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Joshua, no offense, and you may have a point, but most people demand more from their sprites and animations than flat geometric shapes bobbing up and down.

I think this is closely connected to how realistic the game is. In a comical game, I think part of the fun is to collect all these whacky items and feel the anticipation of getting to actually use them.
In Monkey Island and similar games you typically tug around various objects through half of the game before they come in handy. It tickles your imagination and creates some sort of coherency throughout the game.
In a comical game, it doesn't matter that only one out of thirteen office stationeries can be picked up, or that only one fruit in the vegetable stand happens to be for sale.

In realistic games, it's a totally different story. In a normal, contemporary setting there would be an endless amount if pickupable items around the player. You need to circumvent that problem, and one way is to simply tell the player that he doesn't need it right now.

A method not yet covered in this thread, basically because it's a bit stupid but I thought I could mention it anyway, is to have the object not appear until it's needed. In Lure of the Temptress there is a special herb that grows in a patch of grass, but it's not visible until you're told to search for it. Not very logical but still...

Start by applying for all sorts of scholarships in Norway, they're often more than you think, so really do a proper search there.
Second, if you're set on going, take a bank loan. Interest rates must have dropped in Norway as well, at least in Sweden it's pretty cheap to take bank loans now. Hopefully, your parents can at least agree to being creditors.
Work stupidly hard once you settle in the States. Work more. Take any job you can, share a big flat with other poor kids, don't buy anything, just study and work. Pay your mortgage. Eat noodles and cheap vegetables, beans and stuff.

If this is your dream, staying in Norway will just get you depressed.

Our good friend Neil Cicierega is hitting the big time over the web. Not only have his goofy animations - oh sorry I meant animutations - spawned a veritable cult all across the world of geeks, but one episode of his very simplistic puppet show Potter Puppet Pals managed to reach the 17th position of YouTube views. That's 57 million views. Wow!

Every music video this creative wonderchild tosses up seems to win some sort of award, and some are enjoyable even to normal folks like you and me, like the recent Toy Food.

Neil's got 2300 friends on Facebook, 2204 of which are attractive young girls who are in love with him. Chicks simply can't have enough of Neil.

Neil is better know to us as Trapezoid, and he never made any good games, but he sure as heck made some darn good songs!

I'm trying to establish that there is a connection between painting and photography. That there is a relationship.

This is an incredibly vague and abstract formulation of a question, for being an academic project.

In what perspective? By what standards, what measures? Are you writing an essay on semiotics, art history, or the theory of picture composition?

It's impossible to start without some sort of benchmark, some kind of framework. Please elaborate!

Progz; backlight is neat but the face over all isn't really an improvement. The wrinkles around her mouth just make her ugly, and I'd actually say cartoonesque cell-shading is the way to go here.

What do you mean by "it's too good to be true"? That someone won an auction? Someone has to win. This has nothing to do with the "free meal" argument; in such a model, everybody wins.
Remember that for every person who wins an auction like this, there's a number of people who don't win, but who've helped increasing the auction price.

To reach $101 there need to be over 670 bids, which means other people spent some 500 dollars (granted that the winner only stood for 43 bids) for nothing.

Imagine that you participate, and you want to win a new plasma TV, worth $1000. When will you decide that you have spent enough? What if plenty of other people keep bidding? It's a psychological phenomenon that people keep placing far too many bids in auctions than they first planned. I for one would never go near such a site.

Exactly my thoughts, and I intend to enforce it gradually over at the comp forum.

Certain competitions tend to just never finish, just because they lack participation, or people promise to enter if the deadline is postponed but a day or two, and so it goes on indefinitely.

As you have brought up in this thread, one of the fundamental aspects of our activities - the spontanity - is lost when we allow the participants to plan and scheme for weeks and weeks and then eventually withdraw because of too much pressure and anticipation.

Apart from MAGS, no activity deserves more than 2 weeks, and after that voting should be done with in two days.

Funny, the utterance "meh" has its own usage and etymology in the Swedish language. Less eloquent teenagers use it to express disapproval, skepticism or disliking. It originates, very simply, from "men" which means but.

I'm not sure I would hurry to see everything and try to sleep with countless of women. Sounds stressful. After a week of rushed sight-seeing - prolly lots of late flights and lost baggage, and a dozen anticlimaxes involving women that you either regret having met, or really want to see again, which you tragically enough can't, you'd probably rather have spent that time sitting in a nice garden, enjoying a cup of tea and reading a good book.

Glad you and your daughter are enjoying it, even if it's confusing her.

It's not actually confusing her.  She just asks questions all the time.  She also asked me how old I was when I was little and where grandma's toothbrush is.  True story.  I don't know how she comes up with some of this stuff.   I can't even read her a book without answering 2-3 questions per page.  It's kind of hard sometime to explain what's going on in a Dr. Seuss book...

As a teacher, I'm sure you have the appropriate arsenal of punishments for such a nosey, inquisitive behaviour!

OH and sorry for the OT...

Yes, but now you only have one bounce, which is kind of odd
Obviously, you need to either have two bounces or none, and considering the simplicity of the animation, you might do without any bounce at all.

The walking loop has too many frames for such a simple sprite.
The bounces are off-beat, so to speak. They don't occur regularly, which renders him some sort of limp.

Frame #4 looks unnecessary and out of place. Besides, it's rather un-anatomical; when your legs are the furthest apart, the front feet will point upward, not lie flat on the ground. The foot isn't flat until most of the body weight is over it.

Frame #5 could benefit from having the right leg bend more and the foot lifted, with toes pointing down. 

Remove one more frame from the "right" part of the loop to compensate for the loss of #4.

I'm not sure this will look better, as I haven't tried the loop, but those are steps toward a better animation with some more tweakening.

Alright, it seems that most of this thread is now dedicated to scorn the naivity displayed by the original posted. While that might be justified, I think the thread itself is hardly constructive anymore. I think we have exhausted the comedy-pool provided by NASA-cover-up-theories by now.

I don't really understand the question posted in your topic. Why wouldn't there be anyone around to give you consultation? Is it worth posting? Who knows, hopefully...

As for your portrait; it seems you have drawn it totally without references or guidelines. If you want it to be realistic, start with getting the basic anatomy right and give it proper proportions.

So many cool things have happened.
Both Run Hot and What Time Is It have been released, RON has finally caught on and is now widely popular, Yahtzee's returned and is now a regular visitor of the forums, Helm has come out of the closet, Kickme is a moderator and CJ has won a dart competition.
Just to mention some.

welcome back, oh captain my captain

Thanks!
Yeah, Nikolas, I'm having a bit of a problem with the percussions; at first they sound pretty decent but they soon drown in the music, and only the rather repetative tambourine is heard. Should I introduce another percussion, or increase the beats of the tambourine? I feel that once the song picks up "power", the rather sparse tambourine hits aren't enough.
Sure, I could remove the fade-in. And lower the volume of the vocals in the beginning.

I'll have an update by tonight, but keep sharing your opinions, oh ye musicians of AGS

I like how Nacho gets a PM for his post, and then Tuomas composes this drunk rant which is pretty much out of line even in a less serious discussion...

Alrightie, time to get some c&c. Some of you might remember the song "The Beautiful one and Me", a sort of collaboration between me and Goldmund.
I have taken the song and changed the lyrics - not because they sucked but because I wanted the song to be mine altogether, in case Goldmund, in an attempt to bring more money to his new family, decides to sue me for royalties.

With the brand new lyrics and a new arrangement, I had a friend of mine sing it, as her voice is highly professional, in contrast to my own rather mediocre voice. We have planned to do more projects together, so I hope to remake most of my tunes and have them sung by her.

A word of warning; this is a rather low-key, sort of sullen tune. Don't expect to be cheered up by it!

http://www.andail.com/breakthesilence2.mp3

Enjoy!