If you are into indie music at all, this is the real deal. I got this on loop and can’t stop. Do yourself a favor and buy this record.

Update: After hearing this album several times in the last days, I can only say MASTERPIECE!!!

Soooo … by now you surely have guessed that apart from being a designer I’m also a gamer. In fact I consider gaming the highest state of escapism. Don’t get me wrong, nothing on this planet beats being outside in the world and experience something firsthand. Also there are few things that can match a good book or a good movie as far as entertainment is concerned BUT if I want to really just drop out, video games are king.

There is an ongoing discussion whether or not gaming is an art form in itself. I believe that wholly depends on your definition of art. For a good game you need good artists for concept art, you need good designers, good writers etc. This is not much different from a movie – movies are generally seen as an art form so in my book it’s the same thing. Of course there are a lot of bad games hardly anyone would describe as being art. But there are also these other games that really have an impact on you, that are so well written and well designed that you have to call them art.

Which brings us to the three games that took a big share of my gaming time in recent years. Mass Effect 1-3. I was aware of Mass Effect since its debut on the XBOX 360 but was not that hyped about it because of some mixed reviews and because at the time I was not that much into RPGs. Eventually it came out for PC and one of the download services here in germany sold it for a good price so I bought it and fell in love.

Mass Effect has become such a massive success that there are a lot of people out there that seem to hate these games just because they are successful and are being published by EA which apparently is the most evil corporation on this planet. Of course all of this is bullshit and in the next part I will tell you why I think the Mass Effect games are a pinnacle in recent gaming history.

Stay tuned!

Hi everyone. Since I had not a lot of time to post lately I thought I give you another goodie. YAY! This time it’s the beloved weighted companion cube of portal fame.
The wallpaper comes in two flavours – with and without text – and two sizes. 2560×1440 and 1920×1200 as always. Hope you like it. Have fun!

Click to download (with text)
Click to download (without text)

(For science, you monster)

UPDATE: I changed the texture slightly to make it look less plasticy.

Checking it out right now. As far as I can see, this will be a worthy update.
Download it here

Due to popular demand, here’s a little gift for all the Mass Effect fans landing on my little site by searching for a Normandy Wallpaper. If you are interested in a Version for multi-screen setups speak up in the comments and maybe I create one.

2560×1440 and 1920×1200 variant in one handy ZIP-file.
Click to download

I just wanted to let you know that updates will be sparse at best in the upcoming weeks. I received my copy of Mass Effect 3 Yesterday and expect to fill my spare time with some heavy gaming. See you on the other side.

Long time no post. That’s because I was on vacation with Ms. boxoffrogs. We spent three weeks travelling through Lao PDR. If you are in to travelling and south east asia is not on your list, reconsider! We’ve now been to Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao and Thailand and plan to go to Lao a second time and do Myanmar (Birma) some time in the future. These are all great and very beautiful countries. Stay tuned for some more photos or go to schmu-und-du.com.

Hi there, this is my new series “10 seconds of …” where we will recreate 10 seconds of moving images that were part of our childhood, be it video games, movies or whatever comes to mind. I created a vimeo group here if you want to participate. I hope to get some cool stuff together.

My first entry are 10 seconds from Super Mario World, one of the first video games I played extensively. And by extensively I mean whole nights. I collected 100 lives in level 2 on Yoshis Island and fought my way through the harder levels. When I ran out of lives I would come back to this level and get new ones.

I created the animation in Cinema 4D and After Effects. The 3D setup is basically a mix of sprites and blocks with the textures slapped on. Thanks to the cloner object it was no big deal to create the blocks. Mario-related sprites can be found all over the internet.

Hope you like it.