It’s Minimalism Day, again. I couldn’t find any information about today’s artist, A Truly Inspiring Piece of Wax. But they have a great name. Also, their songs are great, plus they’re free; that is also great. Ride 3 Ghosts:

Nothing interesting happened this week. Seriously. There was a whole bunch of StarCraft 2 stuff, but I don’t need to talk about that here. Surely, you’ve already absorbed it all elsewhere! So…

I thought I’d call attention to a blog post made this week over at Schnauzer Studios. The funkdacious Rob Geboers (whose March of The Zombies was recently featured in Audiosurfing) shared what he remembers about his time making music with Amiga systems as a youth. He’s even posted a couple of his creations for us to hear, one of which is all about peanut butter. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Official Casebook Vol. 2: The Miles Edgeworth Files is the second entry to the Del Rey-published manga series based on Capcom’s Ace Attorney video game franchise. Over a dozen creators contributed stories to The Miles Edgeworth Files. It was released in the US in February of 2009.

Just as The Phoenix Wright Files was chocked with fan-service and silliness involving fan-favorite characters from the Ace Attorney games, so is The Miles Edgeworth Files. If you aren’t prepared for absurdity such as Edgeworth going to extreme lengths to keep Pearl Fey from being exposed to the sad ending of a TV movie, or seeing Edgeworth fight a bear while armed only with Pink Princess Chocolate bars, look elsewhere. Or just skip those stories, because there’s plenty more where they came from. Over twenty, in fact! Many of which have obviously been written with the swooning fan-girl in mind, but any fan of Ace Attorney should still be able to appreciate even the most frilly stories. Not every entry in The Mile Edgeworth Files is a stranger to seriousness, though; the very first tale in the manga concerns Edgeworth considering ending his career in prosecution. The legendary “frienemy” relationship between Miles and Phoenix is also spotlighted throughout the book.

That is to say, if you’re a fan of Ace Attorney — and especially if you’re looking forward to the upcoming Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth game — you should definitely pick up Official Casebook Vol. 2: The Miles Edgeworth Files.

Instead of posting another kick ass artist, this month I thought it’d be cool to show where to go to learn about creating digital art pieces. Plenty of helpful tutorials and that sort of thing.

Becoming Better at the Digital Arts.

Become enamored with digital art: photos made clean and crisp through manipulation and correction; painting made clean and easy, with no brushes to wash or tarps to lay down. All of it is just a blast to do. I love the feeling of using Photoshop compared to most any other programs, and I rarely like to pick up a pencil or brush and use them for fear of mistakes and wasted materials. Like many others, I got started with the program on my own, just exploring it and learning things by myself. Every once in a while, though, I’d see a cool effect and wish I knew how to make, so I’d cruise the Internet for a tutorial to show me how. Sites like psdtuts+, a great resource for those who wish to build their skills in digital art.

Described as “the nearest I get to a blues song these days,” Blue Tooth by Markovich/A.M.P. is a song that was a lot more challenging to play than what I usually go for, but it was a lot of fun. This artist has been serving to break me in to the trip-hop genre, and I’m very much enjoying what I’m hearing so far. Blue Tooth, along with the rest of Markovich/A.M.P.’s music can be downloaded for free under Creative Commons at Markovich-AMP.com.

Paul Wedgwood of Splash Damage brings to our attention what seems to be common sense, but may not be. I’ve never considered, for example (and maybe I’m just out of touch here), that I can’t think of a single developer who has a history of making licensed games and/or ports that eventually went on to make a break-out hit. I’m sure there has to be some exception to the rule, but I can’t think of one.

Maybe I didn’t react as harshly as John Romero did, but I was definitely caught way off guard by the news of ZeniMax buying out id Software. Once my brain caught up with my gut, though, I decided it might not be such a bad thing for id to have some stability in a publisher. Reading this interview earlier today put me further at ease.

The only thing I’m left wondering about now is, how does Splash Damage and their collaboration with Bethesda on Brink fit into all of this? Did SD play matchmaker? Is an acquisition in their future as well? After all, the partnership was announced way back in May of 2008, well before the E3 meeting between id Software and ZeniMax.

Ah! News like this frightens me. Remember Westwood? What’s left of them are called EA LA now. Admittedly, this is a different EA than the one that acquired Westwood, but this development still gives me pause. For purely selfish reasons, I’m glad to see that BioWare seems to be The Top in the relationship.

FlatOut 2 is an arcade-style racing game developed by Finnish studio Bugbear Entertainment and published by Empire Interactive. It was released in the US in August of 2006 for PC, Xbox, Playstation 2, and again in October of 2008 for Mac OS X.

FlatOut 2 is a racing game that offers something for everybody. Single race, stunt or derby modes will best suit the dabbler. Just pick a mode, a track, a vehicle, and get to racing, death-defying, and destroying your way to victory. There is nothing to unlock, to buy, to sell or to upgrade. Some prefer to earn their keep, though, so for the arcade-racing purist there is a full career mode complete with the aforementioned unlocking and shopping as well as classes, cups, tournaments and special events. FlatOut 2’s modes can also be taken to multiplayer games via party-play (local), Internet (where a healthy group of people can still be found playing), or LAN. No matter your poison, FlatOut 2 is always all about the mayhem with its destructible environments, brutal crashes, tons of debris, and AI-controlled drivers that are not afraid to get their hands dirty.
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