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av_nefardec

WFG Retired
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Posts posted by av_nefardec

  1. I really enjoyed walking around the area from Picadilly Circus to Leicester Square to Covent Garden. There were a lot of neat places.

    I went to see a play near Picadilly Circus, which was really nice.

    The London Eye offers a really interesting view of the city.

    I also enjoyed walking around Windsor Castle and the surrounding area (namely, Eton).

    Klaas-

    You could stay in hostels too of course - I stayed in a fairly nice hostel (for its price) with a cafeteria dinner included. I believe it was not far from the Globe Theater, right next to a tube station. It was a dorm room though - not bad I guess if you are with friends. And the rooms were pretty good quality.

  2. Hey I thought Belgian DJ's were the best

    Haha, that was a foolish thing of me to say. (not that I have anything against Belgium :) but that Belgian DJs are not well known) There are a handful of producers from Belgium who I know of, however.

    tw, in Ghent (Belgium) we have the I love techno party, with over 35.000 people

    Nice! I know next door in the Netherlands (in Utrecht) there is Trance Energy, which is something like 80,000 :(

    It will take a lot of saving before I can make the trip overseas for something like that.

  3. Anyone else going to this?

    http://www.ultramusicfestival.us

    The actual event is a 13 hour, 50,000 person electronic music (mostly trance) party at Bayfront Park, Miami. It goes from 11 AM to Midnight.

    The biggest DJs in the world:

    Paul van Dyk

    Tiesto

    Armin van Buuren

    Ferry Corsten

    Nu-NRG

    Timo Maas

    Paul Oakenfold

    Moby

    The Crystal Method

    Carl Cox

    BT

    Dieselboy

    ...

    over 100 DJs

    Then there's the afterparty in the American Airlines Area from Midnight until 5 AM.

    10,000 people 18+

    It's going to be massive and awesome. I'm taking a bus down alone from new york on thursday and missing a day of classes to go there.

    Is anyone else at WFG going?

  4. DI is by far my favorite internet radio.

    I think that the freshness of the trance on the DI trance channel is pretty awesome. Maybe a bit on the very progressive/cheese side sometimes, but mostly I can't complain.

    And Armin van Buuren spins live on DI every once in a while to do his A State of Trance Show, which I never miss when it's possible to catch.

    Some of the best tracks I have ever been privileged to hear were played on DI for me first.

  5. I think the second drawing is far better.

    Probably the highlights of the drawing are:

    - Skirt with its deformation and folding

    - Subtle rendering of knees

    - Subtleness of boots and details of folding

    - Hands/gloves and sword.

    Things I think could be improved:

    Face - facial features here are much too big for the face. In general I think the upper body is too small for the lower body.

    The neck is far too thin.

    Sawing lines should be avoided. Sawing lines is when you go back over a line many times and you end up with like three fuzzy lines next to eachother. I see this in the cape's edges and the edge of her right arm.

    Drawing eyes is a difficult thing. Eyes are not simply ovals with pupils inside of them - they have a very distinct relationship with the rest of the face, and there are several unique forms with which one should familiarize himself.

    It would help you to do life drawing, that is drawings of real people, and you could examine the subtleties of facial features.

    What I see here for the most part is the "symbolic" representation of features, not the lifelike rendering. For example, a symbolic eye would be an oval with an iris and pupil. But this isn't how eyes look. If one just goes with the symbolic representation, what he ends up with is the outline of a face with some symbols inside of it.

    Why don't you put as much emphasis on rendering in the face as you do with the knees?

  6. I mean we all have our conceptions of cultures in ME based on our real world experience, just like the professor had his conception based on some experience.

    But I am only weary of making one to one comparisons unless Tolkien himself did it.

    The ingredients for creating lesser known TLA civilizations:

    - Research everthing in the books related

    - project known things in logical ways

    - research Tolkien's ideas about historical influences

    - apply only the minimum amount of things needed to the civiliztion

    - creative invention "within the world prescribed" (this is a last resort, but something Tolkien permitted with a movie adaptation in one of his letters, as long as it fit within his Arda.

    Elven "magic" (I know that the word 'magic' is not what Tolkien liked to use, but bear with me) is very Celtic, and the Daione Sidhe of Celtic mythology are quite strikingly similar to Tolkien's Elves.

    Quite true, also the entire concept of ages in which various races are more powerful is reminiscent of Celtic cosmology, with the Fir-Bolg, Tuatha de Danaan, etc. In regards to magic Tolkien preferred the terms 'magia' and 'goetia'. He discusses them at length in one of his letters - i'll have to get back to you on the number.

  7. Comparing Arda to Earth only works so far, because the Dwarves seem to be part-Celtic in their designs and lifestyle but they live mostly where Ukraine and Russia would be.

    I think that's quite far off the mark -

    Tolkien's dwarves are of Norse Origin, from actual norse mythology. For instance, most dwarven names are from a Norse epic called the Voluspä. In fact, Tolkien repeatedly expressed disdain for the Celts.

    Tolkien MAY have had some intention of siting Middle-earth atop our own geography, but the way in which he did this is anything but logical and standardized. Though he seems to have centered the Shire on England, particularly the area where he lived, and there are other correlations geographically, there are more anomalies than anything, and it's dangerous to give everything a one-to-one relationship.

    Tolkien, as a philogist, was very much interested in ancient and mythological cultures, but let it be said that these things were mere influences upon a fantasy of his own writing, not of a corresponding alternate reality. One simply can't draw lines connecting the real world and Arda. The designers are very careful not to make things more about the real world than Arda in this regard. We choose to avoid things rather than to try to invent or borrow unnecessary things from history.

    Middle-earth is not 'representative' of anything. Tolkien, as he writes about in his letters, had certain attitudes about specific things in various cultures in history. Thus he has chosen to describe some parts of his own cultures in similar ways.

    This also has something to do with Tolkien's views on Allegory. To make a purely representative story would have been allegorical. That would be like saying, for instance, 'Hobbits represent a weakened Britain since it is "good" and in the west, and Mordor represents Nazi Germany, since it is"evil" and in the east". Tolkien repeatedly denied such senseless speculation on the part of critics. In his foreward to the second edition of LotR, he addresses this in detail.

    Tolkien distinguishes allegory from applicability, by saying that allegory resides in the purported domination of the author, that is if Tolkien had a specific representative quality he wanted to get across (for instance Mordor=Nazi Germany) that would have been allegory. But Tolkien writes applicable stories, stories with familiar archetypes, mythological patterns found in the real world, and occasional historical influences.

    What you are doing here is applying Tolkien's writing based on your experience and your knowledge.

    With TLA, we try to compare and contrast the experience and knowledge of several people from around the world, to get the most balanced and objective application of Tolkien's writing. And of course, when he explains himself in the Histories of Middle-earth and the Letters, these things have first priority.

  8. I just fixed that problem and moved the topic. Apparently when Klaas or whoever created the forum he made an error in the permission masks.

    Hello Mormegil, please make yourself comfortable here. We hope you will enjoy your time with us as a forumer.

    When did you apply? It's possible we never got the application or it was misplaced.

  9. Ok, fair enough, but Tolkien himself made the distinction, he used orcs and goblins when he meant the lesser orcs, and he used uruk usually as "black uruks of Mordor" referring to more elite, thick-skinned, orcs that were usually leaders and good withstand the sun more than other orcs.

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