Creative Cogitation

In this sec­ond paint­ing inspired by Roll Play Games online, I draw upon the idea that any­one can become any­thing and be suc­cess­ful at it.  One of my friends who was hav­ing a hard time in the Big Blue Box sev­eral years ago, but online she did become mas­ter of her guild and empress of her uni­verse.  Too bad suc­cess in the real world doesn’t seem to cor­re­late well with cyber­space, but who knows maybe cyber­space is becom­ing the new “real world.”

I admit I used to play Dun­geons and Drag­ons back in the 70s; of course in those days play­ers would get together and play face to face — some­times we even took it “live” roam­ing through the city “adven­tur­ing.”  I even played an “online” ver­sion on a com­mu­nity college’s main­frame, but back in those days there were no graph­ics — just a series of events that would be trig­gered if you inputted a rec­og­niz­able response.  Games have come a long way.

CMAP (Cover My *Butt* Parter), by Jake Beck­man. As they near the entrance to an omi­nous look­ing cas­tle, the house finch gamer turns to his rap­tor buddy and asks him to cover his butt.

This image is inspired by what I con­sider the grand­fa­ther of RPG online, namely D&D.  Adven­ture awaits those who dare to enter the fore­bod­ing cas­tle, but it is always good to have friends look­ing out for you even online.

For more details about CMAP see its art page at AKAJake.com.

Any com­ments? Do you like it, hate it, think its too dark, think its funny?…”

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

NOOB is a third paint­ing inspired by online roll play, specif­i­cally first per­son shoot­ers.  I have been around long enough to remem­ber play­ing the orig­i­nal ver­sion of Doom — it was very pop­u­lar among the bud­ding sci­en­tists at my uni­ver­sity. It makes me laugh to see old time com­put­ers in movies from the 80s and 90s, which I remem­ber using.  It is all so very dif­fer­ent now.  You used to need a lot more imagination.

In gen­eral NOOB is an acronym recast from “new­bie,” which can refer to any­one not famil­iar with cyber­space, but in the con­text of RPG it refers to an unskilled player.

NOOB by Jake Beck­man. Two yel­low house finch gamers perch in a tree gaz­ing down upon a fallen com­rade as the first per­son shooter roll play con­tin­ues on.

In this paint­ing I harken to Halo, Half-Life, Call of Duty, and other vaguely mil­i­tary first per­son shoot­ers.  Although their com­rade has fallen, he can rise again and be slain again ad infini­tum. In cyber­space death is a tem­po­rary incon­ve­nience.   I kept the back­ground includ­ing the hel­met that as fallen off the dead bird in shades of soft blue gray to con­trast the yel­low house finch play­ers from the cyber game space.  In the mid­dle back­ground I have placed sev­eral vague mil­i­tary fig­ures engaged in the con­tin­u­ing game play. Update: Some­one sug­gested I put the size of the paint­ing in the blog; size and other par­tic­u­lars are avail­able on the NOOB art page.

Any com­ments? Do you like it, hate it, think its too dark, think its funny?”

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Sorry to take this long to post some­thing new.  Back to back art mar­kets wiped me out.  I have com­pleted sev­eral paint­ings in the interim, and even wrote a cou­ple of draft posts about a week ago.  Then I got busy. Oops. It hap­pens.  Even though Con­spir­acy The­ory is not yet done, I did wan­der into another social media topic — online gam­ing, which turns out to be a very rich source of mate­r­ial indeed.

Avatar, I’ve always thought it was kind of a cool word back when it was only men­tioned in con­junc­tion with earthly incar­na­tions of Vishnu. Then I read a novel by Poul Ander­son, called The Avatar,  which intro­duced me to an alter­nate def­i­n­i­tion, the  embod­i­ment of a principal.

I can’t remem­ber when the word came to refer to the image that is the “embod­i­ment” of online per­sona, but in gen­eral I feel many avatars are the quin­tes­sence of our aspi­ra­tions rather than who we really are.  Avatars can be the pic­ture of a per­son 20 min­utes ago, or 20 years ago, like the news­pa­per columnist’s pic­ture that never ages.  They can be a photo from a day that a per­son just hap­pened to look par­tic­u­larly good.  They can be pic­tures of objects of desire. They can be the image of the moment;  some peo­ple change their avatar as often as they change their socks.  But like all things in cyber­space they are not nec­es­sar­ily a reflec­tion of reality.

Avatar by Jake Beck­man. A yel­low house finch uses a fierce, god­like scream­ing rap­tor as his avatar.

In the con­text of RPG, avatars gen­er­ally are illu­sory.  Even if a scrawny social mis­fit in real-life can be project as the unbeat­able war­rior, or irre­sistible sor­cer­ess. And so  a house finch could take on a fiercely divine rap­tor as his avatar.

Update: Some­one sug­gest I put the size of the paint­ings in my blogs. Details of this work are avail­able on the Avatar Art Page

What avatars do you use and why? Do they bear any resem­blance to real­ity or are they firmly lodged in fan­tasy? Do you think avatars should rep­re­sent the true self ? Or are they just good fun?

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.