N64 Dark Rift Motion Capture Session. Kronos Digital Entertainment. Circa 1996

 Images I found of our motion capture session at the now defunct TSI motion capture studio in Los Angeles for the N64 game Dark Rift.  State of the art optical motion capture (not that old crappy magnetic MC) in an old junky warehouse.  Bring your own outfit, and we will tape the marker balls to your body.  Cutting edge stuff!  I am the guy getting the balls duct taped to my shoes.

Performance actors (Mostly Kronos developers) are as follows: 

John Paik (Niiki, Morphix, Zenmuron, Aaron, and Scarlet), Steve Knotts (Gore, Demitron, and Sonork), Theodore Warnock (Demonica), Sandra B. Christensen (Eve)

https://youtu.be/-_XiC1iA_2Y?t=873

D&D Session 25 (10/6/21): Forces Of Nature

Text by Paul O'Connor, Dungeon Master 

What's worse -- a vengeful dragon or an avalanche? How about ... getting stuck between those things? A-yup.

It would have been easier to run for it. Over the wall! Into the mine! But, nope, the heroes picked the main keep. It was close. But it was also right in the path of the avalanche.

Run! Up the stairs! Get the girls! Quaff a speed potion and get moving! And for the most part, that's what happened ... with a path clearing to safety when Codoroth the Longtail -- the aforementioned dragon -- failed (for a second time!) to pluck Sompher up in his claws, and instead pranged off an elevated bridge and crash landed in the castle courtyard.

And then Arthur, who might have been baited a bit by an evil DM,  saw that dragon was on the ground, maybe disoriented, certainly with its back toward our Murderball, and the halfling thought that "Arthur Dragonslayer" had a nice ring to it.

So up he leapt, in between the shoulders of the beast, where the wings come together and there's sure to be a weak spot. Sure to be. Right here. Somewhere around here. Oh, dear.

Enter Khostov Sarkagan, who conjured the Phantasmal image of a giant to fight Codoroth, and the surprisingly dim dragon bought it, and thrashed in futility as that imaginary giant did very real damage to him (and as Arthur finally got through those dragon scales). Quickly getting the worst of the fight, Codoroth surged off to return to the skies, flapping hard and barely clearing the ground as the avalanche slammed into the castle. Arthur deftly leaps from the back of the rising dragon, turning an ankle but making it to the keep just in time to see the dragon wing into the oncoming wall of billowing snow. Escaped? Buried alive? None can say.

Then the avalanche hit the tower, and the tower hit the ground; with our heroes inside. One of the girls was pinned -- I think it was Jenny -- but Khostov blew the beam aside with a Thunderwave and the whole group rushed down into the basement of the tower as the walls gave way before a whole mountain on the move.

Everyone hung on to their gear! Blah even got the Vorpal Sword, though he cut himself and Sompher pretty fierce in their panicked flight to safety.

In the basement ... rotten supplies, and a place to rest up, sealed in by who knows how many tons of ice and rubble above. Also the entrance to an oubliette.

After determining that trying to dig out of the basement could take weeks (or more, or forever), the heroes cranked open the oubliette and reveals what sure seemed like a bottomless pit beneath. Or functionally bottomless, in any case. Blah went down on a rope, and eighty-odd feet down the well found a side passage, maybe four and a half feet tall.

Unroping himself, he went in, at a crouch, axe at the ready, scanning ahead with his keen dark vision. Up above, Sompher headed down on the rope.

Blah thought he saw something in the tunnel ahead of him ... but the dice were not kind. Some of the most dreadful words in the D&D language are "You noticed the Gelatinous Cube, but too late." Glug!

And that's where we left it! 

D&D: Session 24 (9/29/21): ... The Harder They Fall!

  Text by Paul O'Connor, Dungeon Master  

After six weeks (real time) in the Castle of the Blue Hills, King Gut finally makes his appearance. He's 22 feet tall! He has icicles for beards! He's got two heads, and a sword so sharp it can cut the sky. He's got Jenny Agutter tied to one forearm, and Farrah Fawcett on the other!!

But all this was not before the lads had another stellar night, faking out an ogre punishment squad set to execute the remaining slaves when Blah masqueraded as the orcish cheiftan, Hakkon. Sending most of the ogres to reinforce the south gate against an imaginary attack divided the enemies in two, where Murderball, Sompher, and a raging Blah could make short work of the ogres that remained behind. They even freed the slaves (sort of), though an attempt to convince the ogre's dim-witted wolfpack to flip sides didn't amount to much.

And what was Sarkagan up to through all this? Biding his time, mostly, but when Gut appeared from his castle the wizard was quickly into action, blasting a magical gust of wind through the signal horn atop the citadel, ringing it out well above OSHA safe decibel standards, rocking the very earth and unleashing ... a massive avalanche bearing down on the castle!

Things began to move fast. The heroes piled on King Gut. You could almost feel sorry for the old blue bastard as he was held in place, hamstrung, had one of his girls cut free, and eviscerated by not one but TWO convincing magical illusions of a dragon attack. But no sooner did the wicked frost giant collapse to the snow than Jenny pointed to the sky, did her best Faye Wray scream, and shouted DRAGON!

That's right, our old friend Codoroth the Longtail is back! Summoned by the horn, this is no illusory dragon ... this is a pissed off an hungry dragon, alerted by the dinner bell, and seeing before him prey that escaped and shamed him once before -- the cleric Sompher. He's swooping in for the kill ...!

(and happy birthday to Paul)

D&D Session 23 (9/22/21): Half An Orc!

  Text by Paul O'Connor, Dungeon Master  

The party made their most critical save yet, resuming the campaign after multiple cancellations led to a gap of more than a month since our last game!

But it wasn't long before the lads were back in the swing of things, arguing plans while Khostov muttered darkly about eight-minute timers (when packet loss didn't make it sound like he was at the bottom of a fish tank). At least they managed a short rest. (They'd need it).

A horn shatters their reverie! No, not THAT horn ... not the one Arthur so wants to sound. No, this was a hunting horn alerting the (now humiliated, naked, and dead) guard to open the main gates already!

And who has a hunting horn but a hunting party? A savage scene greeted our heroes as they peered from the parapet. A grouchy orc chieftain, astride a vast wooly mammoth, dragging a travois laden with carcasses and animal skins, and six orc soldiers, balancing poles on their shoulders, from which depended dead yetis and (it seemed) a pair of human slaves thought to have safely escaped.

The boys set an ambush while Blah parlayed with the chief, and very nearly bluffed the orcs into going after the rest of the escaped slaves, but orcs being orcs negotiations quickly broke down, and before you know it the chieftain was trying to bust down the doors of the castle with his mammoth.

And this proved his undoing! The orcs forced the gate, but packed themselves into the gatehouse, where Sarkagan's Thunderwave wrecked havoc, killing half the orcs outright, rendering the rest insensible, and panicking the mammoth to throw its rider and book it back off across the snow.

All of which had approximately no effect on Hakkon, the orc chief, who had a good-old exchange of blows with Blah before being born down by superior weight of numbers, his own pigheaded stupidity, and a timely intervention from Dee Dah.

Thinking quickly, Blah gathered up Hakkon's gear, with an eye toward impersonating the chief, and the crew elected to bunker up on the top floor of the ogre barracks for a long rest ... which they managed, given the snake was happily snoring away with several ogre-shaped bulges in its body, and the giant spider was no match for a determined party. They were joined by Radshard, the lone escape slave who survived being brought back to the castle, given new life by one of Sompher's spells.

With a long rest in the bank, the party awakes to the sound of the alarm being raised across the castle -- the bodies or the freed slaves (or both, or something else) has been noticed at last!

D&D: Blah and Dee Dah in the land of the Giants (WIP)

 Blah is sporting his hand crafted Yeti cloak and boots.  Hand caught and made.

New GOW trailer dropped

 The new God of War trailer dropped the other day.  Reminded me of this fan art I did after finishing the last one.  

Dr. Sketchy's, Thursday 9/9

 Another fun night with the one and only Ernie Von Schmaltz.  My good friend Linda Spain is keeping Dr Sketchy's Seattle alive.   This drink and draw, with extraordinary models in elaborate costumes, is once a month at the The Rendezvous Seattle.