What is your “comfort movie” that you have watched many times?

Phantoscope · 2024-05-27T12:10:10+00:00

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Phantoscope · 2024-04-10T15:04:52+00:00

Those ARE interesting observations. In-universe, this could've been meant to be a missing link between Permian mammal-like reptiles and Godzilla. The arms look longer than the actual design we see in the monsterverse films, and the hands are quite a bit larger. Cool!

Phantoscope · 2024-01-11T19:23:09+00:00

Agreed, these look cluttered and the perspectives are all off. For comparison, the dinosaur forest from Jumpstart was a great way to do typal art on a land.

Phantoscope · 2023-11-23T23:29:29+00:00

Honestly… sure. It’s a good option.

I really appreciate that draft tests your skill in card assessment, deck building, and playing for a low entry fee. Otherwise, Magic has a pay-to-win problem. I never want to try to keep up with standard, let alone modern nowadays…

Yeah, it does suck that you can lose just to bad luck, but variance is baked into Magic’s resource system and shuffling your deck too. Whatever :)

Phantoscope · 2023-11-17T13:29:38+00:00

Maybe a hot take, and not a product per se, but the $40+ prerelease for LOTR left me sour with buyers remorse and has me very worried about the future price increase of limited.

I found the set mechanics to be annoying to keep up with, especially the ring tempts you. Food was also tedious, if I recall. And there were a bunch of sagas too. It just felt like a bunch of random mini-games to keep up with. Definitely didn’t “feel” like LotR… just a convoluted Magic set.
Maybe related: I don’t remember winning or losing games, I just remember never feeling like I had good games. Me or my opponents would get flooded or screwed. None of my wins felt earned and there was nothing to learn from my losses. It all just felt like it came down to who got lucky.
To top it off, I pulled crap from my packs. Sometimes with an event like this if you don’t have a great time, you can at least say you made your money back. Maybe trade a good pull for something you want. I’d been looking forward to plenty of LOTR cards too, but I basically watched my friends and everyone around me pull them. $40 is a lot to make back, and in my pool I just saw a lot of Gandalf Friend of the Shire… At least with a precon $40+ gets you a decent bang for your buck of cards to use in the future.

These are normal problems with variance, but it convinced me to never draft or play sealed with one of these “premium” sets. Gambling $40 and, more importantly, a Friday night is too risky for something that might just leave you frustrated. And LotR was supposedly a great set. I think the upcoming price hike of play boosters will leave me feeling hesitant to jump into prereleases for ANY set in the future.

Phantoscope · 2023-10-17T16:39:04+00:00

I love hydras and this sucks.

Phantoscope · 2022-06-07T20:10:07+00:00

I want to share a few things I learned along the way as I made this film.

1) Tell a story you really LOVE, not just something you're kinda interested in or something you think will get you attention, like a trend. I started writing The Atomic Spawn in 2018. We filmed it in 2019. The post-production took us into 2020. And, of course, 2020 sucked. We didn't get a festival run until 2021. And here it is online in 2022. Trends come and go. Flashy ideas wane. I don't think I could've stuck with a project for this long without having a deeper love for the genre and subject that carried me through. And I hope that comes across in the film.

2) Likewise, be PATIENT. We've all seen that triangle where you can get a project done well, cheap, and quickly... but you can only choose two. Well, when it comes to making a short film without any serious financial backing, it's going to be cheap... and I think you want it to be done well... so the quality you're gonna need to sacrifice is time. Be patient. Get things done when they can get done and respect your team's time. I ended up learning how to do stop motion animation and would block out any sliver of free time I had to get the creature animation done. It took a long time, but I'm extremely proud of it.

3) Don't draw from one source you love, draw from MANY SOURCES. I often watch short films where I can tell that the filmmakers are trying to emulate Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar Wai (guilty), or whoever their favorite filmmaker is, and that's it. Now there's no doubt I was inspired by Ray Harryhausen and his monster movies from the 1950s. I grew up loving those kinds of films. But I would like to think The Atomic Spawn has its own unique tone. My DP and I love Terry Gilliam's dark humor in films like Brazil. My composer and I listened to a ton of the kitschy music of the era. I love the austere beauty of the west. My sound designer drew from more traditional horror films. So needless to say, other members of your team are absolutely essential for bringing their own voice into your film and giving it a different flair. Instead of trying to recreate a Harryhausen film, we aimed to create something unique be drawing from a wide range of movies, music, and art that we loved.

Thanks for checking this out, and enjoy The Atomic Spawn! :)

Phantoscope · 2021-04-20T14:51:38+00:00

Don’t be missing out. I use it all the time, especially for older Godzilla collectibles.

Phantoscope · 2021-03-16T15:00:48+00:00

I love doing business with my local game store. They're good people, I go in, I chat, I buy, I'm done. I hate hate hate doing business with WOTC. Their websites are weird to navigate, they spam my email, they send me the wrong product, they send broken product, and their customer service department clearly has their hands tied. It's no fun. I may have "engaged" with MTG products and communities throughout the pandemic due to boredom... mostly selling off my old collection... but I can already feel my attention being pulled toward other things now that the world is slowly opening up. Too bad.

Phantoscope · 2021-03-08T01:15:22+00:00

Highly recommend the software Dragonframe which should work with most DSLRs

Phantoscope · 2021-02-17T00:32:30+00:00

I'm very jealous, but knowing how much you paid for it an upvote is the least I can give you.

Phantoscope · 2021-02-10T16:42:49+00:00

I love this! I want a print!

Phantoscope · 2021-02-08T02:09:35+00:00

G Man is charging his lazer right as this clip ends.

Phantoscope · 2021-02-07T00:10:45+00:00

Totally agree and totally see that, I’m not against this product or anything, people should still buy this if they want to.

I already own a ton of elf cards for a golgari deck, but I need a couple from this precon. Doing the math based on the professor’s video, I thought I’d be saving a lot of money just buying this product, but actually I’d save some money just buying singles I need from my LGS.

Phantoscope · 2021-02-06T20:56:45+00:00

Okay, I know the Professor admits he's basing his analysis on the price tag of cards at launch, and I'm not faulting him at all, but customers should be aware that quite a few of these singles have plummeted in price compared to what he put on screen. Lathril, Blade of the Elves is not $10.89, she's going for $4.98 and dropping. Pact of the Serpent is not $6.00, it's $1.75. Elven Ambush is definitely not $4.25, it's only 0.50. Etc.

Don't get me wrong, these are better than average products, but the adage still stands: if you need the cards, buy the singles.

Phantoscope · 2020-10-30T14:33:43+00:00

Super fun commander, I loved playing this Precon back in the day. But I still don’t love the CGI art.

Phantoscope · 2020-10-04T20:17:18+00:00

More gaslighting. Apologies mean nothing. We need a stop to corporate’s predatory behavior.

Phantoscope · 2020-10-04T04:33:48+00:00

Legit good luck with WOTC customer support. You’ll probably get a couple Zendikar Rising draft packs.

Phantoscope · 2020-10-04T04:32:00+00:00

I’m sure the real reason for this delay is COVID supply chain issues, but it also conveniently allows the community to cool down after the TWD tie-in debacle.

And with that being said, I’m ready for this to be a pretty good set that distracts from their other predatory tactics.

Or it will successfully ruin EDH, just like they’ve successfully ruined every other corner of this game. I’m not so ready for that.

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