Silent

Nobody's called my taste shit in a while so I'm going to post the best Anime OP per year, for the last 40 years.
 
To make things clear, these aren't my favorite anime of each year.  In fact I don't even like some of these anime.  These are simply the anime that had the best openings, both in terms of the music and the animation.
 
To make sure that I don't lose anything in the middle of writing a really long post, I'll put 5 OPs per post and to make things more manageable they'll all be in spoiler tags.

file:///D:/Images/Great%20Sun%20Set.jpg

Apparently EA partned with Nexon to make a MMO.
 
This sentence alone has microtransactions.

ok so the boys and I have been hammering out this stupid alignment system for dnd or anything really over like a week here u go it's 3d what do u think?
 
also featuring Silent's sorcerer 
 
 

Unlike the binary choices of Law-Chaos and Good/Evil that are commonly used, the NFSWOD Alignment System offers more depth to summarizing your character’s moral, existential, and hunger alignment. Works like plotting a point on a 3D graph, (x,y,z)
 
J’Roarg the orc could be very violent and terrifying, wanting more and more, but also loves what he does. He’s primarily Scungry and waxes towards 1-800-Are-You-Slappy. (6,-5,7)
 
Thorson Lighningbeard the Dwarf is s retired badass who spends his days teaching smithery to local apprentices. He’s well-off and lacks want in his life and is approachable. However he misses his deceased wife dearly. He’s primarily Satisfull but crappy due to his grief. (-6,7,4)
 
this is is very logical, serious, and well-thought-out

A little over a week ago, a bunch of us here got together and watched the long-awaited "Kimi no Na Wa" or "Your Name" by director Makoto Shinkai, who is known for having directed films such as "5 Centimeters Per Second" and "The Garden of Words" among others. Watching this film had been a long time coming after its absolutely glowing reception both in the west and in the east, rivaling the Ghibli classic "Spirited Away" in terms of income globally and having shot to the top of practically every single anime database out there in terms of popularity and average rating.
 
In preparation for watching Kimi no Na Wa, the aforementioned bunch had gotten together in the months prior to watch Makoto Shinkai's older work. We watched "Voices of a Distant Star" along with some of his newer and more critically acclaimed work, namely "The Place Promised in our Early Days" and "5 Centimeters Per Second".
 
I must admit that I had my concerns about this film initially. It's rare that an animated piece from Japan gets this much attention on a global scale and the general online opinion seemed to be that Kimi no Na Wa was undisputedly one of the best animated films to come out in decades. That sets the bar pretty high and I'd be lying if I told you that my expectations of the medium aren't a bit different from your average anime fan. As such I was worried that the movie would not live up to the hype and that I'd be disappointed by the end of it.
 
Makoto Shinkai is notorious in the animation community for putting an insane amount of work into his films. While his official title might be "director" the truth is that he actually does pretty much everything. His earlier works were created almost entirely by him and his wife, including everything from storyboard and animation to sound design and voice acting. As he grew in fame as a director he has since gotten people working under him, but he still very much has a hand in the entirety of the creative process. With that in mind, it's quite simple to discern a Makoto Shinkai movie from other contemporaries because Shinkai has a very unique way of presenting his films. There is always a focus on the backdrop to the point where you could pause and screenshot almost any moment from a Shinkai film and it would make a great desktop background.
 
Example from Kimi no Na Wa
Example from 5 Centimeters Per Second
Example from The Place Promised in our Early Days
 
Kimi no Na Wa is insanely beautiful. A still image cannot do this movie justice at all. The backgrounds are so detailed that one can only assume the animators worked for days on every single frame. The characters move with fluidity rarely seen in anime and the use of CG animation is very cleverly hidden away to the point where you'd really have to look for it in order to spot it. I don't think it would be an understatement to say that Kimi no Na Wa is the most well-animated movie I've ever seen.

If you're not familiar with Kimi no Na Wa I will briefly summarize the plot for you. A high school city boy and a high school country girl from two entirely different places in Japan begin mysteriously swapping bodies for no discernable reason. Every time they go to bed, they swap bodies.
 
That's it. That's the simple plot of Kimi no Na Wa. Of course the situation develops as the movie goes along, but I won't talk about that in detail because it's major spoilers. The bodyswapping aspect leads to some absolutely hilarious but also adorable moments for both the characters. The girl gets called out for speaking like a girl when she is in the boy's body (Certain Japanese words and phrases are considered masculine/feminine, women use "Watashi" while men use "Boku" or "Ore" fx.) and the boy has no idea how to do his hair properly while stuck in the girl's body. Overall, it's pretty damn hard not to be endeared by the characters in Kimi no Na Wa. They have just enough genuine human elements in their portrayal that you can't help but get attached. This goes for the side characters as well (BASED TESSIE).
 
Earlier in this post I talked about how certain things repeat in Makoto Shinkai's work and Kimi no Na Wa is no different in this regard. One of the biggest overarching themes that exist in all of Shinkai's work is a sort of melancholy, longing or sadness. Every single one of his movies is sad in one way or another. Be it sadness over the loss of a friend, a lover or melancholy feelings of times past. Kimi no Na Wa has this aspect as well and there is a certain point where the movie twists into this theme. I won't speak of it in any more detail, just be aware that it does also happen in this movie, just like all the rest of Shinkai's films. Personally I was very invested in this part of the movie, it didn't feel stupid or contrived to me instead I was just feeling genuine concern for the characters involved and by the movies' end I shed a tear. You'll have to watch the movie to find out whether that tear was one of happiness or sadness.
 
In summary I can tell you that my concern about Kimi no Na Wa being overhyped was totally unfounded. The movie really is just that good. It hits all the right beats in terms of pacing, plot progression and characters on top of having an absolutely fucking stellar presentation that is practically unprecedented. Kimi no Na Wa is a film that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and is something I wouldn't be ashamed to show my parents, who know nothing about anime whatsoever. It's just all-round a great film that I really recommend that you watch.

good movie
good new living space
 

good movie
good new living space
 

good movie
good new living space
 

good movie
good new living space
 

New desktop build and I got a boom arm and shock mount for my mic, which I've cleverly attached to a cable routing hole in the top left of my desk, I'm unreasonably proud of doing that.

New pc new monitor

We just finished Kimi no Na wa and holy shit what a masterpiece

BRAP

Yes, you can. There are people in any company whose literal job is to estimate cost in money and time to finish a project.
 
I particularly find it hard to believe that Valve, with its weird, open, drifter approach to assigning projects doesn't use some kind of Agile methodology in their planning, which should at least let them tell us how many sprints they think they have left before the end and translate that into days, weeks, or months.

I'm working on my blockout at the moment. I chose to do a desert eagle because I own an airsoft model of one, and I found some very good blueprints for one online.
 
This is my first proper model, and is VERY much still in progress, most obvious right now in the grip, and the fact that a lot of the gun is missing. But I'm having fun and thought I would share.
 

I HAVE to post this one, it's probably one of the best wallpapers ever

 

So I decided to do a half-assed Inktober thing, with a theme of elemental beasts and powers. It'll be a varied bunch, but expect a lot of dragons.
 
That means 31 pictures, one a day, using some sort of ink. My art tool of choice is the humble biro, notably a shitty black pen with a rubber grip I got from Lidl, €1.20 for a pack of 5. As added challenge, I'm not allowed to use pencil, because that's not ink.
 
Water - October 1st
Fire - October 2nd
Earth - October 3rd
Air
Ice
Stone
Light
Shadow
Stasis
Time
Life
Death
Energy
Space
Harmony
Chaos
Creation
Electricity
Magnetism
Gravity
Plasma
Sonics
Vacuum
Metal
Psionics
Fear
Hunger
Hatred
Love
Poison
Nature
 
Okay these aren't all really elemental powers, but they're the sort of thing you can imagine someone using in a fantasy world. A bunch of them are Bionicle-based as well.

I've been pretty enamored by Titanfall 2 over the past month and it's easily the game that's taken up the most of my free time throughout September. As such, I suppose it can't come as much of a surprise that my most recent dream that I can remember was TF2 related.
 
In my dream me and Silent (who doesn't even own or play Titanfall, fuck knows why he's there) were members of an elite mercenary team known as "The Fast Guys" and we were sent on a mission by the team leader to kill a renowned titan pilot named "Lastimosa" (Who is a character from the single-player campaign of TF2). So we travel to the planet this Lastimosa is supposedly on and a whole bunch of fighting ensues, but we pretty much take out all opposition with ease. Finally we find Pilot Lastimosa and have a long 2v1 duel with him. After a hard fight we blow up him and his titan and Silent turns to me in his titan and goes "Looks like Lastimosa just had his Lastimoment"

Then I woke up.

I remember there being this online geometry game where you start with just a compass and prove things which you then can apply to later questions. I think it even got posted here, anyone know what I am talking about?

I've been searching for a mobile game that I really like for fucking ages now and finally gave Final Fantasy Brave Exvius a go.
 
It's really fun, although I think that might be something to do with the fact that I pulled 5 really good (although not top tier) units from the get go.

This?

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/if_the_light_music_club_played_magic_the_gathering_ch01

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/6xqtgz/an_insightful_thread_where_game_developers/dmhz7fa/?st=j74vov4h&sh=94577080
 
 
There was some Twitter discussion about hidden game mechanics and someone compiled them all into a reddit thread. Some of these are really cool