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commandertheory · 5 years

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War of the Spark Commander Set Review

The Commanders of War of the Spark

In white, there’s not too many ways to build around her. Once you exhaust the suite of self-bouncing creatures you commonly see in Karametra lists (e.g., Kor Skyfisher, Whitemane Lion), the next best cards to run are cheap utility creatures like Stoneforge, Weathered Wayfarer, etc.-- essentially goodstuff.

It’s notable that this card could be very good as part of the 99 in Karametra and Ephara lists. Also, it’s a double striker with a big butt for Doran lists.

I’m not a big fan of commanders that solely care about what your opponents are doing because they don’t give your own deck a lot of direction. If you’ve got a Lord Windgrace deck in your meta, then this might be useful in the 99 of hatebear decks that are good at finding their silver bullets.

The best piece of tech for Fblthp is Proteus Staff. If you run a creatureless Fblthp list, you get to stack your entire deck and then immediately draw two cards, which is great for assembling combos, such as Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal. If you have mana rocks that produce three or more mana, Scepter + Reversal will give you infinite mana and then infinite activations of Proteus Staff so you can draw your deck and find a win condition.

Nexus of Fate is another solid combo piece to stack on top of your deck with Fblthp, as you can keep stacking it to the top with Proteus Staff and Fblthp, provided you have the 10 mana required to do so every turn.

I’m a little skeptical that this strategy is going to be significantly stronger than what was already possible in any Commander deck with access to Proteus Staff. Like, if you’re already in Blue, you’re not going to be starved for card draw, and you could be running a different commander that provides additional benefits (or additional colors) instead of an effect that your color identity could easily do anyway.

Seems like a very strong commander for extra turn effects. As long as you can keep Scroll Racking your Time Warps to the top of your library, you get infinite turns; even if you have to rely on one-shot effects like Brainstorm or whatever, you’ll still be taking a lot of extra turns, which will hopefully be enough for your 4-power evasive commander to eliminate some threats.

This deck naturally runs a ton of sac fodder; Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, and Bloodsoaked Champion are all good here. You may also want to run some efficient token generation, as well. I also think it’s a good idea to run some of Black’s strong sac outlets like Attrition and Mind Slash so that you have the option to control your opponents with your sac fodder instead of just exchanging them for random cards via Bontu’s ETB. These sac outlets can also help you more easily reuse Bontu’s ETB trigger, especially if you sacrifice her in response to the trigger so you’ll immediately redraw her.

The most unique thing about this commander is the ability to sacrifice noncreature permanents. This opens up cards like Ugin’s Nexus and Spine of Ish Sah, which get you value when they die.

One interesting idea I’ve heard was to run Endless Whispers with her so that you get all your opponents’ creatures that die to her ETB trigger. Blink effects seem good here and I’d think about running stuff like Undying Evil, Kaya’s Ghostform, Abnormal Endurance, and Supernatural Stamina to both protect her from removal and reuse her trigger.

It may also be a good idea to run random sac fodder to ensure the ball gets rolling; it’d be a shame if the massacre never got started because the board was full of 2+ toughness creatures.

Sample Decklist

Similar to a regular Krenko, Mob Boss deck, but with power-pumping effects in place of the activated ability synergies and some of the token generation.

With Krenko, it was important to be able to get a ton of dudes onto the battlefield early to maximize his gobbo-doubling power. Krenko 2.0 doesn’t need random gobbo bodies unless they do something useful.

Sample Decklist

Neheb is kind of a sidegrade from his previous incarnation. The card filtering makes it so that you’re not quite as likely to run out of gas, but the fact that his mana generation is limited by the number of cards you discard to his trigger prevents some of the truly absurd plays that Neheb 2.0 was known for-- you’re not going to be hardcasting Eldrazi and Blighsteels nearly as often in this deck.

Extra combat step effects are very good here, as they can potentially net you mana and they give you another chance to rummage for good cards. I like that this deck can run situational cards like Ruination and Blood Moon because there’s no such thing as a dead draw in this list-- Neheb hungers for bad cards to discard.

Mass land destruction is great in this deck because, like the first Neheb, the Champion can provide the mana you need to cast your stuff.

The single best card in this deck is Aggravated Assault, which goes infinite with your commander, provided you have five or more cards in hand that you can discard-- just make sure you’ve got one of the original three legendary Eldrazi so you can shuffle your graveyard back in and prevent yourself from milling out.

I wish there were more good madness cards in Red, or in Commander in general. Neheb 3.0 is the perfect commander for madness since he provides both an outlet and mana to cast stuff, but the only madness cards worth running are like Fiery Temper and maaaaybe Avacyn’s Judgment.

Sample Decklist

This seems like an awesome reward for running fat donks like Blightsteel and Malignus.

Although he doesn’t play nicely with attack triggers, you’re on color for some sweet combat damage triggers like Balefire Dragon, Hellkite Tyrant, Dream Pillager, Rapacious One, Neheb 2.0, Steel Hellkite, and Mordant Dragon. Neheb, the Eternal, while not a combat damage trigger, also works pretty well with Ilharg.

Ilharg has some synergy with echo, since you’ll never have to pay the upkeep cost, so cards like Volcano Hellion and Crater Hellion are much better in this list than they normally are.

Having six toughness and an ability that lets you cheat mana costs means that Wildfire and Destructive Force are very good here, as is mass land destruction in general. Keldon Firebombers seems like a great way to repeatedly limit your opponents’ mana.

In addition to the usual suite of mana accelerants and haste granters, Generator Servant is quite good here, and I’d consider running Seething Song, as well.

Sample Decklist

The creatures that benefit most from Rhonas’s ETB trigger are win conditions in their own right; you don’t need to rely on your commander to make canned armies like Rampaging Baloths, Titania, and Avenger of Zendikar into threats.

Maybe this wants to be an infect deck, since doubling the power of cards like Phyrexian Juggernaut and Phyrexian Hydra makes them one-hit KOs.

Muscle Mutt is just a voltron deck, albeit one that uses an unusual subset of cards. I wouldn’t run most cards that solely put counters on Mowu, but I like cards that put counters on him while generating cards, like Ordeal of Nylea, Ancient Animus, or Implement of Ferocity. I also like some of the repeatable counter-generating effects; Retreat to Kazandu, Armory of Iroas, and Invigorating Boon (cards with cycling) seem good. There are also some lands that can get counters on your commander, such as Oran-Rief, the Vastwood; Forge of Heroes; and Opal Palace. Also, don’t forget your Hardened Scales!

There’s been a little bit of controversy about Yanggu and Mowu lately because Yanggu is able to bring Mowu with his when he planeswalks (which is supposed to be impossible, as Huatli’s tamales illustrate; normally, creatures are summoned to a plane). It would be weird if Yanggu could only do this with Mowu, but my headcanon is that Mowu is able to do it with anyone but has so far only attempted it with his dog (or that if he had previously done it, he forgot about it when he came down with amnesia).

I don’t think it’s worth running random wolves as sorcery-speed kill spells, but I might run wolves that get me value in addition to fighting (e.g., Rot Wolf, Skalla Wolf, Pack Guardian). Wolfir Silverheart is too monstrously large to leave out of this deck.

I’d also run repeatable wolf token generators like Sword of Body and Mind, Wolfcaller’s Howl, Master of the Wild Hunt, Kessig Cagebreakers, and Feed the Pack. You can also run some of the wolf token generators that create a bunch at once (such as Howl of the Night Pack, Predator’s Howl, and Wolfbriar Elemental) to build your own Ezuri’s Predation.

I gotta say that it’s very cute that they gave Voja a title so that he wouldn’t legend rule the tokens made by the old Tolsimir.

We all know that BG has a lot of good creatures that are worth recurring (putting your opponents under the Abyss with Fleshbag variants sounds like a barrel of laughs), but it also has a ton of good planeswalkers, especially when you don’t have to care too much about protecting them. Firing off a Sorin Markov or a Vraska 1.0, letting your opponents dogpile on it, and then getting it back again next turn seems like a great way to control the board and divert aggro away from your face.

I would try to fit in some ways to give your commander haste (Greaves, Hall of the Bandit Lord) and protect him (Yavimaya Hollow) since he’s the engine your deck revolves around.

This guy checks some boxes to make use of mana dorks that are too narrow for most decks: he costs four, he’s got 4+ power for Whisperer of the Wilds, and he’s an Elf for Priest of Titania.

This card does not appear to be designed with Commander in mind. Death triggers don’t work very well in this format, especially when you don’t have access to black and white reanimation engines. If you discount the proliferate (as you should), all that’s left is a pile of stats, which has never been particularly strong in Commander.

If this guy was just ETB double proliferate, he would have been waaay more interesting.

I’ve heard about lists that use clones to farm his death and ETB triggers, but I tried it and it was not… great… Proliferating before you add the new counters is pretty lame, and one-shot proliferation without cards attached to it is not worth a card slot, IMO.

The best Boros commander ever, and it’s not close. This deck draws tons of cards thanks to white and red’s many cheap cantrips, it can protect its commander pretty easily thanks to the million 1CMC instants that give things protection or indestructible, and it has some great combo pieces like Aurelia’s Fury and Blinding Beam to allow you to soft lock your opponents.

Plus, if you’d prefer to eschew the controlling playstyle for something more aggressive, you can run a bunch of Fists of the Anvil and Double Cleave variants to beat the hell out of your opponents.

Sample Decklist

This card just encourages you to run the most powerful multicolored cards, which tend to be hyper-efficient removal spells like Assassin’s Trophy and Anguished Unmaking. The only non-goodstuff cards in the list are a handful of blink spells so you can dodge removal and refill your hand. As far as win conditions go, turning Niv sideways seems to be the best one; Civic Saber, Conqueror’s Flail, and Duelist’s Heritage will cut your clock in half.

Sample Decklist

Card Ratings

In this set review, I’ll be using two five-point rating scales to evaluate the nonlegendary cards, one that measures how many decks a card is playable in (we’ll call that “spread”), and one that measures how powerful it is in those decks (”power”). Here’s a brief rundown of what each rank on the two scales means:

Spread

1: This card is effective in one or two decks, but no more (ex: The Gitrog Monster). 2: This card is effective in one deck archetype (ex: self-mill decks). 3: A lot of decks will be able to use this card effectively (ex: decks with graveyard interactions). 4: This card is effective in most decks in this color. 5: Every deck in this color is able to use this card effectively.

Power

1: This card is always going to be on the chopping block. 2: This card is unlikely to consistently perform well. 3: This card provides good utility but is not a powerhouse. 4: This card is good enough to push you ahead of your opponents. 5: This card has a huge impact on the game.

The Planeswalkers of War of the Spark

Spread: 1

Power: 2

I could imagine running this in Odric, Lunarch Marshal, since it’s a cheap way to give all your guys indestructible and lifelink or vigilance. Otherwise, it’s not worth your time.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Might see a little play in Arcades as a way to produce a pair of beaters and draw a couple cards. It’s nice that you can curve Teyo into Arcades to frontload the mana cost but wait to produce your tokens and get your cards until after your commander comes down. The rate is not insane, though, and I could see this getting cut for a better stats-to-cost ratio in the future.

Spread: 1

Power: 4

This is solely for self-mill decks. It’s less vulnerable to removal than Laboratory Maniac but you can’t get it back with Dread Return or something similar if you mill yourself out. Either way, both Jace and Lab Man are worse than Nexus of Fate.

Spread: 1

Power: 4

I could see running this in a deck with a lot of wheel effects (Nekusar and The Locust God being the obvious ones) to act as a Leovold, making your opponents discard their hands and only drawing one card to replace it.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Liliana is a bit expensive, but she might have potential in the few decks that can make use of more than one of her abilities. For example, sacrifice-oriented decks are interested in black token generation and getting value when your creatures die, so both her static effect and +1 will be useful there. Also, it’s worth noting that although planeswalkers are generally pretty fragile in Commander, Liliana makes a chump blocker and she’s going to have 7 loyalty when you pass the turn, which can be difficult for your opponents to beat though, especially if you’ve got Savra, Queen of the Golgari or Teysa, Orzhov Scion to control their boards.

Spread: 4

Power: 1

This card is really similar to Chandra, Pyromaster, and that card sees almost no play.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

For the purposes of the Ur-Dragon, it’s two dragons for the price of one and it can potentially deter attacks. I don’t think there’s anyone else that’s really interested in this, though.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

He’s a second copy of Rishkar for green +1/+1 counter decks.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Omnath, Locus of Mana seems like a natural home for this card. It’s kind of cool that it’s effectively three mana since you can untap a Forest with the +1, but this card is still worse than Vernal Bloom in most ways. Vernal Bloom gets you to the game-winning threshold for mana a lot quicker; you don’t need more than 8 or 9 mana to win a game of Commander so what really matters is hitting that game-winning threshold as early as possible. Casting a turn four Bloom into a turn 5 Tooth and Nail is much stronger than casting a turn 5 Nissa into a turn 6 T&N, especially when you consider the fact that your Vernal Bloom can’t be attacked or Bolted in the intervening turn.

That being said, this is still a powerful card for monogreen ramp.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

I like the surprise factor of the -2; it’s cool that they’re finding ways to improve on abilities we’ve seen a thousand times already. Anyway, this card is not good. If you want two random cards out of your deck, you can get it at a better rate than this.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Overall, this card feels very intro pack-y. The plus ability doesn’t affect the board, the -3 is a pretty bad rate, and the ultimate is not very impactful. This doesn’t seem like a great reason to buy a box (unless the price ends up being super high).

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Every element of this card can be done much better somewhere else in these colors. There is something to be said for the power of choices, but I really don’t think this card is good enough to see play.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

This card looks a lot like Ajani Goldmane, although it’s much better in superfriends decks than Goldmane ever was. It’s also worth noting that Ajani will probably draw less aggro than whatever busted planeswalker you’re bumping up, so he’s less fragile than he looks. However, I still think this effect is not worth a card. There are some solid repeatable proliferators in WAR, and I’d much rather use them than rely on a card type that can get attacked to death.

Spread: 3

Power: 1

I really like CMC-based reanimation and I’d really like to see it on a WB commander one day. Anyway, since you’re on color for both white and black reanimation you can do way better than this. If your deck is trying to recur a lot of weenies you can run Return to the Ranks or Dusk/Dawn, and if you want to get back one big thing, you can run Animate Dead or Reanimate or Necromancy or whatever.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

With a little tweaking, this could be an interesting commander, as it rewards you for playing with a subset of cards that normally doesn’t get played in Commander. In the main deck, however, this card seems pretty underwhelming. Even in lists that naturally have a ton of deathtouchers such as Hapatra, this is a pretty slow, small, and fragile anthem. If she had some way to gain loyalty, the -2 could help the card find its way into decks looking for sac fodder, but two tokens over two turns for four mana is not going to turn a lot of heads.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

There’s currently no UG commander that really rewards lots of large dudes, but I’m hopeful we might see something in the future (maybe a Simic or Temur Divine Visitation effect on a commander?).

Between Kiora, Temur Ascendancy, Garruk's Packleader, Kavu Lair, and Elemental Bond, we are getting very close to a critical mass of this type of card.

Spread: 1

Power: 4

Maybe if you’re running a deck with a ton of Twincast variants, this could serve as a potential win condition/storm enabler. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the combo, you cast a Fork variant copying any spell, then cast another Fork variant copying the original Fork variant. The second Fork resolves, putting a new copy of Fork #1 on the stack, which can then target the original Fork #1. Keep going through this loop and netting Ral triggers until your opponents are dead.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

Young Pyromancer sees play in 6400 decks on EDHREC, many of them in Izzet color identities. I think Saheeli slots into those same lists pretty easily, especially given the potential power offered by her -2 when copying mana rocks or utility creatures.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

What a brutal mana cost. I’d run this in superfriends since it’s almost a planeswalker clone and killing creatures/drawing cards is not terrible in that deck. I think that mana cost and the general meh-ness of PWs in Commander keep him out of most other decks.

Spread: 5

Power: 0 (no sideboards) / 4 (sideboards)

The playability of this guy hinges on whether your playgroup allows you to get cards from outside of the game. The Rules Committee’s stance is that sideboards are not officially supported and have to be house ruled into the format. If your playgroup follows that bit of dogma and Karn can only search your exile zone, then he’s not really worth playing; Null Rod only sees play in the most cutthroat cEDH lists, and while Karn only affects your opponents, I think that’s more than offset by the fact that he costs 4 and can get attacked to death.

Now, if your playgroup DOES let you have a sideboard or just dig through your binder or whatever, Mycosynth Lattice is one of the best things it can do, as it shuts off your opponents’ lands and all of their activated abilities in combination with Karn. Paradox Engine and Bolas’s Citadel are strong cards that don’t require much set up, but if you’re trying to combo off with those cards, you’d probably rather have them in your maindeck, rather than only accessible via a planeswalker. There are some neat artifact combos that you can search for both halves of if you can ensure that Karn lives long enough to activate twice: Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth gets you infinite mana (although again, these cards may be better in your maindeck), and if Painter’s Servant ever gets unbanned, you can use Karn to grab it and Grindstone to mill your opponents out one by one.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

Now, this guy is a Commander-playable planeswalker. I’d run this in any deck currently running Scour from Existence (barring Mizzix), which mostly means colorless, monoblack, and monored decks. The +1 is also solid, offering sacrifice fodder that is likely to be pretty useful in many of the monoblack decks that run it, and colorless cost reduction makes it even more powerful in the colorless decks that run it. I’m a big fan of this card, and I like that it disproportionately helps color identities that were on the weaker side.

It’s great that he’s rare, since I plan on picking up a bunch of these.

Maindeck Cards from War of the Spark

Spread: 3

Power: 3

At low numbers, the ratio of bodies to cost is not great. There are so many good white token generators that I doubt this makes the cut, even though the tokens are better than the ones produced by most of its competitors. Also, you should treat the “10 or more” text on this card like a planeswalker’s ultimate and ignore it.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Seems very good in a Mikaeus, the Lunarch deck and in planeswalker decks that don’t invest heavily in mass removal. It stinks that White got the worst experience counter commanders and never got a poison commander because this card has so much potential, but the support isn’t there.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

This is a lot of mana for a narrow tutor. When you consider the fact that most Superfriends lists are already running Black and have access to cheap unconditional tutors, the Beacon becomes much less appealing.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

It does make a lot of Angels for your Lyra Dawnbringer deck. It’s not worth 8 mana, though.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Hating on multicolor permanents is not that great. Although most commanders are multicolor, most main deck permanents are one or fewer colors. To put this card in perspective, Radiant Purge sees almost no play in Commander.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

I think Diving Reckoning is a fair point of comparison for this card. Divine Reckoning sees a fair amount of play; it’s in almost 6000 decks on EDHREC, most of them Voltron. While Single Combat has a few knobs that distinguish it from Reckoning, it’s probably a safe bet that it’ll see similar amounts of play in similar lists.

That being said, I’m not a huge fan of this card. It guarantees that the biggest threats survive and most of the time I’d rather take out the scariest things on my opponents’ side of the field than protect my own things.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Varina is very interested in making multiple Zombie bodies for less than three mana. I’m gonna save a little space in a very long set review and suggest you apply the previous sentence and ratings to every Amass creature and most Amass spells that cost less than four mana.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

I like this card a lot. I think it’s much stronger than Steady Progress, and about on the power level of Tezzeret’s Gambit, which sees play in 8500 decks on EDHREC.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

Kruphix is very interested in outlets for the absurd amounts of mana he produces, and unlike almost any other commander, he can realistically hit the “10 or more” mode.

Mizzix likes X spells that generate value, so she might also be in the market for this card.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

This card could see play in planeswalker decks as another Inexorable Tide. This could also potentially see play in Mizzix decks as an additional way to bump up your experience count or in Noyan Dar as a way to grow your manlands.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

The additional mana relative to Thrummingbird hurts, and this also misses on some of the bird tribal lists (Kangee) that were interested in that card. Still, I could imagine running this in Atraxa, Ezuri 2.0, and Vorel.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

It’s a cheap Sphinx for Unesh, and it can bounce another Sphinx to your hand so you can get another trigger.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

Unfortunate that it can only target your own creatures and planeswalkers, but it seems strong in superfriends decks and simic +1/+1 counter lists. It’s also quite good in Estrid, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, and Saheeli, the Gifted, since all of those commanders have mana-generating abilities that make the Double free or cheap to cast.

There are also a ton of commanders that this can break wide open. Double Reaper King, double Atraxa, double Zndrsplt… if you’re in Blue and you’re running Helm of the Host, this card seems like a big upgrade.

Spread: 3

Power: 5

This is the new Paradox Engine. If your deck has a lot of card selection and tutors then this ought to be able to win the game all by itself. Some of the better interactions:

Circu, Dimir Lobotomist: This guy was kind of a joke before Citadel got spoiled. His mill effect is really weak and he’s in the bottom half of all Dimir commanders when it comes to popularity. However, he works pretty well with the Citadel because he can mill off excess lands from the top of your library so that you’re less likely to fizzle when comboing off.

Sensei’s Divining Top: Turns the Citadel into a Yawgmoth’s Bargain (thanks to @snarwin for pointing this out).

Mana Severance: Gets rid of all the lands so you won’t fizzle.

Aetherflux Reservoir: Subsidizes the Citadel’s life payments and eventually serves as your win condition.

Spread: 3

Power: 4

It’s interesting that this and Bolas’s Citadel showed up in the same set, since they’re both six mana black rares that offer insane card advantage and mana savings at the cost of a ton of life.

Anyway, I’ve heard people talking about using this in Oloro and other decks that gain life very easily. It could also be good in decks with very low curves so that you’re getting more cards for the life you’re paying.

Interestingly, it deals damage to you rather than makes you lose life, which means that you can prevent the damage, give yourself protection, or give the spell lifelink in order to cheat the life cost.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

The ability to get back noncreature cards is pretty rare in black, and if your deck has a lot of redundancy built into it you can sometimes remove your opponents’ ability to screw you. Plus, there’s a lot to be said for making deals with the opponent in the weakest position to get back the cards that will knock someone else down a peg.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

It provides a steady stream of Skullclamp-compliant sac fodder for decks that need it, as well as a self-recurring threat for Varina Zombie tribal lists.

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This card seems like great value for mopping up small utility creatures. 4 mana to kill some combination of Oracle of Mul Daya, Fauna Shaman, Tymna, Edric, Mentor of the Meek, etc. seems pretty strong. I think the easiest point of comparison is probably Black Sun’s Zenith. Black Sun’s sees play in over 15,000 decks, and it’ll cost you the same amount of mana to kill the same creatures. This one is asymmetrical but won’t get the random collateral damage against your opponents’ other creatures. I think they’re about on the same power level, although it’s worth noting that you could conceivably hit the 12 mana in a monoblack deck with Coffers and a bunch of ways to find it.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

This guy requires you to jump through a ton of hoops. In order for him to do his thing, you have to have:

A way to give him haste and/or a way to protect him until your next turn.

A high density of instants and sorceries

Either an extremely low curve on those instants and sorceries or a way to buff the Arcanist’s power.

I can think of commanders that fulfill some of those requirements, but not all of them.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

X spells are great in Mizzix and she has a ton of great targets to choose from. Seems like an easy inclusion in that list. It could also be good in Zada as a way to re-use your token-generating spells and cantrips.

Neheb, the Eternal is one of the few commanders who can reliably get X to 10 or higher, since that deck is desperate for good mana sinks and it runs a fair number of strong instants and sorceries.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

This card is awesome. Great in Hapatra decks as a way to get a bunch of Hapatra triggers at once and accelerate the death of your opponents’ dudes. Also seems solid in Thelon of Havenwood for spreading spores, nabbing experience with Meren and Ezuri 2.0, pumping the team in Mazirek, and of course, building loyalty among your planeswalkers.

Spread: 4

Power: 4

I don’t think we needed more cards like this, but whatever. The rich get richer. Other cards in Green that accomplish the same thing:

Tooth and Nail

Green Sun’s Zenith

Survival of the Fittest

Finale of Devastation

Chord of Calling

Worldly Tutor

Natural Order

Fauna Shaman

Note that all of the above are Commander staples.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Useful in Sasaya as a way to get more Forests in hand. Also a solid upgrade over Sylvan Scrying in a Nissa, Vastwood Seer deck.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Unfortunately, none of the Green planeswalkers that you can run as your commander have insane ultimates, so I don’t think it’s worth running in those decks as a means to pop em off really quickly.

It is, however, a slightly more expensive Deepglow Skate for Atraxa, Ezuri 2.0, Vorel, Pir & Toothy, and all those other blue/green counter-based decks.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Over 7500 decks on EDHREC run Naturalize, and this is strictly better, even if it’s not a huge upgrade.

Spread: 2

Power: 1

This card suffers from the Immortal Sun effect, where it does several things, but none of them particularly well. +2/+2 isn’t a huge boost for a one-shot effect, and the lack of trample is frustrating. Also, I don’t like that this card is really bad at punishing pillowfort, since their artifacts and enchantments are what’s preventing you from getting it.

If you’re in need of artifact destruction, you’re probably better off running a tutor to find your Bane of Progress. If you’re in need of an Overrun effect, you’re better off running a tutor to find your Craterhoof Behemoth. Might I suggest Finale of Devastation?

Spread: 1

Power: 2

I really don’t like the idea of pumping mana into this in the hopes of getting something relevant. However, I do like running it in decks that can manipulate their top card (Hua Tuo, Honored Physician comes to mind) and in decks that just like its type line and don’t actually care what it does (such as Reki, the History of Kamigawa, who only cares about running the cheapest legendary cards possible).

Spread: 4

Power: 3

I really like Negate and Countersquall, so I’m happy to run this effect as a 5th or 6th counterspell in all my decks with a blue/white color identity.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

I love asymmetrical board wipes. Note that it doesn’t target the creature it bounces so you can still cast it when you have no targets and it can’t be fizzled by removal. This seems like a pretty easy inclusion in most blue/white lists in the market for sweepers.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

This could be really sweet in any GR deck that runs a lot of mass land destruction-- maybe something like Grand Warlord Radha that isn’t totally reliant on its lands to cast its spells and can generate enough mana early in the game to bounce its lands and still cast a Thoughts of Ruin.

It also might be good in Borborygmos Enraged, as it’s a way to get lands back to your hand that is much less painful than Storm Cauldron.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

While the average CMC of Commander decks has crept down over the years, this is probably still very good. It kills all but 4 of the top 21 commanders of all time and while it’s pretty bad at taking care of mana accelerators and cheap draw engines, it’s great at killing the most terrifying threats in the format (such as Paradox Engine, Gods, Praetors, Titans, etc.). Don’t run it over Anguished Unmaking but consider it in a high-CMC metagame.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

I have not played a lot of Decimates, so I can’t fully judge how strong this card is. I thiiink it’s worse than Windgrace’s Judgment because of the rough mana cost, 6>5, sorcery speed.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

Eldritch Evolution sees a surprising amount of play (almost 9000 decks on EDHREC), but Neoform is worse in three ways, so it’s hard to be bullish about this card. I think I like it in Tishana, since she naturally wants a bunch of creatures on the field and morphs into Craterhoof, but I’m not sure there are many other commanders that would be stoked to run this. Maybe in Ezuri 2.0 as a way to trade mana dorks for Sage of Hours?

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This is the cheapest we’ve ever seen this effect and it can be really devastating to an opponent to have their commander permanently stolen. That being said, there are other cards with similar effects that cost only a little more, such as Legerdemain and Switcheroo, see hardly any play in Commander.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Very unfortunate that the red mana in its cost disqualifies it from being used in the two decks that want it most: Doran and Arcades. There are a bunch of Kynaios and Tiro decks running Wave of Reckoning, so there’s potential for it to be run there (although it’s worth mentioning that Wave of Reckoning was included in their precon, so it may not actually be that great in the deck; maybe people were just too lazy to take it out).

Spread: 4

Power: 3

This seems very good in Lord Windgrace since that deck has a ton of mana to pump into it, a slow clock, and many ways to recur it.

Other slow control decks with lots of mana available will probably be happy to run this card, since it’s a difficult-to-answer counter that doesn’t require a deck slot.

Spread: 5

Power: 1

Even with the restriction to creatures, Winding Canyons is much better than this and doesn’t see a whole lot of play, so I’m skeptical that this will accomplish much. Losing a land is a huge downside.

Spread: 3

Power: 2

This is great! Coming into this set I was hoping to see a lot of proliferate attached to staple effects, and there’s nothing more universally useful than lands. It’ll be tricky to run this in Atraxa and five-color superfriends lists because of the heavy color requirements in those decks, but I’m sure planeswalker decks with fewer colors (the nicer Narset builds, for example) and infect aggro, +1/+1 counter decks, -1/-1 counter decks, and experience counter commanders are all going to find room to run this card.

Wrapping Up

Were there any cards I missed? Do you disagree with any of my ratings? Let me know!

#set review #commander #edh #mtg #magic the gathering

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beardycarrot · 5 years

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An Attempt Was Made. I wasn’t planning on doing another one of these so soon, but JS went and plopped this thing right in my lap, so I pretty much had to. This isn’t actually terrible, in the grand scheme of things... which isn’t as much a commendation of this artwork as it is a sad realization about all the others. It’s still significantly more on-model than your average JS 8-Bit design, though... and for good reason. They just scaled down and traced over the normal Kyrii.

This is a technique that they’re had limited (VERY limited) success with, which is unfortunate, because with a little cleaning up this could be pretty good. Unfortunately, they tend to leave in some really bizarre artifacts of the resizing process without trying to redraw them... check out those amorphous blobs it has for feet. There are also some really weird mistakes left in, I can only assume because the artist didn’t care; breaks in the outline, that square of hair colors randomly placed in the ear, the concept of wearing a fuchsia shirt with brown pants. Mistakes were made, is all I’m sayin’.

For my design, I was on the verge of saying, “y’know what, I’m going to modify the colors I’m using so that I can have four teals to shade with”, as seen on the left... but realized halfway through, why break my own rule about limiting myself to the NES color palette for this? It shouldn’t even be based on a Blue Kyrii to begin with, over half of the 8-Bit pets I’ve redrawn have been blue. I don’t know if the artist just likes blue or if they’re so lazy as to just select the first color in the list, but... yeah, I’m gonna make it red.

As always, I had trouble deciding on the outfit. I definitely wasn’t going to try to mimic the original, and briefly considered a dress... but ultimately decided that I wasn’t actively trying to change the concept of the thing, just improving upon it.

While the original is recognizable as a Kyrii, hopefully you can appreciate the difference seeing them side-by-side. When drawing a low-res version of a character, you have to decide what gets exaggerated and what gets compressed. You want it to be as expressive as possible, so the head and eyes should almost always be exaggerated, which is why you see so many old video game characters with heads the size of their bodies. With characters as large as these however, there’s no need to compress the small details; Kyriis have three-fingered hands and two-toed feet, which can be represented without issue. Why give them formless hands and club feet?

I know that I’m more experienced with pixel art than the average person, but really, this isn’t any artistic feat. It takes VERY little time or effort to make minor improvements like this, so JumpStart, please just put in that little bit more.

#neopets #8-bit #kyrii #pixel art #spriting

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injuries-in-dust · 6 years

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Steven Universe Shield

A prop I made for Halloween. Finished today. Two days of work. Since I was winging this for the second half of the build I’ll be admitting my errors, so you know what not to do.

Do note that I was going for passable, rather than a perfect replica of the shield. Mostly due to my limited skill and equally limited funds.

Sorry, I didn’t document every step, I only figured I should when I was in the later stages.

Start with these instructions for making a Captain America Shield, following only up to step 12.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Flying-Captain-America-Shield/

Except you don’t have to use coloured duct-tape due to the painting that will come later, all regular silver will do.

Next, add masking tape to the top, at least three layers, Layer one should criss-coss, to make a union jack, or asterisk, shape. An X on top of a +.

The second Layer should be vertical strips.

The third layer should be horizontal strips.

Do make sure all the strips are long enough so that they can be wrapped around the edge and stick onto the back side of the shield, it helps them be more secure. All of this is because duct-tape is supposed to be water repellant and spray paint may not adhere to the surface.

After this should come the painting. Spray Paint, I found a Fluorescent Pink on Amazon. It may seem too bright to some, but it seems to be the colour most other people choose on their replica shields.

A nice, thick, coating. While this dries, you can begin working on the stencil for the shield. When it’s dry, add a second coat to better cover the masking tape.

Not an easy task. I couldn’t find stencils online, so had to hand draw this using an image of Steven’s shield for reference.

Basic cardstock, A4 size, four pieces attached with masking tape on the front and back.

The size of the shield should come to 56 inches, give or take. Always make sure you have the size of your shield noted down. Pencil, tied to a string, attached to a pin in the middle will give you a nice circle.

Reduce the size of the string by about an inch (I went a little larger, so I know this to be wrong) and draw a second circle inside the first.

Next, I made the centre circle, which was just drawing around an everyday mug. Once that circle was in place, it helped me make the rose design. Draw three straight lines at 11 o’clock, 7 o’clock, and 3 o’clock spots and you can carefully draw lines to attach the three of them.

Keep an eraser on hand and it should go without saying that you should draw in pencil. Gentle curves, take your time and redraw until it looks close to the reference picture.

The spiral can be done easier if you can access a bendy ruler. Also known as a Flexible Curve Ruler. It’s a 12-inch strip of round or rectangular rubber or PVC, usually with a metal wire core, so it can be bent and stay in that shape. Found in most office supply stores. Or, if you don’t have one you can do what I did and make it with a combination of a string as a guideline, and a lot of slow, careful, freehand.

This will be one of the most time-consuming steps.

Using a craft knife and a cutting board, cut out the shield along the inner edge. Cut out the ring along the outer edge and save this for later.

The following is something you shouldn’t do. Taping the central stencil to the shield will not work as the flat surface does not match with the domed shield at all.

Attempting to spray around the stencil in order to create the outer edge of the shield will only result in a messy, uneven border.

For the outer edge of the shield, I chose a spraypaint with the title of Lake for its colour shade. It looked more blue in its amazon picture but, as you can see here, it came out more green. It’s the downside of shopping online for supplies.

A much better thing to do it to create a ring of masking tape. It’s best done by placing the outer ring from the stencil above onto the shield and running along its inner border. Very time consuming but necessary for a cleaner border.

Carefully spraying the edges of the shield will result in this. Some of the paint may mist onto the pink.

While you can do this next step, it is something of a waste of time, as I discovered. I’ll be telling you a better solution later, around the time I figured it out.

What I did was place the ring over the green, to act as something of a shield, and spray the pink again, to cover up the green which had misted onto the pink. It worked well enough, but some pink did land on the very edges of the shield, spoiling the flawless green. At the time I chose to come back to this later.

While All the paint is drying you can start cutting out the stencil. At first, I thought to take this in stages, cutting out a bit at a time, but I quickly found that cutting out the whole thing allows it to sit on the shield much better. Placing loops of masking tape on the undersides of the stencil will better fix it to the surface of the shield for a tighter fit and better protection against the paint escaping the edges.

Before placing the stencil on the shield make sure that the paint is dry. Next peel away the masking tape which had separated the pink from the green. No matter how carefully you do it, some paint will be peeled away. Don’t worry about this, it’s fixable. This is the same fix that will work when you tape down the stencil and will likely peel away some paint when the stencil is removed.

Sadly I did not photo the next step.

You take a plastic cup and a paintbrush. You spray the spray paint into the cup until a sizeable puddle gathers in the bottom of the cup. You can then use this as a normal paint and simply paint the gaps where the paint has peeled away.

It’s also how we will cover any paint which has misted over onto the other sections of the shield.

Do use a different cup and different paintbrush for each colour. Washing them out with hot water doesn’t clean them enough and you’ll end up contaminating one colour with another. Stronger cleaners like white spirit or turpentine will clean the brushes but it takes time and I was working to get it done as soon as possible.

A 1-inch or a 1/2-inch brush will suffice.

What we see here is the beginning of the spiral, when I was trying to take it in stages, one bit at a time, in the hopes of getting some accuracy. I figured quickly that actually cutting the whole thing and placing the whole spiral onto the shield leads to better accuracy.

Note the ring piece is still in place to keep the green clear of the spray paint from the spiral segment. You can’t paint it again after your done to cover any misting that happens to make it through.

The colour of the spray paint I bought was called Amanita. It’s close to flesh coloured and is probably not the right shade of pink. Again, it’s the downside of buying supplies online. It looked fine on its Amazon picture.

When you’ve cut out the stencil, save the circle from the centre and use a large loop of masking tape to affix it to the middle of the shield for the- I’ll call it the- gem-space.

Spray with the nozzle aimed straight down, it can stop the paint getting under some of the edges of the stencil and spreading further than you need to.

After the spiral portion has dried, peel away the stencil and you should, more or less, have something resembling the above.

Using the cup and paintbrush method can cover any spreading, patch any peeled paint and cover any droplets that have landed on a different colour.

In the final stages, you need a permanent marker, some white card and glue. The white card makes the glint of light on the gem and the black marker makes the colours really pop and stand out more.

You may spot a slight purple shade on the 7 o’clock position on the shield. This is where I learned, the hard way, to use sperate brushes and cups. The green and pink mixed into purple and it was impossible to cover up with further layers of pink, the darker colour always bled through. Lucky it was just a small spot.

To finish the whole thing, spray with a Spray Paint Gloss - Clear Acrylic. As you can see, it helps to add a shine to the finished product and adds a layer of protection to the whole thing against some general wear and tear. I can also guarantee that it adds waterproofing against a light drizzle, at least. I’m unwilling to test on a heavier rain.

Like I said, I wasn’t going for a perfect replica of Steven’s shield, what I was aiming for was something that was passable enough to be recognised as Steven’s shield. I think I achieved that quite well and so did others. I’ve received a few compliments on it and people seem impressed when I tell them that I made it instead of bought it.

#prop #craft #build #steven universe #shield #crafts #crafting #building #making #creation #cosplay

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inikavulpixelreviews · 6 years

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Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Forces of Nature

641: Tornadus

Here we are, at yet another set of Pokemon that have collected a lot of fandom ire. This time though, I... don't have many words to defend them on. I thought nothing of them when they were first leaked, and think even less of them the more I really got into them.

But Tornadus at least has a distinction in the fact that it's the only pure Flying type in the game, currently. Which is fitting for a thing in control of heavy wind storms. Sadly, though, this apparently makes it far more inferior compared to its two companions since it doesn’t have as much move diversity, and everything else about it is pretty unimpressive. And it's a problem all three of them have, in that they're all palette swaps of each other with slightly different hairdos. The only major distinction they have from one another are their tails. And while the tails are some neat imagery with how they're wrapped around their body, Tornadus's tail just looks haphazardly designed. “Oh, a wind elemental? Better lazily put swirls on top of swirls.”

And also they're muscly men. That's not a huge negative against them since here it feels a bit more fitting as deity figures than just. Things that are awkwardly human-looking are running around like wild animals. But still. There's plenty of design elements angles that feel like they got to waste here.

Personal Score: 4/10

Not a winner, nah.

Therian Form:

Come Black and White 2 though, and the genies received alternate “Therian” forms, which are all the genies but as more animal-like beings. Which almost feels like an apology for how the three were the same sprite but with some different spots on top in the first Black and White. These forms are basically why I'm gonna opt to skip out on redraws this time. I think my redesign attempt at Machamp kinda proved I shouldn't be touching these folks, but at the very least these Therian forms kinda redesign the three to be at least passable for me. Which seems like a fair way to approach that. I don’t care enough to “fix” the genies, but these Therian forms kinda bump these up to at least be passable anyway.

Anyway, rather predictably, Therian Tornadus becomes a giant bird. But I can't help but kinda like how stupid of a bird it looks. It looks relatively average silhouette-wise, but then you see the garish green and purple with that absurd looking tail, combined with that awkward man-face it keeps even as a bird. It really makes it look more like a mythical deity, and I kinda wish that was a design feature that carried over to the other Therian beasts.

Personal Score: 7/10

Look at this gaudy mess. I love it.

642: Thundurus

And like I said, these Pokemon are just palette swaps of each other. Blue Tornadus here is an Electric/Flying type, donning a more spiky and striking tail. I'm sure they're mean to call raijin to mind as well.

Personal Score: 4/10

Second verse, same as the first.

Therian Form:

...Look, I said these Therian forms bump them up to be at least passable, haha.

And then Blue Tornadus becomes...this? I'll admit, I've no solid clue what this is meant to be. But my best guess is a Dragon. But otherwise, this thing looks absolutely ridiculous. Just looks at it. That cartoony muzzle. The yaoihands with the skipping of leg day. Topped off with a righteous mustache and hairdo. What an idiot.

Personal Score: 6/10

All joking aside, it's a coolish creature. If... really silly looking the more longer you stare at it.

645: Landurus

Yes, I know this is technically going out of Pokedex order. But dammit. My OCD is more angry about them being separated than it is about skipping two Pokemon for now. I don't even know WHY they decided to do it that way. Especially with regional dexes being a thing, cause it's most likely because Landurus is only accessed via postgame while most of the other Legendaries are available before the end of the game. But still. Augh!

Anyway, Red Luigi here is interestingly, Ground/Flying type. Apparently meant to control earth and is a god of making soil very farmable. And yet it's the leader over a creator of tornadoes and lightning storms. Okay then.

Personal Score: 4/10

Aw jeez who woulda saw a 4/10 coming?

Therian Form:

And out of the Therian forms, Red Luigi's is easily the least interesting of the three. It's just some four-legged monster thing. A tiger I suppose. I know you already had Terrakion and Bouffalant but. Why not a bull or buffalo? I'd say those represent land better than a tiger does. Eh.

Maybe, just maybe, they had the inkling of an idea fo Tapu Bulu even all the way back then and wanted to save that idea for a better Pokemon

Personal Score: 5/10

The only slightest of upgrades.

Overall:

Yeah, a miss all around here, I'm afraid. The Therian forms are notably nicer, but none of them hit it off much better. Just more drops into a bucket that already had too many damn Legendaries in it.

[Archive]

#Pokemon #Pokemon Reviews #641 Tornadus #642 Thundurus #645 Landurus #Tornadus #Thundurus #Landurus

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jadeyarts · 7 years

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sooo... i watched that power of four special, even though i don’t think the ppg reboot is worth the time of day. but i was curious about bliss. the special itself was ... ambitious, i suppose you could say. very obviously just a promotional cashgrab, but had some good ideas that were bogged down by bad execution.

the same could be said for bliss as a character, too. after all, an older powerpuff girl, a black powerpuff girl ... possible inspiration for the powerpuff girls creation! those are interesting concepts to explore! maybe not a great idea for those concepts to all be packed into one character ... and her flaws were interesting, if awkwardly executed. i did find myself somewhat attached to her, despite it all.

but the episode and her character were bogged down by clumsy writing that didn’t care about any lore established in the original series, or the integrity of any character outside of bliss - whether the others were in character didn’t matter.

so i’ll take matters into my own hands. redesigning her so she doesn’t look so out of place in contrast to the other powerpuffs, and rewriting her story.

first of all - changing bliss’s colors. give her a natural haircolor so she doesn’t stand out so much in a bad way, and change the purple dress. since purple already belongs to bunny. either the teal from her hair in the original design, or the silver of the “perfect little girl” from whoopass stew, couldn’t decide which.

second - redraw her proportions. i figured, since bliss is a teenager, she’d look something like the teenage powerpuff girls from that one episode. but those teenage powerpuff girls didn’t look too great, did they? so the proportions for this re-imagining were a little more inspired by these older powerpuff designs. but maybe a little less curvy, and a lot more reasonable for a 16-ish yr old girl.

third - the original backstory definitely needs reworking to be believable and yet still maintain her intended character. so first of all - we know the powerpuff girls were technically planned. utonium was only planning for one perfect little girl instead of three, and the chemical x and their resulting power were an accident. but utonium definitely intended to create them, and knew exactly the formula to create at least one perfect little girl.

but the question becomes - how would he know the specific formula if there’ve been no prior attempts? in the powerpuff girls movie, the girls were his first attempt as i recall. and what would inspire him to create the perfect little girl? there was a time travel episode that explained that they were exactly what he hoped his kids would turn out to be like, but it never clarifies what inspired him.

this is where bliss comes in. perhaps cut out utoniums rivalry with newtronium and her perfect little boy, and instead go in a different direction altogether.

lets say utonium used to be the assistant or partner to another scientist years ago, perhaps back in college, let’s call him astrotine for convenience. for whatever reason the two were experimenting with sugar, spice, and everything nice. this results in the creation of bliss, whom the two dubbed the perfect little girl. and in terms of appearance, bliss took after astrotine. the two would care for bliss together for a while, and as far as bliss was concerned she had two dads.

(maybe bliss’s concoction had an intentional drop of chemical x? maybe utonium had chemical x so close to the concoction because he did plan on using it at some point before mojo’s interference causing a premature and excessive dosage? but there was no chemical w, or any other non-x chemicals. )

but then the time came for utonium and astrotine to go their separate ways, and astrotine took custody of bliss. though utonium enjoyed being a father figure to bliss, he assumed that he couldn’t take the title of bliss’s father. or “other father” as the case may be. it seemed that she was simply astrotines daughter, not his.

but this would inspire him to create his own daughter later on, and would serve to explain how he knew specifically what ingredients to use and how to measure them to create the - or a - perfect little girl. but as we all know, things didn’t go quite as planned, all for the better you could say. and instead of one perfect little girl, utonium got three. and these three would take after him.

meanwhile as bliss grows older, and the stress of being known as "the perfect little girl" combined with Puberty is getting to her. she’s becoming emotionally unstable and developing previously unseen telekinetic powers. astrotine isn't a bad person, but just doesn't understand what she's going through. so the two of them re-enter utoniums life, just seeking help and answers for what's going on.

and then HIM shows up, as himself instead of having been a tiny shapeshifting elephant living with bliss for most of her life, and manipulates her because none of them understand what she’s feeling. things continue mostly the same as they do in the show. but in the end, utonium and astrotine agree that theyre Both bliss’s dads and the power of love - the powerpuff girls’ love for their older half-sister and the love her fathers have for her - saves her and saves the day.

and instead of leaving to push saturn back in place - either both bliss and astrotine stay, with the powerpuff girls and bliss having two dads... or more accurate to the actual ending, the two just go home, to another town, finally understanding each other. and bliss, with a new sense of purpose and with control of her powers, is going to protect her town the same way her little half-sisters protect their town. or something along the lines of that i guess. idk.

fourth - i admittedly had no idea what the fuck to do for a design for astrotine for this rewritten backstory. wanted to be sorta parallel to utonium without being exactly the same (like how newtronium is literally utonium with tits.) while having features found in bliss as well. but other than that had no clue what direction to take that! thought an argyle sweater with ppg colors would be cute, though.

#jadeydoodles #powerpuff girls

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Translating the Overhaul Arc into Animation (Part Two)

Hello all, and welcome back to Why It Works! Last week I shamefully left everyone hanging, as I concluded my first half of the Overhaul arc discussion without actually addressing any of the questions I raised. And I raised a whole lot of questions! The difficulty of transforming two-page impact spreads into fluid movement, the increasing visual complexity of My Hero Academia’s Quirks, the overtly shifting geometry of the Hassaikai compound… the arc offers a variety of unique challenges, and addresses them with a variety of unique answers. So let’s start where the attack itself does, with the very walls melting around our heroes!

As I mentioned in the first half, one of the general rules of animation is that you can’t shift the camera’s perspective relative to the background, unless you’re planning to continuously redraw that background over and over for every single degree shift. For a power like Mimic, that implies continuance redefining of the fundamental geometry of the environment, simply maintaining visual coherence is a challenge; therefore, the entire Hassaikai compound approach path has been built as a CG rig, which can more effectively be squashed and stretched without demanding continuous redraws. Though a trick like this could easily devolve into visual noise, the combination of pipes extending from the walls and human figures placed at intervals throughout maintains a sense of depth and distance, making for a convincing balance of disorientation and dramatic clarity.

At other times, My Hero Academia captures the raw, rugged intensity of its source material simply through the personality of its animation, and choices in terms of what sequences to most fluidly animate. One of the great strengths of the original My Hero Academia manga is the ragged impact of Horikoshi’s linework. The translation to animation has a tendency to soften and homogenize the aesthetic of manga (a necessary concession to animation-friendly designs), but for season four’s big setpieces, the focus is often not on fluidity of ambitious body movement, but complexity of linework and attractiveness of aesthetic within single, impactful character motions.

While emphasizing complex linework is generally a bad idea for animation, for this season’s big setpieces, the complex linework is the drama—you want to see every crack in Red Riot’s shattering armor, and every detail of Sun Eater’s bizarre chimera form. By focusing on intense linework and major impact shots over physical choreography, the anime is able to capture the appeal of its source without compromising its own visual impact.

Along with its clever use of CG sets and smartly employed animation, these episodes also maintain visual clarity and dramatic urgency through simply adhering to the narrative fundamentals of effective action sequences. Fights like Lemillion’s exhausting battle demonstrate My Hero Academia’s precision in terms of executing potentially convoluted fights; there’s no CG helping to make the range and limitations of Overhaul’s powers clear, just one smartly planned transition after another.

In spite of Lemillion and Overhaul’s battlefield being in a constant state of destruction and reformation, the actual tactical stakes of the fight are always clear. Lemillion wishes only to rescue Eri, and his power directly counters Overhaul, but he cannot retrieve her without incapacitating Overhaul, and thus must disable his opponent while keeping Eri safe—a condition his enemies are happy to exploit. The clear tactical stakes of this fight make the momentum of the action far easier to follow, as even when it’s difficult to parse what exactly Lemillion or Overhaul are attempting in terms of employing their powers, their overarching intent is always obvious: Lemillion is seeking to knock out Overhaul without letting Eri get hurt, while Overhaul is seeking to use Eri’s fragility to guide Lemillion into a self-destructive position.

In addition to the clarity offered by the coherent, engaging stakes of this battle, Lemillion’s fight also benefits from excellent storyboarding that always keeps the flow of the action clear. Attacks don’t just come out of nowhere; each action is precipitated by a prior action, as the three active combatants continuously reassess the field, with their own perspective and new focus generally guiding each sequential shot transition. “Animating” action scenes is often just as much about where you make your shot transitions as the animation itself, and the Lemillion battle does a wonderful job of keeping the flow of tension clear, making it exciting and easy to follow in spite of the absurd visual scale of Overhaul’s power.

And sometimes? Sometimes you just bring in a ringer. All of the animation-unfriendly issues present in this arc mean consistently fluid animation is impossible; but television anime has never been defined by consistency. Fluidity ebbs and flows depending on the dramatic and visual needs of the narrative, and if a certain difficult-to-animate sequence absolutely needs to pop, well, that’s tricky, but certain animators can accomplish it. Midoriya’s fight against Overhaul consumes the last two episodes of the Hassaikai raid, and is absolutely brimming with cuts that demonstrate the beauty of animation as a showcase for specific animators.

Look at the almost gentle explosion of Deku’s clothes as his body is wrapped in energy, a cut likely animated by My Hero Academia's legendary character designer/animation director Yoshihiko Umakoshi. Look at how the beautifully twisting tendrils of Overhaul’s powers lend this cut a sense of massive physical space. Look at how Yutaka Nakamura, one of BONES’ most treasured animation assets, creates such an intense sense of speed through the distorted figures, impact frames, and staggered visual pacing of this mighty punch. There are things which are easier and things which are harder to convey in animation, but when one of the best animators in the business is given free reign and ample time to bring a sequence to life, anything is possible.

All in all, I’d say the My Hero Academia anime did a commendable job with an impossible task. I hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration of the pitfalls of animation, and please let me know all your own favorite Hassaikai moments in the comments!

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Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now, and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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birchwoodswolf · 7 years

Note

Who is blue samurai x? I'm dying Squirtle please help.

Well, Anon, there’s my theory, and then there’s the popular theory. And because you came to ask my opinion, guess which one you’re going to get? :D

So here’s a “disclaimer” of sorts for you, or perhaps more of a waiver: This is nothing more than the same desperate string of hope that’s led along a lot of my other theories about mysterious characters in years past. The difference with this one is that there’s actually a significant amount more substance than the usual theories, including a very powerful source (i.e., the Dark Island Trilogy novels, specifically the third one) that vouches for it.

With that said, let’s begin!

So let’s go back to before the beginning, to a basic analysis of what little we do know within canon about a certain Dr. Julien. Here’s a list of important points:

He’s a crazy-fantastic inventor, able to understand complex mechanics with little more than a glance at a set of blueprints.

He was the first person to invent a sentient android. (Cyrus may or may not have based his designs for Pixal off of Zane - it would certainly explain all of the references to “compatibility”, why Pixal was so easily able to duplicate Zane’s blueprints to create the Nindroids, and how Zane was able to rebuild himself in Borg Industries’ factory - but this is just speculation.)

He was (presumably) able to redraw Zane’s blueprints from memory and then modify them such that they would be suitable for use with far more limited materials (Word of God says Echo was made out of “copper and bits and pieces from the island”).

He was able to draft blueprints for and then reassemble the Destiny’s Bounty’s engines within about 18 hours. (Started around midday, they left the island at sunrise the next morning.) He also added the “blimp”, most likely for stability, and made several other changes to make sure the ship would be able to fly safely. The improved engines were powerful enough to resist the pulling force of the entire Leviathan.

He seems to have a certain talent for inventing and implementing weapons, considering the Juggernaut, the Bounty, the two vehicles he made from scratch on the Dark Island, all of the Skeleton Army’s various vehicles, Zane, and Echo (though Echo isn’t as good at it due his obvious limitations, i.e. the fact that he’s constantly falling apart).

He also seems to have a decent amount of skill operating vehicles, or is able to learn how to operate vehicles rather quickly. Consider his experiences with the Bounty in the second half of season two: he redesigns it but doesn’t pilot it when they leave, he spends the next two episode building unrelated inventions, and then in E25 he’s able to control it precisely enough to intercept the Overlord’s missile before it can hit Lloyd. All of that with no prior on-screen flying experience.

Samukai forced him to consume an unknown potion. Said potion brought him back to life, and considering how most magic in Ninjago is a double-edged sword, it’s possible that there might have been other effects.

Cyrus admires and respects him, as seen in his little spiel with Zane in E27.

He’s not 100% confirmed to be dead, and the circumstances of his sudden “disappearance” between S2 and S3 are unknown. This here is the clincher. The very fact that we don’t know what happened to him means that he’s an extremely viable option to come out of left field and fuck shit up.

And then, finally, there’s something that I only found out by chance on the Ninjago Wiki, seen here on this page.

Later that night, Wu, waking up, would be struck with a horrible nightmare. Recounting what he’d seen in his journal, Wu would recall his dream; Cryptic visions, such as that of Dr. Saunders, followed by the Hall of Villainy exhibit, its statues filled with more life than regular mannequins; Master Yang, dwelling in the shadows; the former masters of Fire and Water, Ray and Maya, in a pit of flame forging something terrible; the deceased inventor, Dr. Julien; and finally, the twins he thought lost to time, Acronix and Krux. Haunted by his visions, Wu decides that he must prepare for the inevitable future.

Before I even get to the rest of the evidence that supports this, I just want to consider this tidbit here. The Dark Island Trilogy is set between the end of the “real” part of Skybound and Day of the Departed. So let’s take apart these visions, shall we?

Dr. Saunders and the Hall of Villainy were core pieces in the plot of Day of the Departed.

Sensei Yang was also a core piece and main antagonist of Day of the Departed.

From the leaks of the last half of S7, Ray and Maya are still alive and are/were helping to forge the Iron Doom.

Acronix and Krux is obvious, as they’re involved all throughout S7.

And then you consider that Julien is on the same list, in the middle of the list of things that were relevant in S7, and that again according to the Ninjago Wiki, he was considered important enough to be pictured (scroll down to the Appearances section). And now, if you still don’t believe any of this shit I’ve laid out before you and you’re still not 100% convinced, then we can start getting into the nitty-gritty details that really start to suggest something when put together.

So let’s actually start off with the Samurai X Rising preview that LEGO posted on their YouTube channel a few weeks ago. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.) What we’re going to do for each piece of this is start assembling a list of the skills this character must have, and thus eliminate every character that does not have all of these skills.

And this opening short sets the bar pretty high. Samurai X (who I will henceforth refer to as “X”, both to avoid confusion and to save typing) is intimately familiar with technology to the point where they can reprogram it on the fly to redesign Nya’s vehicles and armor. They also seem to have some minor skill with bladed weapons, and are either very talented with operating Nya’s vehicles or instinctually know what to do to prevent all of the dangerous maneuvers they’re doing with the vehicle from killing them. With these three details, we can eliminate 99% of the cast.

Minor skill with weapons implies that they can’t be any minor characters such as Ed, Edna, Dareth, Brad, Gene, Sally, Lou, the Mailman, etc. etc. that have no knowledge whatsoever of these skills.

The ability to drive the vehicle alone narrows the rest of the field down significantly, leaving only:

The Ninja and their close allies (Wu, Misako, Ronin, etc.)

The Elemental Masters

Cyrus and Pixal

Finally, the familiarity with Nya’s technology narrows it down even further, to an incredibly narrow field of Julien, Cyrus, Pixal, Ronin, and Karlof (due to his engineering experience).

And then, just from this short, we can narrow it all down to only Julien and Pixal through the fact that Cyrus appears all throughout the season, X steals Ronin’s voice, and X doesn’t appear to have any elemental powers (since Karlof’s iron fists would be a dead giveaway).

I can hear you now saying: “But Julien and Pixal are both viable options, and most of the same arguments you applied to Julien apply to her just as well!”

But don’t worry about it. I have a way to rule her out, too. But first we’re going to start over, to derive this tiny pool of two viable options in a different way.

X first appears this season in E70, when they appear out of nowhere to rescue Lloyd, drop him off with the Ninja again, have a short confrontation with the Ninja in which X says absolutely nothing, and then blast off and leave without even attempting to make conversation.

Next: E71. Nya returns to her Samurai X cave and has a very odd encounter with X, in which X copies other characters’ voices. The characters they duplicate, in order of appearance, are:

Ronin

Dareth

Misako

Kai

Nya herself

Skyl*r

What connection do all of these characters have? Oh, nothing in particular… except for the fact that they’ve all spoken in Nya’s Samurai X cave. While I have no proof of this (and no desire to find old French or Finnish episodes to search for voice lines, considering I speak neither) it’s quite possible that the things Samurai X says are exact lines from what said characters spoke when they were in the cave.

When we consider this in the context of the strange encounter from E70, it suddenly makes sense: X is unable to speak for whatever reason, or chooses not to speak such that their identity will not be revealed to the Ninja. This is yet another important detail that will be very significant - and it can singlehandedly narrow us down to one character. (I’ll explain why later.)

Another important thing to note in this scene is that X apparently doesn’t know that Garmadon is dead, or generally says something about Garmadon that causes Nya to go into a fit about Garmadon and makes sad music play. This is yet another thing that’s very important to consider, and I will again explain why later.

Finally, Nya walks away at the end of that scene assuming that Samurai X is Skyl*r… and then Skyl*r is immediately counted out in the very next scene.

Honestly, I’m getting tired of presenting evidence because let’s face it, everybody who’s reading this is already convinced X is either Julien or Pixal and all I really have to do is explain why it can’t be Pixal. I’m not even going to bother with presenting the rest of the stuff, because I’m getting tired of it and none of it is relevant anyway.

So here’s my final argument on why it has to be Julien, and why it can’t be Pixal: color schemes.

See, throughout the series, even if you don’t look that hard, you’ll see that Pixal tends to be associated with three or four colors: white, purple, green, and red. Her body is white with purple accents, her eyes are very obviously green, and parts of her design (and her eyes when she was briefly “evil” in S3) are red. Notably, none of these colors are blue or gold, the main colors that X chooses to associate with.

On the other hand? Julien’s entire family is centered around four main colors: blue, yellow/gold, white, and black, most of which are prevalent in X’s design. For evidence regarding this color association, it’s as easy as taking a look at some of the episodes that are significant to their family in general:

In Tick Tock (E7), the memory sequence has a persistent yellow color which turns into a sickly green when Julien dies/Zane is deactivated.

The Last Voyage (E22) has lots of associations with blue, yellow, and black, most notably everything near the end of the episode (the lighting in the scene at the top of the lighthouse, and then everything after that, pretty much).

The Titanium Ninja (E34) features all four colors. Blue, white, and black are the most obvious, but there’s also yellow (the butterfly at the end).

Zane’s original design features all four colors: yellow skin, white clothing, blue eyes, black accessories/gloves/etc.

Zane’s new Titanium design features three of the colors: gray (black + white) and blue. Additionally, Echo has the last color of the quartet (as he’s mainly themed around yellow).

The Workshop features all four colors at one time or another (black and white from the trees outside; yellow and blue from different lighting on the inside).

The Lighthouse also features all four colors in different amounts and places (the tower is mostly dark gray/blue, but is accented by yellowish wood; the light the tower produces is pure white).

But the most cementing detail about all of this is X’s eye visor, which is a particularly telling color: the exact same shade of blue as Zane’s eyes.

*drops mic*

…

*picks mic back up again*

So now here’s the fun part: we’ve got all the fun, weird details about X in place, and now I have to explain where Julien gets all of these extra things from. Some of these are very easy: if X is Julien, the reason X doesn’t know that Garmadon is dead is because Julien was never around to find out about it and presumably has had no contact with anyone who would know.

The more concerning detail, however, is this: if X is Julien, why is Julien unable to speak?

Before I get into my explanation, there’s one more thing I’d like to point out: In E74, X does something very odd. In any context it would seem innocent, but this odd thing is given specific attention and adds a very tangible weight to my idea about what happened.

Go ahead, watch it. Starting at 20:30, watch straight through.

Did you reach 21:00? If you did, go back. Watch it again. Just watch it over and over, those same thirty seconds, until you can figure out what’s wrong with that picture.

Still stumped? Here’s the answer: X moves. They take a step forward, to get a better look at what they’re seeing, as if whatever they’re seeing is the most important thing they’ve ever witnessed. No one else moves; they all stand and stare. X steps forward to look, but at what?

Oh, nothing but Kai using the yellow Time Blade to reverse-age his father.

Here’s the theory: Remember everything I’ve said about Samukai’s potion? How it might have had unintended (or intended) side effects, how magic is a double-edged sword? How a second chance at life can’t just be given away for free, how a price must always be paid for immortality?

Let me just link back to that Ninjago Theories post from 2013 one last time. Just for kicks, y'know. Because option number two can explain everything.

Here’s a timeline of sorts on how everything probably went down, just for the heck of it, and also because I doubt it’s explained in S7 from what we’ve seen in the leaks. (Admittedly it is kinda hard to tell when you can only understand the visuals, but considering that X only appears for short bursts more than anything, it’s definitely a reasonable assumption.)

Starting off post-Tick Tock’s flashback, Samukai brings Julien back to life with the infamous potion and takes him to the lighthouse prison to start creating vehicles for the Skeleton Army.

Julien creates vehicles for a while until the Skeletons abandon him (because they lose the war and can no longer travel to the surface of their own accord). At this point, the potion has probably already started to take effect - but Julien doesn’t notice, because he’s too busy stressing out over his two main concerns at this point: “not starving” and “not going insane”.

Julien makes Echo, blah blah blah, bides his time, blah blah blah, The Last Voyage, blah blah blah, the Dark Island, blah blah blah, THEY WIN YAY!

At some point afterward Julien starts to figure out that something is terribly, terribly wrong, but he doesn’t want to worry Zane about it so he says nothing. Eventually he figures out what’s going on and decides to make himself disappear, because he doesn’t want to put Zane through this shit right after they were just reunited.

Julien likely flees to the Workshop and lays low there for a few years or until Zane goes to visit for Day of the Departed and Julien realizes he needs to leave, due to his “skin condition”, in that his skin is nonexistent. (Ha ha funny joke.)

He seeks out another isolated place where nobody can bother him, and possibly by accident, stumbles upon Nya’s samurai cave. There, he gets the idea to “borrow” Nya’s equipment and gear such that he can like, not live in hiding for the rest of his existence.

S7 happens: meeting with the Ninja and Nya, not wanting to use his own voice or possibly being unable to use it (again due to the aforemented “skin condition”), etc. etc. etc.

Finally we get to the end of the season, where he witnesses Ray getting de-aged by the yellow Time Blade. The step forward now makes sense: “Holy shit I don’t have to be an actual skeleton until the end of time now”.

So yeah, that’s about it for all of this. You now have the proper context to understand this video that I made the night I watched the leaks! Hooray!

#ninjago #ns7 #ninjago spoilers #ns7 spoilers #dr. julien #zane #cyrus #nya #pixal #echo zane #samukai #ronin #my posts #my headcanons #my theories #Anonymous

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joyceyangeth · 5 years

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Final Reflective Statement

Situated Creative Practice - Animation Slate

Assessment Two: Reflective Statement

Word Count: 1483

Over the course of this semester, the four films that were selected at the beginning of the production process have progressed exponentially through their pre-production stages and all ended with a solid pre-visualized version of themselves. Each film required a vast amount of time and effort from each student that participated in the unit and because of this, the final products truly show the hard work that was put in. Despite the amazing work that was completed, there were definitely some bumps and big learning curves along the way as this was most peoples, and particularly my, first long-term project that they would be completing from the pre-production stages and all the way to the final outcome. With the pre-production aspect of most films being completed, there is now some time to reflect the experience that was had throughout the first semester and discover what could be fixed or improved going into the next stage of production.

Going into the semester, I originally anticipated to be working on more than one film in pre-production with regards to character, concept art, storyboard and animatic work. However, looking back now, it seems that I may have underestimated the workload that I would of had to deal with if I were to shift my focus onto more than one film as I ended up putting the majority of my time and effort into one project for the entire semester. In doing so, I strongly believe that I was still able to broaden my knowledge of how the workflow and progression of a film in a studio team works while also increasing my skills in a creative manner. I went into this unit with little knowledge of how the workflow works when creating an entire film from start to finish within a studio environment and came out of the first half of it, with a much better understanding of the scheduling system and team work that is required for these kinds of projects.

In the first assessment, where I discussed my professional plans, I stated that one of my goals was to practice or gain the ability to work on multiple projects at a time in an efficient manner. Finishing up the semester, while I am able to look back and say that I participated in more than one film, a minimal amount of time was spent on any other project than Profound, the film that I worked on mainly. I had approached Georgia Tobin, the creator and director of Profound, that I wanted to be on her project from the very beginning and therefore remained focused on just that one film for a good amount of time in the first few weeks. It wasn’t until another director approached me to do some character designs for their film that I was able to work on another project, like I had previously planned. Eventually that character was cut from that film so I naturally gravitated back towards putting all my attention onto Profound, continuing this until the end of the semester.

I did not really mind the turn of events as I, previously stated, actually struggled with the amount of workload I ended up doing within the semester. I failed to realize that working on a film from the very beginning required so much back and forth with numerous amounts of drafts and changes that were made each week. While I overall enjoyed the work and the aspect of discovering this process, it definitely proved difficult at some points in the semester especially with other units that required my attention.

This would all come down to my own personal time management and experience. Now that I have a better understanding of the production process for films like these, I realize that it is important to take into consideration the amount of drafts, as it will definitely need to be tweaked more than once, either majorly or just small fixes. Either way, the film will never have a final product that matches the original idea and therefore requires a lot of discussion and changes along the way. A major element that proved this was that I originally anticipated the Profound animatic to only take around three weeks to be finished and then never touched again as I believed it to be a foundation for the rest of the stages of production. While this is the case, I learned that the story will constantly be changed and until it is fully animated, edited and green lit by the director, the animatic and storyboards should continue to be tweaked throughout the course of the film being made. This was definitely a moment of reflection for me, as I had to redraw and throw away numerous boards that I had spent a lot of time on, so it was very difficult yet interesting to learn about that aspect of the production.

Another goal that proved more difficult when put into action was the plan to gain understanding of the workflow for a long-term project and what kind of production styles work for certain teams. For Profound, I had trouble with finding my place or position in the film when first coming onto the project, as there was a vast amount of enthusiasm and initiative coming from other people who wanted to be a part of it too. Coming straight out of a summer semester unit and not a holiday like most others, I had difficulty meeting the same level of energy when it came to brainstorming and offering different ideas. This led to me attempting some concept and character art but still not really having a strong presence within the production for the first few weeks. While I was worried at the beginning if I would even have a role in Profound, I eventually took on the role as storyboard artist and began to build up my confidence again through it. That gave me more of a chance to suggest new story ideas and involve myself much more within the team, which then grew my comfortability and confidence as a member of Profound. While the lack of initiative was on my part, I also found that the lack of experience we all had working a film like this had its effects.

Due to all of us not really understanding the schedule or team roles that had to be assigned, we were sometimes overlapping or unsure of what needed to be done by certain people and because of that, it was confusing at times, especially for me who wasn’t really sure what I had to be doing in the early stages. However, because of that, it was another learning curve that taught me so much about the process and how the workflow should be structured. As I took on the storyboarding and animatic side of things, I also observed numerous things that I could have done better to make the entire process easier for me next time. As I mentioned earlier, I ended up having to throw away and fix a vast amount of boards over the course of the semester until the final version. This meant that I was throwing away hours of work sometimes which led to some very stressful moments and me feeling a sense of burnout as an artist. After attending a session in Annecy run by a storyboard artist from Disney, she mentioned keeping boards very rough (still clear) until the director gives the thumbs up and before putting an unnecessary amount of effort into them. I also ran into an issue of naming my boards as my system got out of control by my third or fourth pass of the animatic and I was using a mix of letters and numbers. I figured it would be smarter to come up with a naming system that works for the numerous different versions that will be made when working on any project.

Overall I was extremely happy to be a part of Profound and am incredibly proud of the final outcome that was created during the semester. Each of the things that I struggled with or even enjoyed, were things that I can take into account and learn from before applying it to future projects and endeavors. Most people went into this without much experience but I believe that we have all come out of this first half much more familiar with the industry workflows and how to work within a studio like environment. As it is a long-term project that stretches until the end of this year, we still have a lot of work ahead of us and therefore, much more to learn as a group and as individuals. Personally, I am extremely excited for the rest of the year and am looking forward to additional hardships and learning even more about the industry that the majority of us will continue to grow in in our future endeavours.

Thank you!

Joyce Yang

n9708685

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mokatechgq-blog · 7 years

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Returning to the Xoom: Examining Jelly Bean on a 10-inch tablet Will a product refresh set the zoom back into more seasoned equipment?.

On Friday, Google started pushing out the guaranteed Jelly Bean refresh for the Motorola Xoom. While the Nexus 7 is the momentum watermark for what an Android tablet ought to be, the Xoom was the principal tablet to dispatch with a form of Android intended for tablets. A large portion of the elements in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean begun there.

The Xoom is getting somewhat long in the tooth and it has never been a major vender, however it's as yet the main surviving 10-inch Google Experience Device—the telephones and tablets that Google picks with each new Android correction to flaunt the stock look and feel of the working framework. More established equipment or not, the Xoom running Jelly Bean still speaks to Google's standard for how a 10" Android tablet ought to be finished. It will likewise reveal to us something about how Jelly Bean will keep running on more established equipment, in the occasion that Google's accomplices really get on board and push out the refresh.

Jam Bean on the Xoom: No curve balls here

Jam Bean on the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S, and Nexus 7 have every single utilized minor departure from Android's telephone format: the Android programming catches over the base of the screen, the Google Now bar over the highest point of the screen, and a persistant dock that stores a couple of symbols and the application drawer. Warnings are gotten to by swiping down from the highest point of the screen, where the system and battery markers and clock live. Whenever conjured, the application switcher assumes control over the whole screen.

As opposed to changing to a Nexus 7-style cell phone format, the Xoom's Jelly Bean overhaul keeps on utilizing the tablet-style design initially presented in Honeycomb (which itself was initially presented on this very tablet): programming catches in the lower-left corner, warnings in the lower-right corner, application drawer in the upper-right corner, and Google Now catch in the upper-left corner. The application switcher appears on the left edge of the screen.Tablet or cell phone, whatever remains of Jelly Bean's UI upgrades make the move over to the Xoom without issue—the spotless whites and blues of Jelly Bean are by a wide margin more refined and alluring looking than Honeycomb's luminescent theming, which dependably appeared to attempt a bit too hard.Also display: the enhanced, prescient console; home screen symbols and gadgets that move consequently to account for new ones; the Google Now and voice correspondence includes; the refined Roboto textual style; and the enhanced warnings. This is a charming change from the condition of things on the iOS side of the fence, where regardless of the possibility that your gadget can run the most recent working framework it may not get the greater part of the most recent components. Voice transcription and Google Now specifically function admirably on the Xoom. In a genuinely calm live with the tablet held about a foot and a half from my face, the tablet accurately saw each word I stated, even "Ars Technica," an expression that routinely trips up discourse to-content programming.

Extend Butter: Held back by the equipment

One of Jelly Bean's other standard components, expanded execution, additionally goes to the Xoom. That is, the length of you legitimately deal with your desires.

We should think about: the Xoom uses NVIDIA's Tegra 2 T20 SoC. The CPU part of the chip is contained two ARM Cortex A9 centers running at 1.0GHz, while the GPU keeps running at 333MHz and utilizations four pixel shaders and four vertex shaders (signifying "eight centers" in NVIDIA speech). The Nexus 7 uses NVIDIA's Tegra 3 T30L SoC. The CPU utilizes four ARM Cortex A9 centers running at 1.3GHz, while the GPU keeps running at 416MHz and utilizations eight pixel shaders and four vertex shaders ("twelve centers"). Both tablets utilize the same 1280x800 determination for their screens. The majority of this is an extremely circuitous, specialized method for saying that the Xoom needs to push a similar number of pixels utilizing significantly less preparing power.

So, Project Butter has a discernible effect on the Xoom. Movements that were periodically equipped for smoothness in Ice Cream Sandwich are presently reliably smooth in Jelly Bean—things like flicking from home screen to home screen, opening and exploring the application drawer, and looking over are reliably less jerky than some time recently. Swiping between home screens utilizing a live backdrop (something that quite often brought on lagginess in Ice Cream Sandwich) is decent and smooth in Jelly Bean. Utilizing an application like CPU Usage Monitor affirms that the CPU clock speed slopes as far as possible up to 1.0GHz when the screen is touched, one of the slack decreasing enhancements made in Jelly Bean.

There are different spots where things remain somewhat jerky, owing generally to the Xoom's maturing equipment. Things like swiping without end notices and open applications are reliably uneven, similar to the movements that go with opening applications from the home screen. This happens each time the activities are performed, demonstrating that the Xoom's equipment instead of Jelly Bean is to blame. While these issues are exacerbated a bit by the Xoom's screen, which is all around inclined to movement obscure, they demonstrate that Project Butter can just do as such much for yesterday's equipment.

Benchmarks and perusing: Quantitative execution increments

While the accentuation in Jelly Bean is on clear speed—making Android gadgets feel quicker by decreasing slack and expanding the smoothness of moves and activitys—it likewise gives the Xoom some little however quantifiable increments in genuine speed over Ice Cream Sandwich. These show generally in our illustrations and program benchmarks.

The numbers from Geekbench and Linpack, the two CPU-concentrated benchmarks we more often than not keep running on tablets and cell phones, were pretty much indistinguishable in both Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. The numbers from GLBenchmark 2.1.5 recount a somewhat extraordinary story however.The scores for GLBenchmark's Egypt and Pro tests don't move much—around 12 and 19 percent, separately—yet the execution increment is quantifiable and predictable. Regardless of whether this expansion originates from enhancements to Jelly Bean or changes to the Tegra 2 drivers is hard to state without more gadgets to test. Across the board execution enhancements would propose the previous while changes just in Tegra 2 gadgets would recommend the last mentioned. Until further notice, the upshot is that you should expect insignificantly better framerates on the Xoom in Jelly Bean contrasted with Ice Cream Sandwich.

The second significant change is in the implicit program's execution. While Chrome is the transportation program on the Nexus 7, gadgets like the Xoom and Galaxy Nexus are sent with the stock Android program and keep it as the default in Jelly Bean. There aren't many changes to what it would seem that and demonstrations, however the new form of Browser brings abundantly enhanced SunSpider scores to the table.What's truly odd here is that Chrome running in Jelly Bean took somewhat longer to finish the test than did likewise form of Chrome in Ice Cream Sandwich. Program, then again, enhances its score by a solid 27 percent, and takes generally as long to finish the test as the quicker Nexus 7 running Chrome.

Regardless of these enhanced numbers, Browser in Jelly Bean is as yet mediocre compared to Chrome in real use. When looking down the Ars landing page, Browser stacked it all the more gradually and in huge, perceptible lumps. On the off chance that I looked over rapidly back to the highest point of the page, I needed to sit tight for Browser to redraw everything despite the fact that the page had as of now been stacked only a few moments before—neither of these things are issues in Chrome. Program is still under dynamic advancement in Android as of Jelly Bean, yet benchmarks aside, I trust that Chrome turns into the stage's default program within the near future.

Conclusions: The correct programming looking for the correct equipment

The best word to depict Jelly Bean on the Xoom is "reliable." The look and feel of the working framework is predictable with its look and feel on the Nexus 7 and the Galaxy Nexus, giving us a look at a world where Google had iOS-like control over all parts of the product encounter. The tablet's execution is more predictable, and keeping in mind that the equipment's age implies there are still a few regions where movements remain somewhat uneven, even that roughness is presently dependable and repeatable, as opposed to all in or all out as it was some time recently. Once more, in a word: reliable.

The greatest fly in the balm is that the application biological community for Android tablets is still quite hopeless. While an application intended for a telephone may look tolerable on the Nexus 7, it keeps on looking absurd on the Xoom's 10-inch screen.Even if the Nexus 7 is a sufficient achievement that engineers start focusing on it and advancing their applications for its screen, regardless it won't do much for any semblance of the Xoom. Applications intended for a 7-inch screen will likely look better on a 10-inch screen, however despite everything they won't make as great an utilization of the space accessible as do iPad applications.

While Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean have made the Xoom a significantly more proficient, finish item than it was the point at which we initially checked on it, this is still equipment that was created and discharged when the main iPad was the essential rivalry (it appears in the Xoom's thickness and weight). The Xoom's screen—which has poor complexity proportion, is inclined to movement obscure, and has (by all accounts) quite low pixel thickness—is likewise somewhat of an issue. Jam Bean ought to persuade even long-lasting iOS holdouts that Android on a 10-inch tablet can be aggressive and even wonderful. Presently we simply require it to appear on current equipment.

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