Of Stamina

I've just discovered this artist named Zac Gorman who has a very interesting art style. I find his use of colors really inspiring. He writes some comics about Zelda once in a while. They're beautiful. And funny. Sometimes  so freaking epic.

So there I was recalling memories, tasting the art and the colors (and that atmospheric rain effect) when I noticed inspiration kicking in. It's weird, but things that make me recall my childhood can be so inspiring.

Then I noticed Link's stamina bar over there and things made sense. The connection between this feeling of inspiration with the feeling of replenishing health in the games suddenly occurred. It feels as if I could be hit and I'd still have strength to stand up and keep going.

I also realized something:

How come a game where the door of the hero's house lies carved a heart can be so epic?

Sparkles are shot from Link's sword when his stamina bar is full. Goddamn Sparkles. Coincidentally, in more recent games, like Minish Cap, I think, when the opposite happens and you're left with one heart only, Link will regain the ability to shoot those energy blasts, like some kind of desperate strength Analogizing back to the inspiration and ideas, this could very well be Calvin's "last-minute panic".

Of Mindscapes

As a Taster, sensory feelings are everything for me. Smells and colors and sounds and flavors and textures are part of what my life is, especially because sometimes the combination of them creates a whole meaningful and memorable scenarios, despite of their usual fugacity.

Those are mindscapes, sensory feelings that combined stick to our memories. We all have lots of mindscapes in all our minds, ranging from all kind of experiences. That sunset hour plus her perfume. The foggy night plus a black metal song. That smell of coffee and plants in grandma's house.

I guess mindscapes are part of the whole personal element study. They can add so much to one's perception that I have this life goal that is to taste as many mindscapes as I can, be it through living my life or tasting other life stories (and clearly this has enormous story-telling potential).

It's weird to think there are people who have experienced mindscapes I could never dream of. It's quite interesting to try thinking of them, to broad my horizons. It's also helpful to realize some of my most influential mindscapes can be completely unknown or uninfluential to others.

I like living in this small city surrounded by nature. Mountains and valleys and forests. Now here's a cold and cloudy day. And I've got a hymn for this mindscape. I mean, there's quite a lot of them. There's so many of these heavy atmospheric, melancholic (sometimes with a hint of anguish)-sounding songs that I had to name them, Sunday Gray (i know, these names embarrass me, but a name is a name). So far the list includes: Alice in Chains' Bleed the Freak, Pearl Jam's Black, Acid Bath's Venus Blue, Metallica's My Friend of Misery, and, currently the most meaningful one, Pantera's Floods (especially that sweet outro, but that's quite because of another mindscape).
This whole mindscape actually reminds me of the city I grew in, which sometimes used to feel this beautifully sad and melancholic in days like this. Hey, umm, all these songs were released in 90s, the decade I lived there. Also, my brother did use to listen to a lot of grunge and thrash metal back then. Probably there's a Nirvana song that'll fit in this list (oh, it's quite frustrating to realize it's just a nostalgia-indulced feeling). So this whole Gray mindscape is indeed one of my strongest ones, and it has even influenced my musical taste. Quite deeply, I'd say, for this mindscape could pretty much even be the reason I love so much baritones vocalists and low-sounding instruments like bass and cello.

Of Hybridism (pragmatism and lyricism)

I think it's a sign of Art when words can be used so masterfully. And I want to achieve it, but there's a long way to go, as I still can't do much impressive tricks with my currents skills. I've even been trying to avoid poetry. Mermaid words, careful with them. They can be shiny and beautiful and deviate me from my purposes when my ideas are not clear and whole and formulated enough to bear with that temptation.
Look, I've just preyed myself, but it seems the last sentence was strong enough to get safe and accurate to the other side.

And there it goes, the texts can sound beautiful and pleasant even when my main purpose is to convey a message thoroughly. I've been thinking, this whole pragmatical approach I'm using to discipline my writing skills is somehow making my texts sound somewhat poetic in its own pragmatism. I've noticed how when I express ideas like tasting or seasoning I sometimes sound like a sensitive poet with a delicate word-playing, when I'm fact I'm only trying to be as practical and objective as possible just so my meaning can travel safely to the reader.

I like this kind of beauty, this meaningful beauty. Sounds like a good hybrid between the efficiency of methodic simplicity and the tasteful spices of poetry (see, only using names for concepts I've given lots of thoughts).
By the way, nice word, hybrid. I'll adopt it as a name for this long-sought balance between dualities.

Of movies and visuals

I won't deny it, get your movie decent visuals and you pretty much bought me already. 
I enjoyed watching Tron Legacy for one reason mostly, its color scheme (the soundtrack felt like fresh air, too). That contrast of white/blue and orange/red was something I don't remember experiencing in a long time. Man, that spice alone skyrocketed the experience for me in a way the average story didn't came to bother me at all.

Maybe it wouldn't impress me this much if I wasn't getting extremely sick of digital color correction, which is making movies look bland and insipid (I really mean it, that even downgraded Inception a little for me). That brownish or blueish or greenish overall tone in movies is making me feel a little like when I smell that sickening burning brake when I'm on the road.

I've heard "movies shouldn't look like videogames" talk, which I call bullshit. They're both visual arts, and there's nothing shameful to giving your movie some interesting graphical treatment, and one shouldn't avoid making a movie look gorgeous just so it won't be compared to a game like it's the worst critic you can get. It's not like if you work the visual wisely you're bound to have childish and/or hiperactive visuals or whatever people think games visuals are (and look at how parallel the industries are: digital color correction is bringing insipidity to gaming industry too). Plus you can lose a whole lot with that limitation.

Anyway, my point here is just that I miss more movies trying "bold" color schemes (weird how the boldness would be mostly for trying) and vibrant contrasts. I fail to see how trying iconic and strong images is "a cheap trick to get dumb people to watch your movie".

I see nothing cheap and dumb about this.

Of The Personal Element

If there's anything that keeps me find the world fascinating, it's the ammount of diversity around us.

See, everybody is different, everybody has got a unique spice inside them. Everybody's got their own lifestory due to their particular background. So be it the way that city you were raised in affected your tastes or the way relationships affected your maturity, all those previous things will make you stand unique. Everybody has got something new to bring to the table. It's the thing about the bands. Let's consider the instruments are played averagely, but the singer's voice is always a unique instrument (although that's something not necessarily positive!).

As a brazilian person, I can bring elements characteristic to my referencial universe (Brazilian culture) that other referencial universes probably won't feature this clearly (remember some things being easier to realize in drawing than it's in playing music?). You can see that happening everywhere, basically in anything culture-related.

I think that's one of the ways to improve over the standard formulas mentioned previously, so art can always show us new and interesting things.