This has about 20 layers, the window frames are on one, the interior lights we can see through the reflection are on another and then a couple for the sky etc. When It can time to paint the church I went window by window. Since each panel had 3-6 layers I had to merge them down as I went or maybe crash the iPad with literally 1000s of layers open. I would draw for a few hours and then look at the illustration overall and see I still have something like 87 window panes to do. I kept pugging away until finally it was done.
Below is a closeup of the part of the drawing. A both complimentary and frustrating part of doing something like this is when I send it to anyone they think it's a photograph because they are almost always looking at it on a phone and never realize the work that went into it. The other image is the original 89 photograph. I could not get the exact angle matched up because there is a lot more stuff going on there now and that angle just wasn't available and other things were blocking the view.
The game relies, as did Myst 4 on too many confusing circular pathways, constantly going back and forth to do one simple thing to progress. Maybe people like that, I don't. Many of the ages in this game are good looking but i tink were limited by the free roaming aspect. Earlier games you could get into smaller spaces and they had a lot more details for each age.
Did I enjoy it. Sure it was fine. I am Myst'd out for the moment. I still have Uru to do which is the first time I will be playing it through as it was not available on Mac when it was an internet game. Because of it's early internet origins the graphics look pretty bad and the story seems to be a hodgepodge of stuff not used from other Myst games. Maybe it will change my life. Likely, it won't. I am much more excited to start getting into No Man's Sky as it looks great and I think will scratch my explore places bug. It has a no conflict mode and I'm all for that.
Cyan finally remastered their older games to 64 bit and the updates were free on Steam so I can now finish playing them all, including Myst 5 and Uru which I never had a chance to play before.
Myst 4 revelation is an odd duck in the series. While some of the visuals are as stunning as ever, the gameplay was a bit stale in places and the story wasn't as engaging as I would have liked.
Visually, the game is pretty stunning considering it is still basically a point and click game. The different is each node you click to has video overlays and the ability to pan around giving it gameplay ALMOST but not quite like some more modern 3D games. A lot of attention w s put in the details and designs and it shows.
Gameplay and technically there are problems. The puzzles are sometimes just annoying and hard and don't advance the story much at all. The ability to figure them out on your own is not always possible, too much information is missing to make sense of some of it. Some of the puzzles need much more precision with the mouse and its just not there making it very frustrating even if you have something figured out. A couple of the worlds have mazes composed on pathways that are deliberately confusing and i you stop moving the mouse, the scenery will rotate on its own making it impossible to get a good sense of direction.
I would still recommend playing it to see the environments and the creatures that are animated throughout. When it's works, there is a sense of a real place with lots of life. There is a lot less room to explore and discover little details that are not important to the plot but nevertheless make it an interesting place to hang out bus there was enough visual stimulation to keep me playing until I was unable to move forward anymore.
This was a rare case I didn't hate the drawing until the end when it was near finished. It came along much more smoothly, thought slowly. Lots of bricks. I think before the fire it was all painted pink!
I didn't really succeed, so much time has gone by I have only impressions left of what I wanted to draw. That said, I am still happy with the work and I'm sure these will be eventually useful somewhere. Maybe wallpaper in an animation or I would love to have embroidered versions added to a tuque or the top of some knitted gloves. I might add more details at some point and take them away from solely silhouetted images to something more decorative.
This will work for the poster, though I am not sure I got the likeness as close as I would like. I used layers of shapes with blurred edges overlapping to get the soft blending for a more natural look over the overly clean 3D model look vectors can have. I think I really got the overly dyed blonde hair right. There are 100s and 100s of lines to make the hair and I added shapes for shading underneath to keep it from looking too flat. His shirt was inspired by but not copied from any one shirt or another from the series, there were a few to look towards for ideas and I think I get something with a little of all of them in it.
I can still make adjustments as I go and likely will. I wasn't going to do Ming but now I think I will start him and see how it goes.
The final poster will have an art deco feel and I don't think I'll do a logo or anything like that. I made one from the original movie version but it's pretty ugly and not having it will give me more options when making the composition.
