Control Freak, Gears of War, and Kling enemies

This week I finished Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games by Cliff Bleszinski. The original Gears of War trilogy has a very special place in my heart — I still think "Brothers to the End" is the best game trailer ever made. I also wanted to know more about Unreal Engine (and Unreal Tournament, which consumed so many hours of my uni days).

It's a good book — one person's experience of the industry, and I found it genuinely entertaining. Though I was disappointed that Infinity Blade barely got a mention. That game was groundbreaking for me — you could make something THIS visually stunning on mobile? What?

But getting back to Gears — it was an amazing story, an amazing world, full of amazing characters and weapons. It was fascinating to learn how all of it was conceived and transformed and how it all came together.

I feel privileged to have time now to read books about things that genuinely interest me. It's such an inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration — radical pivot from Gears of War — I've been experimenting with Kling animations for some of my enemies. I don't plan to use them in the game. I still cherish the dream of working with a real artist rather than trying to unblock my limited art capability with AI, because whatever I can produce as an animation amateur is probably 10x inferior to what someone who actually knows what they're doing can achieve. But I find these little animations inspirational, and now they all live on the Larithea Instagram. Expect cuteness overload!