Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas Everyone!



And thank you for following this fantasy art blog.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas Everyone!



And thank you for following this blog. Here are some Christmas-tagged images from my various Second Life Flickr contacts... Enjoy!

Christmas Shopping? Try a great older game that looks and plays even better today

If your stocks took a dive this year, this holiday season you might be thinking of cutting back on gifts for your friends or for yourself.

One way to spend less and still get a great gift is to buy an older video game, especially for the PC.

At the time Spellforce 2 was released, computers were probably incapable of smoothly running it at its graphical best -- highest resolution (1600x1200) and all the eye candy including sky, grass, shadows, and the best quality in reflection. And even then, there was only a certain amount of anti-aliasing (removing the jagged edges in the models) that was built into the game.

Today, you can ramp up the quality, and even force higher quality anti-aliasing by having your video card take over the anti-aliasing (switching it from "application controlled" to "hardware controlled"). Here is an example of "normal" Spellforce 2 anti-aliasing, and the hardware controlled 8xS anti-aliasing:

Spellforce 2 antialiasing comparison - regular

Spellforce 2 antialiasing comparison - 8xS hardware controlled anti-aliasing

Spellforce 2 is still a great game with solid and exciting gameplay. Moreover, the original Spellforce: The Order of Dawn, plus both expansions (Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix), plus Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars and the Dragon Storm expansion have long since been bundled together into a very affordable Spellforce Universe pack. That's 5 games for the price of one, and you'll be playing it with the video game art quality it deserves. If you're not sure what you'll be getting, there is a website with a huge collection of screenshots for Spellforce and screenshots of Spellforce 2.

These older games may be hard to find nowadays at your local store. If you are in Vancouver, you should give Electronic Boutique a call. They have discontinued trade-ins for PC games (no doubt due to rampant piracy), but they may still have some items leftover on the shelves or in storage. Otherwise, there's always the online superstore Amazon.com for safe purchases online, especially if you don't want the hassle of bidding on eBay.

Creative Santa Childrens' Illustrations by Shaunagh Radcliffe

Merry Christmas Everyone!



As you know, my website presently showcases the fantasy art of computer games, so there's a lot of art out there that doesn't fit there at the moment. I can, however, introduce it to you on this blog.



Today, I'd like to introduce the art of Shaunagh Radcliffe.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Merry Christmas everyone!

And all the best for the New Year.

Solstice Queen by ~photopixie on deviantART

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hi Everyone!



If you've been following my Weekly Art Showcase Presents posts, THANK YOU!

I'd just like to say, however, that I will be discontinuing it at various locations elsewhere. So if you arrived at this blog by following one of my WASP posts from another site, do know that it will continue here, but you may have seen the last post from the site you came from. I feel I am overextended on social networking sites, and this will be the last post on those sites.



I will instead be focussing in these three areas:

(1) My website, Fantasy Art and Portraits to add content more aggressively. It will continue to showcase the fantasy art of computer games, and I invite you to visit the site and subscribe to the RSS feed to get regular updates.



(2) My blog, where I'm swamped with so many more wonderful artists than I have time to feature! I aim to continue blog about a fantasy artist or fantasy art site everyday, 6 AM PST. I will also focus more effort on identifying talented but virtually unknown artists. If someone who's featured is too famous, definitely let me know. (^_^)



(3) A few social networking sites here and there. I have made many friends in the last few months, but haven't had the time to properly connect with them. With the time freed up, I hope to do just that.



Thanks again for reading my posts and looking at the wonderful art. Happy Holidays!











In case you're wondering -- No, this isn't photoshopped. This outfit actually shipped with Titan Quest.



(Why are fishnets so hot? Check out their appearance in Heroes V.)