A pig and a cow walk into a bar...

Hey there Ricketeers! This week I have what you've been waiting for (all three of you), the tutorial on how to make those fancy textures! Aaaaaaand it's less than ten minutes! Go me.



I hope this helps guys! Next week I'll show you how to animate characters while the textures stand still. Won't that be nifty? There's still a lot of animation to be figured out, so maybe as I get further along with it, I can do more tutorials. We can learn together! It's like we'll be best pals! And then you can spot me $5.

Unfortunately I don't have any new sketches or pieces of concept art. Although, I did pretty thoroughly figure out the class system, which I'll diagram out next week. And my sound guy is finished on his other projects he was working on and is back on track for dealing with Rickety Rat audio, so hopefully we'll get to see a mock up of the animated opening.

Oh wait! I lied! I do have a sketch to show you:



This is the waitress from the Rodential, a low-class nighclub Rickety works in. She's of bovine descent(because you never call a lady a cow, even if she is one).Her name is Donna Daisy. Donna Daisy, the girl with two names. The waitress with double D's. Man, I really have to stop designing characters or I'll end up falling in love with all of them.

This week on Noir Review, I watched the Fritz Lang's M. It's a German film from 1931, the noir film before there were noir films. It's important to note that Fritz Lang is the director of the great silent sci-fi epic Metropolis, not because M is very science-fictiony, but you can tell it's from just after the silent movie era.

It's about a child murderer loose in a small German town, creating mass suspicion and paranoia. People start suspecting each other of being the heinous criminal. Cops start cracking down hard on everyone, especially the criminal fraternity, which makes them band together and go after the murderer themselves. The criminals are actually more organized, and more effective and can do things and go places the police can't.

It's a great movie for cinematography wise, creating some very unnerving shadowy shots, and the acting is all top notch. The stand out performance is Peter Lorre as the crazed child murderer. It's worth a viewing for the acting alone.

But the problem of this being too close to the silent era is two fold. First it does a great job of setting up this sinister mood, but then it destroys it with a slapstick joke. It's hard to tel sometimes when it's a comedy and when it's serious. Second, there's little to no sound design. There's no music whatsoever and in some parts it's just silent. And I'm not talking about tiptoeing-through-a-library silent, just blank no sound at all silent. There will be cars screeching and people scurrying but no sounds. You can tell where they either couldn't afford to record, or simply thought it was unnecessary. Though, looking back, I was watching the super special awesome redone with extra scenes version, so who's to say those scenes weren't added after the fact. But still, it's weird.

Anyways, I'd give it a 32 out of a 43. It's a great sinister movie with some incredible acting, but it's probably only for the most avid noir buffs.