That means I'll occasionally ramble on about some awesome new movie or show I saw. Or horrible movie or show. On occasion, it may even be both.
So what's this guy who types things like? My name is Ed, and currently I am 25 years old, living in Florida. You'd think this was a great thing, but honestly, I can't wait to get out of here - between the job market and the humidity, I'm ready to pack my bags and call this whole thing done.
I came to Florida for one major reason: to go to school to learn Computer Animation. I succeeded, and after four years of study (the last year repeating the same class over and over), I'd like to think I learned something. The initial hope was that I'd go off to do some grand things.
Except I realized that I had no money to move, no jobs in the area, and uh... not enough connections to land a job anywhere else. So far, I've managed to tread water, and things have improved. With any luck, I'll be looking to move out to Texas sometime next year, and we'll see how things develop from there.
Enough of that crap though, that's not why you're here (I hope!). The important thing is fun! Because that's what this blog is all about - attempting to document my chronicle through learning new artistic abilities, and expanding on ideas that have been bounding about the inside of my skull since I was a child, and letting them out to play for a bit.
Ever since I was young, I had a couple of dream jobs. The first one was a rail-road train track switcher. Then I wanted to be a conductor on a train. When I grew up a little and hit maybe four or five, I got it into my head how awesome it would be to become an astronaut. Then I grew a little more and decided I wanted to be a writer.
Well, I think that about settled it, really. I was huge into cartoons growing up, and TV shows were awesome. I used to read quite a bit growing up. I never really lost that writing bug, though after a traumatic childhood event early on nearly stopped me from ever writing again, it did take me eventually. In early High School, I got into drawing a bit, but never really thought a whole lot of it... despite having tried to create webcomics on three different occasions. One of which actually managed to see the light of day at some point.
As for gaming.... when I was a wee tyke, I was hooked. Five years old, we went to my aunt's to visit our cousins. They had an NES. I remember very distinctly staying up late to play games... I also remember another time that we went to visit, they were renting an SNES, and had such amazing titles as Road Runner's Death Valley Rally. I remember it clearly because I was somehow more awesome at it than my older brother OR our older cousin. I was hooked on those. Next Christmas, our parents got us an NES and an NES Entertainment System to go with it, and a few choice titles.
From then on, we got our games mostly from pawn shops or the like, but I was hooked. Zelda, Double Dragon, Megaman... those were the worlds I longed for, and as a child I would often dream of how awesome it would be if the 'cartoon world' and the 'video game world' and OUR WORLD were combined. Needless to say I was a tremendous fan of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Next to Princess Bride, it's still on my list of top favorites.
Moving along, the other game that help shape my childhood was a little board game called Hero Quest. It was described to me as a lighter version of D&D, which sounded awesome to me growing up. After all, it has Dungeons, and it has Dragons, so how the hell could that be anything *but* awesome? Obviously, despite my parents somehow owning an original Red Box, I was never allowed to play it. Didn't keep me from staring at it for weeks on end, wondering to myself if it was worth climbing the shelf to take it down and take a peek inside.
But Hero Quest put it into my mind how awesome tactical board game combat could be. I was hooked, and I didn't even yet know at the time just how badly addicted I was to this stuff.
My first initiation to D&D was much without my parents blessings. They didn't know for many years that I was gaming with my older brother (who had come back from the military by that time). They never knew their son was going out to gather together with people mostly 8 years his senior (and then some!) to pretend he was some badass from another world, where magic reigned supreme. Within the first year, I wanted to Game Master.
And boy was I terrible at it, but over time I started to get better, and now I think I can safely say I'm at least halfway decent at it.
I love to say that I've played more games than most people have even heard of. From CCGs to Tabletop to freeform-forum-posting. I've played Magic, Lord of the Rings, Deadlands, Star Wars, Star Trek, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Legend of the Five Rings.... and probably some others I've forgotten over time. I've played AD&D, D&D 3.0 and 3.5, Pathfinder, d20 Modern/Future, and recently I've played some 4E as well. I've played GURPS, RIFTS (don't get me started on that), and made a few characters for various iterations of Shadowrun. I've ventured from Rogukan to Eberron to Greyhawk and beyond - I've tasted Spelljammer and been left wanting more.
I think it's fairly safe to say that few people know entertainment quite the way that I do. Because quite frankly, I've made it a tremendous part of my life, because I feel that it too is a medium for artistic creativity to blossom.
As a child, I always wanted to go and make people feel something. As that same child, I was influenced by the books and television shows and movies and games I played, and I always desperately wanted to give something back.
So here we are today: Entertaingineering. Or learning how to create something entertaining.
I hope that you are better understanding the sort of person I am. And if you are thinking that I tend to ramble on an awful lot, you're probably correct. But I only ramble because I feel it's the only way to properly convey all of the information I wish to impart, because for whatever stupid reason, I feel that it's important.
So with all of that said.... here's what I hope to convey on this blog:
- Things related to my gaming group - materials, settings, or other awesome things that occur. This can range from gaming mechanics to just general table play, or plot hooks I think are kind of neat.
- Inspirational images, movies, television shows, books, whatever it is I come across. For some time I was doing movie reviews and such on another blog of mine, so I may continue that trend here on occasion.
- Plans for moving forward with my artistic career - either works that I am currently working on modeling or animating, or talking about webcomics or my plans to create a series I feel has never been matched in the world.
- Stuff relating to the previously-mentioned comicry/entertaining medium. Because I've never decided where I wanted to put that thing.
- And occasionally, things pertaining to writing, because it is an important creative medium nearly as old as painting itself.
So with all of that said, I hope and pray that any other entry I write will never be this long. Unless it is super important. Or super silly.
Hope you stick around for the ride.
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