ChasingLilly.net

Now I don’t often blog about things like video games… though maybe I should. I’m sure most of you have heard of a game called Portal. Originally packaged in The Orange Box Collections, it was made by Valve, the crazy people behind the Half-Life series, Counterstrike, and the Left 4 Dead series, among others. I heard a lot about the game, got really interested, and thus went out and bought it. I realize this may be old news to most, but it’s new to me!

It’s primarily a puzzle game based around the use of what’s called a “Portal-gun,” which allows you to create portals between two disconnected areas and travel between them. It’s crazy fun, and crazy innovative. You play as a character named Chell (which is a stupid name, but whatever), who is apparently a test subject at the weird and deserted Aperture Science Laboratories. The facility is run by a computer system named GLaDOS, who is hilarious. She helps you around the facility. Constantly full of wit and other subtle humor, GLaDOS is easily one of my favorite video game characters.

While at first you are simply completing tests in different rooms, you eventually begin to realize GLaDOS may be trying to kill you. It’s around this point you go on a mission to destroy the facility.

And I love it. I don’t even know why, but I’ve completed the game three times already and still want more. Portal 2 is coming out next year, and I can’t wait! So go try it out and stuff.

Happy Trails,
Sam.



PS — Since I’m now a Valve fan, I’ve started to play Half-Life 2, so we’ll see how that goes…

My best bud Will McCarry is just now releasing his long-awaited debut solo album, In Flight. He’s been working on it for quite a while, and it really shows. It’s an awesome selection of songs, and you should all definitely pick it up. Yours truly even makes an appearance on at least one song. Right now the only way to get the whole album is from him, though I’m working with him on a way to put it up online for free. Maybe I’ll even host it here on ChasingLilly.net! You can, however, check out some of the songs at either his Facebook Fan Page or his Myspace. And while you’re over on Facebook, be sure to become a fan!

In preparation for the album, our quite good friends Mel Kobran and Nathaniel Tonelli worked on an album cover for the CD. You can see the finished back cover/cover (respectively) for the album below. They did a really great job, and Mel did a great job putting it all together in Photoshop. All the elements are real, from the hand drawn planes to the coffee stain (which is actually an orange juice stain, but who needs to know?). As always, click to enlarge and by doing so, enjoy.

While they worked on the cover, I simultaneously worked on designing the inside of the album booklet. I finally finished yesterday at 4 AM, and figured I could share a few of the pages with you. But I won’t share them all, some surprises should be left for when you get your hands on a copy of the album!

In Flight booklet pages 1 & 2

In Flight booklet pages 5 & 6

I think it turned out quite well, but then again I am a bit biased. So far the response has been positive, though, so that’s a good sign. Regardless it was a lot of fun branching out into the design of album art. The awesome photos from the booklet were taken by Mel as well. She’s a photography major at VCU, so go over to her flickr or some place and support her. Another friend of mine, Billy Bacci, is also releasing an album soon (he claims next week) and has asked me to do something for him. I can smell another late-night-team-album-art-creating venture coming! Where’s my album? It’s coming…

So go pick up a copy of In Flight from Will, and I’ll keep everyone else updated on where they can download a copy of the album on the interwebz. Soon, very soon. In fact by tomorrow. No joke. I know, it’s crazy how much I’m suddenly blogging. And yes, I realize I’m just having a conversation with myself at the computer.



Happy Trails,
Sam.

Howdy. Yeah, that’s right. Howdy. It’s been too long, internets.

I’ve been all over the country in the last few weeks, and boy are you guys gonna get some long-awaited info from me this week. Might as well start by talking about how much I love the fair state of New Mexico. There’s a reason it’s called “The Land of Enchantment” (and yes, that is a rhetorical statement). Because it’s so enchanting (well, looks like I answered it anyways…)! I was over there for two weeks, and did everything from disc golf to hiking to tubing to hot-tubbing it in some natural hot springs. My cousin and I were even presumed dead twice by our parents. (Note to readers: do not walk to a river in the middle of no where, leave your phone and jacket on one side, then cross over and out of sight; just in case your parents find them and suspect the worst.)

I left my jacket on that post for a few minutes, thus claiming the mountain for Mary Washington

We hiked a mountain in Colorado up to what’s called “Sharkstooth Peak”, and it was one of the most awesome, epic things I have ever done in my life. The hike up to what we will affectionately call “the tooth” was beautiful and nice. But once you finally reached the tooth, it was a thin-aired, straight-up climb over thousands of loose rocks. The views were equally stunning. For evidence, just look below! (click to enlarge)

There are the thousands of rocks I was talking about

taken up near the top of The Tooth, the air was getting thin

Climbing straight up the rock that is Sharkstooth peak

Of course, this was just one of the many awesome things we did. I haven’t even started talking about disc golf (of which I am now obsessed)! But that’s a post for another time.

Happy Trails,
Sam.

I’ve been sick as of late, and (in my free time from watching Arrested Development) have renewed my love for digital design. So I’ve been spending a lot more time in Photoshop and After Effects designing stuff for really any reason at all. I’m still working on effects for our National Treasure spoof.

I’ve started making some pretty cool outer space graphics for our epic travel to the moon in the trailer. That’s right, we go to the moon searching for the next National Treasure. Right now I’m making a street-level zoom-out into space and some clips going towards the moon. All in After Effects, which can be a little hard as AE isn’t a 3D program. However, it’s far better than the alternative for me, which would involve animating in Blender or my not-working 3ds Max. I think I would rather jump off a cliff than bother with the terrible virtual cameras there. Though I should probably learn… Ah well, it’s forcing me to be more creative in AE, which is also helpful. I’ll add some vids of what I’m doing with that soon.

I’m also working on a graduation “gift” thingy in Photoshop. I’ll post it when it’s done as well. However at the moment every attempt I’ve made has failed. When there’s new info, I’ll update. Well those are my thoughts for today, hopefully next time I write I won’t be sick and at 2:14 AM.

Happy Trails and Namaste,

Sam.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was going to make a new homepage for chasinglilly.net, mainly because the one right now sucks. I want to make a simple yet elegant single page with large links to the blog, the band page, my twitter, and my facebook. I also want the page to include a feed of my latest tweets as well as a listing/summary of the few latest blog posts. Oh yeah, and I also want the background picture to either change every few seconds, or else change every time the page loads.

For a beginner in web design, a CSS template like that is pretty tricky. So far I’m working on the basic page look in Photoshop. It’s not finished yet, but in the screen shots below you can see the sort of look and feel I’m going for. The multiple shots show examples of different backgrounds the site would have. Obviously I want the backgrounds to look epic, and I’m going to make them all pictures I’ve taken (or else taken of me). (click pics to enlarge)

At the same time, I don’t want to look all cocky and have huge pictures of me show up every time someone loads the page, so I’m really trying to mix them up. Except for the third one, which was too cool-looking to leave out. So that’s it so far, I haven’t even gotten to the coding yet. Any thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? I’m trying to learn on the fly, and this is really a great way to figure this stuff out. Mo’ stuff ta come.



Happy Trails,

Sam.



P.S. – Keyboard Cat is awesome

There are some other projects happening at the moment here in the [tentatively titled] Super Best Friends group. Personally I am working on a new homepage for chasinglilly.net, which at the moment is disgusting. I am also working on a solo album, which so far has a total of zero finished tracks. As a group we are working on a revamped, more professional version of the McGrimmy’s, as well as a few spoof movie trailers. The movie series’ we’re going to make fun of with the trailers include National Treasure and Twilight. Will and I recently started writing a script for the National Treasure trailer, “National Treasure 3: Book of Secrets 2″.

It’s going to be great! And though the script isn’t finished yet, I got carried away and started making graphics for it. So below is a still frame of what the Nicolas Cage credit may look like. It’s based mainly on what I thought the credits in the past two movies’ trailers looked like, and it was made completely in After Effects. (click to enlarge)

Obviously it’s not done, but it looks much better in motion. Though the font annoys me a bit… Or maybe it’s just what the font says. Either way, the trailer’s gonna be awesome. So get ready…! Well don’t get ready too soon, we’re still in the scripting phase.



Happy Trails,

Sam.

Haven’t posted anything on any of my webspaces much since Lost ended. Sorry for the lapse in typing, but Sam the Awesome Blogging Man is back in action, and this time with a new-found fervor and a love for truth and justice.

So let’s talk film.

Don’t say it! No… NO… don’t! Stop it! I know you were about to say it. Don’t even think it! Don’t ask about when Island Wars is coming out. It was a piece of crap test film Will and I started making after ninth grade. It was a terrible idea that we ran with once people accidentally found out about it and loved the car chase. And the school newspaper coverage didn’t help either. Basically Will and I went to go finish the movie yesterday. Yes, that’s right, finish it. So we went into Pinnacle (the worst editing program in history) and began compiling the edited scenes into one huge movie file. But we ran into a problem once we realized whole segments of the movie were missing. In fact entire finished segments of the movie (including the car chase scene) are now missing. In the time it would take to find everything and edit it again we could easily start a better film project, something real. For Will and I, this was the last straw, and the final message from God that this project just isn’t meant to be.

So that’s what we’re going to do. I may look for footage on and off when I’m bored, but we’re not finishing the terribleness that is Island Wars. Don’t be surprised if in a few years I do find all the footage and begin posting segments on YouTube, though.

We are looking forward to producing the new post-apocalyptic drama next Fall. But for now, we are going to start producing the McGrimmy’s as our main thing. Except we are completely restarting and revamping the series to engage a broader audience. Mel Kobran is also gonna help us out with filming, so that should make things work about 2.7 billion times more smoothly. We’ll start releasing them to the internets before Summer ends. In fact, we actually have a mini sort-of production team including more than just me and Will to complete these two projects. Whether we’ll keep the name Umbrellaman Studios remains to be seen.

Happy Trails,

Sam.

This is the end. LOST is over. For good.

I just got back from a post-finale IHOP trip with some friends/fellow fans, which included a lot of good discussions about this episode. So while I’m currently too emotional, breathless, and blown away to write a full post about it, I figured I had to write a little something.



Ohhh where to start…



What an AMAZING episode. Everything has come to this point. Every thought, every theory, every tangent, every second of LOST has led to this episode. I’m putting this fact out there now: the LOST series finale is the greatest two and a half hours of anything ever. And that is no exaggeration. Writing: AMAZING. Acting: FANTASTIC. Special effects: INCREDIBLE. Cinematography: BREATHTAKING. Music: HEARTBREAKING. And on and on it goes…

I’ll admit the fact they didn’t answer a whole lot in terms of the nagging questions. But you know what? Who cares. I certainly don’t. And the fact that a huge fan like myself has come to the point where the ending was so good I don’t even want to know the full answer(s) is saying something. Every emotion since the first episode has culminated into this last fight, and this last goodbye. And the show took our feelings and threw them all around. Every single commercial break I was overjoyed, teary-eyed, or flat-out in awe.



Wow. The photography of the show was mind-blowing. LOST has always been the most beautiful show on television, but this episode blew even itself out of the water. The shot of Locke standing at the edge of the cliff with the storm coming in, the boat coming towards him, literally left me jaw-dropped. And then the sweeping, spinning camera angles of the incredible Jack/Flocke fight, combined with the dark and moody weather added up to be one of the most astoundingly epic scenes in television history. And of course, we can’t forget Jack’s huge Super Smash Bros. downward-punch before the commercial break (credit Mel Kobran for saying it was “Smash Bros. like”).



They even showed us the inside of the cave, which I never thought we would see. A strange symbol-covered stone in a pool of seemingly electromagnetic water. The stone seemed almost like it was a cork of some type. When the cork was removed, the Island began fall apart and sink. Now what could that remind us of? That reminds me of a certain conversation Jacob had with Richard in Ab Aeterno, in which he described the Island as a sort of “cork” to keep the evil from destroying the world. Of course it’s also interesting that the water from in the pool disappeared once the cork was removed. The only place I could think it would go would be into the hole from which Desmond pulled the cork from. Someone pulling a cork and water rushing into it, causing something catastrophic? Sound familiar? It sounds to me like when Ben went into his secret room to call Smokie. He reached into a puddle of water, pulled some sort of cork, watched the water disappear, then waited for the monster to show and destroy Widmore’s men. Maybe these two examples are just coincidence, or maybe they were meant to foreshadow what was to come.



The producers have said since the beginning they knew what the last frame of LOST was going to be, and I believe them. How poetic, how symbolic, how amazing that the show would begin with the opening of Jack’s eye, only to end with him slowly closing it. In the same position of the bamboo forest, no less.

This is The End. Nothing has ever felt more right in this television show, and I never thought I would say that. Here’s to LOST. And here’s to the most amazing, meta-physical/spiritual ending to any television show ever.

Well I’m tired, and emotionally drained. Time to go watch the Jimmy Kimmel after-show and then sleep, happy that God didn’t end the world at 8:59 PM like we all feared he might. More to come, OF COURSE…



Happy Trails and Namaste,
Sam.

UPDATE: LOST begins to end in one hour. EXACTLY. And I’m watching it. You should, too.

I told you guys I have a few things lined up to do this summer. The next thing lined up is band-related.

Yes, you all know about Violent Blue. But did you know we now have our own website? Chances are you didn’t, so go check it out at violentblue.net. Having your own website is a big step for bands in today’s digital generation. Thus while the band itself is a big project, another big project for me will be creating/updating the site. Will and I agreed it would be great if each member of the band had his own blog, so I got Will set up with one of his own at violentblue.net/willmccarry. You may notice he only has one short post up, so go comment on and yell at him to start updating it more!

Right now the site is up and functional, though it looks terrible. It was just a custom page I threw together in an hour or two using a [terrible] CMS called concrete5. For now, it’s passable. It has a video of our single, and is also running the RSS feeds of our three blogs under our epic pictures. It’s also running a feed of our latest Tweets, and I’m going to put a box linking to our Facebook Fan Page. So it does work in terms of being a sort-of HUB for our future fans to be socially in touch with us. But don’t worry, the look of the page won’t stay white, weird, and boring for very long. Like I said, concrete5 is, while easy to use and great for beginners, nearly impossible to personalize. So for this site I’m moving away from it, and any other CMS for that reason.

I tested numerous others such as Drupal and Joomla, too. While many people I know use content management systems like concrete5 and Drupal effectively, it just isn’t what I’m going for with the site, even if I wanted to take a more community-driven approach. However, I don’t want to use services like WordPress or Blogger for a home page. While I could even strip a theme down so it has a more basic homepage, I don’t like the non-static feel or annoyingness of blog-driven band pages.

So basically the whole point of all the above writing is to explain why I’ve chosen to build the site from the ground-up by myself and code a crisp, clean, CSS template from scratch. This will be quite a learning experience for me, and I don’t want any of you “smarter” web developers laughing at me as I crawl and cry my way to a cool looking site. Obviously I won’t post the site until it’s completely done, but I will keep updating the process on this blog as it comes along. So it looks like this is the only place you’re gonna get that info which… you probably don’t actually care about. Hahah no matter, I’m the one running this blog, so I decide what gets put up, even if it’s boring and loser-filled.

Happy Trails,

Sam.