A Blind Legend

A Blind Legend is an action-adventure Audio game. The game was Supported financially by Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée and other organizations. It was published by French studio Plug In Digital, and developed by Dowino for Microsoft Windows, IOS, macOS and Android. The game is without video/graphics, and requires headphones to play this game.
Overview.
The game is about a knight called Edward Blake whose wife has been captured by the guards of the king while looking for him.
The game has no video graphics and so the player requires stereo loudspeakers or a pair of headphones in order to play the game. The game uses binaural recording technology in order to render the sounds on the play field in 3D to make it possible for the player to faithfully find his or her direction. The controls of the game are primarily by the use of different touch screen combinations to play. In Windows, the mouse can be used in place of the touch screen.
Scenes.
The game is divided into scenes, and a player must pass 1 scene in order to proceed to the next. If a player fails to pass the scene, for example when his character has been killed off, the player's total number of lives reduces and he/she has to repeat the scene until when the scene will be passed.
lives.
The game is free to download on all the platforms. Upon download, a player is given Five lives which reduce whenever the player is killed by the enemies, is boiled over in the lake, enters into a bridge or is consumed by any trap. However, once the lives have been depleted, the player cannot play again until when the lives have been replenished or when the player decides to buy other lives from within the game's main screen. The lives pack are set to replenish after every 20 minutes after depletion.
Weapons and Controls.
During playing, the following controls and weapons are available and which can be utilized by the player.
Used to fight with enemies whenever they confront the Knight the knight withdraws his sword automatically whenever he is challenged, but tapping the screen twice with two fingers also withdraws or keeps the sword away.
Whenever the player is confronted he/she can pinch in the screen to activate the shield. If the player pinches out, the shield stops being active.
This is performed by pinching in on the screen, then pinching out and flicking many times towards the direction of the enemy.
Plot.
A Blind Legend is set in a medieval fantasy setting. The player assumes the role of a blind knight named Edward Blake who's wife has been captured in the square market by unknown captors. Accompanied by his daughter Louise, who guides him along the way, the protagonist has to traverse the kingdom of High Castle, facing various enemies and traps in order to reach the captors, make war with them and free his wife.


List of esports games

Esports are video games which are played in professional competitions, usually fall into a few major genres. The majority of esports titles are fighting games, first-person shooters (FPS), real-time strategy (RTS), or multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBA), with the MOBA genre being the most popular in terms of participation and viewership. The following is a selection of games which currently have or had a professional scene, sorted by genre and ordered roughly chronologically.
Fighting games.
Fighting games were among the earliest games to be in tournaments, with the founding of what would become the Evolution Championship Series in 1999.
Competitions in the genre are generally individual competitions with both players providing input to the same machine. The genre originally focused on arcade play, but has gradually moved to console play as arcades have declined. The "Street Fighter" series, "Mortal Kombat" series, "Marvel vs. Capcom" series, "Tekken" series, "Killer Instinct" series and "Super Smash Bros." series are amongst those fighting games played at a professional level. Important tournaments for the genre include the Evolution Championship Series and Capcom Cup, Tougeki – Super Battle Opera was a major tournament for several years.
Fighting game enthusiasts generally prefer the moniker "competitive gaming", and often eschew the term "e-sports", citing cultural differences between the predominantly PC-gaming esports communities and the older arcade-gaming community.
Members of the fighting game community are generally especially cognizant of their cc to the old arcade-era competitions, wishing to prioritize the preservation the spirit of those competitions over simple monetization of fighting competitions.
"Street Fighter".
The "Street Fighter" has one of the earliest and longest running professional gaming scenes.
Professional "Street Fighter" players include Daigo Umehara, who had two of his matches included in a 2011 Kotaku list of "The 10 Best Moments in Pro-Gaming History". His early 1998 match against American player Alex Valle in "Street Fighter Alpha 3" ranked sixth and his 2004 comeback against American player Justin Wong in "" ranked first, while his 2009 grand finals match against Wong in "Street Fighter IV" at Evo 2009 was listed as having "[j]ust missed the cut."
"Super Smash Bros.".
Nintendo's "Super Smash Bros." series has a large competitive community. While every title has been featured in high-profile tournaments, "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" are the most popular for high level competition as of 2018. Major League Gaming regularly sponsored "Melee" events from 2004 to 2007, before dropping it in favor for the 2008 sequel "Super Smash Bros. Brawl". According to Major League Gaming, over 400 "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" competitive tournaments were held in 2010 in North America. Since then, "Melee" has again been periodically hosted at MLG events, with the latest being MLG 2015 World Finals. "Smash Wii U" had an online contest sponsored by ESL. Other notable national tournaments to feature "Smash" games include Apex and Evolution Championship Series (EVO). At EVO 2019, "Smash Ultimate" became the largest "Smash" tournament ever with 3,534 entrants.
"Marvel vs. Capcom".
"Marvel vs. Capcom" (MvC) is a fighting game series developed by Capcom that features characters from Capcom games and Marvel comic book characters. The series was played at the Evolution Championship Series from 2000 until 2017.
"Tekken".
Namco's "Tekken" series is known as the lightning chess of fighting games, having a large player base in Asian countries. Over the years Tekken has been cited as the most technical among fighting games. Praised for its balance, strong basics, depth and one of the few fighting games to feature a real 3D design, it continues to be featured in various championships. The "Master cup" series of Japan, "Final round" series of U.S.A, "Strongstyle" series of U.S.A, "UT" championship series of Europe are a few examples of events that are, or started off as exclusive Tekken events, and still hold it as a main game. The "King of Iron Fist Tournament" is a Tekken only tournament hosted by Namco themselves. Apart from this, other shows such as "Tekken Crash", "Tekken Strike" are Tekken only shows held in South Korea on the E-sports channel "Nice Game T.V". Tekken has made it periodically into the Evo Championship series, and since 2013 has become a permanent part of the event. Although it has a lesser player-base in the west, it seems to be steadily rising. In the east it dominates the arcade scene today leaving other games of its genre miles behind.
"Killer Instinct".
The "Killer Instinct" series is a combo-heavy franchise created by Rare and currently maintained by Iron Galaxy Studios and Microsoft. The franchise' most-played game is the 2013 Killer Instinct reboot, with the platform of choice being Xbox One. A circuit for the game has been created called the Killer Instinct World Cup, with a second iteration ending in early 2017. Killer Instinct's best player is Jonathan "Rico Suave" Deleon, who currently holds the EVO and Killer Instinct World Cup titles.
In January 2017, Ultra Arcade enforced a ban on taunting and teabagging in major Killer Instinct tournaments which sparked controversy among the fighting game community with some stating that it is considered impossible to enforce due to certain players' playstyles.
First-person shooters.
First person shooters focus on simulating a firefight from a first person perspective, and may be either individual or team based. Classic games include the PC game "Team Fortress 2", which is featured in a few smaller leagues such as the ESEA League, RGL, United Gaming Clans, and European Team Fortress 2 League. "Call of Duty" and "Halo" competitions usually play their console editions.
"Doom".
Doom is a series of multiplayer 1v1 and free-for-all deathmatch games developed by id Software. Doom is notable for establishing the arena-style deathmatch format, and also was partially responsible for the first online FPS community through DWANGO, an online gaming service officially endorsed and partially worked on by id Software. People also played Doom deathmatch online through other BBS services. The Ultimate DOOM and Doom II, alongside Heretic, were played in the Deathmatch '95 tournament, sponsored by id Software, Microsoft, and DWANGO. This tournament, perhaps the first PC esports tournament of its kind, was played through the online DWANGO service. Finalists from the US and the UK were flown to Microsoft headquarters to compete in a LAN party format event, named Judgement Day. Dennis Fong, best known for his victory at the Red Annihilation tournament for "Quake", won Judgement Day, marking his first entry into esports. Doom II was also played in Cyberathlete Professional League and QuakeCon tournaments.
"Doom 3" featured a 1v1 mode which was played professionally at QuakeCon 2004, QuakeCon 2005, and CPL Winter 2004, but was ultimately replaced by "Quake 4" and "Painkiller".
"Quake".
Quake is a series 1v1 PC based games developed by id Software. In 1996, id released the original Quake, and launched QuakeCon. QuakeCon is an annual convention which hosts competitions for the series, and has become the largest LAN event in North America. The first offline "Quake" tournament, Red Annihilation took place in May 1997. The winner, Dennis Fong, going under the alias "Thresh", took home the prize of "Quake" co-creator John D. Carmack's own red Ferrari 328 GTS convertible.
"Quake 4" supported a small professional scene, with a dozen professional players signed to a few professional teams and a number of players marketing themselves through other means. Tournament play for "Quake 4" peaked around 2006, with the game included in tournaments such as the Electronic Sports World Cup, the World Series of Video Games before the league's demise, the World Cyber Games 2006, and KODE5. As of 2008, "Quake 4" has fallen out of favor in competition for the previous game in the series, "Quake III Arena".
"Quake Live" was released in 2010, primarily based on "Quake III Arena". "Quake Live" was played in tournaments such as DreamHack, QuakeCon, and FaceIt. The popularity of the title declined after a couple years. In 2012, the last major tournament to host "Quake" competitions, the Intel Extreme Masters, decided to drop the title.
"Counter-Strike" series.
The "Counter-Strike" series is a series of team based first person shooters which began as a "Half-Life" mod which was bought by Valve and released from beta in 2000. Professional competition is centered in North America and Europe in tournaments such as the World Cyber Games, CEVO, ESEA League, Intel Extreme Masters, Cyberathlete Professional League and the Electronic Sports League. The defunct league Championship Gaming Series franchised teams with contracted players who played "".
"Counter Strike" is consistently at competitions such as DreamHack and World Cyber Games as the 1.6 version released in 2003, despite newer versions having been released by Valve over the years.
The most recent game in the series, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, was released in August 2012. Although "Counter-Strike" did not appear in the World Cyber Games 2013, the largest prizepool in the series' history has been announced for RFRSH as part of the BLAST Premier Series, with US$1.5 million.
"Call of Duty series".
The "Call of Duty" series is a first-person shooter that has been played as an esport primarily in North America and is primarily played on PlayStation consoles, but was formerly played on Xbox. It has been featured in MLG tournaments ever since "" was introduced to the league in 2008. Tournaments usually have a large number of unknown teams competing to play with the top pro teams. A well known example is OpTic Gaming, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from competing in leagues and tournaments.
"Unreal Tournament".
Beginning with the release of the first game in 1998, the "Unreal Tournament" series of first person shooters supported competitions in the early 2000s, such as the series' inclusion the World Cyber Games from 2001 through 2004. There are no longer major tournaments for the series, as it has been dropped from leagues such as the Electronic Sports League.
"Halo series".
The "Halo" series has been featured in the American Major League Gaming since the release of Halo: Combat Evolved for the original Xbox. The series has also been played internationally, such as the European Console League's event in July 2010 in Liverpool. The Australian Cyber League hosted a Pro Circuit with tournaments in several major cities in Australia, including a January 2009 event in Brisbane. Partially due to changes to the series' design, "Halo" competitions have gone into steep decline that started in 2010 with the release of Halo: Reach, a drastic change from what was considered traditional Halo, as seen in the original three games. The decline had continued into late 2013/2014 where Halo 4 had been introduced and was an even bigger change to the series than Halo: Reach, and as a result had no major competitive events held, other than the Halo 4 World Championships, which was put on by developer 343 Industries as an early attempt to save Halo esports. 343 Industries later released Halo: The Master Chief Collection, re-releasing all 4 original titles in 60fps, but featuring a completely remastered version of Halo 2 to use as the primary game for halo esports. Although this was a good attempt by the developer to bring back the dying community, the game suffered from many bugs and glitches that made the game unplayable, which furthermore damaged that Halo esports community. At the same time around the release of Halo: the Master Chief Collection, 343 Industries introduced the Halo Championship Series as another attempt to re-establish Halo as a competitive esports title. As Halo declined, it was dropped from Major League Gaming, to be replaced by Call of Duty as the new staple game for the league. Currently Halo 5 is the newest game in the series and has entirely built around being competitive and well suited for esports, featuring vanilla competitive settings, a wide array of competitive game modes, and an in-depth spectator mode. 343 Industries is hosting the Halo World Championships, which will be a 4v4 competition, held in part with competitive leagues MLG, ESL, and Gfinity. The prize pool is currently 2 million dollars, which is crowd funded through Halo 5's in-game "REQ Pack" purchases. The game franchise's history in esports is currently focused at the Halo Championship Series (HCS) Pro League in conjunction with the ESL esports organization, with the first season finished up in
"Painkiller".
"Painkiller" is a 2004 game developed by Polish game studio People Can Fly and published by DreamCatcher Interactive. At the end of 2004 "Painkiller" was chosen by the Cyberathlete Professional League to be their official 2005 CPL World Tour game. This was slightly controversial with many e-sports followers and competitors due to the fact that other games had proven themselves at least as popular online multiplayer games. As the tour had already been announced as a one-on-one deathmatch format competition, "Unreal Tournament 2004" and "Doom 3" were also fan favourites for this tour. However, since "Unreal Tournament 2004" developer Epic Games was in the process of changing publishers from Atari to Midway Games and could not guarantee their full support throughout the year-long tour, it was not chosen. An agreement between the CPL and DreamCatcher stipulated that no other organization was allowed to use "Painkiller" in a gaming competition with prizes above 2,000. without obtaining a license from the CPL. For the 2006 CPL World Tour, "Quake III Arena" was selected as the one-versus-one deathmatch game, replacing "Painkiller".
"Battlefield series".
"Battlefield" series games have been played in multiple tournaments. The PC version of the games are usually used. Electronic Sports League has sponsored "Battlefield" tournaments since "Battlefield 2".
"CrossFire".
"CrossFire" is a Korean-developed shooter similar to "Counter-Strike" that is most popular in East Asia. CrossFire Stars is the name of the highest professional league.
"Overwatch".
"Overwatch" has attracted attention as an esports title including teams being picked up by professional teams. Blizzard Entertainment has founded an official Overwatch League for professional, salaried players.
"Team Fortress 2".
"Team Fortress 2" is a class-based shooter that has been played in several online leagues, notably ESEA League, RGL, UGC League, ETF2L, Ozfortress and Asiafortress in a 6vs6 format and a Highlander League 9vs9 format. The game has made appearances at DreamHack due to support from Razer Arena Team Fortress 2 has also held annual international LAN events at the Multiplay Insomnia Gaming Festival during the summer since 2012.
"Rainbow Six: Siege".
"Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege" is the first esports game in the series. Official competitions of Rainbows Six Siege is Rainbow Six Pro League run by ESL and Ubisoft.
Recently ESL hosted the Rainbow Six Siege ESL 2020 Six Invitational, in which Space Station Gaming was crowned the winners.
"Alliance of Valiant Arms".
"Alliance of Valiant Arms" (A.V.A) was a first-person shooter most popular in Asia. Developer Aeria Games sponsored a world championship, and there were also some other independent offline events held. The game shut down in 2018, as well as its successor one year later.
"Special Force II".
"Special Force II" has the Special Force II Pro League in Taiwan run by the Taiwan esports League, as well as events organized by Electronic Sports League in Europe.
"Valorant".
"Valorant" is the first first-person shooter released by Riot Games in 2020. Currently the majority of Valorant events are organized by third party organizations such as BLAST Pro Series.
Multiplayer online battle arena.
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games are historically a spin-off of real-time strategy games, but are different enough that they are now generally considered a separate genre. While traditional RTS games feature many units controlled by a single player, MOBAs are typically team focused, the model being five players on a team, each controlling a single "hero" unit. MOBAs are generally played on personal computers.
"League of Legends".
"League of Legends" ("LoL") is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games, primarily inspired by "Defense of the Ancients". It was released on October 27, 2009. In an early "LoL" tournament, the game was featured as a promotional title in the 2010 World Cyber Games in Los Angeles. The victors were the Counter Logic Gaming team from North America, winning a $7,000 prize. "LoL" was added to the Intel Extreme Masters lineup for the 2011 Electronic Sports League season. The Season 1 World Championships were held at DreamHack Summer 2011 in Sweden. The European team Fnatic defeated teams from Europe and the US to win US$50,000 of the tournament's US$100,000 prize pool. According to Riot, the final match drew 210,000 concurrent viewers.
Riot announced a prize pool of US$5 million to be paid out over Season 2, allocated to tournaments featuring League of Legends. the Season 2 World Championship featured a prize pool of US$2 million. Taipei Assassins of Taiwan defeated Azubu Frost of South Korea in the grand finals, winning the $1 million grand prize. During the quarterfinal match against Team Solomid, Azubu Frost player Woong looked at the spectator minimap, resulting in a fine that reduced their winnings by US$30,000. The League of Legends Season 2 World Finals match drew a peak of 1.1 million concurrent viewers, who observed the matches from Internet streams, Korean television, and Chinese television.
In season 3, the total prize pool was US$8 million. The 2013 Season 3 Championships was held in Los Angeles, featuring a prize pool is $2 million with $1 million for first place. The team SKT T1 won the final, which took place at the Staples Centre on October 4. The event drew 1.4 million concurrent viewers during the final series.
"Dota 2".
To ensure that enough "Defense of the Ancients" players would take up "Dota 2" and to promote the game to a new audience, Valve invited sixteen accomplished "Defense of the Ancients" esports teams to compete at a "Dota 2"-specific tournament at Gamescom in August 2011, which later became an annually held event known as The International. From The International 2013 onward, its prize pool began to be crowdfunded through a type of in-game battle pass called the "Compendium", which raises money from players buying them and connected lootboxes to get exclusive in-game cosmetics and other bonuses offered through them. 25% of all the revenue made from Compendiums go directly to the prize pool, with sales from the 2013 battle pass raising over 2.8 million, which made it the largest prize pool in esports history at the time. Each iteration of The International since then has surpassed the previous one's prize pool, with the most recent one, The International 2019, having one at over $34 million.
By the end of 2011, "Dota 2" was already one of the highest-paying esport games, second only to "StarCraft II". At E3 2013, South Korean company Nexon announced the investment of 2 billion (approximately 1.7 million) into local leagues in the country, which coincided with their distribution partnership with Valve for the game. In February 2015, Valve sponsored "Dota 2" Asia Championships was held in Shanghai with a prize pool of over $3 million, raised through compendium sales. Since then, other "Dota 2" Asia Championships have taken place, with it being sometimes being referred to as the "Chinese International". In total, professional "Dota 2" tournaments had earned teams and players over $100 million by June 2017, with over half of that being awarded at the International tournaments, making it the highest earning esport game by a margin of nearly $60 million.
"Smite".
"Smite" is a third-person MOBA developed and published by Hi-Rez Studios. Prior to release, "Smite" was kept in an extended beta that resulted in over 74 million hours of playtime and the realization of a robust competitive community. Throughout the beta, Hi-Rez hosted a series of LAN and online events with cash prize pools. "Smite" was officially released in North America and western Europe on March 25, 2014.
The weekend following its release, Hi-Rez hosted a Smite Launch Tournament in Atlanta where the eight best teams from Europe and North America played for a prize pool of over US$200,000, half of which was raised by the community from sales of a character skin. Team Solo Mid from Europe won first place, with Team Dignitas from North America taking second place. Viewers at home could make their own predictions for a chance to win various prizes. According to Hi-Rez, the event drew more than 400,000 unique viewers worldwide. After the event, Hi-Rez added a custom-branded skin in honor of Team Solo Mid's victory.
In May 2014, Hi-Rez announced the Smite World Championship Series (SWC). The SWC began with three months of regional qualifiers, which culminated into two separate US$50,000 regional LAN events for Europe and North America. The SWC took place on January 9–11, 2015 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta, and featured a prize pool of US$2,612,260, raised from the community through the sale of digital cosmetics and special edition items. The World Championship featured teams from North America, Europe, China, Brazil, and Latin America. After several matches, the North American team COGnitive Prime (Now Cloud9 G2A) took 1st place earning US$1,306,130, with Titan, a European team who began their run to the SMITE World Championship in the open amateur scene, coming in second place. Afterwards, much like the Smite Launch Tournament, a branded cosmetic skin was released to honor COGnitive Prime and an invitational competition scheduled in their name.
"Heroes of the Storm".
"Heroes of the Storm" is crossover multiplayer online battle arena game, developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, released on June 2, 2015. Heroes Global Championship (HGC) was main esports event in 2017 and 2018, until Blizzard's cancellation of all its plans for tournaments in 2019. However, Tespa Collegiate series continued to support "Heroes of the Storm" competitive scene.
"Vainglory".
"Vainglory" is a multiplayer online battle arena released for iOS and then released for Android, Microsoft Windows, and macOS. Developed and published by Super Evil Megacorp (SEMC), "Vainglory" has attracted some interest as an esports game, including the sponsorship of a team by SK Gaming. It boasted the largest prize money awarded for a mobile game with $350,000 from tournaments around the world in Fall 2015.
"Arena of Valor".
"Arena of Valor" "(AoV)" is a multiplayer online battle arena developed by TiMi Studios and published by Tencent Games for Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch. The game first released on October 14, 2016.
Arena of Valor tournaments have been held in numerous regions, with each region having their own local leagues such as Garena Challenger Series Pro League (GCS) in Taiwan, Realm of Valor Pro League (RPL) in Thailand,  Arena of Glory (AOG) in Vietnam, Arena of Valor Star League (ASL) in Indonesia, Arena of Valor: Valor Cup (AVC) in Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines,  Arena of Valor: Valor Series (AVS) in Europe, North America, and Latin America, and Arena of Valor Japan League (AJL) in Japan.
"Arena of Valor" also has two annual world championship tournaments; Arena of Valor International Championship (AIC) and Arena of Valor World Cup (AWC). AIC is a tournament where teams from across the world participate to earn profit and glory for their own esport organisation, while AWC is a tournament where teams participate under the banner of their national flag to represent their own country.
The first AIC was held in South Korea from November 23 to November 26, 2017. The event attracted more than 36,000,000 online viewers, breaking mobile game records worldwide and has since become the leading standard of mobile eSports. The game occupying the top positions of mobile game rankings in Asia for months has also received the honor of Google Play's Best of 2017 Game award in Europe. The second AIC tournament was held in Thailand from November 23 to December 16, 2018. The tournament increased the number of competing teams to 16, with teams competing for the title and a proportion of the prize pool worth $600,000 (£460,000). The third AIC tournament was also held in Thailand from November 5 to November 24, 2019. It featured an additional all-new 1v1 competition, where one player represents each team and the winner walking away with $5,000.
The first Arena of Valor World Cup (AWC) tournament was held in Los Angeles, United States, from July 17 to July 28, 2018. A total prize pool of $500,000 made AWC one of the largest mobile eSports tournaments in gaming history. A total of nine regions competed for the grand prize, which includes Taiwan - Hong Kong - Macau, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia - Singapore - Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, North America, Latin America and Europe. Additionally, the tournament host selected three Wildcard teams to participate in AWC. The second AWC tournament was held in Danang, Vietnam, from June 27 to July 14, 2019, with the same total prize pool of $500,000. The second AWC also marks Japan's first participation in an "AOV" international tournament since the game introduced their Japanese server on November 30, 2018.
The third Arena of Valor World Cup for 2020 was canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic.
"Mobile Legends: Bang Bang".
"" is a mobile multiplayer online battle arena developed and published by Moonton. The game hosted its MSC 2019 () with a total prize pool of US$120,000 featuring 12 teams from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The world scene tournament was dubbed as M1 2019 (MLBB World Championship 2019), consist of 16 teams from 14 different countries with a prize pool of US$250,000 and was held at Axiata Arena in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Racing.
"Formula One" official games.
The Formula One official games, currently being developed by Codemasters, has hosted many esports series, some of which are officially endorsed by Formula One, such as the Formula One Esports Series and Virtual Grand Prix, a series of races involving several real-life motorsport racers and global celebrities created to substitute the cancelled Formula One Grands Prix during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Forza Horizon 4".
The game entered eSports in 2018 its release and attracted any player who was also passionate about cars and at the eSports event it runs on either PC or Xbox.
"Gran Turismo Sport".
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile officially endorses an annual FIA Gran Turismo Championship, consisting of two series throughout the year since 2018, and are viewed via YouTube livestreams from the official GRAN TURISMO TV channel. The two series compromise of a Nations Cup, where drivers will represent each own's country, and the Manufacturers Series, where drivers will race for and represent their selected manufacturer; participants will also have to use the "Sport" mode within the game during these events. The winner of each series are given $1 options or US$160,000 in winning Manufacturers, a TAG Heuer watch, and a glass plaque, and are also honoured at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony. The tournament also allows the audience to join in by rooting for their country. If the driver wins, the players of their country receive a "victory bonus." The tournament itself has been considered a success.
"iRacing".
NASCAR hosts an affiliated annual video game competition since 2010 known as the NASCAR iRacing.com World Championship Series, which had a grand prize of US$10,500 in 2011.
"Project CARS".
"Project CARS" has become an official esport with the Electronic Sports League and has become a success.
"rFactor 2".
"rFactor 2" had hosted the Formula E Race at Home Challenge, which was involving Formula E drivers, as well as several pro eSports players. The virtual tournament was broadcast on various Formula E social channels along with selected television partners.
"Kart Rider".
Kart Rider is the biggest Arcade Racing esport. Kart Rider has been a competitively since 2005 with KeSPA ( Korean esports association ) organizing events in the game with prize pools over $70'000 and reaching over 100'000 viewers live on some for top events, like Kart Rider League.
"Trackmania".
TrackMania has had a competitive scene since 2006, with the game Trackmania Nations ESWC, that was made specifically for Electronic Sports World Cup. Trackmania has had prize pools over 10'000 euro and some events selling out stadiums in couple of days, especially in France, where some event are reaching out for more than 140'000 viewers live. Nowadays the main game played competitively is the latest iteration in the Franchise just called Trackmania, that is trying to reach out to more global audience, with leagues like Trackmania Grand League.
Real-time strategy.
Competitions involving traditional real time strategy games generally feature individual competitors competing on personal computers over a local area network or the internet. While not nearly as popular as other RTS games during this period, the "Age of Empires" series was played competitively as well, and was part of the World Cyber Games from 2000 to 2003, and 2007–2008.
"StarCraft".
"StarCraft" was used at several tournaments including the Professional Gamers League. However, its expansion pack " was far more popular than the original.
" was foundational in the establishment of e-sports, and along with "StarCraft II", remains among the most popular series in competitive gaming. "StarCraft" competitions did especially well in South Korea, which remains central to the competitive scene as a whole. Professionals in Korea achieved a status similar to professional athletes. In the west, "StarCraft" enjoyed significantly less competitive popularity. "StarCraft" was the very first game to have been accepted into the World Cyber Games tournament, and had a tournament at their events every year until it was replaced by "StarCraft II" in 2011. In Korea, prominent "StarCraft" competitions included the Ongamenet Starleague, the MBCGame StarCraft League, and Proleague. Finals for these league attracted tens of thousands of fans, and became very popular on Korean cable TV.
"StarCraft II".
After its release in 2010, "StarCraft II" competitions gradually replaced the prior "Brood War" competitions. For example, "StarCraft II" has replaced the original game in the WCG, and the initially "Brood War"-focused Proleague mixed "StarCraft II" into their competitions, before finally phasing out "Brood War" entirely. Initially, disagreements between Blizzard and Kespa prevented many players in Korea from moving to "StarCraft II", but conditions improved, and were ultimately resolved by 2012.
Many leagues and e-sports organizations in Korea and across the world host "StarCraft II" tournaments, including the Team Liquid StarLeague, Major League Gaming, North American Star League, DreamHack, the Intel Extreme Masters and the GOMTV Global Starcraft II League.
In 2012, Blizzard Entertainment created the "StarCraft II" World Championship Series. In the tournament's initial 2012 season, Korean player PartinG beat Creator to win the $100,000 grand prize. As of 2013, the WCS system divides players into three leagues: WCS Korea, WCS Europe, and WCS North America. Players earn points based on their performance in many different tournaments, including the ones mentioned above, and the 16 players with the most points advance to world championship at BlizzCon. In the 2013 grand finals, sOs beat the crowd favorite Jaedong 4–1, winning the $100,000 grand prize. The 2nd-place finish for Jaedong awarded him $45,000, making his total prizepool earnings $489,384.83, the highest of any esports player at that time.
"Warcraft III".
"Warcraft III" has been played professionally all around the world, especially in South Korea, China, France, and Germany. Although the game never achieved the same competitive popularity of the original "StarCraft", the game supported a few dozen professional teams. The game lacks a singular world championship, as there have been numerous large tournaments. Events have been organized by Blizzard Entertainment, have also been televised Korean leagues, and large tournaments have been held in China. Chinese players generally have used their own clients for online competition, due to a poor connection to the outside world. Notable "Warcraft III" players include: Xiaofeng "Sky" Li, Dae Hui "FoV" Cho, Jang "Moon" Jae Ho, Fredrik "MaDFroG" Johansson and Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen. In more recent times, Warcraft III competition has declined in popularity. Many professional "Warcraft III" players have since moved to "Starcraft II", including Grubby and Moon. Despite this, "Warcraft III" continues to be played competitively, still appearing in events such as WCG 2013.
Sports games.
"FIFA series".
"FIFA Football" a generally individual competition available on consoles as well as PCs. FIFA has been an official game of the World Cyber Games since its first tournament in 2001. In 2003, a FIFA tournament was also held at the first event of CPL Europe. Germany has the biggest "FIFA Football" community, hosting leagues such as the Electronic Sports League and the World League eSport Bundesliga (which was aired on the national TV-broadcaster "Deutsches Sportfernsehen" before the league's cessation). There are also leagues in South Korea like the Ongamenet FifaLeague that are televised. The ESL continues to host FIFA competitions into 2013, as does the ESWC.
Furthermore, the FIFA Interactive World Cup (FIWC) is the world's largest video game tournament and with that the biggest FIFA tournament there is. The virtual football world championship is organised annually by FIFA and its presenting partner EA Sports. The inaugural FIWC took place in Zurich in 2004 and since then enabled millions of football fans from all around the world to fight for the world champion title. The tournament is played on the latest console generations of Xbox and PlayStation.
"Madden".
The "Madden NFL" series of American football games has been used as esports. Game developer Electronic Arts sponsored a $1 million "Madden NFL 17" Championship Series. The television series "Madden Nation" was an American reality television show, created as a joint effort between EA SPORTS and ESPN Original Entertainment and focused on the competitive scene of "Madden".
"NBA 2K".
In February 2017, the National Basketball Association, in conjunction with Take-Two Interactive, announced the creation of an esports league centering on the "NBA 2K" franchise called the NBA 2K League. It began play in 2018.
"Pro Evolution Soccer".
PES League is the official competition series of "Pro Evolution Soccer" run by Konami. In 2016 and 2017, the PES League final competition was held together with UEFA Champions League finals.
"Rocket League".
"Rocket League" is a vehicular soccer video game. It is described as "soccer, but with rocket-powered cars". Competitions have been run by Twitch, Psyonix Studios, ESL and Major League Gaming as well as other independent tournaments. The central competitive circuit of Rocket League, sponsored by Psyonix Studios, will distribute a prize pool worth $4,500,000 this upcoming 2020-2021 competitive split. This will be adding to the already $14,000,000 worth of prize pool money given out by Rocket League tournament sponsors.
Third-person shooters.
"Gears of War".
"Gears of War" is a third-person shooter series developed by The Coalition. It is usually played during ESL and Major League Gaming events. In 2016, Xbox and the Coalition announced the a Pro Circuit for "Gears of War 4", with the prize pool being one million USD.
"Fortnite".
"Fortnite Battle Royale" is a third-person battle royale shooter developed by Epic Games. Multiple tournaments have been hosted including the Fortnite World Cup which offered a $30 million prize pool in 2019.
"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds".
"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" ("PUBG") is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole. The game was initially a third person battle royale shooter, but later included a first person mode. The game offers millions of dollars in prize pools and also hosts tournaments for PUBG Mobile, the mobile edition of the game.
Card games.
"Hearthstone".
"Hearthstone" is a digital collectible card game from Blizzard Entertainment. It has gained popularity as an eSport with MLG and BlizzCon hosting tournaments.<ref name="MLG/ManaGrind"></ref>
"Magic: The Gathering Arena".
' is a digital adaptation of ' card game, published by Wizards of the Coast. Tabletop "Magic" has developed competitive scheme and scene of its own, such as and since 1994. In December 2018 Wizards of the Coast announced that an esports pool would be created for the game for 2019. The $10 million prize pool will be equally divided between the traditional tabletop game and the new digital version Arena. In 2019, Wizards of the Coast unveiled a new esports program which started with a special "Mythic Invitational" event and a $1 million prize pool.
Others.
"Pokémon".
The "Pokémon" series of strategy video games are played competitively. A Pokémon Company-sponsored world championship organized by their Play! Pokémon division has been held annually for several years. The GO Battle League in "Pokémon Go" also has the aspect to be an eSport.
"Puyo Puyo".
"Puyo Puyo" was approved as an esports game by the Japanese esports Union in March 2018. The first esports tournament for the game was held during Sega Fest 2018 from April 14 to April 15 of the same year.
"Tetris".
There is a Classic Tetris World Championship for the puzzle game "Tetris".
"War Thunder".
"War Thunder" (WT) is a cross-platform MMO combat game for PC, PS4, Mac and Linux, dedicated to World War II military aviation, armoured vehicles, and fleets developed by Gaijin Entertainment that was first released in 2012. War Thunder held the first season of its Thunder League tournament in late 2015. The tournament prize fund was directly funded by the players of game through the purchase of special in game goods, with the final prize pool reaching a sum of $57,425 distributed between 6 teams.
"World of Tanks".
"World of Tanks" (WoT) is an MMO tank game for PC and Xbox One developed by Wargaming that was first released in 2010. Since 2012, the company has been heavily invested in the WoT esports scene. There is annual world championship with qualifier tournaments held across the world. The Electronic Sports League also sponsors some WoT tournaments.
"World of Warcraft".
Blizzard's MMO "World of Warcraft" added PvP features to the game after its release, and was received enthusiastically as an eSport. The game was generally phased out of MLG between 2010 and 2011, but Blizzard continues to hold the World of Warcraft Arena Global Invitational annually. The prize pool for the 2013 World of Warcraft Arena Global Invitational totaled over $180,000 and that of the 2014 World of Warcraft Arena Invitational World Championship totaled $250,000.
"Clash Royale".
Supercell's "Clash Royale" is a freemium, real-time strategy game that incorporates elements of collectible card games, tower defense, and multiplayer online battle arena. Developed for mobile devices with a free-to-play, pay-to-win pricing strategy, the game has appeal to those without competitive gaming set ups. Despite allowing users to pay to advance their account, competitive tournaments operate at "tournament level" to facilitate an even playing field. The game allows anyone to advance from an in game public tournament all the way to the world finals. Prizes of $1,000,000 and $400,000 have been awarded to winners of past competitions.


Charles E. Barber

Charles Edward Barber (November 16, 1840 – February 18, 1917) was an American coin engraver who served as the sixth chief engraver of the United States Mint from 1879 until his death in 1917. He had a long and fruitful career in coinage, designing most of the coins produced at the mint during his time as chief engraver. He did full coin designs, and he designed about 30 medals in his lifetime. The Barber coinage were named after him. In addition, Barber designed a number of commemorative coins, some in partnership with assistant engraver George T. Morgan. For the popular Columbian half dollar, and the Panama-Pacific half dollar and quarter eagle, Barber designed the obverse and Morgan the reverse. Barber also designed the 1883 coins for the Kingdom of Hawaii, and also Cuban coinage of 1915. Barber's design on the Cuba 5 centavo coin remained in use until 1961.
While much has been written about Barber being disagreeable and even hostile to Morgan, this has recently been conclusively disproved, with concrete evidence that the two had a warm personal relationship. This of course, makes perfect sense, as the two worked closely together for over 40 years.
Again, contrary to what many people believe, Barber also had a warm personal relationship with President Theodore Roosevelt. While it is true that Roosevelt wanted U.S. coinage in the new century to have a more modern look, and also solicited designs from artists outside the U.S. Mint, this does not mean that he had a personal dislike of the man. The descendants of Charles Barber possess artifacts that prove a warm personal relationship existed.
At the request of President Roosevelt and Mint director George E. Roberts, Barber made a trip to Europe to visit a number of foreign mints on an information-sharing mission. His goal was to observe and discuss the practices at the foreign mints to look for ways to improve operations and efficiency at the U.S. Mint. He combined this trip with a family vacation with his second wife Caroline and his 19-year-old daughter Edith. Barber carried with him memos from various departments within the mint with questions to ask their counterparts overseas. These memos, some of which today have Barber's hand-written notes, correspond to the various reports he submitted to Mint director Roberts after his return (these reports are in the National Archives). Edith's diary from the trip provide details on their itinerary and personal reflections on her father.
Barber was known to be a meticulous professional. While different people have varying opinions about the artistic merits of his designs, it is indisputable that his coin designs hold up to years of heavy use and wear. This is one reason that so many Barber coins exist in such low grades—they were real workhorses in the U.S. economy and were routinely found in circulation until the 1950s.
In the end, Charles Barber was well liked and respected within the Treasury Department and the U.S. Mint. As evidence of this fact, the flags at the Philadelphia Mint were lowered to half staff on the day of his funeral. Roger Burdette provided a scan from the National Archives of the letter from Mint director F. H. von Engelken requesting permission to half-mast the flags. Charles E. Barber is the last mint official of any rank to have had this high honor bestowed upon him.
Biography.
Barber was born in London on November 16, 1840, the son of engraver William Barber. In 1869, he was appointed the assistant engraver at the United States Mint in Philadelphia. On January 20, 1880, he was appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to succeed his father in the position as chief engraver. He was frequently criticized for unimaginative designs, but R.W. Julian suggests that he "was capable of superb work when given a free hand".
Barber's best known designs are the Liberty Head coins — Barber dime, Barber quarter, and Barber half dollar, as well as the so-called "V" Liberty Head nickel. Some lesser known pattern coin designs include the trial copper-nickel cent, trial three-cent piece, and the $4 Stella "Flowing Hair" pieces. He was strongly critical of Augustus St. Gaudens' proposed high relief pattern for a new double eagle in 1907 and tried hard to stop them from being produced, citing the impracticality of the design. In reality, for a circulating coin, Saint-Gaudens' high-relief double eagle was entirely impractical as each coin required three to five blows of the dies to produce. Barber had to significantly lower the relief of the design to make a production-worthy coin. From 1907 to 1933, over 70 million "Saints" would be struck, impossible with Saint-Gaudens' original design.
Personally, Charles Barber was married to Martha, who died in 1899. In 1902, he married Caroline Gaston (1846-1950), who was his wife until his death in 1917. Charles and Martha had a daughter in 1875, Anna May, named for Charles' mother. Unfortunately, the baby died in 1876. Ten years later, Charles and Martha had a daughter named Edith (1886-1970). Charles E. Barber died on February 18, 1917, and was buried 3 days later with Martha and infant daughter Anna May in Mount Peace Cemetery in Philadelphia.
Barber was succeeded as chief engraver by George T. Morgan.


Crispian Sallis

Timothy Crispian Sallis (born 24 June 1959) is a British art director. He was nominated for three Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction for the films "Aliens", "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Gladiator". He is the son of Peter Sallis.


Puzzle Bobble 3

Puzzle Bobble 3 (also known as Bust-A-Move 3) is an action puzzle video game developed by Taito. The second sequel to "Puzzle Bobble", it was released for arcades in September 1996 and later ported to the Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Game Boy, Nintendo 64 and Microsoft Windows. Like its predecessors, the player is tasked with shooting balls at groups of balls, creating groups of three or more, which are then removed from play.
The version of the game for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 featured refreshed graphics and new features. It was released as Bust-A-Move 3 DX in Europe (versions for the Game Boy and Microsoft Windows were exclusively released there) and Bust-A-Move 99 in the United States. In Japan, the Nintendo 64 port was released as Puzzle Bobble 64, while the PlayStation version was released as Puzzle Bobble 3 DX.
Gameplay.
The game completely abandons the idea of previous titles that the playfield is being pushed down by some sort of mechanical device and instead attaches groups of bubbles to nodes that move downwards. When a node is no longer connected to any bubbles, it will disappear and when all nodes in a level have vanished the level is complete. As a result, shooting a bubble to the top of the visible playfield without striking any bubbles causes it to bounce and travel back downwards. The player is not penalised if such bubbles again leave the playing field without attaching to anything (except for adding to the number of moves until the field is pushed down by one empty line). Despite this, some versions include a reimplementation of the "Puzzle Bobble 2" levels now built around nodes (entitled Version 2.5).
Gameplay is further varied by the implementation of new scrolling playfields that are several times as high as the screen and must be conquered as an endurance event. Each scrolling playfield occupies the same space on the world map as five previous levels.
This game also marks the introduction of rainbow bubbles into the series - bubbles that are initially transparent and filled with a rainbow. If an adjoining bubble is burst, the rainbow bubbles switch to the colour of the burst bubble, allowing the player to build up chain reactions.
The ability to choose a character was introduced, but only to the VS Computer mode. As in "Bubble Bobble", the first player controls Bub, and the second player controls Bob. In the Nintendo 64 version, a four-player-simultaneous option is available.
Release.
"Puzzle Bobble 3"s developer, Taito, also published the game in Japan. The U.S. division of Acclaim Entertainment, which held the rights to publish Taito's games in the Western hemisphere, had dropped support for the Sega Saturn in mid-1997, so the Saturn version was published in North America by Natsume instead. However, Acclaim's European division published the Saturn version in PAL territories.
Promotion.
The game was showcased at the JAMMA 96 along with Fighter's Impact and G-Darius.
Reception.
In Japan, "Game Machine" listed "Puzzle Bobble 3" on their January 1, 1997 issue as being the seventh most-successful arcade game of the year.
The Saturn port received moderately positive reviews, with critics voicing approval for the introduction of multiple playable characters with their own individual abilities, the vast number of levels included in the collection mode, and the intensity of the multiplayer gameplay. However, most questioned whether the game's improvements to the series formula were enough to warrant a purchase for gamers who already owned "Bust-a-Move 2". "GamePro" found the reuse of the previous installment's soundtrack and the limited changes to the gameplay in particular doused much of the excitement for the game. "Next Generation" disagreed, asserting that "it's arguable that the formula Taito and Natsume hit on with the "Bust-A-Move" series needs no major improvements and is sure to please any puzzle fanatic. A must-have classic game."
"Sega Saturn Magazine" concluded that while the game's one-player modes lack sufficient longevity, they are highly enjoyable, and the two-player mode makes "Bust-a-Move 3" a great purchase for puzzle fans. While Dan Hsu of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" argued that the "Bust-a-Move" games are mindless compared to other action puzzlers, his three co-reviewers all found the game to be great fun, and felt the enhancements were enough to make it worthwhile for veterans of the series. Kraig Kujawa summed up that "This game has about everything one could ask for from a sequel that keeps the original gameplay intact."


Hardee hat

The Hardee hat, also known as the Model 1858 Dress Hat and sometimes nicknamed the "Jeff Davis", was the regulation dress hat for enlisted men in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Hardee hat was also worn by Confederate soldiers. However, most soldiers found the black felt hat to be too hot and heavy and shunned its use, preferring a forage cap or slouch hat. However, the unadorned, plain and often field-modified Hardee hat was worn by Union troops, especially in the Western theater. The hardee hat was most famously worn, and easily identified, as the hat worn by the Union Army's Iron Brigade, which became their trademark and were popularly known, by the nickname, "The Black Hats".
The hat apparently was named after William J. Hardee, a career officer in the U.S. Army from 1838 until resigning his commission on January 31, 1861. Hardee was Commandant of Cadets at West Point from 1856 to 1860. He was lieutenant colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry until just before the war. In 1855, he published "Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics for the Exercise and Manoeuvres of Troops When Acting as Light Infantry or Riflemen", popularly known as "Hardee's Tactics", which became the best-known drill manual of both sides of the Civil War. He joined the Confederate States Army in March 1861 and eventually became a lieutenant general and corps commander.
U.S. Army regulations specified that the hat should be adorned with a brass hat device and a wool hat cord denoting the branch of service of the wearer: sky blue for infantry, scarlet for artillery, and gold for cavalry. The brim was to be pinned up on the right side for cavalrymen and artillerymen, and on the left for infantry soldiers.


Laser Squad

Laser Squad is a turn-based tactics video game, originally released for the ZX Spectrum and later for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Amiga, Sharp MZ-800 and Atari ST and PC computers between 1988 and 1992. It was designed by Julian Gollop and his team at Target Games (later Mythos Games and Codo Technologies) and published by Blade Software, expanding on the ideas applied in their previous "Rebelstar" series of games.
"Laser Squad" originally came with five mission scenarios, with an expansion pack released for the 8-bit versions, containing a further two scenarios. Reaction from gaming magazines was positive, gaining it high review rating and several accolades. The legacy of the game can be seen in other titles like the "X-COM" series, especially the acclaimed "" which was also created by Julian Gollop and was initially conceived as a sequel to "Laser Squad".
Gameplay.
"Laser Squad" is a turn-based tactics war game where the player completes objectives such as rescue or retrieval operations, or simply eliminating all of the enemy by taking advantage of cover, squad level military tactics, and careful use of weaponry. The squad's team members are maneuvered around a map one at a time, taking actions such as move, turn, shoot, pick up and so on that use up the unit's action points. More heavily laden units may tire more easily, and may have to rest to avoid running out of action points more quickly in subsequent turns. Morale also plays a factor; a unit witnessing the deaths of his teammates can panic and run out of the player's control.
The original Target Games 8-bit release came with the first three missions with an expansion pack offered via mail order for the next two. The subsequent Blade Software 8-bit release included these as standard; the mail order expansion pack now offered was for missions six and seven instead. Both offers covered cassette and floppy disk versions. As well as featuring new scenarios, the expansion packs included additional weapons as part of the scenarios.
Including the expansion pack, there are seven scenarios in total, each one with its own difficulty settings and squad allocation:
Reception.
"Computer and Video Games", reviewing the original ZX Spectrum version, awarded it a near-perfect 97% score and a 'C+VG HIT!', stating that ""Laser Squad" is one of the hottest games I've ever played." Other Spectrum reviews included an 89% in "Sinclair User", while "Your Sinclair" gave the game a 9/10, calling it "a sophisticated strategy wargame...on a par with "Elite" for thinking warmongers." The game was voted number 16 in the "Your Sinclair"s Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time.
The Commodore 64 version also fared well with "CU Amiga-64" giving a 'CU Screen Star' award with a 92% rating. "Zzap!64" gave the game a score of 83%, stating that the game was "an absorbing and very fresh approach to man-to-man combat." "Amstrad Action" awarded the CPC version with 91% and an 'AA Mastergame' accolade. The "Expansion Pack 2" received an even higher rating of 93% when it became available for review, as "two excellent additions to a game that was already excellent."
The Amiga version also received positive reviews. "Amiga Format" awarded a 'Gold Award' for a 93% rating explaining that it "is a terrific game that is superbly playable and can definitely be recommended." Other Amiga reviews given by "Zero" and "CU Amiga-64" gave the game their scores of 88% and 87%, respectively. It was ranked the 25th best Amiga game ever by "Amiga Power" in 1991.
In 2004, readers of "Retro Gamer" voted "Laser Squad" as the 63rd top classic game.
Legacy.
"Rebelstar" and "Laser Squad" are among the earliest examples of turn-based unit-level wargame video games. In 1990, Mythos Games released a fantasy game "Lords of Chaos", which had many similarities to "Laser Squad" but was a follow-up to Gollop's earlier ZX Spectrum game "". The "Laser Squad" franchise has been revived by Gollop's Codo Technologies in 2002 with the play-by-email game "Laser Squad Nemesis", although this departs from the turn-based action point system and does not have customizable weaponry.
Many of the "Laser Squad" mechanics were re-used in the later "X-COM" series of games, created also by Gollop and Mythos Games but published by MicroProse. Notably, the first "X-COM" game, ', began its development as "Laser Squad II". Some of the name choices for characters and organizations in the games of Mythos and Codo are a thread connecting all the "Laser Squad" and "Rebelstar" games. The cover art for "", Firaxis Games' and 2K Games' remake of "X-COM: UFO Defense", pays homage to "Laser Squad".


Baroda Group

The Baroda Group refers to the artists involved with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, now known as Vadodara in Gujarat state of India. An experimental art school that drew artists of a variety of backgrounds, the Baroda Group offered an alternative to the nationalism associated with Santiniketan and the Bengal School.
The dynamic group was formed in 1957 under the guidance of N. S. Bendre. Prominent artists associated with the group were N. S. Bendre, Bhupen Khakhar, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Ratan Parimoo, Rekha Rodwittiya, Jyotsna Bhatt, Vivan Sundaram, K. G. Subramanyan and Jeram Patel.
History.
The Faculty of Fine Arts, established in 1949, at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda was intended to provide an alternative to established art schools while promoting the value of contemporary art. The school's curriculum centered around the concept of "Living Traditions," or the idea that traditions are necessary to modern and contemporary art, and arts must learn from them. This concept led to exhibitions of folk art and the Fine Arts Fair, developed by teacher and artist K. G. Subramanyan. At Fine Arts Fairs, local craftspeople would teach students their trade, inviting students to learn from these traditions and experiment with different media and forms. This proved especially fruitful for Mrinalini Mukherjee, a contemporary artist who would eventually become acclaimed for her hemp-based sculptures.
These fairs also inspired Subramanyan's work in terra cotta. Between 1962 and 1963, Subramanyan and a team of students and faculty collaborated on a terracotta tile mural on the front wall of the Rabindralaya auditorium in Lucknow, illustrating the Rabindranath Tagore story "The King of the Dark Chamber."This kind of collaboration between teacher and student was an important aspect of teaching at Baroda, while the medium and content reflected Subramanyan's emphasis on folk craft and indigenous culture. Subramanyan celebrated craftspeople and folk art because he believed in craftsmanship as an alternative to the negative effects of consumerism. He said,
In addition to drawing inspiration from tribal traditions and crafts, Baroda artists also believed in documenting and preserving these traditions. Concerned that folk arts were dying out, artist Jyoti Bhatt photographed the lives and art of different tribes around India, including the people of Kutch and Saurashtra regions as well as Rabari people. Through his travels, Bhatt photographed and documented the artistic traditions of women from all over India, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, and Bihar.
In 1981, artists Jogen Chowdhury, Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani, Sudhir Patwardhan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, and Vivan Sundaram participated in "A Place for People," an exhibition focused on contemporary narrative and figurative art. This exhibition marked the beginning of the Narrative Figurative Movement of Indian art, which announced the return of the narrative Indian art, a turn away from the abstraction that had dominated much of the twentieth century. In an accompanying essay, Geeta Kapur laid out an argument for the value of the narrative in contemporary Indian art, arguing that the centrality of the narrative (and the figural) in historical Indian art, like temple architecture and miniature painting, made the narrative a vital resource for contemporary Indian artists. She saw modernism's simplification of forms as parallel to Indian traditions in sculpture and miniaturism, and thus an important consideration for contemporary artists. Fundamentally, she believed in the power of the narrative and the figurative as the basis for a life-affirming art that moves away from nihilism and towards a more positive future for both Indian art and India itself, one that acknowledges the complexity and contradictions of contemporary urban life. Kapur's assertions were supplemented by the artist's statements in the catalog. Gulam Mohammed Sheikh wrote,
While the Narrative Figurative Movement became an important turn for Indian modern artists, it also proved to be somewhat controversial. The Indian Radical Painters' and Sculptors' Association pushed back against Kapur's idealistic interpretation of narrative art, launching their own counter-exhibition titled "Questions and Dialogue." Despite this controversy, the Narrative Figurative Movement continues to be an important era of Indian art, as it launched the careers of artists like Sudhir Patwardhan, Bhupen Khakhar, and Nalini Malani.
Exhibitions.
The Baroda Group had exhibited in various cities like Bombay, Ahmedabad, and Srinagar between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s. Members of the group changed over the years. The exhibition intended to show works of both established and emerging artists at the time. Participating artists included Jyoti Bhatt, N. S. Bendre, Farokh Contractor, Bhupendra Desai, Kishori Kaul, Padmini Manerikar, Sumant Shah, Vinod Shah, G. R. Santosh, K. G. Subramanyan, G. M. Sheikh, Himmat Shah, Narendra Amin, Shailesh Dave, Triloke Kaul, Vinodray Patel, Jayant Parikh, Jeram Patel, Jyoti Shah, Vinay Trivedi, Balkrishna Patel, and Hasmukh Modi.


Afro Samurai 2

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma was a third-person action-adventure video game published by Versus Evil and developed by Redacted Studios. The game was released for the PlayStation Network and Microsoft Windows in September 2015, with an Xbox One version planned for October. The sequel to 2009's "Afro Samurai", originally a manga series by Takashi Okazaki, the player controls Kuma, a swordsman who seeks revenge on the titular character.
The game received widely negative reviews from critics. Originally planned to be released in three volumes, Versus Evil removed "Revenge of Kuma" from all platforms, issued refunds, and cancelled the other two volumes. The Xbox One version was also never released.
Plot.
The plot of "Afro Samurai 2" is about Kuma trying to fight Afro, the titular character of the anime series. Kuma following his defeat by Afro now seeks to challenge him for the Number One headband and take his revenge.
Development.
The game was developed by Redacted Studios and published by Versus Evil. After the release of the first "Afro Samurai" in 2009, former Namco Bandai senior producer David Robinson left the company, and founded Redacted. Along with leaving Namco Bandai, he secured the rights to make other games in the series.
"Afro Samurai 2"s story was written by Jim DeFelice, co-writer of "American Sniper". The soundtrack to the game was done by rapper RZA, who also produced two soundtrack albums of the animated series. The game's still image cutscenes was done by series creator Takashi Okazaki.
The game was released for the PlayStation Network and Microsoft Windows on September 22, 2015. An Xbox One version was also planned to be released on October 9. After the negative reception of the other versions, however, it was never released.
Reception.
Upon release, "Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma" received widely negative reviews from critics and fans of the series.
Polygon called it one of the worst games of 2015. Giant Bomb called it the worst game of the year. It was the second worst-reviewed game of 2015 according to aggregate review website Metacritic.
Withdrawal and cancelled trilogy.
In November 2015, "Afro Samurai 2" was pulled from the PSN and Steam. In an interview with CGMagazine on the game's withdrawal, Versus Evil's Steve Escalante called the game "a failure" and announced the cancellation of the other two volumes and refunds for customers. Escalante later expanded on the decision in an interview with Gamasutra, saying, "Given the game quality was not what people were expecting, it didn’t sell like hot cakes, let’s just put it like that."


Hum Award for Best Drama Serial Popular

The Hum Award for Best Drama Serial Viewers Choice or Popular is one of the Hum Awards of Merit presented annually by the Hum Television Network and Entertainment Channel (HTNEC) to producers working in the drama industry. Best Drama Serial Viewers Choice/Popular is considered the most important of the Hum Awards, as it represents all the directing, acting, music composing, writing, editing and other efforts put forth into a drama. The nominations are selected by Hum membership as a whole while winners are selected by Online voting of Public thus called Viewers Choice or Popular. This category is the equivalent to the Hum Award for Best Drama Serial - Jury, decide by Hum membership and selected panel of Jury by Hum.
History.
The best drama Viewers Choice category originates with the 2nd Hum Awards ceremony since 2014. This category has been given to the best drama of previous year to the ceremony held by public voting. Since Hum Awards has been just started, this category has not a brief history. The name of the category officially termed by the channel is:
Winners and nominees.
In the list below, winners are listed first in the colored row, followed by the other nominees. The year shown is the one in which the drama serial first telecast; normally this is also the year before the ceremony at which the award is given; for example, a drama serial exhibited telecast during 2005 then this will be eligible for consideration for the 2005 Best Drama Serial Hum Awards, awarded in 2006. The number of the ceremony (1st, 2nd, etc.) appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article on that ceremony. Each individual entry shows the title followed by the production company, and the producer. From Second ceremony, the Best Drama Serial Viewers Choice award has given to Production company rather than to producer.
For the first ceremony, the eligibility period spanned full calendar years. For example, the 1st Hum Awards presented on April 28, 2013, to recognized dramas that were released between January, 2012, and December, 2012, the period of eligibility is the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.
Date and the award ceremony shows that the 2010 is the period from 2010-2020 (10 years-decade), while the year above winners and nominees shows that the dramas year in which they were telecast, and the figure in bracket shows the ceremony number, for example; an award ceremony is held for the dramas of its previous year.


Louise Sandhaus

Louise Sandhaus (born 1955) is an American graphic designer and graphic design educator. She is a professor at California Institute of the Arts and is principal of Louise Sandhaus Design.
Early life and education.
Sandhaus received an associate degree in advertising design from The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in 1976. She worked for a small publisher in Boston in the 1980s. She earned her BFA and MFA in graphic design from the California Institute of the Arts in 1993 and 1994. She received a Graduate Laureate from the Jan Van Eyck Academie in The Netherlands in 1996.
Work.
Sandhaus founded her design studio, Louise Sandhaus Design (LSD), in 1998. She was the co-director of the CalArts Graphic Design Program from 1998 to 2004 and was the program's sole director from 2004 to 2006.
Since 1999, Sandhaus has collaborated with architecture firm Durfee Regn as Durfee Regn Sandhaus. The collective has designed museum exhibitions and interdisciplinary projects. Her work is included in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. She co-curated the Graphic Design section of the 2010 California Design Biennial "Action/Reaction".
Sandhaus received the AIGA Los Angeles Fellow Award in 2009 and served on the organization's national board from 2009 to 2011. She is currently working with AIGA on "Making History", a national initiative to build and preserve graphic design history through crowd-sourcing and utilizing a digital platform/tool.
Sandhaus's book on West Coast design history, "Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936-1986" was inspired by English architectural historian Reyner Banham. The book received exceptional press coverage including reviews from The New York Times, The Guardian (London), The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Eye magazine. An exhibition including page spreads of the proposed book was held at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 2008.
Sandhaus lives in Ojai, California.


Sound M.O.B.

Sound M.O.B. (The Sound Of Magnificently Orchestrated Beats) is a record production and songwriting duo consisting of Brandon "Pyro" Tillman and Raul "DJ Ryu" Gonzalez from Houston, Texas. They are mostly known for creating the infectious instrumental to Kirko Bangz's single "Drank In My Cup" in 2011. Other than Kirko Bangz, they have produced for Bun B, Casey Veggies, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Z-Ro, Killa Kyleon, and more.
History.
Pyro and DJ Ryu both went to Barbara Jordan High School and even though record production wasn't a career at the school, they were both into production before they even met. They both met each other through a mutual friend and rapper by the name of Krucial and DJ Ryu was making beats for his songs. Krucial told Pyro to go to DJ Ryu's house where they made music together. Pyro went one day after school and he was surprised that DJ Ryu had a whole entire studio in his house. Pyro played DJ Ryu has beats and vice versa and they both realized they were making the same type of music, so they decided to form a production duo.
In 2007, Pyro and DJ Ryu entered the Red Bull Big Tune, a national twelve-city beat battle tour sponsored by Red Bull. At the time, DJ Ryu was nineteen and Pyro was twenty years old, and was before they really named themselves Sound M.O.B. The beat all of the competition and made it to the Semi-Finals before being defeated by S1. In 2008, they entered the competition for the second time as Sound M.O.B. and earned the title as the 2008 Red Bull Big Tune Champs of Houston, and went on to compete in the National Finals in New York City, which was broadcast on BET. In 2009, they first met rapper Kirko Bangz and began working together and exposing him as an artist working while working on his "Procrastination Kills" mixtape series.
One day, they got a call from Pleasure P, who was on tour with Young Money, informing them that he'd ended up on YM's tour bus and Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, and Drake recorded a song on one of their beats. Sound M.O.B. thought it could end up on their upcoming album "We Are Young Money". Ryu and Pyro were both excited and were checking their phones almost everyday to see if they'd get called about the song placement, but no one called in three months. Once they were called, they looked up track list online to see if they were on there and saw the name of their song, but with a name of a different producer. It happened that, they were told that the beat was theirs but, it was actually someone else's. It was heartbreaking for them.
Later that year, Sound M.O.B. were called by Bun B to work on his "Trill OG" album. They produced the bonus track "Real Live", which featured rappers Gator Mane and GLC. In early 2010, Sound MOB's got recognition with the song, "What Yo Name Iz?" by Kirko Bangz. With the success of the song, Bangz got signed to Warner Bros. Records. The song peaked at number 41 on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, which led to a remix being released featuring Big Sean, Wale, and Bun B. On September 16, 2011, Kirko Bangz' released the second Sound M.O.B. produced single, "Drank In My Cup". During the week of February 25, 2012, the single debuted at number 96 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. It has since peaked at number 52 and at number 1 on the Heatseekers Songs chart. The song spawned four remixes featuring hip-hop artists J. Cole, 2 Chainz, Bow Wow, and Trey Songz.
Production style.
Ryu mostly uses melody-chord and an advanced piano player, and Pyro started off using Fruity Loops, with kicks and drums. DJ Ryu showed Pyro mostly everything about the piano. When DJ Ryu started off, he basically wanted to learn how to play the piano and try to hone his own skills on the piano side and drums kind of fell second nature, but once he started to work with Pyro, he showed how to use the drums, so they helped each other out in that sense.


Taku Murata

 is a video game programmer working for Square Enix (formerly Square), as well as the general manager of the research and development division of the company. He was born in 1965 and joined Square in 1991. He is most notable as the main programmer for "Final Fantasy Tactics" and "Vagrant Story". He also worked on the development of the PlayOnline service. Murata also helped promote a new proprietary cross platform game development tool called Crystal Tools. His latest work was on "Final Fantasy XII" as the programming supervisor of the game.
Biography.
Games.
During the creation of "Vagrant Story", Murata and other team members decided that a "real time 3D" was the way to go, though the scale of the game and the heightened expectations that came with it made him feel "uneasy".
Later, while supervising development on "Final Fantasy XII", he stated that development and innovation became such a protracted affair that the game was in danger of being technically obsolete upon release, so 70% of their staff was assigned to improve the quality of the games art assets. In this way, each of the three development priorities (innovation, quality and volume) were all held together, though innovation remained top priority.
Crystal Tools.
Beginning in 2004, Square Enix decided there was a need to create a common 3D data format, and as a result a Research and Development Division was established in September 2006. At the 2007 Game Developers Conference, Murata noted that the development team was using proprietary software to allow "real time display" of PlayStation 2 output to a television to see immediately and precisely how a game would look. At the Game Developers Conference 2008, Murata did a presentation called "The Technology of Final Fantasy" during which he revealed that they had been working on a PlayStation 3 exclusive game development engine called "White Engine", and it had already reached Version 1.0. He also announced that Version 1.1, or "Crystal Tools", was finished in September 2007. Murata later said in an interview that White Engine was meant to be a code name, and they wanted to have an official name that had something to do with Square Enix, and Crystal both sounded right and reflected "many different colors". Finishing his 2008 speech, he stated that the technology would be used on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and a "scaled down" version for the Wii, and that "Final Fantasy XIII", "Final Fantasy Versus XIII", and a new MMORPG would both make use of the technology. The developers working with the engine, in keeping with the "Final Fantasy" style, requested many closeups and stylization of characters. When asked if Square might license the engine to other companies to develop games with, he stated that Squares focus was elsewhere, and that there was not yet enough documentation to do that.


Hum Awards pre-show

The Hum Awards pre-show (currently known as Hum Awards Red Carpet) and Making of Hum Awards are recorded televised pre-shows where former precedes the start of the Hum Awards telecast by 37 minutes and latter, two days prior to ceremony respectively. The pre-show takes place on the red carpet surrounding the theater which holds the telecast, and is almost always hosted by various media personalities, while making of award ceremony introduced the back stage performances, rehearsals, managements and making of stage of ceremony before the event. The latter event is not necessary to be recorded and shown every year.
Red carpet of Hum Awards begin half an hour before the ceremony starts, it's include the interview and the welcome arrival of all the guests, nominees and others on the ceremony. While Making of Hum Awards usually held two days before the ceremony with running time of forty to forty five minutes. 1st Hum Awards Ceremony's red-carpet and making of ceremony was hosted by Sohai Ali Abro and Noor Hassan Rizvi at Expo Center, Karachi.
History.
As of 1st Hum Awards the pre-show or red carpet is held half an hour or 45-minutes before the actual ceremony starts. As the red carpet and event went live with out telecast for audience. 1st Hum Awards and Red carpet were both recorded as per the decision by Hum TV management team.
Title.
Most recently it's known as the "Hum Awards Red Carpet", but it is also known as the Hum Awards pre-show, but more acknowledgedly it is known as Red Carpet.
Hosts of Pre-shows.
The pre-show usually employs the use of recent TV or media personalities as the hosts, who interview the nominees and attendees and sometimes introduce special segments in the moments preceding the ceremony.
As per of 1st Hum Awards there is a special 30 minute program, which shows the making of Award Ceremony, for example; Stage making, Awards presentations, interviews of management head etc. For 1st Hum awards the making of ceremony televised at 7: 25 pm on April 26, 2013, 2 days before the actual event, as per event or red carpet this program was also recorded at televised two days before actual event and one day before red carpet event. The event is not neccassry to be shown every year.
Mostly the hosts of Red-carpet and Making of ceremony are same, following is the listing of hosts of the pre-show since the 1st Hum Awards ceremony held in 2013:


Margaret Farrar

Margaret Petherbridge Farrar (March 23, 1897 – June 11, 1984) was an American journalist and the first crossword puzzle editor for "The New York Times" (1942–1968). Creator of many of the rules of modern crossword design, she wrote a long-running series of crossword puzzle books including the first-ever book of any kind published by Simon & Schuster.
Biography.
Margaret Petherbridge was born March 23, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York, to Margaret (Furey) and Henry Petherbridge, who owned a licorice factory. A lifelong resident of New York City, she attended Berkeley Institute in Brooklyn and graduated from Smith College in 1919.
Her career in crossword puzzles began at the "New York World" in 1921. She had been hired as the secretary to the editor of the Sunday edition of the "New York World"; he eventually assigned her to assist crossword inventor Arthur Wynne, who was overloaded with reader submissions of puzzles – and with complaints about flawed puzzles. Petherbridge had never solved a puzzle herself and therefore chose puzzles to be printed without testing them, until fellow "World" employee Franklin Pierce Adams criticized her for it; in response, she tried the puzzles, and discovered to her dismay that some of them were unsolvable. She subsequently described her reaction as "(taking) an oath to edit the crosswords to the essence of perfection;" her puzzles eventually became more popular than Wynne's.
In January 1924 Petherbridge was given an advance of $25 and asked to compile a book of crossword puzzles by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, who were launching a book publishing company but did not yet have any manuscripts. "The Cross Word Puzzle Book" launched Simon & Schuster as a major publisher and was the first of four bestselling compilations published that year. Simon & Schuster's crossword books became the longest continuously published book series.
In 1926 Petherbridge married John C. Farrar, one of the co-founders of Farrar & Rinehart and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She left the "World" to raise a family, and returned to journalism in 1942 as founding puzzle editor of "The New York Times". She remained with the newspaper until 1969. She also edited novels for Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1950–1960), and upon her husband's death in 1974 she succeeded him as a member of the company's board of directors.
In 1959, a "New Yorker" article described Farrar as "[p]robably the most important person in the world of the crossword puzzle." The article quoted Farrar's preferences for clues: "We don’t allow two-letter words and we avoid as much as possible obsolete words, variants, obscure words, and clichés—words like 'gnu' and 'emu' and 'proa' ... I favor using lots of book titles, play titles, names in the news, and so on. I also favor puzzles with a unifying theme—what I call the inner-clue puzzle, which was invented by one of our best constructors, Harold T. Bers. For example, an inner-clue puzzle he did for us recently was called 'Catalogue' and had answers that were words or phrases like 'catbird seat,' 'catacombs,' 'Kitty Hawk,' and 'pussyfoot.'"
Farrar died June 11, 1984, at her home in Manhattan. Up to her death, she compiled two crossword puzzle books a year for Simon & Schuster (she was working on the 134th volume), and was editing puzzles for the "Los Angeles Times" syndicate.
Legacy.
Puzzle creator, editor and publisher Stanley Newman has referred to Farrar as a "crossword genius", and credits her with the creation of "many, if not most" of the rules that guide modern crossword design.


S. Craig Taylor

S. Craig Taylor Jr. was an American game designer who has worked primarily on board games and wargames.
Career.
S. Craig Taylor Jr. first had a playtest credit on the 1962 version of Avalon Hill's version of "Bismarck". Stephen Peek and Craig Taylor worked for wargame company Battleline Publications, which later merged into Heritage USA to speed its growth; when that did not work out Peek and Taylor took the opportunity to form Yaquinto Publications, a new wargame publisher. Taylor has been a playtester, designer, developer, researcher, rules writer, and producer for well over 100 board, miniature, card, and computer games for such publishers Battleline, Yaquinto, Avalon Hill, Microprose, Imagic, SouthPeak Games, TalonSoft, Lost Battalion Games, and Breakaway Games. Taylor's credits include such designs as "Wooden Ships and Iron Men", "Air Force", "Flattop", "Battle", "Wings", "", "Sergeants", "Battlegroup", and "Gettysburg: Leading the Killer Angels".


Christiane Baumgartner

Christiane Baumgartner (born 1967 in Leipzig) is a German artist best known for her woodcut printmaking.
Life and work.
Baumgartner studied at the Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, from 1988 to 1994 before completing her Masters in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London in 1999. Baumgartner is best known for the monumental woodcuts based on her own films and video stills, for example "1 Sekunde", in which she documented a single second of video in a series of 25 woodcuts. She has said that she is "interested in woodcut for conceptual reasons and not just for the love of the material...it's about bringing together the different mediums of the video still and the woodcut, about combining the first and the latest reproduction techniques to produce an image..." She first came to public attention in the UK in EAST international in 2004 with her print "Shack" and a year later with a major solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. She was included in the groundbreaking exhibition at MoMA, NY, "Eye on Europe".
In 2009 she received the Teresa Bulgarini Prize for her woodcuts which deal with concepts of time, motion, velocity and acceleration. In 2012 she was awarded the first ever Goethe-Institut artist's residency in Vietnam, jointly sponsored by the state of Saxony. She began her three-month stay with an exhibition at the Goethe-Institut in Hanoi - "Holzschnitt im digitalen Zeitalter" (woodcut in the digital age) and finished with a tour around the country's art schools, sharing her experience in the art of woodcut. Her work was subject to a traveling retrospective in 2014-2015, with exhibitions at the Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image Imprimée in La Louviere, the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, and the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva; it was accompanied by the first oeuvre catalog in her career.
Baumgartner’s works are included in the collections of Albertina (Vienna), the British Museum (London), the Städel (Frankfurt), Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), Kunsthaus Zurich, Museum der bildenden Künste (Leipzig), Museum of Fine Arts, (Boston), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Spendhaus (Reutlingen), Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), The New Art Gallery Walsall and Victoria and Albert Museum (London), among others.
Her working process is largely intuitive. She begins by selecting an image from existing film footage she shoots off of a television screen. The grainy lines of the screen appear in her final images. She decides on the size and frequency of the lines and creates a half-tone image. Then she prints the image and transfers it onto a woodblock and starts cutting. She describes the wood cutting process as meditative and uses the cutting as time for reflection. Once the cutting is complete, at such a large scale she must ink and print by hand, using no press. "I also like the handmade aspect of the cutting with all its inaccuracies and mistakes- this is an important aspect of the final print."


Alice Russell Glenny

Alice Russell Glenny (1858–1924) was an American painter, sculptor, and graphic artist who lived and worked in Buffalo, New York. Glenny was a fixture of the thriving artistic scene in Buffalo in the early twentieth century. From 1893-1894 and 1903–1904, she served as president of the Buffalo Society of Artists. She studied under top teachers, such as William Merritt Chase and Gustav Boulanger, in both the United States and France, and was considered in her time to be one of the city's top artists. Today, Glenny is best remembered for her Art Nouveau posters and magazine illustrations. Her posters were featured prominently in Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition of 1901, famous for being the location of the shooting of President William McKinley. She also regularly contributed illustrations to the Buffalo-Courier Express, one of the major newspapers in Buffalo at the time.
Early life and artistic training.
In 1858, Alice Russell was born in Detroit, Michigan. As a young woman, she moved to New York to study art, where she met and married John Clark Glenny of Buffalo (1859–1909). The couple had two daughters. Living in New York, Glenny trained under American painter and art teacher William Merritt Chase. Traveling to Paris, Glenny also studied with French figure painter Gustav Boulanger.
Involvement in the graphic arts.
While also being a muralist and sculptor, Glenny's work as a graphic artist consisted of American Art Nouveau posters. With the development of color lithography, the production of posters was elevated worldwide from what H.C. Bunner had called a "primitive system" in which woodblocks were harshly carved allowing for an imprecision of color and shape. Color lithography provided American advertisers with the means of creating eye-catching and beautifully rendered pictures, often of fashionable women. Poster design in America was influenced by a number of emerging styles from countries such as France and Britain. French poster design, largely influenced by woodblock printing in Japan, was well received in the United States when Harper's Magazine commissioned Franco-Swiss artist Eugène Grasset to create covers in 1889, 1891, 1892, and in April 1893. Exposure to these international styles ignited a "poster craze" in which American graphic designers developed a style commonly "depicting bourgeois scenes" and utilizing more stylized lines filled with blocks of color, similar to the designs of artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha.
Through the proliferation of print culture as well as industrial expansion, American millionaires such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick began to support education and culture, enabling the U.S. to be a fertile ground for the creation of a new style of art. It was not only the upper-class who strove for cultural edification, but the also middle-class who were exposed to emerging art styles through magazines. These magazines provided a push for the opening of new museums and travel abroad. Women's Clubs were integral in establishing cultural spaces as well as publishing these art magazines.
Glenny was a part of a women's club named The Twentieth Century Club in Buffalo, New York. She, along with other poster artists such as Ethel Reed, was active in promoting the interests of American female artists. Her best known work is the cover for the Buffalo Courier: Women's Edition in 1895. Similar to other posters and covers being produced at this time, the cover displays organic and natural forms as well as the color blocking technique indicative of Art Nouveau style. Glenny's figure displays a hard face, however, uncommon of the bourgeois women depicted in posters of this time. A classical revival of sorts, the woman stares out in a stark frontality. She is softened by the flowing hair ribbon above her head and the full blooms of the flowers in her coiffured hair. While feminine in features, hairstyle, and clothing, the woman holds a firm stance in the face of women's rights.
The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.
Glenny's prints were exhibited at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. A World's Fair, the Pan-American Exposition sought to emphasize good relations between North and South America. After much deliberation and competition, Buffalo, New York was chosen as the site of the exposition due to its large population of 350,000 people and easy access by railroad. Following the Spanish–American War, the exhibition emphasized the economic connections of the United States and Latin America, especially Cuba and Puerto Rico. Upon learning of the theme of the World's Fair, President William McKinley declared, "I shall be very glad to do anything I can for Buffalo." The Pan-American Exposition ran from May 1 through November 2, 1901.
In 1900, Glenny won a mural competition to decorate the Pan-American Exposition's New York State Building. Her painting, "Blessing of the Cross by Father Milet, 1688" depicts a scene from New York history where a priest, Pierre Milet, erected a cross following the rescue of a starving garrison. The scene shows Milet, surrounded by a small group of soldiers and American Indians, blessing the raised cross while a faint figure of Christ hovers behind him. In addition to "Blessing of the Cross by Father Milet, 1688", Glenny had four other works displayed in the Exposition's Exhibit of Fine Arts, including "The Maid of the Mist", "The Coral Harp", and "The Figure of Electricity". The Exhibit boasted the largest collection of contemporary American artists such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler. Many of the works exhibited emphasized the achievements of American society and technology. Glenny's cover design for the booklet, "Music at the Pan-American Exposition: Organists, Orchestras, Bands", also known as "The Coral Harp" demonstrates her creativity representing the idyllic, idealized female form. The coral color choice was not an accident. As part of the spectacle of the Pan-American Exposition, each building was painted a different, vibrant color, with the Temple of Music painted red and salmon.
Highly advertised, the Exposition saw several noteworthy visitors, including Thomas Edison, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, and President McKinley. On September 6, McKinley was greeting visitors at the Temple of Music when Leon Czolgosz shot him twice. Despite the presence of the newly invented X-ray machine, doctors decided not to use it on the president for fear of possible radiation side effects. As a result of his wound in the abdomen, McKinley developed gangrene and died on September 14. The assassination cast a pall over the Exposition, and postcards depicting the Temple of Music, together with portraits of McKinley, were distributed. After the Exposition closed on November 2, the halls, including the Temple of Music, were disassembled and destroyed. The sole surviving structure from the Pan-American Exposition, the New York State Building still stands and was converted into Buffalo's Historical Society Museum where Glenny's mural remains.
Historical significance and artistic legacy.
Alice Russell Glenny is a historically significant figure in the realm of late nineteenth to early twentieth century American women artists as evidenced by her presence in "American Art Posters of the 1890s". The exhibition catalogue includes prints and posters that are housed in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Glenny's artwork in "American Art Posters of the 1890s" visually elucidates the uniqueness of the American posters when compared to French posters of the same time period. The insertion of Glenny's poster in this collection demonstrates that women artists helped shape American graphic design.
Glenny's legacy is also solidified by her inclusion in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Her artwork can be found in the tome "American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States". Within the text, there are many examples of works by influential women who were authors, film makers, photographers and printmakers. Glenny's entry in the volume regarding "The Buffalo Courier's Women's Edition" from May 8, 1895 explicates the importance of "Women's Editions" magazines. Women's editions magazines were usually longer than the regular magazine and were marketed specifically towards women. For example, "The Buffalo Courier's Women's Edition" was "forty pages (versus the usual ten) ... [and was] promoted with colorful posters and flyers to attract readers and advertisers alike." These editions proved that women were worthy of being marketed to as consumers.
Besides Glenny's historical legacy on the national stage in the MET and Library of Congress, she was also a prominent local figure in Buffalo, NY during her lifetime. For example, she was an editor of a local magazine called "Hobbies", which was put together by the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, circa 1920. "Hobbies" was a magazine that aimed to bring the "world to Buffalo." The purpose was to help middle class citizens cultivate their leisure time into worthwhile pursuits that promoted culture and erudition. Articles provided opportunities for citizens to become involved with a multitude of activities such as the study of photography, microscopic experimentation, and even anthropology. Glenny was the Art Director of this magazine. Her name can be found on the mast head. This demonstrates Glenny's continued involvement and authority regarding the arts even up until four years before her death.