resistance to persistence

There’s a photo exhibit going on at Toronto’s Steam Whistle Art Gallery (near Rogers Centre). Claiming some of the best action sports photography, I think it would be worthwhile to check it out. The website is pretty empty on details, but hopefully the show has some good work. It’s only on until July 30th, so get there before it’s gone.

http://www.actionsportsart.com/about.html

trailer for tony hawk’s project 8

i can’t believe how far games have come. i’ve bought every version of the tony hawk games from “tony hawk pro skater” all the way up to “wasteland”. “project 8″ is the most recent and it visually looks amazing. it won’t look this good on my ps2 - i’ll need to get a ps3 or xbox 360 to have these great graphics, but it’s such a far way away from the old blocky single textured polygon bodies of the older games.

let me know if you know this guy so i can get in contact with him

I’ve always wanted to put together some shots like in the skateboard magazines. Once I got my new camera, I finally had the speed and lens to capture some fast skateboard sequences. This guy (sorry I didn’t get his name) was down with it and kept setting up tricks for the shoot. This was the best series I got. I’ve gotta get out this summer and find some more shoots like this. Click the image to see the larger shot.

Danny Way.com has a ton of videos on the site for viewing. An amazing skateboarder, he went pro at the age of 12 and he’s at least 30 years old now I believe. He’s also got 2 world records to his name (longest distance jump (75′) and highest air (23.5′) on a skateboard). He’s even dropped out of a helicopter into a skateboard ramp. Continues to put the boundaries. Check out the quicktime videos at http://www.dannyway.com/_videos/. In particular, watch dannyway_epk.mov (12.8M) for an overview of Danny Way or if you just want to see his world record run, watch worldrecord_line.mov (820k)

On Friday night, I went to a show opening for my brother in law, Alist. He was contacted to do some artwork for a touring show of graphics on skateboard decks. When he showed me the boards the week before, I blew up in excitement. The show, Thirty Two Inch Canvas, was at Goodfoot shoe store. Really hip show, lots of great work. I’d consider buying a board from the show. It would be a good piece of artwork to buy for my office.

Two weeks ago, I was driving through a neighbourhood near my house looking at available houses to buy and spotted a concrete skatepark. What a find. This weekend I finally got time to go. Jenn came with me…I didn’t want to go alone just in case I hurt myself and required some emergency assistance. Hopefully not. Jenn actually really enjoyed watching all the skaters. We were there for almost 3 hours. It was a bit scary dropping in for the first time. It’s been years since I’ve been on a ramp and I’ve never skated a concrete bowl before. It’s really slippery as I found out the first time I tried jumping in. I still haven’t figured out pumping the walls to keep the speed up. I started to get the hang of it but then a bunch of really good guys showed up and it was hard for me to get enough time in the bowls. It was a great day and I’ve always wanted to ride a concrete park. I’ll definitely be back there again next weekend. It was amazing watching some of the guys. A few of them were going upside down in the 3/4 bowl with serious speed. And the greatest thing is I wasn’t the oldest guy there. There were 3 or 4 guys who were in their mid to late 30’s and tearing it up. I was inspired. I think I’m back in the skating game again.

Photos - click to see larger image
Video - click to download

Well, not in real life. But in the 1’s & 0’s I’m pretty good. I just finished Tony Hawk’s Underground (THUG) for the PS2 last night. This is the first PS2 game I’ve completely finished all the way to the end. Usually I get to about 90% and then it either becomes too hard, too routine, I have another new game that takes my attention or I just have no time to play. Last night I was flabberghasted when I actually finished it. It was a wierd feeling - “what now? what do I do next?” The credits rolled and that was it. I looked forward daily to the challenges, but they are now complete.

So I decided to check out some online play now that I was familiar with the levels and could provide some challenge to the vidpunks online who play 8+ hours/day. Before I got that far, I checked out the additional online features. You can download everything now when you connect online. Extra user-created levels, players and goals! In THUG, it’s now a story mode game with 129 goals to tackle throughout the game. You start out as a rookie skater, working your way up through the ranks to become a pro. Users can now create their own series of goals throughout the different levels of the game, providing infinite playability of the game. What a brilliant idea. So I downloaded a few goals packs and started playing again. I now have more to play again….just until SSX 3 arrives on Xmas morning (hope, hope) and I’ve found a new game to occupy my time.

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Last weekend I bought Tony Hawk’s Underground [reviews | screenshots ] for my PS2. It’s the 5th game in the series. This one is slightly different. New this time is “story mode” because you start out as an aspiring pro and work your way up the ladder earning sponsorships. There’s also some new stuff where you can get off your board and walk around (kinda cool to combine with tricks), climb up buildings, etc. And you can drive a car at some points. They should have just left this out. If you’re going to put in cars, do it right. After playing a game like Grand Theft Auto for hours, you’d expect a car game to have some features. This was the worst I’ve ever seen car driving…it’s like they took a step back 10 years and pulled the code out of Super Mario Cart, but worse. A big box with wheels and handles about the same. This doesn’t distract from the game too much though.

One really cool feature is new to creating a skater. You can put your own face on the character. You take a photo of yourself, email it in and then with network access for your PS2, you can download your face and map it onto your character. Not great results, but a great concept. Look for this in other games in the future.

The Tony Hawk franchise is really pushing things forward in the online gaming community. Now you can upload moves, characters, skateparks to a central server and download other peoples creations. Before, after finishing the game you’d get tired of skating the same locations over and over. You could make your own parks, but who had the time? Young kids, that’s who? Now you can take advantage of their excessive free time and download their creations. I haven’t played too much with the online stuff yet…I’d rather stick to finishing the game first.