Polygon Wizard – Introductions
Monday, December 29th, 2008
Introducing Geekshow Entertainment’s new gaming writer, Nathanael Fuller.
Polygon Wizard
Video Game News, Reviews, and Retrospectives
The first thing you need to know about me is I am an animator for a small studio in North Carolina, and I feel very lucky to have my dream career. Ever since I saw Toy Story, I knew I wanted to be an animator. I live for the days when I feel like a great puppeteer, and every decision I make breathes life into the character on my computer screen. It makes all the extremely frustrating days when all I do is curse my computer for crashing too much and the characters for not doing exactly what I want disappear like a bad memory. I wouldn’t trade this career for all the money in the world (which is good because I actually don’t get paid all that much).
I could probably point out many things in the latest animated movies that most people will never see. I could bore you to tears talking about proper animation rigs, inverse kinematics, sub-patch modeling, motion paths, and the frustrations of tweaking dynamic calculations. I could tell you why it can be much harder to animate a subtle facial expression than a character falling down the stairs.
However, that is not why I am writing here.
Apart from my day job, I have many different “geeky” interests. I have read Lord of the Rings a countless number of times. I can just about quote The Princess Bride at will. I love Star Wars, and I was even a band geek back in high school where I played the alto saxophone in marching band, symphonic band, and jazz band. I really enjoy watching movies and television (and I love a good book), but the reason I am writing here is because I also love playing video games.
I grew up playing basic computer games (even some written in BASIC), starting on my dad’s old IBM. I played everything from QBert and Commander Keen to Myst and Wolfenstein 3D. When I got my first computer, I broke it in playing Thief: The Dark Project and Starcraft. Growing up, I was only able to play Nintendo at friends’ houses, so I didn’t get hooked on playing console games until I got to college and discovered the drug called Super Smash Bros Melee. My roommates and I would play Melee until the wee hours of the morning, with many a noisy outburst. We would also play other games such as Halo, but it always seemed to come back to Smash Bros.
The first console I owned myself was a GameCube, and I still love the little purple lunchbox. I currently own a Nintendo Wii, a Nintendo DS, an XBox 360, and an outdated PC. I enjoy each one of those systems, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to write about my favorite hobby.
I’m not sure if I can be pretentious enough to claim that video games are art. I’m not even sure if it really matters. All I know is that video games capture my imagination, and they are a whole lot of fun to play.
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Welcome to the wizard! Obvious first question – what is your favorite animated film/short ?
That’s a difficult question. There is quite a bit of good animation out there.
I like pretty much every Pixar movie to varying degrees, but my favorite has to be The Incredibles because it’s very geeky in addition to being a great movie. I also love The Iron Giant for similar reasons, and Ratatouille is great as well…..so I guess you could say I am a fan of Brad Bird’s work.
I love old school Disney stuff. I especially love the look and feel of Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio. I love pretty much anything Chuck Jones ever did, especially the Roadrunner cartoons. Batman The Animated Series is also some quality stuff.
On the anime side, I really like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. Ghost in the Shell is good, and Grave of the Fireflies is great. And it almost goes without saying that Hayao Miyazaki is pretty much a genius.
Don Hertzfeldt’s Rejected animated short is dementedly funny, and Bill Plympton has made a ton of shorts that also fit into the same “demented” category.
So, if I had to narrow things down a bit, I would say that my favorite animated movie is probably The Iron Giant, and Looney Tunes are my favorite when it comes to TV.
Ask me tomorrow and I’ll probably say something different. ;)
I like it! For me my favorite animated movie is ‘The Incredibles’ and my favorite shorts are the Roadrunner series. I even have some limited cells from Roadrunner on my wall!
Howdy, sir. And welcome aboard. I’m looking forward to reading your reviews. I’m a bit of an OG gammer myself. I still have my collection of NES cartridges.
I actually broke out the old NES lightgun last night cuz I was in the mood for some duck hunt.
Yay! Polygon!! I love the pic with your tongue sticking out while playing a video game. It’s so Randy!
I was wondering when someone would mention that. :P
I did that on purpose as soon as I saw the new Geekshow logo. :)
I can’t wait to hear your reviews. Sounds like we have an OG gamer in the hizzouse… wait.. I’m a little too white to pull that off… Anyways.. best of luck.
I loved Commander Keen. :) Although for one of the games all I ever had was a weird demo that’d only let you go to some of the worlds. Never did get the full version of the game. :(
I tried to find it through… other sources a bit back but all I could STILL get was the demo! LOL.
Welcomen. :)
WTF. Something about this comment tossed it into the moderation queue. Is Keen some sort of penis enlargement drug I’m not aware of? :P
I saw that after I posted and was really confused. I mean, if I’m gonna get a comment sent to moderation I at least want it to be for something cools. Weird.
Usually it happens when the comment has 3 or more links in one post. I’m not sure what happened there. I can only assume it was a combination of words that set it off.
Obviously, these are the articles I’ve been looking forward to the most. Gaming is my biggest passion. Can’t wait to see some stuff from you. I also really think this will improve the site. I have a pretty big bias toward everything 360 related, so it will be fun to see stuff from your point of view on other systems.
It’s not as if I haven’t tried to like other systems. My favorites of all time were the Genesis and Dreamcast. But I had just about system up until this generation. Had a PS2 and didn’t care for it (Though that was only about a year or so after release, so the good games weren’t out yet). I had a Gamecube and loved it, so I sold it and got a Wii. I played it for a few months, but couldn’t get into anything not made especially with the Wii Controls in mind, or with the option to use regular controls.
I want to see your top list of games for this generation at some point.
Good idea! I’ll have to work on a few top ten lists.
It will take a little bit for me to get to something other than the 360 in my reviews. As that’s the system I’ve been playing lately, those are the games fresh in my mind. I’ve started playing a few older games, but it takes a while to play through them enough to get a review written.
Understandably, since it’s had a barrage of newer games lately. The Wii’s best games came out earlier this year. BTW…Loving Fallout 3 so far. I was worried that I wouldn’t, since I didn’t care for Oblivion much at all.
Another factor is that I just got the system this summer, so I’ve been playing catchup with a bunch of games from the last couple years like Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect. I have yet to run out of great games to play. :D
Yeah as a gamer myself I look foward to reading about your feelings on the news.
Yay for Polygon!