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Dave:

Spoiler

Yeah, tried that too, but neither the rabbi nor Lauders widow seems to know him... Oh well, I'll keep on trying anyways. Heh. Not giving up that easily.

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Hey Dave, really great game, I must say. Cool to see it being featured both here and there.
Loved it so far, but got meself a wee bit stuck now, methinks:

Spoiler

I've found out that JDM is Joe De Marco, and I've gotten the adress of Beth Tikvah, but can't seem to make any progress from there. Arr. Got any hint?

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Hehe, nice one, Worm. A bit of Freddy Kreuger-goes-Goth, methinks...
I'd say you need a pair of pilot-sunglasses before you're "super-duper-pooper-scooper"-goth, though.

Oddly enough, I just got to know yesterday that my old teacher from 4th/5th/6th grade has been diagnosed with cancer and she's not going to make it... She didn't get the chemotherapy soon enough, and she's basically just waiting to die right now.
She's barely in her 50's and has a daughter who's just 17, so I can't imagine how horrible it must be, both for her and her whole family...Ã, 
Also, she's a good friend of my mother and one of the best teachers I've ever had. Even to this day I'm still extremely fond of her, even though the last time I really met and talked to her was almost six years ago...
Right now it just feels awful to know that this will be her very last summer. It feels... Unreal.Ã, 

So I understand completely how you feel. It just feels so wrong. It shouldn't happen.
And yet it does. My deepest sympathies.

I have to say that I haven't read the book or seen the film, but I have read and enjoyed the "Holy Blood, Holy Grail"-book as well as played Gabriel Knight 3 and read a comic-book adaptation of the myth by Kari Läppenän that went in the swedish issue of "the Phantom"... Heh. :)Ã, So I haven't felt any need to read/watch any of them, really... Feels like it would be a lot of the same thing repeated all over again, much as Grundy said.

Although, I do have to say I was a bit disappointed and disillusioned when I stumbled upon this earlier today.
It sort of crushed all of my childish romanticised illusions concerning the whole mystery. Bah.
I actually enjoyed being duped into believing that there was a giant conspiracy with bloodlines and secret societes and pseudo-esoteric mumbo-jumbo. And now this whole mystery that I have been fascinated with since seventh grade turns out to be a hoax created in the 50's to attract tourists. Doube-bah.Ã, Why do they have to all the fun away?Ã, 
Oh well, can't win them all... Or any of them, come to think of it.

Ok, a bit of an update, fiddled around with the text positions mostly, made the whole back cover a bit more compact, moved the logo as Matt suggested, and did some other minor things as well.
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/kraademo4.png

I won't bother much with the tracklist for the moment, though, since these are just temporary nonsense titles, which is the reason they're so long and it's so akward to make them look good... So I'll probably wait until I know the real songtitles before I give any more effort to them... :)Ã, 

Also, it turned out that photo was one of the ones that I didn't take, but my friend took with my camera, so I had to change the photo credits a bit. But yeah, Skurwy, you're right about the creativity/nature aspects. But until I drag my sorry carcass out there and get some new shots, I'll stick to this one. No fjords here, however, if we're gonna be nit-picky. That's more Norway than Sweden. But close enough, I suppose. Hehe.
Thanks a bunch for the critics, anyways! Appreciate it!

Skurwy:
Myeah, you have a point about the originality. But then one might argue whether originality is the most important thing...
Yeah, it's taken by me, but to be honest, that photo is perhaps two years old, and I chose it because it was the only decent forest-related photo I had on my computer... Heh. Maybe says a thing or two about my photo collection.
But if they like this design and let me do it for their demo, I'll probably take another picture.

Hm, yeah, I tried doing an assortment of hand-drawn logos at first, but I never really got it to look good.
But I agree that it would be nicer if it was an original design.
Heh, well, I can't really change their name for them, I'm afraid... Heh.
And "KrÃ¥" does sound a bit wierd of you say it in swedish, too, so. (I think that the name Kraa comes from a b-horror movie, actually...)Ã, 

Mm, I've changed the logo now, to match Matt's suggestion, and I'll try and give the tracklist a look-over as well.

Good design by that Jaszak guy, as well. I'm a huge fan of Stephen O'Malley's design work, myself.

Haha, well, you never know, I don't speak a word finnish, so... Kul att höra, hursomhelst. Hah.
Mm, you were right about their faces - Did a smoothing operation on them, and also added the logo in the white space. I'm not sure if it looks better or not, but at least it fills up the blank area.

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/kraademo3.png

Ok, did a little re-working of the cover after reading MashPotatos comments.
- Removed the photoshop-filter
- Changed the colours in the picture to match the cover-photo
- Fiddled with the position of the logo and text

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/kraademo2.png

And I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one to appreciate them, Toumas. They're incredible live as well, watching them was like witnessing a ritual, almost - Hypnotic, yet bursting of energy. Extremely charming, nice and indeed pretty girls, yes.
Can't help with the phonenumbers, I'm afraid, haha, but they have a very temporary website-ish thingy here. Bear in mind that it's in swedish, though.

Heh, that blur is actually in the actual photo, courtesy of my photographic skills, so I don't know how it looks without it. Heh. I thought it gave it a bit more "mystical" feel, but you might be right, it may just be more hurtful to the eye than enchanting.

Mm, I was a bit uncertain about that one myself, and I think I'll use the original photo instead, actually.
I was mainly just experimenting. Here's the original:

(Unfortunately I don't have it in it's orginal colours/real size, I just borrowed it from their website)

Nope, it's just a font I chose, but I felt it went rather well with that old-timey-folky feeling.
Mm, ok, what position do you think would look better? Further up?

Thanks alot for the comments, dude!

Heyhey, folks. Been getting myself used to using photoshop lately, and especially for design purposes, making record covers, mostly for my own band, sometimes for a real demo, and mostly just for fun.
I've basically been just putting together something without even thinking about how a good piece of cover-design should be done.
So, with this one, I felt like the whole design wasn't all that bad and fully usable, but I also wanted to hear some critique and comments from you other design and art gurus out there, so that I might improve it.

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/kraademo.png

The band in question is not mine this time, however, but a great local six-piece folk-rock-band called Kraa, therefore I wanted to use the rather simple design, with a forest/nature/green-theme throughout the whole thing, to connect a bit with the feel of their music.
And no, it's not for an official release or anything, so the songtitles are just silly stuff in swedish. If I'm happy enough with it, though, I might ask them if they want to use it for their demo coming up in June, however.

Cheers!


(And yeah, btw, if you'd like to hear Kraa, you can listen to them here )

Well, mine is from an Einstürzende Neubauten song, aptly titled "Yü-Gung (Fütter mein Ego)", which is german and would translate to "Feed my ego", if I'm not mistaken, right? Feel free to correct me, german AGS:ers.

More music-related ones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6PRPJBnhf4&search=Battlecry
This one is... Well... Just... Too wierd... I still don't know if it's for real or not... 
It's a White Power-themed Heavy Metal duo. With mullets. And mustasches. And falsetto singing. And video-editing-technology straight from 1985.
I couldn't help but laughing, anyways. Heh.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO9V0_1x07Q&search=New%20Noise
And this one is just great. Refused - "New Noise". A favourite song for the moment. 

I have recently started getting into a lot of obscure as well as not-so-obscure late 70's/early 80's post-punk and similar stuff, so I've been getting into a lot of The Comsat Angels, ("Sleep no more", 1982 - Brilliant album) The Sound, Tuxedomoon, Teardrop Explodes, Chrome, etc... A lot of good stuff.
Also started listening to quite a lot of the old jazz-classics - Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus... I had a world of good music I'd missed out on there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7FzpiY7kYA&search=pac-man
Laughed my ass off at this. These guys are my heroes. 
"Wakka-wakka-wakka-wakka!"

Mm, I agree with what most of the others already said earlier on here. But I still don't think that it's such a bad start.
Did a fast edit paint-over of Harry's face to give you some ideas of how to improve it a bit and get rid of that zombie-like face but still not breaking too much with the style you already have going.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uZvPM9D4hws&search=Meshuggah
Meshuggah - New Millenium Cyanide Christ. Who said that you can't make a good music video while playing airguitar/bass/drums in your tourbus? Not Meshuggah, that's for sure.

Yeah, I do kinda agree that the Discworld Noir soundtrack is extremely sterotypical for the Film Noir-sound (and bloody good, if you ask me), but if you want some original music that isn't made as a soundtrack but still sounds very Film Noir, I recommend checking out a german instrumental doom/horror/film noir-jazz group called Bohren & Der Club of Gore.

One of the most incredible moody and brilliant bands ever, they certainly capture that big city/urban jungle/"dark-and-gloomy-and-grimy"-sound better than anyone else.
The lineup for their songs are usually just a basic, jazzy, hihat-and-snare beat with a plodding, slow double-bass, a haunting fender rhodes piano melody and from time to time some reverb-drenched saxophone leads that cuts through the thick athmosphere like a knife and just tops it off beautifully.

Their album "Sunset Mission" from 2000 is perhaps their best example of the Noir-ish vibes, but I also recommend the album after that one, "Black Earth", which I personally think is better, but is a lot darker, slower and more doom/horror-jazz than Noir-jazz. Heh. But all of it is great stuff.

It's http://www.bohrenundderclubofgore.de if you want to check them out.

Ok, Buloght sprites really blows everything away, really, just brilliant work, indeed. Great stuff.
Don't feel like I stand a chance, but I felt like doing something anyways, so I did one of everybody's favourite New Orleans bookowner and hunter of shadows - Gabriel Knight.

Haha, well, yeah, true, I suppose.. Far too long, probably. You've got a point, there.

But as far as I heard from our reptilious friend last week, things are to be rolling again soon.
The main portion of the story is basically finished, so it's mostly the minor stuff and the details that we'll concentrate on from now on. And then hopefully it'll keep on moving from there with graphics and the whole kit.

Forgot to say that t'was an interesting thread, btw. That was what it was all about, after all. A very nice retrospective.