM! puff! all is gone.

2 days before submission, I was sitting in a restaurant having my dinner with my laptop writing project documentation  because I had no time to do it at home so I had to do it when I get a break from work, so everywhere I go my laptop was an extension of me at that time, writing writing writing.

after I finished my project, and went to submit it to my head of department I was so tensed that I felt dizzy and drained and I just sat on a chair close to me in the faculty room thinking what if they don't like it, what if he said it sucks or change something, am going to explode and burst from furstration ( 2 years of frustration getting out in 1 min! I didn't even want to imagine what would I have done.

he came plugged the pen drive in and played it and I was not looking at the screen I was just looking at his face, his expression, what is he feeling and it was a smile all the way on his face, a happy smile, submission was done, I just needed to print on a DVD now. I went out and stood there looking to the sky and than I started walking out of the gate and at that time I screamed ( YES!!!!!! GOD YES! ) as loud as I can!

2 years of work paid off and I graduated but I still had the doubt of will I be able to do something like that again?, and some work came to me and it was just in time through a friend asking me to do a commercial for his software and i accepted right away without even thinking, it was a reflex, I just CAME OUT FROM SHIT! AND HERE I AM BACK IN IT AGAIN! DEAR GOD! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME! I swore not to do such work anymore all along the project and here I am 2 days away after submission and I accepted a contract! O_O stupid ha?

I moved out of India to the Philippians to meet my lovely girlfriend and I was in a desperate place where I needed money so the 1st thing I did a sample of animation to check the quality with the client and thank god it was good and he liked it and I was even surprised that I pulled it that well, I was suppose to finish the work within one month, but I didnt cause of a personal situation that I faced and I was totally cuffed and couldnt get out of it, so I was delayed for a month my client was easy with me since he is my friend and he understood my tight situation and told me not to worry, so later I got back to work and started animating and doing the sound and God the sound was hard! cause I had to record my own voice and there was construction near us and people singing karaoke so the only choice I had is to do it at night when everyone was asleep, so I stand there in the bathroom door is closed, window is closed to prevent noise but still the noise got through every time. but after a while I did and okaish sound recording, finished a commercial of a 1.5 min of animation inside after effects! wow! in less than two months of work I was shocked! the experience I gained working on that motion comic was so much that I know what am suppose to do and what not to do, it felt so natural to do it breaking down graphic, importing them and animating them inside after effect! it was actually fun to see a quick result! and solid work in short time.

sadly the sound didnt pull through still under adjustments and until then I can not post it as a part of my demo reel or portfolio!.

the point of all that blabber is! if you work hard on something next time you will do it faster and your pace will get faster! and the best way to do something? is to DO IT! DONT SIT THERE AND THINK HOW IT IS DONE! JUST DO IT! you will make mistakes, you learn, you redo and it will be done! don't be argent and start saying okay I have to plan perfectly! before doing and you end up stuck in planning which is sucks! and you will end up not doing anything, do it, if it comes well, cool, if it doesnt, find out why and fix it! done!

so today's blabber lesson to you kids out there! be a Nike! Just Do It!

Influence Map

How I did not do this before!?

God! I learned so much about my self making this! I never knew that Video games has so much influence on me! I knew it did but not that amount!

1- this dude's art style (www.conceptart.org/forums/show… when I saw it I was like yes! this is what I want to do! finally!.

2- Retro games, it has influenced me since I was a kid played a lot of amiga, NES, Sega,N64 when I was a kid.

3- Manga - Anime these has influenced me a lot in my childhood and still do since my country used to broadcast Japanese anime, a lot!.

4-Koji Igarashi : that guy! I have a guy crush on him ( not in a homo-sexual way lol! ) I just respect him so much, Brilliant mind and spirit.

5- Neo Geo games OMG! do I have to talk about this? KOF! Metal Slug! Captain Commando and all of these awesome hell bullet games that keeps your fingers on the joypad with no break!.

6-Deviant art : my story with Deviantart is very deep, I was in a world with no guide and not knowing what to do, this site guided me to my passion through awesome artists who made me realized what I should do with my life Like     .

7-Family and friends ( my mother and all the friends who believed in me and still does ( specially my friends Ali&his family and Mike Parent ) also my lovely wife who have so much faith in me that makes me feel am on top of the world.

8- Nintendo : from metriod to mario to legend of zelda and you start laying down the others lol!.

9-Capcom : this company showed me good days and bad days ( good days always regarding their awesome art and concepts ) bad days regarding their recent game releases.

10-Konami : Metal Gear, Castlevania, Contra and others always kept me cheerful ( again apart from few releases they did recently).

11- SquareEnix : do I need to talk about this? lol! FF, Chrono, Parasite eve, einhander ( God this game kept me sleepless ).

12-Ashley wood...Dear God...this man....my 1st exposure to his work was Metal Gear Portable Ops and it just made me want to do stuff like that!  the motion comic! and I ended up doing a motion comic for my graduation project!  here is the (www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7L7Hk… to it.

13- Joe mad : from comic to video games, I loved his work and always left me speechless.

14- Yoji Shinakawa : man that guy can illustrate and create some of the coolest Designs or what!?.

15- Kentaru Muira : this mangaka Illustrator sweet lord you can see his skill development and vision through his still running since 1987 manga ( Berserk ).

16-Ayami Kojima : her twisted beauty of design and painting is just astonishing! I loved her work since the moment I laid eyes on it .

the Influence map temple belongs to  

thank you so much for reading and going through it if u did! and have a good day, good evening and good night!.

Attack on Titan Story analysis (SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER) Do not read if you didn't watch

I have reach Ep15 the story is too epic and very capturing, after all the hype is going down recovering the City using Eren's power of transformation, it seems that also the other (Armored and Colossus) showed inelegance and they just show up for a small period of time to break a hole in the walls to let the other small ones get in.

my Analysis is either it is an out side power trying to wipe out this place but there is no reason for them to do so, so the work is from the inside, some one inside the City knows the power of Titans as well and trying to let the Titans in to gain control over the people using fear and keep them busy, so the enemy is from inside is the more logical explanation but who is it and apart from controlling people? why? to reduce human count to keep them inside the walls and frighten them so they wont even go outside or think of it? yes it probably is.

sounds like our world, no one let us think outside our walls and always a war happening to reduce human count.

very interesting and smart translation to our real world, Bravo to the writers.

Attack on Titan Ep1 Pre-View

Every one has been talking about Attack of Titan and doing fan art and making a big deal about it so I decided to check it out, amazing screen play! lovely grasp on animation! and they have done something that many animes never done ( as far as the ones that I have watch ) the Grabbing scenes! they didn't get into the explanation of a story or the plot or what is happening in the beginning, they kept it interesting and actiony! that made me scream in my chair YES! YES YES! AT LAST! SOMETHING WORTH WATCHING! than they got into the story and the story of the universe is even more awesome, kind of original and capturing ( for me at least ) the brutality of the scenes in it is so shocking that I would say this anime is at least for 16+ audience! for sure it is not for kids and not many people can stomach the brutality of it.

after I was done with ep1 am left thirsty and hungry for more of the story and the amazing fight scenes!

personally I give this anime 10/10 since it pinned me in my chair and I could not move my eyes of the screen the whole time and it kept me pulled and not bored, not even for a second! I hope they will keep this quality all along with the anime and I just hope it will stick to the manga without stretching like any other commercial animes and mangas. fingers crossed!

Attack on Titan! ROCKS!

Sketch test

I have tested this cellshading style using a binary brush in Paint Tool Sai, this brush is really cool, it doesnt give any fade on the outer lines of the stroke so it gives that pixel feel and doesnt disrupt the color table as well.

it was fun drawing with this style, ver crisp honest lines and no fooling around, it develops more understanding of light, shadow and value.

Street Fighter IV for Android

Most of the Retro gamers and the noobs as well knows the Street fighters and we can never get enough of it! recently I got my hands on Street fighter IV for android samsung galaxy note II I was excited when I ran this game on my device until I started the fight! fail after fail after fail!

1- the game is actually sprites ripped off the 3D models of the original street fighters so they didnt use a real time 3D render engine to for the game.

2- the buttons has only HP and HK with HP+HK and block breaker move ( no LP or LK ) 

3- as  galaxy note II is a powerful android device sadly started heating in my hands just after 4 mins of testing the game

and do not forget that android can not handle two buttons pressed together in the same time on the screen so it is very hard to code a fighting game on it unless creating a whole new system for it or attach a Joypad for your android device ( am no sure about that, never checked about the subject just speculating )

in conclusion if you have an android and you think of getting Street Fighter IV, do not waste your time and money for that.

Zaid M Jawad over and out! good night every one! 

Today!

Today I will keep practicing drawing, portraits and gestures until my hand falls, I will keep updating this post with my sketching so stay tuned, here is what I have done so far after the gestures

Chun Li Portrait

one hour gesture sketching session

well I woke up at 1 AM and just couldnt sleep, done some work related stuff until it was 6AM and went down to get my self some breakfast, i had some pancakes and coffee and my GOD! I dont know what the hell McDonald put in this shit! ( it is my 1st time eating there of course ) I started sweating and I came back home so I decided to start doing some gesture drawing and here is the result!

further details added with autodesk sketchbook galaxy note adition

Retro memories

Metroid has a very strong impact on me since the 1st day I got my eyes on it i still remember I was 9 years old and I don't remember how but I came across Metroid trading card

 
every day I held that card and I wished I had a gameboy, I wanted to play this game, this mysterious character in the suit with an arm looks like a gun, to me that character looked more hip than robocop.

I carried that card with me where ever I go until it just worn out and started to torn than it was gone, years has passed and it was 2004 and i was 17 by that time and I owned a game boy for the 1st time, it was a gameboy advance it was a transparent purple ver

I 1st game for this handheld awesomeness was castlevania , and I bought it just for that game

I played it day and night and it was pure awesomeness to me since it was a handheld device and with it's awesome graphics and extended gameplay, it looked like a psx castlevania : symphony of the night or this is how I saw it, specially by that time it was the after math in Iraq and we had no power and there was no school and i was not allowed to go out so the GBA was my only friend I carried my pack with the games everywhere around cause I could never stop playing.

my brother worked at the US army base at that time and he used to stay for weeks in there, one day he came early morning and it was a really cold winter, I opened the door, and he came in and we sat in the kitchen near the heater and he asked me if he can borrow my GBA for a min and I said sure, I gave it to him and he took out a GBA cartridge from his pocket and played it on my GBA and I just jumped off my chair and said NEW GAME! WHAT IT IS! he said I will trade it with you for Castlevania, I was like no way!!!! there is no chance in that! he said you finished it 3 times already! and this is a bad ass game! I promised my friend to trade it for him! and he gave me back the device and said okay check it out, play it.

I didnt see the title since he passed it and the game was just pure awesomeness, a character with a space gun arm jumping and going around in a space base, taking upgrades and started to shoot rockets and fighting awesome monster bosses

, I was thrilled that I kept played until the batteries were dead, and I still dont know the title of the game! i was so thrilled that I just wanted to play that game, I took out the cartridge and there it was Metroid fusion!

I was so happy that I was jumping around! I still remember that card and finally I have the game! that same character that kept me day dreaming! am playing its game, so I got new batteries and I kept on playing through the game, still didn't die yet until I came across Samus-X and boom! I was dead in a second! and the suit exploded and I was in deep shock! the character is a girl! O_O I was like what?! a girl! no way! but it was a cool kind of shock! it was something new to me! to come across such thing! ( note: I grew up playing NES and Sega, never played super nintendo ) so I just kept on playing and this game just had a huge impact on me, the exploration, the problem solving, the upgrades, game mechanics, sprite change with upgrade so its like having a new character with upgrading through the game, the bad ass bosses and it was simply amazing!

and I could not sell or trade that game no matter what the offer was, even some guy offered me 10 games in exchange of it and I said no, not in my life time.


after a year or two, me and my brother were walking in the market and my eye came across a new metroid cover and it was ZERO MISSION, I got excited that I just pulled my brother's arm and said : I WANT THIS!, we were just done with game shopping and he was like, you little brat! I just bought you 5 new games for ps2! and I said : I don't want any of those 5 games! we can return it but I want this! he laughed and said okay take it! so we bought it and here comes a new metroid adventure, it had a different flavor, different mystery and art style, and very different side from metroid fusion, it was a whole new dice to role in that game, I seriously enjoyed it specially at the end part when Samus reduce to zero suit and the whole game turned into sneaking mission! metroid just got me hocked and I wanted more and more

, we got a game cube and got of course metroid prime I played it but it turn out that it wasnt my dish and than metroid 2 echos and corruption and i still didnt play these and than Wii came out and metroid the other M came out and I still didnt have a chance to play it cause I didnt have time or the console to play it until few months ago, I just decided to watch a walk through for the other M on youtube and I couldn't go through the 1st quarter of the game and I just turned the video off cause I decided that I want to play it, it was this sweet mix between 2d,/3d and shooter, for me metroid was not a 1st person shooter ( it fits as one cause the whole helmet coolness inside ) but the awesome design of samus, I wanted to see the character it self jumping and playing and doing all the tricks, and in the other M it does!.

this game is on my list and now I even want to play the 1st person shooter and my luck stroke with the legacy on Wii so my goal is to get a Wii and get those babies to go into a space adventure hunting aliens from planet to another!

Until now I still own Fusion and Zero mission and I would never give up these two games to anyone!
and I would like to thank my Brother Haider for giving me the opportunity to come across it and play it, even when we have a lot of differences, still, thank you for teaching me how to play games and am still ready to kick your ass any time any place! any game! :D

so guys if you have a chance play metroid! it is fun and very cool game with awesome game design and mechanics, it is a genre of its own, check metrovenia of you don't believe me :D

okay guys, am done! and have a good night!

Realization

it was 2AM I woke up waiting for a call on skype from a dear family member (Mom) and I was going through my DA page and I noticed that I have to updated my Bio since its like 5 years old and I never noticed that. what it made me realize is, even with everything is going so fast and taking unusual turns in my life 6 years ago, you ask me where do you see your self 10 years from now I would say Japan and I want to work with Koji Igarashi, my idol game designer, but at that time I still didn't know how and where am I going to be, I was a guy trying to achieve his dream, a dream that was so far by any standards even people called me childish, foolish and idiot.

6 years has passed, started from ground zero, faced a of support and a lot of discouragement, I have learned a lot about my self, my skills and what was I missing before starting this adventure and of course learned about humans ( they do disappoint me and surprise me in the same time ) 4 years to my deadline to have my own stand alone studio for game production, believe it or not, am not far away from that goal at all, taking a step, a fresh new step into achieving that goal, and one funny thing! my Idol has quit the game design industry as he stated on his official facebook page ( I quit facebook too much crap ) and that made me sad! so sad that got me depressed for a while but! that gave me more encouragement to make that dream comes true! working back to back with my idol! the Koji Igarashi him self! I will make my studio real! I will have a real production house! and I will have enough power to ask that awesome man! who gave me a wonderful childhood to work with me! a dream is never too far kids! if you work hard trying to achieve something don't think how or where, just do it, work hard for it and keep pushing the walls that are trying to stop you, nothing is impossible...never give up that dream of yours, whatever you want to be, if you put your mind to it! you can achieve it!

One day I was you, the small little people who trying to put his idea on a paper, trying to express something, doodling a character  on the back of his book, instead of doing home work, drawing characters, writing ideas, even scripts for games! and animated series, games is not just a video game to play and am saying this to the retro people, the generation of Atari, Msx, Nintendo, Sega those generation who were had their own universe which was not a main stream bullshit, playing video games was not a waste of time, it was an artist in making, a creative mind being molded to create a new way of story telling through video games.

Starting making video games, I learned something, if you want to start, dont bit too big that you can't swallow, start small, understand the little simple things before going for big things cause the small little details are the foundation, pre-production is over rated at some points, sometimes it keeps you away from actual work if you are an indie (some times!!! SOME TIMES!) not all the times, it is a powerful step but like I said some times you don't need it.

Understanding you skills set and tools to use is a very important thing, the net is always out there to learn and pick up something new, it is easier to learn now from what it was previously, never let anyone tells you the tool you are using is not good enough! what ever you are using! as long as you are good at it! your bad ass lean mean machine that will bring the power of that tool to a whole new level or at least to your own level :D.

Don't over think things Just do it and do not be afraid of redoing things, you might learn something new on the way and dont let people tell you what can and can't be done, cause you can do when you find your own way of doing it.

wow! I wrote a lot! anyway, keep practicing, never give up, and keep pushing your limits, quoting buzz lightyear! * to the infinity! and beyond! *

this is Zaid Mohammed Jawad! over and out!.....

Graduation

Thank God at last! just got informed that I graduated from my course! and I am  Second honor, Division one Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Digital Media (3D Animation).

I wanted to Share something with you guys due this event! my dissertation paper  related to silhouette the title is : Effect of Silhouette on Character design in Video games and Animation By Zaid Mohammed Jawad

here is the link if you want to download it for informative read regarding the subject, Enjoy
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21508031/the%20final%2C%20print.pdf

note: this ver was the pre submission one so you might find spelling mistakes :) don't slaughter me 

Death Shirt Design

Just finished a pending design that I worked on previously for a shirt since I was done with one project that I have been working on for a while for my client a bit of freedom and tmrw again will get back to work around the clock! muuuha! ha ha ha! something big! stay tuned and for now! go buy a shirt!

http://www.redbubble.com/people/skeletal-raven/works/10660653-got-soul

good night!

figure practice

Today's practice was figures drawing, it was fun, trying to do that daily, i did it today cause i was waiting for something related to my work to get done meh!