Fighting off the counterstrike

Another Army Men shot from 2007; This is the photo my drawing was made out of. What really kills the scale of this shot is the fact that my dad's barbeque can be seen in the back ground (as well as my house in a couple of these shots).

I've liked the idea of getting down and seeing the world through a 2-inch tall plastic toy's point-of-view. This might be why I liked games such as Army Men: Sarge's Heroes before picking up games such as Call of Duty 2: Big Red One and Battlefield: Bad Company.

Now adays, the little plastic men put me in mind of playing Command & Conquer: Red Alert as the Green Team.

"Boys, we have a traitor!"

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a LITTLE more about fighting than YOU do, pal, because he invented it. And then he perfected so that no man could best him in the ring of honor - and with his fight money, he bough two of every animal on earth, then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the CRAP out of EVERY SINGLE ONE. And, from that day forward, any time two or more animals are gathered in one place, it's called a ZOO!

-Soldier, TF2



So, randomness aside, this is my Soldier Filter assignment. My favorite is that one in the bottom left corner (Cartoonifiy), because I love looking like a Comic Book character.

No, really, I do.

...UNLESS IT'S A FARM!

Shoot the Bland One

One of the pretty rare hand-drawn comics, "Shoot the Bland One" started out as a wise crack at Battlefield Heroes players who bought battlefunds (an in-game currency that you sent real money on), but this was made about a month before I myself got $20 worth of them, and used them to buy "stolen" weapons for my National Gunner and Soldier (never been a Commando person...)

The person in the second panel is a character from an obscure Japanese Turn-Based Tatical RPG called Valkyria Chronicles - it and BFH take place at about the same time (though for radically different reasons - Valkyria is basically the 1941 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union transposed into a Steampunk 1930s setting, with heavy romance; Heroes is a war fought over the results of the Olympic track cycling tourney, and focuses entirely on comedy.)

A moral was to be affixed to the end - it would have read "The one in the default clothing is the one that should worry you most." Granted, the Blue Coat isn't default, but it clearly indicates that the National Soldier in the bottom panel is at least Level 14. He's just broke/cheap/saving up for something else.

Drawn Tesla Trooper

Since the class is titled digital photography, this never got submitted for to be judged. However, I drew this freehand... more or less, as I did find an image of a Red Alert 3 Tesla Trooper - this is probably more at home on DeviantART, but this was actually a Forum Avatar for quite a while - I was the only person on the forum who drew his own avatar, not simply edited someone else's work (though, now that I changed my Avatar to a National Flag from Battlefield Heroes....)

This actually spun off from a series of musings I had mixing a race of superhumans (Valkyrur) and an elite (fictional) branch of the Soviet military (Tesla Troopers) - both from two unrelated video games. This was the end result - looking back, there are things I want to add (like rivets on the armor), but this image is very much done.

"Move up!"

One of my prior images from the Attacker's point-of-view. Present still is the M48 Patton tank, though there is an infantryman riding on the back of the machine this time (or rather, the whole time. The cupola on the tank hid him fairly well.)

"Facing off against well-dug in defenders on their own turf is hard stuff," Sergeant Steiner said to one of his comrades-in-arms. "It makes me hate nature that much more."

Ye Bloge Ownre

I figure that if I'm going to claim this blog as my own, I'd better have proof that I'm the guy who owns it (in spite of actually using this class to learn how to use GIMP). This is one of four photos I had available for my "filtered faces"; the version with the helmet down over my eyes is actually my DeviantART ID.

Between this and the helmet-down version, my preference is for the lower one. Mainly because of how it reminds me of the Team Fortress 2 Soldier, who has his helmet (and most hats he wears anyway) down over his eyes.

Panorama

This is actually the house across the street from mine; I borrowed my grandmother's SLR camera again. Unfortunately, you can see where I've stitched the photos together.

The thing about this picture is that I wanted to do Waldo Middle School not far down the road; while many people doing this particular assingment undoubtedly had vast landscapes, I live in an urban enviroment.