Distant Worlds (A Final Fantasy Orchestra)

Thoughts on Distant Worlds.

Back in March there was an announcement that the Final Fantasy orchestra known as Distant Worlds would be performing in Miami, so I purchased tickets the same day and eagerly waited 8 months to see the first orchestral production of my adult life. (Disclaimer: I saw an orchestra when I was 7 but have long since developed an appreciation for music) The four hour drive to Miami wasn't too bad and by the time we arrived, roughly an hour and thirty minutes before the performance, over a hundred people were already waiting outside the building dressed in sharp suits, nice dresses, cosplay, and the occasional person in regular day-clothes. As the event was a special date for my girlfriend and I, and as Distant Worlds is an orchestra, we opted to dress sharply which fit in with the population, generally made up of people in their 20's and 30's. We brought our 3DS, which many other well dressed people openly sported, and were not disappointed when we acquired 50 or 60 street passes before the doors even opened. It was a truly classy gathering of nerds.

We were briefly interviewed for a website, got our tickets from Will Call, picked up physical copies of the Distant Worlds I & II CD's and found our seats near the front of the stage. As we chatted and watched the people around us, as one by one musicians slowly took the stage. The musicians seemed generally older, in their 40's or 50's perhaps, and my mind spun as I heard them each practicing parts from various songs that have been ingrained in my subconscious for decades. I heard a brass instrument practicing Man with the Machine Gun, a violin play a part of Clash at the Big Bridge, and for once in my life, these people were actually practicing the songs I thought I heard them practicing, not simply something that sounded similar.

As the stage nearly filled I noticed a man in a man holding a violin who the other musicians seemed to look at for cues. I suspected that he was the local coordinator for Mr. Arnie Roth, the conductor of Distant Worlds. I was once told that orchestras don't generally physically travel from show to show, but that a few key members do, and that the rest of the performers are locals who specialize in being very good at learning and performing the music of another conductor. This seemed to add up, because most of the musicians looked local (as opposed to from Japan or Stockholm), and the excitement on the face of the coordinator was plain to me. It seemed like he'd been waiting for this day for a very long time and was proud of his orchestra. As a performing musician I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of instruments on the stage. An entire music store worth of string instruments, a drum set, brass section, wind section, and a harp! I silently contemplated how difficult I thought it was to arrange a song written for the 4 layers of a Nintendo cartridge to fit a 5 or 9 piece band, much less an orchestra of that size. In one brief moment, seemingly out of nowhere, Nobuo Uematsu took to the stage and the roar of cheers was almost deafening, pulling me from thought. As Uematsu walked back stage and Arnie Roth took the main stage there was more cheering, midst Arnie's calm but proud (in the good way) introduction to the music and the orchestra.

For those of you who don't know Arnie Roth, he's the guy who put together Distant Worlds, Play! (a video game symphony), and is involved with the band Mannhein Steamroller (do yourself a favor and check out Creatures of Levania). He's also collaborated with many well known video game composers and is known for staying true to the composers and to their music. Though most of the audience didn't notice until he was formally acknowledged, Uematsu himself humbly sat in the 10th or 15th row of the general audience to watch the performance unfold. 

Arnie Roth & Nobuo Uematsu

After a moment of powerful silence the first song began, a medley of songs from Final Fantasy 1 through 4 called "Medley 2002." The music, the combined efforts of dozens of talented musicians working in perfect tandem, was truly magical in quality. It's a shame that words like "masterful" and "perfect" are as overused as they are within our modern vocabulary because they truly describe what I saw and heard. This talent, combined with the fact that the songs being performed were incredibly important in me personally caused me to literally tear up and miss out on the well executed video that accompanied the first medley. I should mention that the videos throughout the evening were a mix of concept art by Yoshitaka Amano, gameplay, and cinematic footage that fit the theme and game of the music being played. 

A list of songs I can remember being played include the Medley 2002 (which includes the FFI: Overworld theme and FFI: Matoya the Witch), FF IV: Battle with the Four Fiends, FF VIII: Eyes On Me, The Final Fantasy Victory Theme, FF VI: The Phantom Forest, FF X: To Zanarkand, FF XII: Kiss Me Good-bye, FF VII: Opening - Bombing Mission, FF VII: Aerith's Theme, FF XI: Vana'diel March Medley, FF VIII: Man with the Machine Gun, FF IX: Melodies of Life, FF V's Main Theme: Ahead on our way, FF VIII: Don't be Afraid, A Chocobo Medley that included what I think was Mambo de Chocobo, an amazing new Battle Medley that included Clash on the Big Bridge, Fight With Seymour, and FF VII's Battle Theme (Which Arnie called Still More Fighting), and the Final Fantasy Main Theme (the Credits roll).

Highlights for the evening included first class performances by Susan Calloway (the singer songwriter who Nobuo Uematsu personally hand picked to work with), a completely unexpected arpeggio added to the Phantom Forest, and the entire battle medley (which was amazing). In one of the most beautiful songs of the evening Nobuo Uematsu himself came on stage to play keyboard as Arnie Roth played lead violin for what we were told was the world premiere of Distant Worlds' FFVI: Dark World. It was hauntingly powerful and it's the only rendition of the song I've ever heard outside the game. Another pleasant surprise was an encore of One Winged Angel where Arnie informed us that they didn't have a choir so the audience would get to sing lyrics with Uematsu himself! It was a larger than life moment where not everyone was sure if he was joking or serious. It wasn't until the end of the first chorus that most people actually started singing but the underlying message was clear... Distant Worlds would not have been possible without the support of the people in the audience, or the greater audience that's supported Square Enix's fantastic franchise, Final Fantasy. There was a lot of excitement in the room (two people got engaged during the show, earning a cool thumbs up from Arnie), and though those present were from many walks of life we all shared in a common interest, a passion for the music of Nobuo Uematsu.

Myself and Kaitlin
with Susan, Arnie, and Uematsu

Sitting so close to the performers I was able to occasionally hear Arnie humming parts of the songs aloud, see the growing of a subtle grin on the face of the coordinator (the gentleman with the violin) each time the audience cheered, the sound of Nobuo Uematsu solo-whistling the Victory Theme, and the words that were spoken that didn't reach the microphone. Words of congratulations between Arnie, Susan, Uematsu, and the coordinator. Words of thanks to the audience that never reached the microphone.

Kaitlin and I were able to meet and congratulate the trio after the concert, still glowing with joy (which is amazing considering Arnie had been conducting for over two hours!). They signed our CD's, took a picture with us, and thanked us for coming to see the show. Having an appreciation for what Arnie had put together, for Susan's talent, and for Uematsu's profound influence on my life, I wanted to say more but I completely choked up upon meeting them and instead of "thank you for one of the best nights of my life" I was only able to get out the words "thank you." Before I knew it, we were already out the door, back in the car, back on the highway, and back home. Distant Worlds Miami was an experience I will never forget and one that I hope many more people will get to enjoy.

Gaming Review: Playstation 4

Note: Feel free to skip below to the picture of the PS4 if you don’t want a story.

Winter 1997

It feels like ages ago when the Playstation first came out in 1994. I’d looked at magazines article about it, played one at a friend’s house, begged my parents for one (with Final Fantasy VII), and somehow, in 1997 I was fortunate enough to get one for Hanukah… FF VII the following night of Hanukah… and a memory card the night after that (still Hanukah)… You can see that my parents have a good sense of humor. When I first turned on the Sony Playstation I was impressed at the graphics, the flashy visuals on my demo disc, the audio CD-playing capabilities (the first instance of a gaming console that did something that wasn’t directly video game related), the quality and diversity of the music on the games I subsequently played, and the added depth and storytelling capabilities this new machine could produce. I experienced fear through Resident Evil, sadness and frustration through Final Fantasy VII, and I loved every moment of it. Though the controller was strange, and the whole external memory card thing was a new and frustrating concept in the N64 era, I was willing to look past this for games like Tekken 3, Parappa The Rapper, Metal Gear Solid, and Resident Evil 3.

Driving to school in my tank during the PS2 Era.
It was a different time...

By the time announcements were being made for a Playstation 2 I was well aware of just how significant of an upgrade it would be. Playstation 2 games looked significantly better than anything the Nintendo 64 was capable of, the upgrade to dual shock controllers meant the FPS was now a viable genre on the console (as opposed to N64 and PC only), and I’d already had my sights on Red Faction, the first game that advertised a “completely destructible environment.” There were even talks of the PS2 being able to one day play games online somehow but almost no one seemed that interested in that feature at the time. As I was still young and gaming hadn’t really become a mainstream thing, my parents somehow acquired one and completely surprised me on Hanukah with a PS2 and Red Faction (in one night because the PS2 didn’t come with a demo disc), followed by a memory card (the following night), and for a second time Sony raised the bar on what we could expect from video games. This was a clear improvement over the Playstation and is widely viewed as one of the most successful consoles ever made. Even well into the early life of the PS3 massive hits like God of War II were still being released on the PS2 and I’ll fondly remember it for its broad diversity of inexpensive games.

Cue the Playstation 3, which I had been hearing about even before rumors were being whispered in my social circle. It, combined with its competitor: the Xbox 360, would truly be the next generation of gaming, complete with cutting edge graphics, internal memory, online gaming that worked, social elements like “Trophies”, a wireless controller that didn’t eat AA batteries in under a day, and the ability to cure cancer (through the Folding@Home application everyone was encouraged to download)! As a poor college student I really wasn’t able to afford the PS3 until well after the preorder units were sold out, so I did what I thought few others would do and camped in line outside my local Best Buy for 3 days to pick one up.

Happy Folks with new PS3's
(Dan on the far right)

The experience of the line could be described as a cold Florida winter, complete with hot Florida afternoons, sunburn, mosquitoes, and plenty of rain. Even though I was 23^rd in line (The first person in line waited 7 days!) I was able to keep my spirits up because I was there with my friend Daniel, and a few other people I knew from college. We somehow got electric power, finished our finals papers (it was finals week), occasionally played Playstation 2 games on one person’s generator, read books, camped in literal tents, ate food out of cans, and shared stories around the light of a mosquito repelling wick. The memories from that week will always stay with me, especially combined with the news that I’d passed my calculus final which I’d taken just before leaving school to wait in line. Though most of the people in that line sold their PS3’s for a quick buck, Dan and I lovingly kept our PS3s. Since the initial release I’m told that PS3’s are no longer backwards compatible, but mine still is, a treasure and testament to my trial. A few weeks later I was also able to pick up another PS3 for my brother-in-law, Frank (one of my friends subsequently got hired by Best Buy and told me when the shipments were), as it was apparently impossible to get a PS3 in the state of New York.

It’s hard for me to realize just how long ago the PS3 release was because in many ways that winter in 2006 was the beginning of my adult life, so as people started mentioning rumors of a Next Generation of gaming consoles I’ll admit that I was entirely uninterested. The graphics from the Playstation 3 already impressed me, and I was content with the controller’s decent layout, the integration of blue-ray, internet services, and the free online network (PSN).

To clarify why I'm a bit Sony biased: In addition to not having to shell out $15/month for a PSN+ subscription just for Netflix I often prefer(ed?) to play games on the PS3 over the Xbox 360 because somewhere between Rainbow 6: Vegas, R6V2, Uncharted, God of War, Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed 2, Dead Space, Demon’s Souls, Battlefield 3, and countless PS1/PS2 games I can still play on my PS3, an Xbox controller just feels foreign to me. I should mention that I also own an Xbox 360, play it with some regularity, and I'm not someone who only likes Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft products. They all have unique aspects I appreciate.

An actual slide from the Sony Playstation 4 E3 Presentation

As someone who’s been playing and loving Playstation games for over a decade I decided to give Sony a chance to explain why they wanted to phase out a system I thought was already pretty good in favor of one that wouldn’t be backwards compatible (even for new PS3 games!), and finally watched the various reports from E3. Despite being one of the most painfully one-sided “debates” (the Xbox One presentation vs the Playstation 4 presentation) in gaming history I tried to remove myself from the extraneous information (SONY SUCKS! XBOX SUCKS! Etc.) and focus on what the new generation of consoles meant. 

The new generation?

With a virtually identical lineup of games (I’m not a fan of zombie games), a $100 price tag difference, the lack of video camera (I’m not a big fan of having a video camera that’s attached to the internet in my bedroom), and a controller that I prefer, I decided that I was going to go with the Playstation 4.

The Playstation 4 promised:

•  Better Graphics.
• A larger storage space on the Hard Drive (from 60gb to “500”gb [actually closer to 410gb])
• More processing power [speed]. (roughly 2.5 times more)
• More Memory [another component of speed]… Than my computer.*
• An improved online network (PSN+).
• Easier online interactivity with friends through screen streaming/sharing integration.
• New games that my PC can’t run (Dragon Age: Inquisition, Thief, Watch Dogs, etc)

*I should clarify here that I’m not a huge PC gamer and that beyond Starcraft 2 at low-spec my computer has serious issues running most games.

Victory!

I didn’t see that huge of an improvement in the graphics from the PS3 to PS4 (or 360 to Xbox One for that matter) in the videos, didn’t have much money, and felt like I could live with what I had (Pokemon on the 3DS!!) until either Dragon Age or Thief came out, so I didn’t plan to get a Playstation 4. However, a week before the release of the PS4 I got an urgent message from my sister asking if I could use my awesome contacts to pick up a PS4 for Frank (the same Frank). I told her my friend had been fired from Best Buy years ago but that I’d stand in line for her on the release day to pick one up. The day before I stood in line, my sister (who has a track record of being awesome) told me to pick one up for myself too as a Happy Hanu-Christma-Ka-birthday-thank-you present. So, at about 5pm on release day my girlfriend and I went to Walmart and asked where the line was. We were surprised to find that we were the first ones in line! It seems that preorders were managed much better for this generation of games, that they made more of them to go around, and that people who really wanted one didn’t have to quit their jobs to pick one up. A mere 7 hours of waiting (indoors!) later we walked away with two Playstation 4’s! Because we are responsible adults we refrained from trying to play one of them until after work on Friday. 

The following is my report:

Photo by Mon Dean

The first thing that impressed me was the size of the Playstation 4 and its sleek design. Half glossy/reflective-black, half flat-black, and half the size of the original Playstation 3 it’s aesthetically pleasing and something you’ll WANT to showcase. Though people have already made fun of it for a supposed “wobbling issue”, unless you live directly next to a train station or on a boat the average person won’t notice that it wobbles slightly when intentionally wobbled. When I plugged it in, a colored light crossing the top of the PS4 caught my attention and the guide book informed us that the color of light is used to indicate different things, like if it’s overheating. The Playstation 4 controller is also a significant improvement over the Playstation 3 controller, offering improved triggers, better grip, a touch pad, a “share” button (that allows you to easily share your screen with friends or the internet), and a few features that require a PS4 video camera attachment to use. It's hard to quantify in words just how much better this controller is so I found a picture:

The new controller

Though there was a “Day 1” patch that took all of 5 minutes to download/install and a bunch of terms and conditions to agree to, I was ready to play in under ten minutes from plugging it in. However, an issue with the PSN not working prevented me from logging into my old PSN account. In this age it’s to be expected that a launch console might not have working internet capabilities on the day of its release (like Diablo 3 or the Sims), so I was impressed that it was up and fully operational by Saturday morning. Luckily you don’t need the PSN to play games, and gaming happens to be the reason I wanted a PS4 in the first place. Regarding the basic interface, they’ve condensed a lot of the menus that used to be scatted across my PS3 “desktop,” like putting all of the video viewing services (Huloo, Netflix, etc) into one tab. It’s fairly convenient and while subtle these are the sorts of things that made me feel good about the PS4.

Once I was able to log in I took a few minutes to also look at the PSN+ (the PS4 comes with a 1 month free subscription to the Playstation Network +), and felt like it was almost identical to the way it was when subscribed on a Playstation 3. This was the only technical “shortcoming” I’ve experienced thus far in the things that were promised though I’ll admit I’m not much of an online gamer so this has little effect on my opinion of the system. However, despite the PSN+ requiring a monthly fee, Netflix and other video-services do not require you to subscribe to the PSN+ fee to be used. This was a surprise and a clear advantage over the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, which both require you to pay for a Gold Subscription each month (~$15) in addition to your monthly Netflix/stream service fee.

IN GAME GRAPHICS!

The only game I own for the Playstation 4 is Assassin’sCreed: Black Flag so I have a limited perspective to share. For starters, the notorious Assassin’s Creed Series loading times were dramatically reduced. I can’t begin to express how happy this made me. When the first loading screen for the vast open world appeared and went away in under 15 seconds I understood that even without vastly superior graphics the PS4 is a vast improvement over the last generation. Once the world loaded, most of the important visuals of the game, the water, the scenery, and the weather looked fantastic! Thought the character models often resembled good PS3-level graphics (which isn’t a bad thing at all) I noticed subtle improvements to detail like actually having stray pieces of hay fall off the main character after brushing through a hay pile, or splinters of wood flying off a boat after it gets battered with chain-shot. I also noticed that the backgrounds were actual locations you could visit, as opposed to two dimensional painted pieces of scenery!

Who knows what new adventures await?

It’s just the start of the new generation so don’t know if the Playstation 4 will show as vast an improvement in graphics as the jump from the launch PS3 games to the latest releases, but I’ll attest that I’m already happy with how it looks, the huge reduction in load times, the capability for a higher particle/model count, and the improved controller. While there are probably people who will knit pick at this generation of consoles for one small thing or another there is no doubt in my mind that the Playstation 4 is the best console I’ve played. Though it doesn’t boast an enormous array of titles, the ones available are massive blockbusters that will easily take as much time to complete as Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario 64, Luigi’s Mansion, or a Halo game (the major launch titles from previous generations). I’ve already started having a good time and I think that the vast majority of people who get one will feel the same way.

For a more detailed review on the PS4 check out this page.
To read about how they made the PS4 check out this article.

Comic Production: Editing & Art Direction

"Work Harder!"
An early concept by Adam Cartwright

We're only 8 days into November (at the time of writing this) and I know I've already spent well over 30 hours editing the comic book series. We're still storyboarding the final third of the series, and while I can't change a whole lot about what I've written, I've been asked to go through and revise all of the dialogue in the series with a fine-tooth comb, character by character. So I've had to go through the script, character by character, and modify each person's speech to be unique from the others. Most of our characters come from different places in society, don't have a very diverse vocabulary, and generally won't use words with more than three syllables, while others never use conjunctions, or intentionally use big words to confuse everyone else and take advantage of them.

More complexity is added to the situation because the world we've created is extremely phonetic, literal, foreign (different planet), and has to lack all modern idioms/references. So as I scour the pages of the script for instances of "makes sense", "make sure", "make yourself at home", etc, i'm also looking out for things in the social context of our series, like the various perceptions of how to measure time, how numbers are perceived/measured, or if a character believes in evil/good or moral ambiguity. I also have to avoid any modern terms or phrases like "fish in a barrel," "bull crap," or anything else that refers to plants or animals because they don't exist in the comic. It was a surprisingly more difficult task than initially expected and much of the speech patterns feel truly foreign to English. I had to create rules for a phonetic low-class language early on to make it understandable, while still not resembling good English, and remaining phonetically true to how I'd like the words spoken. For example, one character almost never uses "the", instead opting for " a'." While I could have opted for 'da (as in, 'da bomb) instead of a' the character doesn't use the "D" sound much, so it wasn't true to the phonetic rule. Hopefully what I've got passes the final editor's approval and is easy enough to understand. This sentence summarizes much of my work, how "I brought some mercenaries here as insurance to make sure that didn't happen" becomes "Got some friends here ta’ make sure ‘at didn’ happen."

Tattoos for Tarot

On the production side, I generally look at the last week's art and mark things that need to be changed. These are things like making sure that everything in the script that was important was included (continuity), that excess frames are cut, that characters don't look stiff, that with no knowledge of the script I as a reader can understand the visual motions happening in the scene without explanation, and that a given characters' expressions and body language fit the character. We've been working on concepts and thumbnails (basically storyboards) for the last few months so it's important that I suggest large artistic revisions before we get to the sketching phase. Our methodology is admittedly abnormal in the regard that we're working to finish the storyboards for the entire series before we move on to the sketching phase but otherwise we're following a fairly traditional model. 

Effective Pacing?
That is the question

Pacing is another one of those tough spots that separates a good artist from a good sequential artist. There is a balance between cutting a scene short versus dragging it out for too long and it's the difference between an interested readership, boredom, and being confusing. It's also fairly hard to convey subtle motion gestures like a "nod" in sequential art without spending too much time on them, so you need to improvise around certain gestures. Here's an example of the sort of things that sequential artists think about.

Illustrate a character picking up and eating an apple.

Idea 1 

Frame of the character eating an apple.

We skipped half of the job by not illustrating the character picking up the apple. Was it important to show them picking up an apple? Maybe not, but if so, the reader has no idea where the apple came from and there is not enough information in the single frame (without additional points of reference) to assess much of anything about it's origin. Perhaps the character was carrying it, perhaps it was in his/her pocket, perhaps they just found it. Most readers will assume it's clean because the character is eating it, unless the character itself looks dirty. However, this example has not conveyed a character picking up AND eating an apple, just the eating part.

Idea 2 

Frame of an apple, close up. 

Frame of character eating an identical apple.

This is still not very effective because we don't know where the apple that the character is eating came from. We are left to assume that the apple is the same one from the closeup frame (background can help sell this idea) or else the artist likely would not have focused on it for a full frame... Unless it's an apple not yet consumed (still in the background), implying that the character is eating many apples and that perhaps something bad/good will happen when they reach the one from the closeup. Poison apple?

Idea 3 

Frame of an apple, close up, or alternatively an establishing frame of the character and the apple apart.

Frame of a hand moving towards an apple. 

Frame of a character (with a matching hand) eating the apple.

This is fairly effective and can be made more effective by use of color on the hand or by perhaps giving the character a long-sleeve shirt or unique identifiable quality that's visible in the last two frames.

Idea 4 

Frame of an apple, close up. 

Frame of a hand reaching towards the apple. 

Frame of a character matching the hand from frame 2 looking at the apple. 

Frame of the character blowing on the apple. 

Frame of the character wiping the apple on their sleeve. 

Frame of the character looking at the apple to make sure it's clean. 

Frame of the character eating the apple.

While intentionally extended to 7 frames for emphasis, you can see how this sequence of events could easily detract from the main story... Unless the point of the scene was to imply that life is moving slowly, or to give an internal monologue, or perhaps to make a seemingly important statement about the character's nature that couldn't otherwise be presented in a different scene. The point here is that this example wastes 7 frames, possible 2 full pages (pages = $), to show something that doesn't progress the plot, doesn't make a statement, and is possibly boring to look at. This isn't to say that you can't add other elements like the aforementioned monologue, or perhaps to use this as a visual dynamic while a conversation is taking place, but on its own this is probably excessive framing.

So this week's post ends with the sort of joke you'd find in an action film.

Frame 2: Anarchist: "What's the password?"

Frame 3: Glasses Guy: "Huh?"

Frame 4: Gun: JAM*

Frame 6: Gun: click click

Frame 7: Anarchist: "Nice joke, eh?"

Frame 7: Text Box (bottom of frame): *There are few things more upsetting in life than a gun jam.