A strip about the Scottish Parliament Building for NAS Times newsletter (Feburary 2015)

The branch of NAS I've been volunteering in has a workshop that does political stuff (such as how to write to MPs, organize protest groups and so on (I may have made that stuff up)). I'm not part of it, but the group had arranged a tour of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh in December and I joined them (just to see the building). As a result of my visit, I made this....

I plan to do a second strip about inside this building, but you have to wait for that one, 

as I want to do other things now.

If you are wondering how I was able to draw the main illustration, its a mix of photographs from books and the internet (I didn't take any when I was there (security restrictions and I didn't want to risk it)) and aerial and 3D model screen grabs from Google Earth.

A sketch I did for the newsletter to illustrate an article about the visit (no photos (remember))

A small survey I made about Nintendo

A few days ago, a high school friend said this on Facebook. It was a response to the news that Netflix plans to make a live action series based on The Legend of Zelda game series....

"Here's the thing, I've always seen Nintendo as a "character company" than a games company. So having their characters venture out into other mediums wouldn't be such a terrible idea."

I responded with this...

"You are on to something there. When anyone think's of any movies or TV shows that feature video game characters, I can imagine that most people would think of an Nintendo character first."

Now, usually the average person would stop there and continue their twittering way. But, I had an attack of curiosity.  Was I right? Do most people think of a Nintendo game first when asked "name a video game that has been adapted to film or TV?"

I had to find an answer. I could have done a Google search for a survey about this, but I doubted it existed or if it did, it'll take forever to find. So, instead I decided to do my own small survey.

I E-mailed nearly everyone in my e-mail contacts the question and waited for responses. By the time of writing only nine responded. Of those nine, one-third of them said when asked name a video game that has been adapted to film or TV, the first one they thought of was .........

Tomb Raider

I was wrong. When asked to think of a video game that has been adapted into film or TV, the first thing most people think of is an well-portioned, aristocratic "archaeologist" who was played by Angelina Jolie. A PlayStation game! I imagine this result would anger the people in Nintendo. I can easily imagine Mario crashing his kart into a verge upon hearing this news. I imagine Donkey Kong dropping a barrel on his foot upon hearing this news.  And I don't need to imagine that Pikachu will be pissed by the result (that same friend once said to me that while on a trip in America he was able to have a go of the early voice recognition game Hey You, Pikachu! and when he said "PlayStation" to the cute, yellow critter Pikachu turned Hulk on taser mode).

But, I'm not truly 100% convinced by the result. The sample size was small (nine people). Maybe if I asked more people, maybe the result would be more in my favor. But I am willing to admit I am wrong in this initial result. 

This survey was a spur of the moment thing. And it shows an important factor about how I think. I don't take words at face value. I check up on facts (including my own, such as this one). I inspect the references in Wikipedia and I look up info in fan-generated wikis when it came to stuff that has fandoms (such as bulbapedia) as I find them more informative than regular Wikipedia (fans tend to know more about the subject than even the subject's creators do, an interesting fact worth knowing if you want to research things, like cartoon world and real world comparisons). 

I got stuff to do now, so please GO AWAY.....