I've been on the weirdest rampages, but hey, at least I'm drawing again. So this rampage: my very own Cirque show. I mean, do keep in mind that it is my unattainable dream to produce and direct this show, but it's a little fun project I can do, maybe for some sort of designing thing...I don't really know. It's a drawing project, and I'm designing the costumes, arranging the acts, writing synopses and all together creating the show. No, it's not going to be performed or even sent to Cirque du Soleil, but hey, je peux rêver, n'est-ce pas?

So it's called "Fantaisie" which is make-believe in French. I wanted the title to be in Italian, but the word for make-believe is "fantasia" which is sort of over-used. So Fantaisie it is. Of course, it's subject to change. Here are some other ideas: Sogno (Italian: dream), Somnia (Derived from Latin: dream), Eternia (Derived from Italian: forever), Vivia (Derived from Latin: live), and Dreyma/Draia (Icelandic: dream).

It's about a little boy (or girl, I'm not sure yet, I'll say boy for now) who will be one of the three singers. He is very avoidant and often disappears into his own little dream world, called Fantaisie, or whichever name I choose. The show will start with him obviously discovering this new fantasy world and it will be full of wonder and amazingness. The two other singers will have important parts, but here's my dilemma.

There will be the Sun and the Moon. I want at least one of them to be female, but I can't decide whether it should be two women or a man and a woman.

But anyway, towards the beginning, everything is all happy-go-lucky, and the little boy has a lot of fun. But after/before/during the intermission, something terrible happens in the real world and it affects Fantaisie. So when the boy returns to his dream world, everything has been altered. The costumes change, and there are darker, more dangerous acts that happen. Sun and Moon are never seen on stage with each other, and it is up to the boy to make things right.

So ultimately, the show teaches a lesson about self-discovery and responsibility. I have a lot of it written out, including sketches of costumes and such that I will be posting, and even music scores for lots of different instruments. The problem is, I'm writing the lyrics in Italian, and I don't speak the least bit of it. I've been snatching up cool phrases from WordReference.com... ah well. It should be okay. I know a couple people taking Italian, and my French teacher speaks/teaches it as well.

SO! Comments, repremands, questions, critiques, suggestions. You go for it!

I got a tablet, and Corel Painter for only $50. Too bad I hate my art skills. Inspiration = no. And the internet on my laptop isn't working, so I'm forced to use a computer. The keyboard irritates me.

I'm gonna go fail at drawing now.

Hey guys, this is just me, begging you to help me hatch these eggs......



Give 'em a tap to hatch the eggs!

Please completely disregard this journal entry unless you are a die-hard fan of any Metroid game featuring the bounty hunter Samus Aran.

In a frenzy to do so before school, I played my favorite game of the Metroid series, Metroid Prime for GameCube constantly. Unfortunately, the time elapsed was about 18 hours, but even so. It was within a day. But yes, I completed it. I destroyed the Metroid Prime and can say I have done it all by my lonesome--NO brother to aid me. I know that doesn't sound quite as amazing as I'm letting it on to be, but there are many certain good qualities to it that appeal to me specifically. For instance, even if I start a game for any type of console by myself, my dear brother George always ends up defeating numerous bosses including the final boss for me. Not that I didn't want him to, I just always assumed I couldn't do it myself. Even with The Legend of Zelda, George always finished it off for me. So in this case with Metroid Prime, my brother wasn't even here to help me. He's away at the Coast Guard Academy. Pure proof that I completed Metroid Prime without the aid of my amazing gamer of a brother.

This journal entry isn't necessarily for people read, it's just somewhere to post the thoughts and reviews I came up with while playing the game. I'm not here to criticize the game or anything, just specific things that happened to me and that I realized while playing. Please don't read this unless you're truly curious.

When it comes down to it, everyone decides by experience who/what, in a game, is their prime (no pun intended) enemy, the one they moan and groan about when they come accross it. I had a fair amount of these, although miraculously the Space Pirates didn't quite get on my nerves, especially the Shadow Pirates. They were surprisingly amusing to defeat, especially with the Thermal Visor. Sniping was a favorite of mine with those. But back to the main point, as I afore-mentioned, I had a numerous amount of what I called my arch enemies. Among these were the ever-dreaded defense turrets. Fortunately enough, the mega turrets were no different, except they required more force to destroy them. But these defense turrets alone could've driven me up a wall, which they did many times. They fire an extreme amount of blasts at a time, messing with your suit's computer and visor, making Samus's lock-on device useless. But once you got a firm lock-on position, it's nice to hide behind walls, waiting for the turrets to charge their weapons. One prospect to the game that I enjoyed greatly were the specific scanning recticles that disabled defense turrets. Once they were scanned and disabled, I took the wonderful chance to destroy them.

My second arch enemy was discovered at the very last point of the game, in fact, right before the final boss. On my first try, I lost four energy tanks worth of energy alone on one of the simplest creatures in the game: the Fission Metroid. It's a mutated version of the Metroid, exposed to Phazon-related, unknown material inside the Impact Crater. It starts out as a tough, hard-to-destroy Metroid that acts like any other. But once you hit it with enough blasts, it splits into two, Beam-specific Metroids that you can only destroy with certain beams, and even then they're still tough and not exactly easy to get rid of. It took three tries for me to finally get past them without losing too much energy.

Something that came along a little less than halfway through the game was personally specific to me, and I highly doubt it happens to too many people. I started getting the ever-annoying button fix. My default button at first seemed to be the X-button, which rather inconveniently would switch me into Morph Ball mode. Now, when not in a battle, that was simply an annoying trait that I hoped I'd get over soon. But while in combat, thinking, "Oh, I should switch to my Wave Beam to inflict more damage" and pressing the X-button in response to that becomes quite irritating. After a while, that button switched to the Z-button. Not quite as annoying, since all it does is bring up the map which also pauses the game simultaneously.

My third and final thought irritated me greatly until I found a good system to give me a boost. It never realled dawned on me before: Missles. You never really understand their full value until you have one left. I was up against the Omega Pirate with a single missile in store. I read through the guide, which told me that Super Missiles would get rid of this rather annoying foe. I nodded in satisfaction at the easiness of the task at hand. Little did I know that the Omega Pirate was one of the most difficult bosses to battle and that one of the only forms of ammunition I could destroy it with was at its minimum. I devised a plan though, after I decided I'd rather be killed by a pool of Phazon instead of a blood-thirsty Pirate. There was a save station right outside the entrance to the Omega Pirate's lair, containers of Metroids just waiting to give me their generous offerings of powerups, and explosive crates containing the same upgrades. Therefore, every time I lost, I killed the Metroids and destroyed the crates, gaining the extra energy and ever-important missiles. Then I saved my progress and headed back for the Omega Pirate. When I was defeated again, I still had the missiles left over from my previous save. So when I killed the new Metroids, I was only adding on to the ones I had gained from them before.

So that's the extent of my thoughts and realizations during the game. And now, since it is 1:19 in the morning, I bid thee adieu.

So I'm a couple pageviews away from getting 10k. If anyone catches it, I'll draw a little something for them. Just take a screenshot and send me a lovely little note with a link to the screenshot.