LittleBigPlanet has finally arrived! I beat the story levels in a single sitting with a friend in co-op, and I must say, it really surpassed my expectations. The story levels in LBP feature some of the best platforming this generation.

I have finished the first version of my first level — I call it LittleBig Train Heist:

You start off chasing the train in the car. Once you reach the train, you’ll jump from the car to the train’s caboose (and my level will even snap a screenshot of this as you do it). Once in the train, you make your way up to the engine while you avoid obstacles. There’s a switch at the front of the engine: if you fail to pull the switch down in time, you’ll face certain death; but if you do manage to grab the switch in time, it’ll send the train on an alternate track to lots of prize points and the finish.

I’ll be publishing it online as soon as the servers are up. My PSN handle is dfyb, so you can add me as a friend and easily find it.

Anki is a piece of software I’ve run across recently. Basically, it’s a nice flash card program.

Here’s a shot of the back of a card.

Here’s a shot showing the cards in my chapter 8 deck. Since I’m primarily using Anki for learning Japanese, I’m using the included Japanese template — I type the kanji in the ‘expression’ box, it will automatically fill in the kana reading in the correct box, and then I would type the meaning (in english). For other templates, you’d likely just have a front and back (‘expression’ and ‘meaning’).

What makes Anki special is its ability to schedule when you’ll see the cards again. If you didn’t know the answer to a card, you’d click the corresponding button and it will put the card at the back of the virtual stack. If you knew the answer well, it will show you the card again in a couple days — as you continue to produce the answers easily, it increases the time before showing the card again. So in essence, the better you know the information, the less you see the card — inversely, if you don’t know the information well, it will test you often.

While Anki’s strengths excell in learning things over a long period of time, such as a language, the software is very flexible and I anticipate using it to study for a variety of subjects — if you’ve got an upcoming test, you can utilize Anki’s ‘cram’ mode. You can record audio as part of a card, you can include images in your cards, and each card is doubled — one is production, where it provides the info and you produce the item — the other is recognition, where you see the item and you recall the information. If you have a smart phone, you can even access your list online — it even synchronizes your progress. If you ever need to memorize something, I think Anki is the perfect tool. You can watch videos that further explain the software on their website.

http://ichi2.net/anki/

Started on some of the armor and accessories today. I still have the mouth piece horizontal because I’m not done adding details. The shoulder piece will be attached to the arm after I’ve completed the model’s main body. I still have some work to do on the head and the rest of the body is still very rough.

I’m currently working the head — trying to find nice muscle lines for the face. It still requires more work, and I’ve obviously not added the details yet.

You can better see the sort of mask I’m building toward in this close up picture of my sketch.

Update: a bit more progress, and an image showing how the model looks with smooth shading (versus flat shading) and an example texture projected onto the side.

This will be one of the characters from our 2D sidescroller project. It was originally a concept for the Half-Life 2 mod I was planning to do, but I like the design enough that I think I can find a place for it in this 2D game project. It will likely be an advanced enemy character (boss or miniboss).

My first project in metalsmithing was to create earings out of wire — I chose silver. We had several restrictions — they could be no less than 5 pieces and no more than 7, the longest piece had to be 2 inches long, the design could not be semetrical, and we could not bend the wire.
…To check out more pictures and read a bit on how I came up with this design, click here!

Right now the sides are 2 inches tall, but I’m going to be changing that to a height of 1 inch — I’ll either cut what I have now or just redo the sides from scratch. The thinner profile will give a more substantial look to the box. The lid will rest on small tabs that I’ll be adding to the inside of the walls. and hopefully be flush with the top of the walls.