Friday, October 14, 2011

Nomad Droids Review




After a pair of controversial episodes in Shadow Warrior and Mercy Mission, the Clone Wars really needed to step it up for me in Nomad Droids. Once again, I wasn't jumping up and down after watching this episode, but found it to be more entertaining than the past two. As a second part to a droids duology, Nomad Droids felt very distant storywise to Mercy Mission, and was only connected with it through the common characters of R2, C-3PO, and the Wolfpack clones. Yet that's probably for the best, considering the meaningless plot of Mercy Mission.

Right away Nomad Droids felt very familiar to me. Granted it wasn't the epic "Dual of the Fates" Star Wars that I love, but the flow and situations in the episode seemed organic. It reminded me of the beginning scenes of both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi that brought the viewers into the story from the perspective of the droids. R2 and C-3PO interacted with beings similar to the scavenging Jawas, bloated Jabba the Hutt, and unforgiving imperials. This included a great reference to A New Hope when Threepio threw his hands in the air, imploring his captors, "Don't shoot!"

When the episode started I wasn't sure what was in store. When Padme mentioned a "banquet", I started to worry we might have another overly domestic episode on our hands like Evil Plans. But thankfully the droids' cruiser was timely attacked by Grievous. Even though it would have been interesting to see more character development between the bitter rivals, Grievous and Adi Gallia, it was refreshing to see the dual unfold from the droids' perspective. Some of the shots in sequences like this were similar to Darth Vader's attack on the Tantive IV, with the plot itself foreshadowing the beginning of A New Hope, as R2 coerced Threepio to escape with him. If only a droid operating a gun turret had monotonously uttered something like, "Hold your fire; the scanners indicate that no lifeforms are aboard".

The following sequence with the astromech-commandeered Y-Wing engaging a Vulture droid through the atmosphere was well done from an animation standpoint. With pilots like Anakin and R2, it's quite obvious why Threepio isn't fond of flying. The animation of the surface below was interesting. I liked how the initial shots of the Palitites used perspective to exaggerate their diminutive size. As Qui-Gon said, "There is always a bigger fish", I'm starting to think, "There is always a smaller species" after seeing the Aleenas and Palitites in succession. But Lucas clearly has a soft spot for little people, considering classic species like the Ewoks, Jawas, and Ugnaughts, to name a few.

After an obvious Gulliver's Travels reference with the droids being tied up by tiny people, R2 and Threepio began their streak of inciting political turnover when R2 shockingly fell over the fat Palitite leader reducing him to goo. And they say Riff Tamson's death was graphic? I could have done without this whole sequence, but I guess bizarre is better than predictable. I must admit that it was a little entertaining to watch the Palitites squabble over who should become the next leader, as the droids slipped away.

As the Y-Wing's power started to drain, the droids found themselves wandering onto the equally bizarre planet of Balnab. If you think midichlorians are too scientific, try "Primordial Soup". At that point, I half-assumed they were referring to the plot of the post-Mon Cala episodes with that statement. The first lifeforms that the droids encountered trapped them with a yellow electro-net and carried them off to their leader. Personally I found the voicing of the Balnabians to be painfully slow and annoying, but thankfully they were only one of many pit-stops. What transpired next was straight out of the Wizard of Oz, as a maniacally ambitious pit droid was using a hologram and electro-shock to intimidate the Balnabians into submission. Yet to continue in his vigilante ways, R2 quickly ousted the impostor and nonchalantly meandered away from the huge explosion that ensued in Heath Ledger fashion.

The moments that followed with R2 and Threepio running out of power were quite touching and resonated emotionally with me. I'm glad that the writers put a slow moment in what would otherwise be a frantic episode like this to pace the story and add depth to the characters. The camaraderie between the droids was front and center in the episode and seemed more organic than that of the rushed Mercy Mission.

But just as things started to slow down, the story picked right up again as Weequay pirates found the powerless droids and brought them to their ship, Jawa-style. Even though I was very disappointed that the infamous Hondo Ohnaka didn't show up here, I found these other pirates' ship to be a very cool design. It's definitely too bad it got blown into oblivion. The sequence with the droids fighting each other was very entertaining, it reminded me a bit of the gladiatorial match on Rattatak in the Clone Wars micro-series. Additionally, Threepio's fondness for statistics yielded an interesting tidbit in this scene, R2 has 47 fighting styles.

Things finally came full circle as Grievous, with the defeated Gallia standing behind him in binders, opens fire on the pirates. I liked the scene with the droids landing inside the Separatist hanger bay as one of the droids referenced The Phantom Menace with the line "You're under arrest!". The episode concluded with some awesome action sequences as Wolfpack and Plo-Koon came to Adi Gallia's rescue, slightly from the droid's perspective once again.

In conclusion, I enjoyed Nomad Droids. It wasn't my favorite episode, but it still contained enough action and references to keep me entertained. If we had only seen this episode between the epic battle arcs on Mon Cala and Umbara, rather than three offbeat stories, I would be that more satisfied with the beginning of Season 4. But for now, it seems the slow part is finally over and the roller coaster ride is about to begin, one that promises fantastic Clone-centric storylines and the intrigue of Darth Maul.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Mercy Mission Review




Okay... so this episode was quite different and definitely stands out among the steady line of action episodes that we have scene since the second half of Season 3 began. The pacing and humor of Mercy Mission at first reminded me of the Original Trilogy, especially Return of the Jedi. Then it showed glimpses of Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who. And finally it dissolved into a B-rate Saturday morning cartoon from the 1980s, considering the climax was droids pushing a cover over a hole, slowly.

I thought the beginning of the episode was pretty cool to watch. It was awesome to see Commander Wolffe back in the series. His cybernetic eye and painted phase II armor made him an interesting character. Additionally the return of other Wolf Pack clones like Sinker and Boost were a nice touch. I wish that the episode focused a little more on the clones, but mostly they served as straight men to the droids and Aleenas. Nevertheless, the humor was tasteful for the most part. "Suck it up, shiny!"

The opening shots of the relief ships approaching the planet Aleen and then entering the atmosphere through the clouds were well done. From the first shot of Star Wars depicting the imperial star destroyer eating up the screen, I have always loved set-up scenes like this. The line, "It's going to be another one of those planets", let the viewers know that the clones shared a slight annoyance with the native's antics. The surface of the planet was well animated and contained a fair amount of detail for an apparently desolate landscape.

Moving on to the inhabitants themselves, the Aleenas definitely reminded me the Ewoks. They were of similar stature and demeanor, and spoke a gibberish sounding, primitive language. For once it was actually cool to hear non-basic speakers in the Clone Wars, with even Rodians speaking the common tongue. The interaction between the Aleenas and the droids was very reminiscent of Return of the Jedi, as I almost wish R2 had zapped a few curious natives. The one main difference I noticed with the Aleenas, is that they seemed more comfortable around technology than the Ewoks did. Obviously their species has to have some significance to the Republic, like mining raw materials, for them to have been given technology and qualify for aid.

With witty remarks by clones and droids alike and even an utterance of the cliche "I have a bad feeling about this", I was enjoying the episode as C-3PO fell into the mysterious hole, R2 in toe. The tunnels under the surface of Aleen reminded me of the tree cave on Dagobah. The tree creatures that ambushed the droids were very reminiscent of the Ents from Lord of the Rings, and the conflict between the above-ground and subterranean dwellers of the planet reminded me of a recent Doctor Who storyline. Yet these odd pixie-like entities kept swarming around C-3PO and the sci-fi/fantasy feel started to decay into a Disney aura.

Then the story totally left the genre of Star Wars for me when the pixies accumulated into a large light source that transformed into one of the most annoying characters I have ever scene on TV, let alone in a Clone Wars episode. Orphnee seemed extremely out of place both visually and audibly. Fantasy inspired characters like the Diathim and the Daughter of Mortis didn't bother me, but this was a full on fairy or nymph. And if her look wasn't odd enough, her monotonous, high-pitched voice droned on and on in rhetoric and riddles.

After she left the screen, the droids were left to solve an obvious riddle and then were jettisoned back onto the surface to deduce that the hole needed to be closed. This ending seemed completely contrived and hearkened back to weakly written Star Wars material like the old Droids and Ewoks cartoons. The episode concluded with only one blaster shot fired at a bunch of rocks and completely no character or main story development. The only purpose that it served was to illustrate how clones don't always spend their time fighting in epic battles, and the droids are good at solving commonplace problems. Additionally the music score was pretty forgettable.

In conclusion, I think this was one of the worst Clone Wars episodes to date, rivaling Evil Plans and Corruption. Mercy Mission didn't seem like Star Wars, at least not the epic and engaging Star Wars that I'm used to seeing. Once again the humor at the beginning was fine, but it quickly got old, and was not paced by intermittent action sequenced like it should have been. Hopefully this episode was the worst of the season, because I can't imagine anything that much more boring and useless than this. This also marks two straight episodes, where the most exciting scene for me was an establishing shot of an environment. I might as well be playing an immersive video game, considering the weakness of the plots as of late. Umbara can't come soon enough.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Shadow Warrior Review




Meesa hope yousa enjoy deesa review of Shadow Warrior! ...but seriously the fourth episode of Clone Wars Season 4 was certainly the deepest exploration of Gungan culture since 1999. Those fans who favor the darker themes of Revenge of the Sith, or the drier, wittier humor of the Original Trilogy, probably won't find this episode to be very entertaining or compelling. But aside from the wackiness, there were many aspects of Shadow Warrior that were of a high level of quality. And as a consolation for the fans who can't stand anything related to Jar Jar, we did see a few Gungans get impaled.

I'm going to start off by letting everyone know that I didn't find this episode compelling, epic, suspenseful, or engaging on either an emotional or intellectual level. However it did strike me as entertaining, humorous, and interesting. Thus I'm not going fill this review with loads of criticisms that negatively compare Shadow Warrior to Landing At Point Rain or the Empire Strikes Back, because that would be unfair. Instead I'll focus more on the positive achievements of this episode, and reserve my criticism for incongruous plot elements.

Through the first 3 seasons, the Clone Wars has shown us a few Gungans outside of Mr. Binks here and there, most notably in the Blue Shadow Virus duology and the episode Children of the Force. But it wasn't until the second episode of the current season, Gungan Attack, that the full scale of the species was unleashed. Shadow Warrior both built on the character models and improved underwater animation of the previous Mon Cal trilogy, to bring us an in-depth depiction of the Gungan way of life.

Starting with land elements, Naboo's swampy forests have never looked more alive, as they bared the detail of the jungle on Count Dooku's planet in last season's episode Nightsisters. Seeing the Gungan army and its weaponry assembled on the plains was very reminiscent of The Phantom Menace. The giant head carved into the cliff was another visually interesting element.

But even more impressive, was the animation of Otah Gunga and the surrounding watery depths. We saw a glimpse of the submarine city in Gungan Attack, but the expanded shots of the spherical metropolis rivaled its depiction in the Phantom Menace. I also really enjoyed seeing the Bongo sub design in the Clone Wars, being one of my favorite vehicle designs from the prequels. The shot of the sub emerging from the swamp went a long way to establish realism in the environment.

Moving on from structures to character models, I thought the team did an excellent job animating Padme's royal warrior outfit. This model allowed for more facial expression than any previous incarnation of the senator. They also captured Captain Tarpals flawlessly. Not only were his physical attributes and voice spot on, but his unique mannerisms were reproduced well. It's interesting that they chose to kill off his character in this episode, but the way they did it put his sacrifice right up there with Hevy, Ima-Gun Di, and 99's in my book.

I'm sure for most fans, though, the return of General Grievous was the highlight of Shadow Warrior. And he was his usual intimidating self, killing Gungans left and right. But aside from his presence, Grievous' depiction in this particular episode didn't really impress me. His animation doesn't seem to have been improved since the beginning of Season 3, and we didn't really learn anything new or interesting about his character.

Another Separatist addition to this episode was Count Dooku, who rushed in to save the day for Darth Sidious by overpowering Anakin and capturing the Jedi. This whole sequence seemed extremely odd to me for three reasons. Firstly with every additional time Dooku and Anakin duel, the meaning behind their battle in Revenge of the Sith decreases, secondly, if it's so easy for Count Dooku to capture Anakin, why hasn't Dooku tried this before, and finally, why would Anakin risk putting himself in such a compromising situation? Is he really that bold at this point in the Clone Wars? This turn of events would have made more sense if it was another Jedi who was captured, like Aayla Secura.

Ultimately, after looking beyond this weird plot element and the overall goofiness of the episode, Shadow Warrior still holds up as a solid addition to the Clone Wars series. The humor and depictions of characters like Jar Jar, Padme, and Captain Tarpals were decent, the animation was fantastic, and the exploration of the Gungan culture was interesting. Neither as epic as Water War, nor as deep as Overlords, this episode exists as a sole fun episode in a long series of fast paced, action-heavy stories. I enjoyed it for what it was, but look forward to more compelling and detailed knock-your-socks-off adventures to come as Season 4 rolls along.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Prisoners Review




After the visually stunning duo of submarine episodes that premiered the 4th Clone Wars season, I awaited this episode with great anticipation. And for me it delivered with everything that the third episode of a trilogy should have. Prisoners contained a more detailed plot, better character development, great contrast between the light and dark elements of the characters and situations, and a fantastic action sequence to put a stamp on a strong trilogy.

The first thing that struck me about this episode, was how much darker it was than the previous two. There were torture scenes, imminent peril for our heroes, moments where many characters started to lose hope, and increased violence in the final dual between Prince Char and Ambassador Tamson. Riff planting exploding daggers on unfortunate victims was something that stretched the limits of the PG rating, and his demise by the same token was equally if not more terrifying because you were led to anticipate it. The touch of Tamson's teeth-filled skull floating away completed the violent sequence.

In addition to the visual maturity of Prisoners, the plot also weighed more heavily into the mix. The motivations of characters like Tamson, Lee Char, and Nossor Ri were all explored, tying the events of the previous episodes together nicely. It was made clear that Nossor Ri didn't share the blind allegiance to Count Dooku and the Seperatists that another Quarren leader in the EU, Tikkes, did. However Riff Tamson was able to use the Quarren and Mon Cals' incompatibility with each other to create a civil war and steal a planet from the Republic.

Throughout the previous two episodes, there were subtle hints dropped that Nossor Ri was beginning to disapprove of Tamson's handling of the situation, and the psychological tide finally turned when Tamson got ahead of himself and started abusing and intimidating the Quarren leader instead of filling his head with lies and impossible ideals. This caused the Republic's victory to come in a different way than it did in the Microseries episode that this story was based on. Instead of Kit Fisto and the Republic forces overpowering the Quarrens and Separatists, the Quarren realized that the war between the CIS and Republic was manipulating their planet for the worst and rebelled against the same invaders that they let in to end their dispute with the Mon Cals.

Effectively this turn of events thoroughly renders all previous depictions of the civil war on Mon Calamari non-canon. Unless you want to retcon it to death and say that the Microseries episode and other materials took place after the start of Water Wars, yet before the end of Prisoners, with Tikkes acting as a military commander under Nossor Ri.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, this plot shake-up allowed for an interesting and compelling coming-of-age story with Prince Lee Char, as he slowly gained confidence and ultimately brought the two species of his planet together just like his father had. Even though I thought that the Prince's voice was a bit too cartoony and his character development wasn't complex enough in Water War and somewhat in Gungan Attack, I was pleased with the direction they took with him in Prisoners. In fact, I even detected shades of Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings finale Return of the King.

Like the one before it, this episode also included the most devicive character in the Star Wars universe. But I thought that Jar Jar was again used effectively. You have to give him a bit of credit for the idea to plug up Padme's draining helmet with Gungan slime (Unless of course you are a Padme hater too). There were also some cool fight sequences involving Gungans toward the end of the episode, as they zapped everything in their path with electro-staffs.

This brings me to a quick point. Now we all know that Star Wars isn't exactly well known for scientific accuracy, with sounds in space and other inconsistencies with the real world, but I thought the use of electricity in this episode was odd. Firstly, shouldn't any of the various electric shocks in the duration of Prisoners have extended into the surrounding water and zap those emitting the pulse? And even if all the shocks were contained and focused, shouldn't the pulses from the eels have knocked out the prisoners life support systems?

Aside from this minor quibble, I thought anything that lit up like neon underwater was stunning to watch even if it was difficult to intellectually grasp. The eels were a fantastic addition to the array of hazards thrown at our heroes. The visuals of the dungeon facilities were well conceived and executed. And the perspectives of the camera angles were used well to evoke a sense of magnitude in many of the environments.

One of several issues I had with the first couple episodes, was the underwhelming music score. It was neither epic nor contained enough noticeable motifs. But we finally got a payoff in Prisoners with a great use of the Force Theme during the final battle. Overall, however, I still think that the score of these episodes did them a disfavor and failed to escalate or even echo the epicness of the visuals.

The pacing of Prisoners was well choreographed, with a tense dungeon scene at the beginning, great plot and character development throughout the episode, a climactic battle towards the end, and a fittingly regal conclusion that hearkened back to the ending of the Phantom Menace. As always, I thought there could have been more tidbits with other characters like Ahsoka, Kit Fisto, and Captain Ackbar, but the core of the story held up and finished satisfyingly.

In conclusion, I think the trilogy of Mon Calamari episodes were a perfect start to Season 4. In hindsight, the layout really does remind me of the Phantom Menace. Hopefully that means Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith-like episodes are to come! As I was last week, I am just as --if not even more excited about the remainder of Season 4, and I can't wait to move on to even more visually stunning and emotionally compelling stories!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Water War and Gungan Attack Review




Well it's that time again, Star Wars fans! Another season of the Clone Wars and another series of my reviews. I want to start by thanking you all so much for reading my reviews from the previous seasons and giving awesome feedback. I enjoy writing about the episodes almost as much as watching them. So without further ado, let's kick off another season!

I decided to review both of these episodes together because they are not independent of each other in any significant ways. The locales, characters, and plots are the same, and the first one was simply set-up for the second one. Even though the visuals and action in the first part, Water War, was some of the best the series has seen to date, I felt it lacked a good climax and the pacing was slightly off. Perhaps the reason it didn't completely hold my interest at first, was because I had already seen a few clips from the episode, and had a good idea of where the plot was going. There was no suspense for me and it didn't have any really intense moments.

The plot itself is nothing new, as it is based on an episode of the 2003 Clone Wars Microseries that depicted Kit Fisto leading scuba troopers against the separatists amid a civil war between the Quarren and Mon Calamari. Interestingly, when the Clone Wars CGI series was first announced several years later, I thought back to that particular episode as one I would like to see done again in the new medium. It took until the fourth season for the capabilities of the animation team to develop enough to pull this off, but I am really glad they waited, because the animation in these episodes was vastly superior to the previous seasons.

Throughout the episodes, I was only taken out of the story by shortcomings in the CGI a few times. One thing that particularly bothered me was Padme's face. The Clone Wars' wooden or plastic style relies on texture and lighting to give a sense of realism to models, but her smooth pale skin lit by the monotone glow of the watery world and only accented by a bright light inside her helmet took away from the realism. Additionally I found her eyes and facial expressions to be a bit less dynamic than that of other characters, especially Anakin and Ahsoka.

But aside from that minor issue, everything else that flashed before my eyes constituted art in motion. The Clone Wars team took on the challenge of capturing the organic and subtle gravity of a submarine environment and resoundingly accomplished this feat. The stoic buildings themselves lent little to achieve the effect of an underwater metropolis, however the fish, bursting sheets of bubbles, and swaying coral made up for this fact. The sound design also played a huge role in liquefying the atmosphere. Additionally the few scenes that depicted the action above the surface, animated water perfectly, from individual splashes that followed characters leaping into the depths to amazing explosion sequences that deftly interwove smoke, fire, and liquid.

The movement of the characters themselves underwater was very well choreographed. The motion of the robotic aqua droids gave them a rare organic feel, and the darting and plunging dance of the Jedi with their luminous blades echoed and built on the exploration of zero-gravity combat in previous seasons. These individual achievements were breathtakingly multiplied in Water War as hundreds of droids and aquatic species converged in one of the largest scale battles the series has seen.

Adding to the mechanics, all of the character designs were striking. The Quarren and Mon Calamari were both depicted well, including the simplified Captain Ackbar who translated well to the CGI medium. Anakin, Ahsoka, and Padme's scuba gear gave a fresh look to the characters and constitute some of my favorite incarnations of the models. Stunning due to both amazing artistry and uniqueness, Kit Fisto and separatist ambassador Riff Tamson's designs also stood out, highlighted by Fisto's ever-moving head tales and Tamson's menacing menagerie of sharp teeth.

But one of the most surprisingly cool designs belonged to the giant cybernetic jelly-fish. When these ingenious monstrosities entered the fray at the end of the first episode, Season 4 officially began for me. They presented a seemingly impossible challenge to our heroes and provided amazing visuals as their ominous tentacles engulfed everything in their path. Furthermore, the electric shock that pulsated through their bodies as they were destroyed presented delightful contrast to the murky waters that surrounded them.

As the heroes were isolated after the city fell in the second episode, Gungan Attack, the plot and pacing went further to garner my attention. A small band of rebels fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds hearkens back to the original Star Wars trilogy and did well to increase the stakes, suspense, and intensity. The building choruses of action sequences were artistically interspersed with verses of great character scenes between the Mon Cala prince and Ahsoka and other military leaders.

The use of the Gungans in the episode was one of the best uses of the species since 1999, if not the best ever, and I was very excited to see Otoh Gunga finally depicted in the Clone Wars. The sequence with the Republic Cruiser emerging from the clouds and the Gungans jumping out of the hanger into the sea was breathtakingly climactic. It also goes a long way to illustrate the good-hearted nature of the species. On Naboo they fought to defend their home, but this time they fought to defend the survival and liberty of another fellow aquatic people.

And finally this brings me to what I thought was the best part of these episodes. When the trident droids started to spin their tentacles I knew we were in for an amazing action sequence, and the Clone Wars crew blew away all of my expectations. The battle amid the liquid cyclones was the most intense sequence in the series to date in my opinion. The combination of whirling water and flashing explosions provided the perfect backdrop to a great fight scene between the Prince, Ahsoka, Fisto, and Tamson. At that moment, all of the hard work that the crew has spent developing the animation finally came together in a fantastic way, leaving me envious of anyone who has seen these episodes screened in theaters.

Moving on from the effects, I thought the voice acting and music in the Season 4 premiere were adequate, but they didn't blow me away. There were a few good scores that included chorals and one that used Ahsoka's theme, but the rest seemed filler and secondary to everything else going on. I though Riff Tamson's voice could have been more menacing and the there was something slightly off about the portrayal of the Prince. But these things were certainly drowned amid other aspects of the episodes.

To name several more things that caught my attention in these episodes, it was great to see that patented Kit Fisto smile a few times. Any of the camera shots that tracked along with vehicles or swimming characters vastly intensified the visual experience, and I wished their were even more of them. It was humorous to see the Mon Cala and Gungan embracing at the end of the second episode as they were being surrounded, a nice touch to give the story more depth. And the scuba clones and submarine speeders were cool designs.

In conclusion I believe Water War was a solid episode that rivals any of the previous season openers, and I think Gungan Attack was one of the best episodes of the series to date, right up there with the amazing episodes of the latter half of Season 3. The sign of a good episode, is that I can't stop talking about it, and that certainly fits the description for the premiere. And what is even more exciting, is the fact that there is still one more episode to go in this arc. If it is as good as the first two, it will definitely make for the best arc yet of the Clone Wars series. This episode was a classic depiction of the Clone Wars, a battle of epic proportions coupled with political undercurrents (literally) and character development.

I can't wait for the next episode, I can't wait for the rest of the season, and I can't wait to continue reviewing these amazing episodes. The season has kicked off with a resounding bang, and this is only the beginning! Thank you so much for reading my review! Feel free to comment with your thoughts on the premiere. Until next time, may the Force be with you!

Thursday, May 26, 2011

How To Make Awesome Character Wallpaper



I have been having lots of fun making some Clone Wars character wallpaper for you guys, and have been getting lots of positive feedback. So I thought I would take some time to describe the process I use to make the wallpaper, and provide some resources if you are interested and trying it out yourself.

Objective: Make high resolution, multi-layered character wallpaper.

Resources you can use:

Gimp Image Editor
This is a free editor that works with layers like Photoshop does. It is relatively easy to use, and with some practice, can become a powerful tool.

Pixlr.com Image Editor
If you don't feel like downloading software, this site can do basic layer manipulation like Gimp and Photoshop, but is less dynamic. However the interface is a bit more user friendly.

Picnik.com Image Editor
This free online editor can't handle multiple layers, but its great for enhancing and adding cool effects to your basic wallpaper made with Gimp or Pixlr.com.

Wallpaper Abyss
This site contains thousands of free high resolution abstract and sci-fi wallpapers that can be used as the background for your custom wallpaper.

Google Image Search
If you are looking for a specific background or character image, you can search through millions of images on the web with Google. Tricks include clicking "similar images" or "view all sizes" to find the best version of an image, and making sure you are viewing the "full image size" before you download it to your computer.

Clone Wars Images on Wookieepedia
Here you can find a large gallery of Clone Wars character and vehicle images that you can use in your wallpaper.

Process:

Step I - Find your images

Before you can make some awesome wallpaper, you need to get all the different pieces together. You can start be predetermining what character(s) and background type you want and then search the web for them, or you can just browse through catelogs of character and background images, looking for inspiration. Generally you want the colors and styles of the images to match or compliment each other to an extent. But remember that the color doesn't necessarily have to play a roll in what background you choose, because you can easily use a simple image editor to change the color around a bit. For instance if you find a really cool green hued nebula background, but you want it to go with a Sith character, you can always open the background in an editor and adjust it to a more reddish coloring. Watch for words like "Hue", "Color", and "Tint" in the editor's menu.

One other important thing to keep in mind when looking for images, is the image resolution. Typically, you want wallpaper to be both a large size and good quality. Personally I try to make my wallpapers at least 800 pixels high and 1400 pixels wide. A good ratio to use is 9 by 16, the dimensions of most screens these days, so 900 by 1600 pixels is a safe bet for compatibility.

Step II - Open images in a multi-layer editor

Once you have at least one background and one foreground image to work with, open both of them in an editor like Photoshop, Gimp, or Pixlr.com. Use standard conventions to open the background image first and then make sure to open all the foreground images as separate layers. Usually menu options like "open as layer" will do this. Once you have all your images open as separate layers, you might need to add an alpha channel to them. This can be accomplished in Gimp by selecting on the menu "Layer" > "Transparency" > "Add Alpha Channel".

Step III - Position and blend images

Sometimes it is easier to position the different images first, and then blend them together, and other times it is easier to blend them, and then play around with the positioning. So just move them around as you see fit during the blending process. The two most effective tools to blend images are the magic wand tool (fuzzy select in Gimp) and the eraser tool. It is generally easier to blend out the background of a foreground image if it is all one color. That's why when chosing character images, you should look for ones with monotone backgrounds, like black, gray, or white. If the backround of the character image is all one color then you can use the magic wand to select it and delete it. But sometimes there is a jagged outline left along the edge of the character. The easiest way that I know of to get rid of this, is to zoom in a bit and use the eraser tool to erase along the edges. Try to use the fuzzy eraser to do this, because it smooths out the transition between the layers. If the character has a lightsaber, make sure to go around its edges with the eraser tool to blend it into the background.

Step IV - Save the wallpaper

This is actually an important step, because different formants serve different purposes. If you want to save the image in a way that preserves the different layers, so you can go back and change the background or the positioning later, make sure you use the editor's format. Gimp uses .XCF for instance to save project files. If you want to merge all the layers together, but retain perfect quality, save the image as a full quality .PNG or .JPG file. If there is any transparency that goes through every layer including the background, make sure to use the .PNG format.

Step V - Enhance the wallpaper

This is where the fun begins! Once you have the basic version of your wallpaper, you can upload the file to an online editor like Picnik.com where you can add all kinds of cool effects. My favorite effect is making the whole image greyscale and then tinting the character's eyes and lightsaber red to create an "evil" version of the character. In this step you can also add captions and enhance the saturation and contrast of the image to make it more dynamic. Make sure to save the wallpaper at the highest quality of .PNG or .JPG available, so it will look pristine on people's screens.

Supplements:

To get you started I am posting five .PNG character cut-outs that already have transparency built into them. You can open them in an editor and they should fit perfectly over any background. This way you can practice all the other steps, without having to worry about the quality of the blending. Even your first wallpaper could look professional!

Here is a link to where you can download the images in high resolution in a zipped folder.







If you have any questions or comments about this article feel free to leave them in the comments or email me at cterra5@gmail.com. If this inspires you or helps you make any wallpapers, I would love to see them. You can post your creations to the blog's Facebook page.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

How To Make Your Own Language




I have had a few people ask me about this and thought it would be a good idea for a blog post. I am an avid linguist (someone who studies languages) and have enjoyed making a few languages myself. An artificially made language is called a constructed language or conlang. There are various uses for conlangs. Some are made to study the human brain and how we perceive and learn words and grammar, some aspire to unite the world under one comment tongue, and others are made for purely artistic purposes. Additionally, a lot of people make artistic conlangs for universe projects (like for novels and video games).

There are several cheap ways of making your own language. You can find a way to encode English (like Pig Latin) or you can just come up with a parallel language to English by substituting each word with gibberish. But the more artistic and accomplished conlangs have more to them than that. If you go about making a conlang that resembles a natural language, with its own set of rules and quirks, the process will be certainly more entertaining and even educational. Through constructing my own languages, I have learned a great deal about linguistics, and I hope you will too.

A lot of people, especially people who are creative writers, have had the desire to create a language at one time in their life. But most don't know how to go about it. The project is certainly a large one, and can seem daunting to a novice. But I'm going to attempt to outline and explain the process in several easy steps. The first is developing a phonology (basically what letters, sounds, and combinations of letters and sounds can be used in the language). If you want to make up a new alphabet for the language, you can do it in this step. But typically it's less confusing to make the language first, and then make an alphabet. The second thing to do is develop the grammar (how words change and interact with each other). And the final step is to add vocabulary to the language by creating words. You can simplify this process by coming up with a set of small, basic words, and then combining them to make more complicated words. For instance you could have words for blue, wet, and area and then combine them to make the word for sea.

After you have created a language you can use it for many purposes. You could have a code to write sensitive information in, a unique language to add color to a species or culture in a novel or video game project, and even a blue print to help you study real languages. But remember, this is your language. If you don't want it to be complicated, you don't have to make it that way. If there are irregularities in English that annoy you, you don't need to carry them over into it. So take things at your own pace, and have fun!


Step I: Phonology

Every language has its own set of sound and spelling rules. For instance in English we don't have the gargling khhh sound that is prominent in languages like German and Hebrew. It's also against our spelling rules to end words with the letters q or v, or to have long strings of consonants like ngstsch. So the first step to giving your language a unique look and sound, is to come up with these rules. To help you, I'm going to outline all the common sounds in human languages and describe how they relate to each other.

There are three main types of sounds that humans can make. Vowels are made by opening your mouth in different ways and exhaling air while vibrating the vocal chords, consonants are made by closing your mouth in some way and diverting the air flow, and clicks are made by creating friction by rubbing one part of your mouth against another. It's most likely that all the languages you are familiar with only use vowels and consonants in words and use clicks as interjections (like tsk tsk), so I'll only focus on the first two.

There are an infinite amount of possible vowel sounds because there are an infinite amount of ways to blow air out your mouth. The different positions of the tongue and jaw muscles used while speaking vowels account for the majority of accent differences between versions of even the same language. For example American, Irish, British, and Australian English all have their own unique and easily distinguishable rules for how vowels are spoken. Because American English is either natively spoken or recognizable for most English speakers, I'll use it's rules and examples to describe common types of vowels.

Short Vowels:

A in Apple
E in pEn
I in pIn
O in pOp
U in bUn (also called the "schwa" sound)
OO in cOOk

Long Vowels:

A in blAme
E in scEne
O in nOte
U in tUne

Semivowels (really short vowels often used as consonants):

Y in Yot
W in Win

Diphthongs (combinations of vowels):

Long A + short I in sAnd
Short A + long U in cOW
Short O + long E in tIme
Long O + long E in bOY
Long O + short U in sAW

It is really hard to pinpoint rules about vowels because there are even inconsistencies from person to person. Many people pronounce two vowel sounds when they think they are only using one. For instance people in New York City and Boston tend to use a combination of the oh and uh sounds in words where other Americans use the ah sound. Consequently in some regions the word cot can sound identical to the word caught. Another example of vowel inconsistency is in the Midwest, where many Americans add a oo sound to their oh sound. When making a language's rules for vowels, you will most likely copy your own accent. But you can make your language unique by paying careful attention to this area. You can add some exoticness by following rules from French and Spanish rather than English. To illustrate a common difference. The made up word fane would be pronounced with a long a sound according to American rules, but would be pronounced like fah-nay with Spanish rules.

Consonants are thankfully a little more easy to map out than vowels. There are three main ways to distinguish consonants, by where they are made in the mouth, by whether they are a stopped sound or a continuing sound, and by whether or not the vocal chords are used. Most of the consonant sounds that I will discuss here are used in English, but a few are not. You can make your language sound exotic and even alien by throwing in rare consonant sounds and combinations, but also run the risk of rendering your language unspeakable by the average person. I'll start by defining some important terms used to describe consonants.

Voiced: when the vocal chords are used

Unvoiced: when the vocal chords are not used

Stop: when the sound is made by completely stopping airflow

Fricative: when airflow is restricted and diverted but not stopped

Nasal: when the sound is made by moving airflow from the mouth to the nose

Liquid: when there is mostly unrestricted airflow (these can be used like vowels)

To use examples to illustrate these concepts, the s in sand is unvoiced while the s in bays is voiced, t is a stop consonant because it's a sound that cannot be held for any longer than normal, while th is a fricative because it can go on indefinitely, m is a nasal sound because you need to blow air out your nose to say it, while l is a liquid because you need to blow air out your mouth. Try making the m sound while holding your nose or the l sound with your mouth closed... it's impossible. Here are some examples of consonants ordered by these criteria.

Voiced stops: B, D, G

Unvoiced stops: P, T, K

Voiced fricatives: V, DH(in THe), GH(basically the gargling sound), Z, ZH(in viSion)

Unvoiced fricatives: F, TH(in THin), KH(in German baCH), S, SH, CH(in German iCH)

Nasals: M, NY(half-way between N and Y, similar to Spanish Ñ), N, NG(in siNG)

Liquids: R, L

To give a few notes about these examples, v and f are sometimes considered "laterals" because air flows out of the sides of your mouth when you make their sounds, there are actually two different types of th sounds in English, one is voiced and one is not, and you should probably ignore the ch sound I mentioned because it has nothing to do with the ch in cheese and is really difficult for native Enlish speakers to pronounce because it's made on the roof of the mouth somewhere between sh and kh.

You might have noticed that there are a couple common consonant sounds that I have not mentioned yet. That's because the j and ch sounds are actually consonant combinations called affricates. They start with a stop consonant and end with a fricative. J is a combination of d and the zh sound (like in vision), and ch is the t sound quickly followed by the sh sound. The ts in tsunami is another example of an affricate.

Hopefully these descriptions of letters and sounds will help you decide how to make the pronunciation and spelling rules in your language. Before I move on to another subject though, I want to quickly mention that stress is yet another way to add color to a language. For instance, usually we give more focus to a certain part of a word. In English we say ba-NAAA-na, but in other languages it might be BUHH-nana or bana-NAHH. Some languages have specific rules about on which syllable the stress falls, while in others the stress varies greatly from word to word.

Here are some examples of how different phonetic rules change the look and sound of a language.

This is what a language with just a sounds and alternating consonants and vowels would look like:

Al alava kabara sala ba apa kana

A language where words can only have one syllable would look like this:

Mau tsi yung toi han mung

Here is an example of a vowel heavy language that only has three consonants:

Oa ki ana aihu noa hoi

And a consonant heavy language could look like this:

Dengr schtrochtnen kufthbar bint ausgrunder dengr brucht

To you these examples might have a resemblance to Arabic, Chinese, Hawaiian, and German respectively. That's because the balance between consonants and vowels, and the rules about how they fit together into words go a long way to give a language character.


Step II: Grammar

Now that you've thought about what the rules for spelling and pronunciation for your language could be, the next step is mapping out how the grammar works. Grammar is simply how words relate to each other. The most important factors of a language's grammar are parts of speech (the function of words), what order those parts should be in, and how words change to agree with others or alter their own meanings. It can be difficult to find a place to start defining a language's grammar, so I'll begin by defining some important grammatical terms.

Glyph: a self contained symbol, the lower case letter i has two glyphs, the line and the dot

Grapheme: the smallest written unit in a language, each letter is a grapheme

Phoneme: the smallest spoken unit, a basic sound like shh, sometimes a phoneme is made with more than one grapheme and vice versa

Morpheme: the smallest part of a language that has a meaning, for instance the word play has one morpheme and the word playground has two

Noun: a word that represents a person, place, thing, or idea

Article: a word that defines a noun, the is an article that suggests the noun is a specific thing and the article a suggests it's a more general thing

Adjective: a word that describes a noun

Pronoun: a word that takes the place of a noun

Verb: a word that puts nouns into action (action verb), describes their state, or equates them with other words (linking verb)

Adverb: a word that describes a verb

Preposition: a word that describes the relationship between other words

Interjection: a word that does not relate to any other words and can be used to directly illustrate an emotion

Particle: a morpheme that describes or changes the grammatical purpose of a word

Declension: how a noun, adjective, or article changes under different grammatical circumstances

Conjugation: how a verb changes to relate to a noun or to alter its own meaning

The relation and expression of these basic terms are what forms a language's grammar. It's important that you decide what type of grammar you want in your language. Analytical languages have words that seldom change forms, and rely mostly on word order and prepositions to convey meaning. Inflected languages have words that often change depending on what purpose they are serving and what exact meaning they have, and do not rely as much on word order. Synthetic languages throw particles next to words to describe how they fit into the sentence. And agglutinative languages tend to stack many small morphemes together to make larger and more complex words. Your language could be a combination of any of these types, just as every natural language is. English is a good example of an analytical language that has limited inflection, while Latin is heavily inflected, and German is both an analytical, agglutinative, and inflected language.

Even inflected languages tend to have a preferred word order, and analytical languages rely on rules on which parts of speech go where. The three most important parts in word order are the subject, the verb, and the object. Here are some examples of different word orders.

John sees the painting (subject - verb - object order or SVO)
The painting sees John (object - verb - subject or OVS)
Sees John the painting (verb - subject - object or VSO)
John the painting sees (subject - object - verb or SOV)

It's important to figure out what order you are going to use in your language. English generally uses SVO order (and if you aren't thinking too hard about it, your language probably will too). But other languages like Latin use SOV order. Sometimes the order can change depending on the type of sentence. For instance Spanish uses SVO in most sentences, but uses VSO when asking question. Adding other parts of speech to a sentence can also change the default word order.

For many languages, the most complicated and irregular aspects of grammar is declension and conjugation. Even if you don't wish to make an inflected or synthetic language that pays much detail to these things, it still is beneficial to understand some of the possible ways that a language can use declension and conjugation to convey grammatical meaning. For me personally, studying these aspects helped me a great deal in learning foreign languages that utilize them more, like Latin, Spanish, French, and German.

The common parts of speech that are declined are nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives. These are all words that have a hand in describing people, places, concepts, and so forth. Words can be declined by changing or adding to different parts of the word. The most basic part of the word is called its "stem" and anything added through declension are called "inflections" or "affixes". The three most common areas a word is declined in, is gender (which can be related to the gender of the object it describes or can be totally random), number (the quantity of the word, in English we have singular and plural versions), and case (how the word fits into the sentence, is it a subject, or an object, or something else?).

To illustrate this and other difficult concepts, I'm going to make up a special exemplary word. The word is bas (pronounced bahhs like how a British person would say bass) and means it or thing as a noun and to be as a verb. I'm going to decline it by adding suffixes in a similar fashion to how ancient Latin and Greek words were declined. Hopefully by comparing how I changed the word to how the meaning changed, you will begin to understand declension.

Declined by gender:

Neuter - basi - it, thing
Masculine - baso - he, man
Feminine - basa - she, woman
Common - basu - person (either male or female)

Declined by number:

Singular - basu - (one) person
Dual - basuwa - (two) people
Plural - basuya - (many) people

Declined by case:

Nominative - basu - person (used as the subject of a sentence)
Genitive - basus - person's, (of the) person
Accusative - basum - person (used as the object of a verb or preposition)
Ablative - basuay - person (used as the object of a preposition)
Dative - basul - (to or for the) person
Ergative - basur - person (used as the subject of an action verb)
Vocative - basun - (O) person (used when addressing a person)

So let's talk about this for a bit, because it can be confusing. The most common cases are nominative, genitive, and accusative. Most English nouns don't have these declensions, but pronouns often do. For instance he is nominative, his is genitive, and him is accusative. When making your language you can choose what types of words you want to decline and how. Sometimes adjectives and articles match the declension of the nouns they modify like in los rojos libros (Spanish for the red books). Not all words have to be declined. The language could be like English and only decline common pronouns, but it could be like Latin and decline nearly every single noun and pronoun and make every adjective match them.

Also don't think that adding letters to a word is the only way to decline it. You could change its meaning by adding letters to the beginning of the root word, putting a particle next to it, or even changing the letters inside the root themselves. Here are some examples on how to make the word bas plural.

Adding to the end: bas --> basa
Adding to the begining: bas --> abas
Swapping the consonants: bas --> sab
Changing the vowel: bas --> bes
Changing a consonant: bas --> bath
Adding a particle marker: bas --> ma bas
Doubling the word: bas --> basbas

You can even combine these things: bas --> betha (changing and adding)

There are an infinite amount of ways that you can decline any given word. Therefore declension, however complicated it can be, is a great way to add some spunk to your language. And remember that you can throw different forms of declension on top of each other. Say if you wanted the plural betha to be masculine and genitive.

Bas - person
Betha - people
Bethora - men
Bethorash - of the men

So the main concept of declension can be summed up here: if you wanted to make up a translation for the phrase of the men, you could simply make up a word for of, the, and men which might look like da la bes or you could use a declension system to make a single word bethorash that means the same exact thing --whatever suits your tastes.

The final aspect of grammar I want to cover is conjugation. This is basically anything that changes in a verb. Even analytical languages that are hardly inflected have some conjugation in them. English has three main changes that a verb can go through; it adds an s at the end to agree present verbs with third person subjects (e.g. he wants, the man talks), it adds the letters ed to the end of past tense verbs, and it adds the letters ing to form the present participle. Additionally some verbs in English also go through sound changes to denote the past tense (e.g. sing --> sang, catch --> caught). All of these changes are considered conjugation.

Inflected languages like German and Spanish have many more changes like this in their verbs. Just like how the phrase of the men can be rendered as only one word in an inflected language, long verbal structures like he was going can be expressed with one inflected word. Just like nouns can be declined in different areas, verbs can be conjugated in different ways. The most common are mood (are you describing something, telling somebody to do something, or giving a condition?), person (who is the subject?), number (is the subject singular or plural?), tense (did the action already happen, is it happening now, or is it going to happen?), and aspect (did the action happen once, did it continue over a period of time, or is it always happening?). Once again I'm going to use my little word bas to illustrate different possible types of conjugation.

Conjugated by mood (and tense in the participles):

Infinitive - basin - to be
Present participle - basing - being
Past participle - basith - been
Indicative - bast - (it) is
Subjunctive - basat - let (it) be
Imperative - bas - be!
Conditional - basinat - (it) would be
Aorist  - basut - (it always) is

Conjugated by person and number:

First person singular - basim - (I) am
Second person singular - basist - (you) are
Third person singular - bast - (it) is
First person plural - basimis - (we) are
Second person plural - basistis - (you all) are
Third person plural - basint - (they) are

Conjugated by tense:

Present - bast - (it) is
Past - bastit - (it) was
Future - basnit - (it) will be

Conjugated by aspect:

Past simple - bastit - (it) was
Past progressive - bastingit - (it) was being
Past perfect - baswit - (it) has been
Past plurfect - baswitit - (it) had been

As you probably can figure, conjugation can be endlessly complex. If you combine all the different forms for mood, person, number, tense, aspect, and even rare forms like gender, you could end up with hundreds if not thousands of different version of just one verb. Of course, you have the choice of how inflected you want the verbs to be in your language, you could make them like English and have only a few different forms and use pronouns and helping verbs to do the heavy work, or you could follow a more ancient and exotic pattern, and create a complex system. And remember, like with declension, you don't have to just throw letters onto the end of a word to conjugate it. You could change it in other ways too, like in this example.

Bas - to be
Ivas - he is
Ives - he was
Sives - they were

I hope you are getting the picture. Basically you could say I will be going in your language analytically with a bunch of words like ech volm schin gend or you could use just one word that is changed according to set rules like ginendim. As always this is your language. So you can craft it either way and mix in any concepts that appeal to you. I'll also mention that you don't have to just have one set of conjugation rules, you could have formal and informal rules, written and spoken language variants. These are all things that will add depth to the language.

In summary, the things you need to think about when mapping out the grammar of your language is word order, how your language goes about defining parts of speech, the declension of nouns, and the conjugation of verbs. Of course even these things will never be set in stone, and you can continue to tweak them as you move forward. But it is important to have a game plan from early on about how your language is grammatically structured. That way you can start building the vocabulary in a manner that fits well into the structure of a sentence.


Step III: Vocabulary

Now that you have constructed the phonology and grammar for your language, the final step to embark on is building a vocabulary. This process on the surface seems the least complicated; all you need to do is make a bunch of words right? Well, you could do it that way, but here's the thing. Some languages have tens if not hundreds of thousands of words; where would one begin? I have had this problem myself in making my own languages. I would either make up words when I needed to use them, or go through the process of translating poems, short stories, and songs. But both of these ways can be unrefined, because when you don't make similar words together, similar words tend to end up looking totally different, which is both confusing and unrealistic. Also if you build a vocabulary by translating texts, you probably won't be making the most common and important words first, and will be creating a bunch of obscure words that can clog up your memory, and make it difficult to memorize or translate your own language.

So what is the solution to this problem? One solution I came up with is to create the most frequently used words first. If the first few hundred words you make are the most common words, you actually will have created about ninety percent of the the language in terms of usage, even though there are still thousands of more obscure words left to make. Another benefit to making the most frequent words first, is that larger and more complicated words in languages usually can be made up of combinations of smaller and simpler words.

To aid you in this process I have assembled a comprehensive vocabulary building guide. Here I have the one thousand most frequently used English words divided into parts of speech categories. There are six main phases and one preliminary phase. Once you find how each of these words will be represented in your language, you will have a dictionary that can be used to translate over ninety percent of the words that appear in common speech and writing, and once you memorize these words, you should be able to speak and write your language fluently and get any idea across. After you have mastered these one thousand words, you then can go on to create specific vocabulary lists for different aspects of life, like words used in the kitchen, or computer terms, or words for various animals and plants.

Preliminary Phase

Before creating all kinds of verbs, nouns, prepositions, and other words, you should pause for a brief time to figure out two important vocabulary systems; these are numbers and basic pronouns. It is impossible to speak for any length of time without using these words, and making them might help you develop the look and sound of your language.

There are two types of numbers, cardinal and ordinal. Cardinals describe how many of something there is (like one, two, and three) and ordinals describe where something appears in a sequence (like first, second, and third). You can either make both versions of each number, or have only one version that works both ways. There are an infinite amount of ways to go about creating a number system, but I'll use the decimal system based on tens to illustrate how it can be done.

First come up with eleven numbers, zero through nine. Here is an example:

Zero - nal
One - man
Two - dava
Three - tar
Four - tas
Five - pan
Six - saka
Seven - sapa
Eight - aka
Nine - nava
Ten - daka

Then make their ordinal versions (usually zero doesn't have an ordinal):

First - manta
Second - davita
Third - tarta
Fourth - tasta
Fifth - panta
Sixth - sakita
Seventh - sapita
Eighth - akita
Ninth - navita
Tenth - dakita

Then you can use these roots to construct all the numbers from zero to ninety-nine. All you need to do is come up with a prefix for the teens and the tens. For instance if eight is aka, then eighteen can be akatika and eighty can be akinta. You can also make special words for large numbers like a hundred, thousand, and million. One way of forming fractions like a half and a third is to combine the cardinals and ordinals together. For instance the word for one-fourth could be mantasta (man + tasta).

The main pronouns consist of words that often take the place of nouns in a language, words like she, it, and them. These pronouns can have different forms for subjects, objects, and possessives, like he, him, and his. Making a list of basic pronouns is a fantastic way to refine your declension system if you have one. Here are some examples of important pronouns.

Subjects in nominative case:

First person singular - ma - I
Second person singular - tha - you
Third person singular neuter - da - it
Third person singular masculine - ha - he
Third person singular feminine - sa - she
First person plural - mai - we
Second person plural - thai - you (all)
Third person plural - dai - they

Objects in accusative case:

First person singular - mam - me
Second person singular - tham - you
Third person singular neuter - dam - it
Third person singular masculine - ham - him
Third person singular feminine - sam - her
First person plural - maim - us
Second person plural - thaim - you (all)
Third person plural - daim - them

Possessives in genitive case:

First person singular - mas - my/mine
Second person singular - thas - your/yours
Third person singular neuter - das - its
Third person singular masculine - has - his
Third person singular feminine - sas - her/hers
First person plural - mais - our/ours
Second person plural - thais - your/yours (you all's)
Third person plural - dais - their/theirs

Your pronoun system doesn't have to be this complicated or, conversely, it could be even more specific. For instance you could have two words for we, one that means you and I and one that means they and I. You could fit all of these words together into a perfect system, with each one relating to the other, or you could make them a bit more irregular like English.

To conclude this guide to making a language, I have listed nearly one thousand vocabulary words in the final six main phases. Each of the phases is divided further into subcategories based on part of speech. Whenever you are not sure what words to add next to your language, just follow this list. After translating the first hundred or so words, you will be able to construct most simple phrases and expressions in your language, and by the times you have translated all thousand words, you will be able to speak and write it near fluently. But don't think this list is boxing you in or forcing you to dredge along a rigid path. It's only a guide to help you, and you can use it however you want.

If you have any questions or comments about this post, I would love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of the page, or send me an email at cterra5@gmail.com. Happy language building!





Phase I
100 of 100

Nouns 1
10 of 10
time
year
people
way
man
day
thing
child
government
part

Verbs 1
10 of 10
be
have
do
say
go
get
make
see
know
take

Adjectives 1
10 of 10
last
other
new
good
old
great
high
small
different
large

Adverbs 1
10 of 10
not
out
up
so
then
more
now
just
also
well

Prepositions 1
10 of 10
of
in
to
for
on
with
at
by
from
as

Pronouns 1
10 of 10
the
a
this
that
many
some
no
any
every
other

Conjunctions 1
10 of 10

and
that
but
or
as
it
than
when
because
so

Modals 1
10 of 10

will
would
can
could
should
may
must
might
shall
used

Relatives 1
10 of 10

what
which
who
where
when
why
how
how many
whatever
whoever

Phrases 1
10 of 10

yes
no
maybe
please
thank you
you're welcome
well
hello
good bye
sorry

Phase II
105 of 205


Nouns 2
15 of 25

life
case
woman
work
system
group
number
world
area
course
company
problem
service
hand
party

Verbs 2
15 of 25

think
come
give
look
use
find
want
tell
put
work
become
mean
leave
seem
need

Adjectives 2
15 of 25

local
social
long
important
young
national
possible
big
right
early
public
only
able
political
particular

Adverbs 2
15 of 25

only
very
how
when
as
even
there
down
back
still
here
too
on
where
over

Prepositions 2
15 of 25

into
about
like
between
after
through
over
under
against
before
without
within
during
towards
off

Pronouns 2
15 of 25

own
more
same
each
another
most
both
every
much
little
several
half
few
either
less

Conjunctions 2
15 of 25

while
where
although
whether
until
though
since
alter
before
nor
unless
once
thus
therefore
however

Phase III
125 of 330


Nouns 3
25 of 50

school
place
point
house
country
week
member
end
word
example
family
fact
state
percent
home
month
side
night
eye
head
information
question
business
power
money

Verbs 3
25 of 50

feel
may
ask
show
try
call
keep
provide
hold
follow
turn
bring
begin
like
write
start
run
set
help
play
move
pay
hear
meet
include

Adjectives 3
25 of 50

full
far
late
available
little
low
bad
main
major
economic
general
real
likely
certain
special
difficult
international
clear
sure
black
white
common
strong
whole
free

Adverbs 3
25 of 50

much
however
again
never
all
most
about
in
why
away
really
off
always
next
rather
quite
right
often
yet
perhaps
already
least
almost
long
together

Prepositions 3
25 of 50

upon
including
among
around
across
behind
up
along
according
since
despite
per
near
above
throughout
outside
beyond
round
beside
excluding
concerning
except
amid
twixt
notwithstanding

Phase IV
200 of 530


Nouns 4
50 of 100

change
interest
order
book
development
room
water
form
car
other
level
policy
council
line
need
effect
use
idea
study
lot
job
result
body
friend
right
authority
view
report
bit
face
market
hour
rate
law
door
court
office
war
reason
minister
subject
person
term
sort
period
society
process
mother
voice
police

Verbs 4
50 of 100

believe
allow
lead
stand
live
happen
carry
talk
sit
appear
continue
let
produce
involve
require
suggest
consider
read
change
offer
lose
add
expect
remember
remain
tall
speak
open
buy
stop
send
decide
win
understand
develop
receive
return
build
spend
describe
agree
increase
learn
reach
lie
walk
die
draw
hope
create

Adjectives 4
50 of 100

similar
necessary
central
true
open
short
single
easy
private
poor
foreign
human
simple
wide
various
due
hard
royal
fine
natural
wrong
final
present
nice
close
current
legal
red
happy
concerned
normal
previous
serious
prime
sorry
left
dead
specific
total
appropriate
military
basic
original
successful
popular
heavy
top
dark
ready
useful

Adverbs 4
50 of 100

later
less
both
once
probably
ever
no
far
actually
today
enough
therefore
around
soon
particularly
early
else
sometimes
thus
further
ago
yesterday
usually
indeed
certainly
home
simply
especially
better
either
clearly
instead
round
to
finally
please
forward
quickly
recently
anyway
suddenly
generality
nearly
obviously
though
hard
okay
exactly
above
maybe

Phase V
200 of 730


Nouns 5
100 of 200

kind
price
action
issue
position
cost
matter
community
figure
type
research
education
few
program
minute
moment
girl
age
center
control
value
health
decision
class
industry
back
force
condition
paper
century
father
section
patient
activity
road
table
church
mind
team
experience
death
act
sense
staff
student
language
department
management
morning
plan
role
practice
bank
support
event
building
range
stage
meeting
town
art
club
arm
history
parent
land
trade
situation
teacher
record
manager
relation
field
window
account
difference
material
air
wife
project
sale
relationship
light
care
rule
story
quality
tax
worker
nature
structure
data
pound
method
unit
bed
union
movement
board

Verbs 5
100 of 200

sell
pass
accept
cause
watch
break
support
stay
wait
cover
form
cut
grow
contain
join
reduce
face
choose
wish
drive
place
seek
fail
serve
end
occur
kill
act
plan
eat
close
represent
love
rise
prepare
manage
discuss
prove
catch
enjoy
suppose
wear
argue
introduce
enter
arrive
pull
refer
thank
present
control
affect
point
relate
force
compare
suffer
announce
obtain
forget
publish
visit
listen
finish
fight
train
maintain
save
design
improve
avoid
wonder
express
exist
share
smile
treat
remove
state
throw
assume
mention
admit
replace
reflect
intend
encourage
miss
drop
fly
reveal
operate
discover
record
refuse
prevent
teach
cost
answer
depend
hit

Phase VI
200 of 930


Nouns 6
200 of 400

detail
model
wall
computer
hospital
chapter
scheme
theory
property
officer
charge
director
approach
chance
application
top
amount
son
operation
opportunity
leader
look
share
production
firm
picture
source
security
contract
agreement
site
labor
test
loss
color
shop
benefit
animal
heart
election
purpose
standard
secretary
date
music
hair
factor
pattern
piece
front
evening
tree
population
plant
pressure
response
street
performance
knowledge
design
page
individual
rest
basis
size
environment
fire
series
success
thought
list
future
space
demand
statement
attention
love
principle
doctor
choice
feature
couple
step
machine
income
training
association
film
region
effort
player
award
organization
news
difficulty
cell
energy
degree
mile
growth
sound
task
provision
behavior
function
resource
defense
garden
floor
technology
style
feeling
science
doubt
horse
answer
user
character
risk
dog
army
station
glass
cup
husband
capital
note
season
argument
show
responsibility
deal
economy
element
duty
attempt
leg
investment
brother
title
hotel
increase
help
summer
daughter
baby
sea
skill
claim
concern
university
discussion
customer
box
conference
whole
profit
division
procedure
king
image
oil
circumstance
proposal
client
sector
direction
instance
sign
measure
attitude
disease
commission
seat
president
addition
goal
affair
technique
respect
item
version
ability
good
campaign
advice
institution
surface
library
advantage
memory
culture
blood
majority
variety
bill
competition
general
access
stone

Friday, April 22, 2011

You know you grew up in the 2000s when...





"Text" is a verb.

American Idol and Survivor are the best TV shows ever!

You say "That's what she said!" everytime someone uses the words "hard" or "ball" in a sentence.

You (or your sister) were obsessed with High School Musical.

It was "epic" when you "pwned" your friend at Halo/COD.

You don't get why they have libraries because all the info you could ever need is on Google.

You ask people, "Pirates or ninjas?".

The Star Wars prequels, Lord of the Rings, and Pirates the of the Carribean films are classics.

You party to the Black Eyed Peas and Bitney Spears.

Real phones don't have wires or antennas.

You wanted a laptop and a digital camera for Christmas.

You just lost the Game. (sorry)

You want to be like Kobe and Lebron.

Tiger Woods and golf are synonomous.

The best trivia show ever was Who Wants To Be A Millionare.

Digital pets are cooler than real ones.

When you think something is funny you say, "LOL".

You were taught that there are 8 planets.

You watch just as much on Youtube as TV.

Videos or music stored on tapes is ancient.

Earphones go inside your ear.

There are 10 types of Coke and Doritos.

The best family films ever were made by Pixar.

Dude's belts are more for show than function.

Comfort clothing is geans and a hoodie with your iPod in a pocket and earbuds in.

You are smarter than a Fifth Grader.

Your parents always talk about how much better the 70s and 80s were.

":-)" makes you smile.

"Like" is the most common word in your vocabulary.

"Sick" is a positive description.

You will only pick up a book if it's about wizards or vampires.

Your coffee has to be iced.

Vault and energy drinks are like water.

The best outdoor sports are paintball and airsoft.

If you couldn't use Facebook your social life would decrease 50 percent.

You have both online and IRL friends.

You always click on links that say "You know you are _____ when..."

Friday, April 15, 2011

Computer Tips and Tricks: The Basics




Being the administer of several popular fan pages and the writer of a couple of blogs, I get a lot of technical questions, which I am happy to answer. So I want to start writing posts that discuss computer tips and tricks that I find myself explaining to people often. I'm going to assume that the majority of people reading this have Windows 7 for an operating system and Internet Explorer 8 or 9 for a web browser, but most of the things I discuss work with similar systems and other browsers like Firefox and Chrome. In my first post I want to discuss the basics of file and internet operations.

Note: I'm going to highlight important terms in bold initially, however after a while, I'll leave them alone as they should by then have found their place in your vocabulary.


File Operations

Computers are like virtual "file cabinets". Inside the cabinets are different "drawers" called drives. Usually there is only one main drive built into the computer called the hard drive, but drives can be anything you plug into the computer like cameras, USB (also called flash or thumb) drives, CDs, DVDs, and external hard drives. Inside these "drawers" can be an infinite amount of folders. Folders can exist side by side and also can be inside each other. Folders are used to contain and organize files. These files can be documents, presentations, spreadsheets, images, videos, songs, and programs.

Files are created and edited with various programs (which can be called applications). Files can be easily moved from folder to folder, but it usually takes a bit longer to move a file to a different drive. The main operations that pertain to files are new, save, save as, close, open, delete, cut, copy, and paste.

When you run a file editing program like Microsoft Office, Notepad, or MS Paint, the important operations are newsavesave asclose, and open. New creates a new fileSave places that file in a folder and/or updates it with any changes made with the programSave as can be used to save changes to a new file without overwriting the original. Close shuts down the program used to view and/or edit the file; any changes made since the last save or save as will be lost, however some programs have an optional auto save feature that automatically saves changes as soon as they are made. This prevents the loss of changes if the program crashes or is accidentally closed. Finally, open is used to view/edit a previously created file with a program.

When navigating through folders with a folder viewing program like Windows Explorer, the main operations are opendeletecutcopy, and paste. You will see these and other options when you click a file or folder icon with the right mouse/touchpad button. Open brings the file up in a viewing/editing program, if you want to specify which program to open the file with, click the open with option. Delete removes the file from its folder and places it in a virtual "trash bin" that can be emptied to permanently remove the file from the computer. When files that aren't on the main drive are deleted they usually don't go into the "trash bin" and are permanently removed. Cut moves the file to the clipboard, a virtual temporary holding place that usually can only contain one file or inseparable group of files at a time. From there the file can be placed into another folder with the paste operation. Copy places a replica of the file on the clipboard without removing it from its original folder. This is the easiest way to duplicate a file. Two other options in the "right click" menu are rename and properties. These can be used to change the name of a file and view information about it, like its size or when it was created.

There are three main ways to manipulate files on a screen. They are using the touchpad/mouse, the touchpad/mouse buttons, and the keys. Here I'll go over what can be done with these controls.

Move pointer: The simplest control operation is to move the pointer around the screen with the touchpad/mouse. When the pointer "hovers" over an object on screen it can change form. Generally it looks like an arrow. When it hovers over the edge of something that it can change the size of it looks like a 2-way or 4-way arrow. If the pointer looks like a hand, it means that you can click the object and something will happen, and when it looks like a thin capitol "I" it indicates that you can type into that area.

Left click: The most important button on the computer is the left large button on the mouse or right under the touchpad. Sometimes tapping the touchpad achieves the same effect. The button is the one used to "click", "left click", and "select" objects on screen. This is how you navigate menus and other on screen controls. Sometimes objects require a "double click" of the left mouse/touchpad button.

Right click: Another important button is the left mouse/touchpad button. This is used to bring up an options menu for objects. For instance, when you "right click" a file, a little menu pops up where you can use the "left click" to copy, delete, or rename it. Usually you can paste an object into a folder or document by "left clicking" an empty area where you want to put it and selecting the paste option.

Dragging: You can "drag" over a group of files or text by "left clicking" the beginning of the section you want to highlight and holding the left touchpad/mouse button down while you move the pointer to the end of the section. After you release the button, something will indicate that the area has been selected. Then you can "right click" the selected area to bring up an options menu. Another from of "dragging" is "drag and drop". Here you "drag" over an area and then "pick it up" by "left clicking" the selected area and moving the pointer while holding the left touchpad/mouse button down. This way you can move the selected objects or text to another part of the screen. When you drag and drop files from one folder to another, it usually copies the file.

Keys: There are various operations that can be performed by pushing one or a combination of keys on the keyboard. Here are some examples:

F5 - View a presentation in full screen
F11 - View a website page in full screen
PRTSC - Copy an image of the screen to the clipboard
DEL - Delete the selected object(s)
HOME - Go to the top of a page
END - Go to the bottom of a page

ALT + F4 - Close program / Turns off computer if no program is open
CTRL + ALT + DEL - Opens a task manager where you can view all programs running
CTRL + S - Save changes in editing program
CTRL + Z - Undo change in editing program
CTRL + X - Cut selected object(s)
CTRL + C - Copy selected object(s)
CTRL + V - Paste object(s) in clipboard


Internet Operations

The internet is a web of cable, satellite, and wireless connections between computers. Through it all the "file cabinets" in the world can share files and information. Here are some basic internet terms:

Client: That's you! A client is an individual computer or device that accesses the internet.

Server: That's them. Servers are computers that are connected to the internet 24/7 and hold files that are accessible by clients. Servers can also facilitate communication between clients.

ISP (Internet Service Provider): Your ISP is the company that you pay to access the internet.

IP (Internet Protocol) address:  This is like your computer's phone number. Every device that accesses the internet has its own unique IP address.

Web Browser: This is the program that you use to view and interact with the internet. Examples are Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

Webpage: A webpage is what you see on screen when your go on the internet. They are stored on servers.

Website (often abbreviated "site"): A website is a group of connected webpages. A website is like a book, and a webpage is like a book page.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The URL is the address of a webpage. Each webpage has its own unique URL. For example this page's URL is "http://thegleemo.blogspot.com/XXXX".

Address Bar: This is the section of the web browser that contains the URL of the webpage you are viewing.

Domain: The domain is the section of the URL that comes between the "www" and the next slash. "Google.com" is a domain. Usually all the webpages in a website have the same domain.

Hyperlink: This is a segment of text or an image that "links" to another webpage. When you hover over a hyperlink, usually the pointer turns into a hand. Then you can "left click" the link to view the webpage it links to. Most sites will let you create your own hyperlink by pasting the URL of a webpage into a text box.

Text Box: This is an area that you can type text into.

Window: A window is a separately running program. You can view multiple webpages at once by opening multiple windows. Sometimes you can open up a new window by pressing "CTRL + N" on the keyboard.

Tab: You can toggle back and forth between different webpages in a single browser window by having multiple tabs. An easy way to make a new tab is to press "CTRL + T" on the keyboard. You can also close a tab by pressing "CTRL + W".

Bookmarks: Web browsers contain easily accessible lists of your favorite webpages called bookmarks or favorites.

History: This is a list of all the webpages you have visited.

Cookies: These are small text files that your web browser saves on your computer. They remember settings you have on various sites.

Upload: The term for transferring a file from your computer to a server.

Download: The term for transferring a file from a server to your computer.

Stream: The term for watching and downloading a video at the same time.


Hopefully you have understood everything I've said and have learned at least a few things. If you knew all these things already, than you can consider yourself a computer wiz ;-) But don't worry, this is just my first post on the subject, and I wanted to cover all the terminology that I will use in further computer tips posts. If you have any questions about this post, or want to suggest that I discuss something in a future post, please leave a comment below.