I'm a Frag Doll!!!

I'm a Frag Doll!

www.FragDolls.com
Frag Doll Sabre

ULTRAMARINES

For all you Games Workshop & Warhammer 40K lovers out there...check it out!

**WARNING: MILD SPOILERS AND POOR VIDEO QUALITY**
http://fragdolls.com/index.php/blogs/category/cadettes

Happy Valentine's Day!

Watch this now!

Video Blog #5 - BioShock New Year's Eve Party

Happy New Year!

This year, my boyfriend Jason and I decided to host a BioShock themed New Year's Eve party at my house. We loved the idea of re-creating Rapture, the underwater metropolis of BioShock, but MAN we had NO IDEA what we were getting ourselves into.

Here is the Video Blog I created for the Frag Doll site:



And now, for the details:

1. Creating the under-water city

Rapture is an iconic city featuring New York-esque buildings and art decco-styles. I fell in love with the city as soon as I read my first BioShock article in a Game Informer magazine years ago, and it has been so much fun re-creating the city in my house.

Designing the City
The first step in creating Rapture was designing the multiple skyscrapers in the city skyline. Using the picture above, I drew different buildings (styles and sizes) on black cardboard. To make the perspectives stand out, I painted the lines of the buildings with silver paint - just light enough to see, but not too bright so as to take away from the silhouettes.

Lighting the City

After designing the buildings, Jason took strands of white LED lights (super cheap after Christmas!) and re-soldered all the connections to match up with the windows and signs. As you can see from the picture, the new light strands were long and involved. Each building section (above) took roughly 1~2 hours to light, and with 10 building sections the time really added up!

Submerging the City
Once the buildings were lit, we attached them to my basement walls with tape and thumbtacks. We then cut blue cellophane into 92" strips (the height of my basement walls) and attached them on top of the buildings. The blue cellophane provided a great under-water impression, and made the lighting especially dramatic.

Between each "panel" of blue cellophane (meant to be windows looking out on the city skyline of Rapture) we put one strip of white paper to symbolize columns.

The Finished Product

Look at that under-water skyline! :D

2. Adding details
Propaganda
In BioShock, Rapture is littered with propaganda for Fontaine and Ryan, as well as tons of advertisements for locations in Rapture and of course - Plasmids! We decided to print out some posters for our re-created Rapture, including some of the most well-known signs:

Glowing Sign
Jason found a great company online that deals with El Wire. If you're not sure what El Wire is (I can't dive into specifics because even I don't quite get it) check out this company (elwirepros.com) for the full details.

We ended up buying yards of this wire to create a "neon-glowing" sign for the party. Here's a picture of the desired sign in the game:

Happy New Year 1959

And here is our sign - created out of plywood (black base), El Wire, and hot glue!

Plasmid Drinks
In BioShock, Plasmids are essential for destroying your enemies. - Because this game mechanic is so heavily used in the game, it stands to reason that a BioShock party would entail the use of Plasmids too! Here is the drink list I created for the party:

Electro-Bolt
1.5 oz Amaretto almond liqueur
1-2 splashes Sweet & Sour mix
Green food coloring

Incinerate
1 oz Goldschlage Cinnamon Schnapps
2 oz Lemonade
Red food coloring

Sonic Boom
1 oz Vodka
2 oz Orange Juice
No food coloring required

Telekinesis
2 oz Vodka
1 oz Coffee Liqueur
Light Cream
Purple food coloring

Winter Blast
2 oz Vodka
1 oz Blueberry Schnapps
1 oz Pineapple Juice
Blue food coloring






Splicer Masks
Although Big Daddies are the iconic enemies of the game, the most common fight you'll get into in BioShock is with a splicer, left over from the fall of Rapture. To commemorate this, I picked up some plain white masks, paint, hot glue, and white feathers so that guests could create their own splicer masks.

Splicers with their masks!

3. The Vita-Chamber
We decided that no party in Rapture would be complete without a Vita-Chamber, and making it actually turned out to be fairly straight-forward.

Jason created a wood frame to match the frame of a door in my basement. By cutting semi-circles out of the wood, we were able to create a rounded top from which to hang the "doors." We used a clear shower liner for the "doors" and attached a light colored fabric to the front for the door design. Jason was able to hook up two lights to the top of the Chamber; one with a blue light below the top, and a regular light on the top. Out of the same black posterboard used for the buildings, I used stencils to create the Vita-Chamber sign. We added some blue pipe cleaners for electricity to complete the look:

Overall, it was a pretty amazing party. I ended up leaving a lot of good ideas out at the last minute - but the guests had a great time (whether they had played BioShock or not) and we had a fun time hosting :-)

Happy New Year!

VBlog #4 - Happy Holidays!

As promised, I have created a Video Blog for my Protoss Nexus Gingerbread House (affectionately renamed the "GingerNexus").

I'll post up pictures later, but for now - enjoy!



Happy Holidays, and keep on gaming!

And the beat goes on...

Current exciting news:

1. Still pluggin' along with research: I'm meeting with Dr. C on a regular basis now, which is great and will hopefully keep me on a schedule. I've realized that I'm extremely goal-oriented, and I need to set goals and deadlines for myself the way classes and school used to do. Now that I'm working full-time, it's harder than ever to come home after 8/9+ hours days and attempt to read numerous scientific articles. I think I'll try the divide and conquer approach; I'll break my model into sections, then attack each one separately within a tentative timeframe. And no matter how difficult or daunting this task seems, I'm determined to see it through!

2. Playin' some games: I have a number of games on my "to-play" list, and I'm very excited to get at them. However, Black Ops has been released and my division of the PMS Clan (Modern Warfare 2) will be switching official to a Black Ops division in January...in preparation for this, I've been trying to ramp up my play time on the new game. I both like and don't like Black Ops - it feels a lot like Modern Warfare 2, as I suppose it should, but I miss the Special Ops missions and the maps. Oh, I *really* miss the maps...Black Ops has some great detail in it...but when does it become too much? I wonder if anyone else feels the same...

3. Holidays! Gearing up for the festive season by scoping out the game selections and figuring out what games to buy friends and family. I've also been invited to my boyfriend's family's annual Gingerbread House Party, and I'm trying to figure out a way to create a Starcraft II scene out of gingerbread...we're thinking either a Protoss Nexus (a pyramid out of gingerbread is easy, right?) or a Terran Command Center. Either way, I plan on incorporating my favorite race into the scene - candy-coated zerglings and creep! We'll see how this turns out... :D

That's all, ta-ta for now!

(BTW, hope everyone out there is doing well)

Video Blog #3 - Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear!

I know this isn't video game/industry specific....but I couldn't help but post this. Enjoy!