A few years back a team of programmers, artists and mod mappers decided to brainstorm an idea for a Half-Life modification. A modification (or mod for short) is basically an extension or add-on to an existing program which extends the life of the game. Even though Valve released its masterpiece 7 years ago, the game has enjoyed a life of its own because of these modifications.

The team included a friend of mine, Adam Smith, whose job was to provide the soundtrack to this original modification. The mod entitled Metroid: Project Otazuno was to be a 3D Metroid game utilizing the Half-Life engine. Prior to this, Metroid had incured an absence and fans of the series were salivating for something new, a Metroid game utilizing the latest technology.

Several months into production, including devising beautiful levels, artwork and music, the project was halted. The reason? Nintendo of America in conjunction with game developers Retro Studios were working on a top secret project. That project was a Metroid game (Metroid Prime) planned for release on their newest console Gamecube. The Half-Life Metroid team received an advanced warning to “cease and desist” all production on the modification.

All legal reasons aside, it’s a shame that all the hard work was set aside and will never be experienced by the public. The beautiful artwork, amazing levels and music now reside as “abandonware” within the kartooner.com server.

However, as an exclusive I’m presenting to you Metroid: Project Otazuno. Take a look at the screenshots (and the one included in this article). It’s eerie how the Half-Life Metroid ship resembles Prime’s ship and a variety of other ideas from the mod seemed to influence Retro’s version.

It’s always interesting to see how a logo has progressed throughout the span of time. Over the years new designers have their own take on how the logo should look and their goal is to prevent too much deviation from what was originally conveyed.

In this Pepsi logo example (from yayhorray.com) you can immediately see the changes that have occured to the logo from its inception in 1898 to the more recent 2003 version. Up until 1962 the logo retained the scripty font look, eventually replacing the bottlecap in 1973 for the cleaner three-toned look that we all are familar with.

On Saturday, my father-in-law, brother-in-law and I went to the Geneseo Air Show. The plan was to wake up early so as to make it to the 9am Pancake Breakfast, which fell through because I forgot we were going to the air show.

At 7 in the morning, Lucas (my brother-in-law) calls me up informing me that in roughly 30 minutes they’ll be picking me up. Needless to say, I rushed around getting ready and in the process forgot two crucial things; sunblock to prevent sunburn and a hat to block the sun.

We arrived a little after 9am and proceeded to browse the grounds. Every World War 2 plane you could think of was proudly on display, one of which had Natashia from Rocky and Bullwinkle painted on the side of the cockpit. There were also a couple planes on display that were converted from US planes to Japanese Zeros, used exclusively in the WWII movie, Tora Tora Tora. The show itself lasted for 6 hours, but we decided to only stay for 4 hours, heading home around 2 in the afternoon.

Within this time frame, my entire face and arms were burnt to a crisp. My own fault for forgetting those two crucial items (sunscreen and a hat). I now resemble that of a lobster and every inch of my face feels like someone is torturing me with the “Indian burn”.

It was hurting so much this morning in fact that before I went to work I was massaging my face with a bag of frozen peas. Life can be so cruel and many times it’s our own fault.

Imagine a place where trolls, airline stewardesses and fairies live. Then imagine where these seemingly separate entities exist because of a wonderful illustrator’s web site. In this case I’m referring to my friend, Scott Thigpen, and his web site, www.sthig.com.

It’s here that Scott shows us the wonderful eye candy that he has created over the years utilizing programs such as Macromedia Flash and Adobe Illustrator. On a side note, Scott was even so kind to create an illustration for my “mildly” anticipated Sideville project. The site is filled with brilliant designs that remind you of a certain era in time when things were much simplier but screamed quality. In the various portfolios you’ll find all sorts of illustrations Scott has created for his clients (such as Blizzard Entertainment) including High Ballers, Enchanted Elves and Over-sized Creatures.

According to Scott, he prefers Adobe Illustrator for its ease of use (albeit a strong learning curve at first) and the variety of designs that can be accomplished with the program. This is evident in the color work and layout of his characters and scenes.

sThig.com is truly something to experience and from the looks of it, Scott has much more in store for the future.