After a 2 week hiatus, Kotaku’s weekly photoshop is back! Which means I’m back as well with another submission!

This week’s theme is strange to say the least. We were tasked with showing video game characters and/or iconic video game weapons behind an X-Ray screen.

I couldn’t think of anything witty or clever so I just followed the instructions and am crossing my fingers

Oh, and my first submission, Pepto-Kirby, made top 20 by the way

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My good friend Brandon had a creative itch last week he just had to scratch. The result: The birth of Dr. Angry Face! Isn’t he beautiful?

Dr. Angry Face, or DAF as I affectionately call him, was originally conceived to be the arch nemesis of the future video game character Captain Smiley!

Brandon concepted and modeled the character himself, Hugo Dourado and I helped make the mock comic-book cover you see below. I must admit, I’m quite taken by the end result!

You can see more of Dr. Angry Face and Brandon’s other work on his online portfolio.

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Nearly a year ago, my friend Sebastien nudged me in the direction of this pretty cool and addictive game called Elements. I’m surprised to say that Elements has kept me playing on and off since.

What kind of game is it? Well it’s a free, web-based, flash, card, video game. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

It can be described as a poor man’s Magic Online, and it generally doesn’t have the balance and professionalism that Magic Online does, but it’s  far from just a clone. There are several elements that makes Elements (bad pun intended) stand out from it’s big daddy.

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So Kotaku is having a weekly Photoshop contest. The most recent being about showing what video game characters would do for money if times were hard. I decided to join in on the fun.

I’ll try to participate every week if possible, and I’ll of course post my entries on towardsmecca. This should theoretically mean that I would be posting weekly. Let’s see how long that lasts

Below is my entry: Pepto-Kirby! Enjoy

UPDATE: My entry made it to the top 20!!! YOOHOOO!!

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My good friend Brandon Morris and his group of talented and dedicated modders have just released an incredible Naruto mod for Half-Life.

That’s right, as hard to believe as that is, this work of art is a total-conversion of Half-Life, but it’s impossible to see any of Gordon Freeman’s world in it no matter how hard you look. Not to mention that this community mod is better looking than most commercial Naruto games out there! Check out their blog here!

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My good friend Hugo has done it again! I thought that it would be impossible for him to keep surprising me since I’m now used to his epic artistic awesomeness, but it seems I was wrong.

Not only is he a great 2D and aspiring 3D artist, but now he can make figurines!

Check out this incredible Eddie Riggs figure that he made then painted himself! Wanna see more? His Deviant Art page is full of win, see for yourselves!

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While many loyal Valve customers were angry at the launch announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, placing the release date “only” one year after the release of the original, I was thrilled at the prospect of new content in my favorite zombie-bashing shooter!

In fact, I  pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2, pre-loaded it, and played it the moment it was released. I sympathized with most of the points “the mob” was making, but the fact that I was excited about the upcoming product and was very willing to pay for it meant everything.

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I guess towardsmecca.com making it through it’s second year is barely an accomplishment since I’ve barely posted this year at all. 2009 has been a ridiculously busy year for me with my second child, Maryam, being born. Also, I worked on the high-profile iPhone game Modern Combat: Sandstorm and that was a HUGE time investment, but it paid off

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I’m not much of a facebook normally, I log on only when I get a notification of a message by e-mail, so obviously I was pretty neutral about the announcement that Facebook was making it’s way to the X-Box 360. Still, I had to give it a try, and I’m sure glad I did!

I was expecting a heavy, clunky, feature-to-feature adaptation of Facebook on the 360. Instead, whoever developped this app was smart enough to strip it off a lot of non-essential bells and whistles and in-so-doing sculpt a mostly enjoyable experience out of a normally mundane one.

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So, I saw Doug Pray’s “Art & Copy” the other night. Because it’s essentially an ad for advertising, it offered a novel perspective (wait for it): a movie about advertising that features conversations with people that actually work in advertising. No Klein-ist sweater and keffayeh wearing leftist intellectuals/activists, mostly just ad-(wo)men.

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