Some new sketches

It's been awhile!
I'll be on "home vacation" next week, so I'll post new figure drawing sketches as well as who-knows-what during that time. Meanwhile, here's some new stuff I've been doing at Manifest Gallery here in Cincinnati.
Dave

Sports Video Games Suck

I recently bought a PS3. I've been playing GTA4 (which is awesome beyond words). I'm amazed at how fantastically they were able to layer realistic details on top of what is essentially an RPG with guns, drugs, sex and a whole lot of violence.

Enthused about new and varied gameplay possibilities, I've picked up a few other games as well. The last two being the subject of this post: NBA Live 08 and NBA2K8; both of which suck ass and are now no longer "playable"; I smashed one and lost the other attempting to smash it as well.

I go back a long ways with Sports video games. Me and my step-brother used to rent a Nintendo (way back in the stone age of the early nineties) and play two games: NBA Bulls vs The Lakers (the ancient predecessor of NBA Live) and Techmo Bowl. Over the years, I stopped playing football video games. I don't like the sport that much, and I noticed that I really didn't know the plays that well. When Techmo bowl went from 8 to 16 plays, it immediately became too complicated for me. I tried to play Madden ONCE, and never tried again. Being a lifelong Bulls fan, I stuck with the game that would become NBA Live. I've played EVERY version of NBA Live. From the very start, this game was fun to play and just challenging enough not to make you pull your hair out, or throw the disc into a wall. I've enjoyed them all… until now.

With the emergence of the PS2 and now the PS3, EA Sports (the game's publisher) has decided to add what I amount to a load of BULLSHIT to it's basic gameplay. It's not about a simulated basketball anymore, now it's about "superstar gameplay" and "advanced scoring modes". If your player is designated a "star", THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP THEM. As a matter of fact, ES has loaded the game with so much junk that it's FILLED with bugs, glitches, and flat-out TERRIBLE gameplay.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a clip somebody posted from last year's version:

NBA '07 Sucks part one:

NBA '07 Sucks part two:

All of this brings me back to GTA4. I've played every GTA game for the PS2 (GTA3, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, GTA Liberty City Stories, and GTA Vice City Stories). They've ALL been fun. Not without some glitches and head-scratching BS here and there, but I've never found myself wondering "WHO THE FUCK HAS TIME TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME?"

Now I find myself learning how to play a new version of GTA and loving every minute of it. Why can Take Two get this so right while EA Sports gets it SO WRONG!!! (Ironically, Electronic Arts is now trying to acquire Take Two). Every version of NBA Live and has become progressively more difficult to play and enjoy. At this point only a mad-man would expect it to get better.

So this is it for me. As a lifelong basketball video-game player, I've officially wasted the LAST of my hard-earned money on ANY sports game. We're done here.

New to this blogging thing…

Hi. For those of you fortunate to find this, my name is Dave Johnson.

Many confuse me for the fantastic comic book artist of the same name. 

For the record, I am not him. Please find his work at www.Devilpig.com and take in the awesomeness that is "Reverend Cornelius" Johnson.

I'm a different dude. (No shit).

On this blog i will semi-frequently talk about crap I feel the world needs another opinion about. Some of the topics will be art, design, comics, commercial art, music, politics, etc. etc.

Today I will write about art; more specifically artists.

One day I was watching TV and I saw a commercial for some bullshit Baseball video game… when I noticed that there was a Nirvana song playing in the background. Many of us Nirvana fans were no-doubt shocked as hell to hear that at the time. The shock is that Kurt Cobain would have NEVER allowed that to happen in his lifetime. As an artist he was extremely sensitive to the commercialism of his work. To the point of depression and eventually suicide (yes I know there were other reasons too; bear with me).

As an artist, I'm very sensitive to this as well. I work as a commercial artist. If you go to my website, you  can see some of the products that I've designed/worked on (www.davejohnsonart.com). 

I make a distinction between this work and my personal art. For the record, as of now my art is not for sale, I've not posted a lot of it online, nor have I displayed it in any gallery anywhere. I have not decided when the time will be right to do so. The cause of my consternation is because my friends and family cannot seem to respect that decision.

As a kid, many a day I would come home to find my parent's living room chocked with my mother and her friends pawing through my art. I would get P.O.'ed at my mom and explain to her that this is actually a violation of my privacy. She would respond; "Your work is so good, I have to show people". 

Just yesterday, I walked home in a terrible blizzard and passed a local non-profit organization to find one of my prints sitting in their window. It was a print I gave my wife to hang in the office of a non-profit organization she is in charge of. I quickly called her, and she informed me (entirely too fucking late) that she gave the print to them. I went inside and told them that I am the artist, I was never informed of this use of my work and that I want my print back. After a short discussion (one involving my wife on the phone) I trudged back to my home, large framed print in hand, in the snow.

Visual artists have had to deal with this kind of violation forever. Other forms of creative expression don't get their work traipsed out into the public without said artist's permission like this. I told my wife; "What if I took your writing and published it without your knowledge or permission? Or just stood out on a street corner and read it to people as they pass by?" THAT is what it's like when someone puts your visual art on display (or just simply lets their friends put their greasy fingers on it) without your permission.

So back to my original point; I think friends and family members of artists must learn to respect the wishes of the artist. It doesn't matter if you don't understand the reasons why. It doesn't matter if the artist DIES. If you know that you are about to do something with an artist's work that you KNOW they would disagree with; DON'T DO IT!!!!!!

Kurt Cobain might have changed his mind about commercializing his songs if he had lived. He did not, and as far as I know, Courtney Love, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic don't need the money that badly.