Musical advice.

If your just reading, i suggest you start here AND COMMENT. i from now on will not add the next blog till my peeps all comment. (exit mal cheeto. >.> )
Day one: http://profkayton.blogspot.com/2008/08/long-thoughts-into-tiny-font-xd.html


oooKAY.


Day 2 of Kates Career Journal
Music and Advice

I originally tried thinking of topics I hadn’t discussed but I really pretty much got it all generally so I’m going to go into some more detail on certain subjects.

Soundtracks is a big thing for me. I’m not even adequetly allowed to judge good music because I listen to practically all of it, but I have absolutely no shyness in telling you if I don’t like something. Raps never been my forte, but I do have a couple of songs on my zune. I’m not fond of korean or chinese music, I don’t particularly like the languages so, (oh and a lot of chinese music proves the american stereotype of Ching chang wing wang) but yeah that’s about it for my hates.
I like mostly everything else, but soundtracks and songs are two very different things. Actually 3 things. You have (sometimes) in the gaming world:
-A theme song
-A Soundtrack (though this is more prone to movies than games but I wont throw it out)
-And Musical score.

Imo a theme song isn’t needed, but most likely does make it easier to some gamers to reference games using there theme song (as addresssed last essay, I can say ‘WH-HI!~~” and someone like Mal or Ashly would know what i'm referencing.) A musical score however, is critical. The mood is set by the music, which has the general ‘happy sad angsty anxious nervous devious etc etc..” emotions to set songs. That SOMETIMES is a good thing, but it all depends on the series. In Naruto (first arc), Toshiro Matsuda has themes for many themes, and while they are insanely repetitive, you hum along when theres a fighting scene, or you hum to the funeral of the 3rd hokage. It actually was WEIRD when they added completely new music to Shippuden, because you expect gaaras death to have at least some ‘sadness and sorrow’ in it.

Anime and games, even though they are thrown into the same category A LOT of times, do not work on the same music as you’d think. Games cannot have changing theme songs every 15 hours, because in games, you have to keep music going for 40+ hours. I’ll cite my sources here, watching nobou uematsus biography taught me that, that games arent movies with 1-2 hours worth of music plus 5-6 theme songs. Unless you’re making a high school musical game, theme songs aren’t awfully intertwined.

Excellent examples of musical score is obviously Nobou Uematsu, some of my other favorites include Pokemon (if a song from one of the games you havent played in like 4 years pops into your head during the middle of chemistry, I’ll deem that music pretty good. But I still don’t know why I would have the goldenrod city theme in my head during chemistry………) Some very powerful scores have to be the God of War score. Nothing is better than fighting mythological monsters with a kick ass rock-God score going in the background.

Once again, I have no background in music. I can play like 6 notes to a theme of anything on the piano and clearly guitar hero or drum master don’t count. From this I’ll jump into my next matter. I need some help.

I am an extremely stubborn person, I won’t admit help from people, because I have a large ego. At least that’s what I THINK I am. I’ve been proven otherwise though. My neighbor says im very caring to little stevie and more patient than any teenager she knows. Of course I don’t believe my 55 year old neighbor has many teenager friends…unless you count her 2 30+ years old daughters who still act like teenagers. I know I need help, but usually I’m more critical about the help than getting help from it. I’ll most likely never ask a person I know on how to draw. When you draw since 3rd grade spending more years asking for help and getting it thrown in your face or told to ‘trace’, you don’t want help from people. But I know I need it.

In my art skills I need to improve on the 3 Ps:
Proportion
Perspective
And Pretty outfits XD

As for proportion I am a lot better than what I was, but I still draw the head first and foremost than anything, which is a VERY difficult habit to break. Next comes perspective, which ties a lot into proportions, but basically, most of my drawings are very simplistic (character + flat bg) or no BG. So I need to work on that as well, and finally, for lack of a letter P, Pretty outfits.
I am god awful at designing outfits. I base everyone on what I wear, tshirts and jeans. Or baggy jeans. Sometimes they have excessive pockets. Really there isn’t much variation in my outfits. But I need to work on them dearly because even I am sick of jean/tshirt people. Some good examples of good outfit desiging has to be top of my list, Soul calibur. I buy the game to look at the people, not for there realism but the intricate and differing outfits. I mean, in this latest incarnation SC4, the spectrum is very wide:
-Siegfried is wearing an all crystal(or ice) looking armor
-Yun seong is a pirate this time around :\
- to defeat the point of soul calibur (of which in many fans eyes is a boob game; every woman has a skimpy outfit) they go ahead and make Hilde, the princess in all armor .
- Tira is on the lines of a crazed circus performer
-and Zasalamel is like the game version of moses. But black. I don’t know XD
EDIT: okay he looks more like Samuel Jackson as a bad guy in white robes. OXTOPUS?

And even though they could have been like ‘samurai era’ and made them all samurai, they chose not to and broaden there horizons. What fascinates me even more is how these characters live in the 16th century world and really all fit in. Amazing.
As for bad clothing design, one word tetsuya, you’ve got to stop with the madman zippers and excessive pockets. And fishnet. On guys. While this DIDN’T bother me originally, either his characters look like japanese boybands(the prince in ff13versus) or rejects (tidus ? I love tidus but his outfit is a bit silly.) Then comes vaan. Whoever decided on vaan is either gay, in love with gays, or Sai. Its probably Sai.

I’ll need help with the writing as I stated in Day one, I know for a fact im not a writer, so bear with me. And the musical score portions most likely need to be addressed by someone in I don’t know, orchestra? Or Piano for those portions. But really, I don’t think anyone wants a game with sonic disney music in japanese being played on rock band…..wait. o___o SONIC CAN’T WAIT TO BE FAST!? NANDE? 100% on expert. lol.

-Professor Kayton
X/K08