Thank you! I’m happy with how the shades of red turned out. I thought about adding an orangey edge highlight to some of the folds, but ultimately decided it would be a little much.
I hope to one day break away from the template of “mostly brown with a shot of a primary color”, but thats a battle for later.
I tend to agree with you about the art style. While I know HoMM3 is the fan-favorite, HoMM2 was my jam growing up, and it’s distinctive “80s-fantasy-paperback-cover” style is firmly embedded in my mind as the essence of HoMM. While that definitely speaks more to my nostalgia than any rational critique, I do find the current direction to be lacking in character. It’s all fine, but it could belong to any modern fantasy IP.
My hangups about the art notwithstanding, the game seems to be rock solid. I spent 6+ hours in the demo in a single sitting. When I came to my senses, it was well into the wee hours of the morning. If that’s not the hallmark of a good HoMM experience, idk what else would be. Additionally, the actual game map tends to look pretty good, and there are graphical touches that I quite enjoy (like different troop variants having entirely different models, rather than simple pallete swaps). Finally, as a HoMM3 fan, you might even enjoy certain aspects more. When I wrote about this a few months back, someone in the comments mentioned that they felt like there was a fair amount of HoMM3 DNA in the art (which, as a HoMM2 head, I wouldn’t have clocked).
All of which is to say, give the demo a shot if you haven’t. While my bugaboos with the art style never entirely went away, they were easily relegated to the background by the rest of the game’s strengths.
They’ve got a demo available! Worth checking out if you want to whet your appetite.
I’m not saying it’s a brilliant name. Im arguing it is an inconsequential detail that does not matter in the context of the story, and it should be treated as such. You called it “possibly the stupidest artistic choice in cinematic history”. I guess I just find that to be at least as ridiculous as “unobtanium”, if not moreso.
I agree with you in all of the particulars of your argument, but am ultimately unphased by the use of the term. Cameron stopped one step short of calling it MacGuffinite, and I can understand why that would annoy some people. However, within the context of Avatar, it just doesn’t bother me.
If I wanted to conjure an in-universe reason for it, I can do so without straining my credulity too much. Aerospace engineers in the 50s develop a term for a hypothetical wonder material that they can’t get their hands on: unobtanium. Fast forward hundreds of years, and a material is discovered on Pandora which possesses qualities which were previously only thought of as theoretically possible. Perhaps jokingly, perhaps sincerely, the new wonder material is called unobtanium, referencing the fact it is no longer hypothetical, but it’s still damn hard to get a hold of.
Now, I recognize that 1) none of that is explained in the movie, so it’s just head canon, and 2) as you say, calling a material you are actively mining ‘unobtanium’ is stupid. However, I don’t think it’s any more or less stupid than your suggested alternative courses of action given the context of the plot.
If unobtanium had ANY relevance to the story beyond “this is the source of conflict”, I’d wish for more juice there. But Cameron is nothing if not a functional screenwriter. No matter how much lipstick you put on the pig, the sole purpose of the scene is to telegraph the third act conflict (and allegorize the Iraq War, to some extent, but he does more with that elsewhere). The screenplay spends only bare minimum amount of time covering that detail before speeding along to more relevant thematic matters.
So, I agree that it’s a dumb contrivance that is clunky. However, it’s just so irrelevant that I don’t care. Call it whatever you want to, the name, like the material itself, is completely inconsequential. Frankly, I’m actually warming to the idea of calling it MacGuffinite. Put a line in that it was named after the first marine to die on Pandora or some such bs. Have your cake and eat it too, a plausible in-universe name, and a tell to not think about it so much.
Well, I’ll start by disagreeing with the premise that an “objectively poor” artistic choice exists, at least in this context. There are choices that work for you and choices that don’t, but neither are objective. The name unobtanium was chosen because it represents a hypothetical substance that is everything that Cameron needed it to be to tell his story in a single word. He’s practically telling the audience, “look, guys, don’t think about it that hard, I’m speeding through the set-up because I know everyone is here to look at pretty shit in 3d”.
In another story, one where the specific properties of unobtanium were in any way relevant (beyond being valuable), that sort of handwavey shorthand might perturb me. However, as it stands within the context of the film, it’s fine. It’s functional screenwriting, and that, to me, is a hallmark of Cameron’s style.
Also, I’m not suggesting unobtanium was a placeholder for Cameron. I’m saying that it doesn’t necessarily strain my credulity to believe that, if scientists are pre-conditioned to refer to a hypothetical wonder material as unobtanium, and then they actually discover a wonder material, they might continue referring to it as such. Or, if not scientists, at least corporate ghouls like Ribisi who probably can’t pronounce the “official” name, if one exists.
Per the internet, so grain of salt and all, unobtanium predates Avatar by some time, typically used as a brainstorming device. You know how a physics problem might say “assume a frictionless environment” or something of that nature, in order to focus on a specific point or phenomena? Unobtanium is sort of like that. Picture a bunch of aerospace engineers in the mid-50s, talking about how they’re gonna put a person in space. They’re throwing all their spaghetti against the wall, hoping some of it will stick. One guy stands up and says, according to his calculations, if they can get the mass of the launch vehicle down to X, he’s confident they can do the thing. Unfortunately, material science being what it is at the time, there is nothing that would be light, strong, cheap, and workable enough to fashion such a vehicle, but the math all checks out. These engineers jokingly start referring to the hypothetical material that would satisfy all their needs as “unobtanium”, while they search for practical solutions.
Fast forward 60 years, and Cameron is writing his Pocahontas in Space movie. He needs a name for his MacGuffin, but, being a MacGuffin, it’s entirely irrelevant to the plot outside of the fact that the characters are destined to fight over it. So, he decides to call it unobtanium, since that’s pre-existing shorthand for “rare material that does everything you need it to”, and that’s literally all this material needs to be for the plot.
It’s still silly, sure, but no more or less silly than mechs fighting giant blue people that fuck via ponytail sounding.
No matter how many times it’s repeated, this always tickles me a little bit. Your “proper trip” was my daily commute for many years! Meanwhile, my “precious relics from bygone eras” are what you might find at any old jumble sale.
A work colleague was telling me about this place not too long ago. It sounds fun! And eclectic to say the least lol
What’s your go to seasoning blend for a basic dish? Sorry for the game of 20 questions, but lentils aren’t the staple in my region that they are elsewhere. I want to be more versatile in how I use them (and other legumes). I’ve got red beans and rice on lock, and I made a mean pot of frijoles charro last night, but, to date, lentils are basically nothing more than a way to bulk out ground meat recipes like taco meat or sloppy joes. I could stand to learn how to enjoy them in a more naked form, so to speak.
I love love love the number of dudes standing around with their hands on their hips like, “welp, what a cluster this is, someone should really do something about this…”
Some things never change lol
I didn’t realize that he had such a personal project coming out. Looks a fair bit different than My Name Is Bruce or Man with the Screaming Brain (but not entirely removed, if the pot smoking snippet and twisted ankle are any indication lol), but could be a fun little dramedy.
Are you boiling your rice and lentils together? Does that work? What variety of lentils? Rice? This could be a game changer for my “too lazy to do more than boil water” nights.
May I ask what color you used for the cape? Maybe it’s just your lighting, but, not only does it look like a perfectly even, flat coat, but it’s got a vaguely satin sheen too it too. It looks like a different paint from what you used elsewhere on the model, but lord knows I’m not an expert.
looks over at my pile of shame
I should really get my brushes out soon
Or a horror paperback
The showcase video for their physics engine sold me on the game a few months back. It’s sort of a fascinating look at an alternate timeline, where RTS continued down the CnC Tiberian Sun evolutionary path rather than the WC3 RTS-RPG route. I just played through the Red Alert 2 campaigns earlier this year, so I’m primed for this.
An interesting piece! This book was on the curriculum of my philosophy 101 class some 15 years ago. Unfortunately I was not a particularly dedicated student, and I found the book’s style to be off-putting and sparing in its salient points. I’m certain I didn’t finish it, especially as I was firmly on the “rationality conquers all, and anything else is a cop-out” train at the time. Since then, I’ve softened (somewhat) on anti-empirical thinking, so maybe I’d be more receptive to the points being made by Pirsig, but, as the author of this essay points out, it seems like there are more complete treatments of the ideas Pirsig was touching upon by other thinkers.