DPencilPusher

Good Friday

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:41:57 +0100

Good Friday

The Network

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:37:00 +0100

Last Saturday (24/3/2012) I was at The Network, a conference for creatives held at Chevron Club, Gbagada. It was organized by Abinibi.

These are some of the speakers at the event. (L-R;T-B)
Steve Babaeko : An art director and advertising guru.
Lemi Ghariokwu: An artist who specializes in album art. He did several album sleeves for Fela Kuti and many other musicians in the ’70s & ’80s.
Kelechi Amadi-Obi: A well known professional photographer.
Kingsley James: Founder of DigiPrints; one of the best and most well known print companies in the country.
Goke Oludare: One of the major printers based out of Ṣomolu “the printing centre of Lagos”.

Others included:
Toyosi Akerele : Founder of RISE; a youth empowerment programme who is also in the magazine industry.

Cynthia & Teju; who came from Google Nigeria to talk to us about Google+ and YouTube.

Some notes I took down at the event:
From Steve Babaeko

“Build a solid knowledge base”
“Build a solid reputation”
“Build trust; always be on time”
“Build a strong network”
“Have multiple streams of income”
Adapt to survive

from Kelechi Amadi-Obi

“Make the decision to be an artist”
“Do good work, and show it”
“Show your work with style (packaging)”
“Take your work to the right audience”
“Do more than what is paid for”
“Put your standards above that of your clients. Then they be able to tell you “use your discretion” “

Kingsley and Goke also spoke about the age old battle between graphic designers and printers, and why many printers insist on CorelDraw’s .CDR format when we like to design in Photoshop. Basically the rip of their machines come equipped to handle .CDR and .TIFF natively. Also exporting to PDF is also a good format for print. We were reminded to take note of resolution, the size of paper (or whatever material to be printed on) and to design in CMYK.

All in all it was very good and enlightening.
Kudos to Abinibi for organizing this. Look forward to there being more and attending them.

Best Of 2012

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:35:00 +0100

As “award season” comes to a close, Where we take a look back at the past year and pick and/or rank our favorite things, products, entertainment, etc. Here’s my attempt at recapping 2012 and the things that I enjoyed and caught my attention last year. Bear in mind that for most of the year I was away from the city and it was kinda hard to keep up but I tried. I’ll try to make this an annual thing and maybe have a more structured “top-10” type list. You can include some of your favorites in the comments too. (Also it took me veeeerryyy loooong to compile and write this post)

Music. My favorite album last year was Chiddy Bang’s Breakfast. I enjoy every single track on the album. Another album I really liked was B.o.B’s Strange Clouds

But then again I didn’t get to listen to albums/tracks from some old favorites of mine like Nas’ Life is Good, The Roots’ Undun and Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor 2. All three of which were nominated for the Best Rap Album Grammy.
Some singles I enjoyed: Earthquake by Labrinth ft. Tinie Tempah, Kano, Wtech32, Busta Rhymes; Wide Awake by Katy Perry; Some Nights by Fun.; Good Time by Owl City ft. Carly Rae Jepsen; Payphone by Maroon5 ft. Wiz Khalifa; Million Voices by Otto Knows; Burn It Down by Linkin Park; R.I.P by Rita Ora ft. Tinie Tempah
Dubstep was everywhere as well.
Best Nigerian song might be Black Magic’s Rainbow.

Movies. I also didn’t get to see that many movies. Some of my favorites last year include The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Argo, Expendables 2, The Hobbit, Looper, Django Unchained, Hunger Games. Haven’t seen Life of Pi yet, I love tigers and it was Oscar nominated. Disappointments included The Amazing Spiderman. Everyone said Total Recall was crap but I enjoyed it. I also liked Wreck-It Ralph and Brave (although I thought Brave’s story was too linear/predictable)

Tech. I think we’ve reached a plateau of stagnation when it comes to devices and stuff. Sure they’re faster and have bigger (or smaller) screens but they all still work the same way and do the same things they have for the past few years.
Two things stuck out for me this year though.
1. The ereader. The kobo, Nook and the Kindle now have backlight -Kobo Glo, Glowlight and Paperwhite respectively, higher (double the previous) resolution screens, better refresh rates, touch screens and apparently helped move millions of copies of 50 Shades Of Grey.

2. 3D printing. Now this is something. I can’t even describe how excited I am about the ability to design something and have it as a solid object, right there under my nose that same day. For prices as low as $800.

Games. Some of my favorite games of 2012. I only spent a few minutes playing or wathing someone else play each of these games.
Darksiders 2; love it for Joe Madureira’s art and the added RPG elements (which weren’t in 1).
Dishonored; FPS -here the S means slasher. Nicknamed by my friends as “stabby stabby”. PES2013. FIFA13. Diablo 3; the most delayed/anticipated game ever. No? Street Fighter x Tekken. Borderlands 2; like the art style of this one too. Torchlight 2. Sleeping Dogs; a mafia action adventure type game; this one’s like playing out a (really long) movie, it also nears “unanny valley” territory very much.
Halo 4 and Call Of Duty: Black Ops II; both broke records of highest grossing entertainment media ever; Halo’s was more surprising because it’s XBox only.
A new thing also started in 2012: Android gaming consoles; with OUYA, GameStick and GameKlip which ads a PS3 controller to an Android smartphone to make it a portable console. Then there were the gaming tablets too.

TV. Game Of Thrones; The acclaimed high-fantasy novels adapted wonderfully, goes without saying, my favorite currently airing series, can’t wait for it’s return in March.
Touch; I like it, maybe because of ~~Jack Bauer~~ Keifer Sutherland. Although it’s like he has some leftover adrenalin from 24 (he still runs, yells and pants a lot) but it’s nothing like it. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s gonna be on the air very long.
Elementary; there was a lot of hype around this one, I really want to like it, but I hate to say, it doesn’t excite me that much.
Raising Hope; super funny. Twisted humor. Apparently it’s been on air since 2010 but I just discovered it last year. GCB; if you loved Desperate Housewives you’d love this.
Revenge; A lot of people like it but I don’t really, it coasts between serious and cheesy/melodramatic. And it’s like the actors are told to intentionally show intent through facial expressions in front of the camera (almost like they’re breaking the 4th wall). I’m actually surprised it’s on ABC; I would’ve expected CW.
Scandal; got into it because of Kerry Washington but stayed because of the suspense & intrigue.
Homeland; One of my favorites. I told my friend that I hadn’t found anything to scratch the itch left after 24 ended, he recommended Homeland. Said it was like a “24 lite”, plus with all the Emmy nods, I now know why everyone likes it. End of season 2 seemed kinda conclusive so I hope they don’t screw up the story in season 3.
Continuum. Cop chick and a gang of anti-capitalist terrorists come from the future to play cat and mouse. It’s actually more interesting than I just made it sound.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; I’m a TMNT fan and IMHO, this the best version since the original 1987 cartoon which I was hooked up on throughout my childhood. It’s like they deconstructed the title and then made sure each word could be felt when you watched it. I like the anime elements and the humor (although sometimes I wish it was a bit more serious).
Alcatraz by J.J Abrams was about some time travelling inmates, was boring, got cancelled. The he (Abrams) did another show Revolution; this one’s more interesting; a dystopia where all the power goes out (or as we Nigerians put it “NEPA takes light”)
Arrow; based on the DC character Green Arrow and sorta takes the place of Smallville for CW. Interesting and more grit than mush esp. for CW.
Legend Of Korra; I really enjoyed Avatar: The Last Airbender (not the horrendous movie though) and was glad when I learnt of another cartoon continuing that universe. Set 75 years after the original the world building is brilliant with steampunk and oriental elements. The character’s are great too. The art style and animation are also very awesome and makes me believe that 2D animation will still be around and enjoyable for a long time to come..

Babes. The women I kept ogling last year:
Kerry Washington got a lot of attention in 2012 due to the success of the new TV series she stars in Scandal (or vise-versa) and her role in Django Unchained. We remember her as Alicia in Fantastic Four and as a sultry seductress in I Think I Love My Wife. Very few women have high cheekbones as well as big baby soft (I imagine) cheeks. She’s got those big bright eyes that would seem difficult to close, and those luscious lips that barely cover her toothy grin. That and her slender lepa body and a fast paced walk on par with runway models.
Hannah Simone plays CeCe on the hit sitcom New Girl. She’s got a rocking figure 8 bod so it’s only apt that her character is a model. And she has a skin tone that I imagine all humans will have sometime in the future when all the races have mixed. Plus I recently found out she’s into videogames.

For a more general sampling of the celeb chicks guys dug last year check out AskMen.com’s Top 99 Women of 2013 (There are some I would argue shouldn’t be on that list though or whose positions should be moved up/down)

Websites & Web apps.
Website of the year goes to DIY.org; colorful, lovely illustrations for both avatars and badges and big UI elements. It’s purpose is also awesome; helping kids learn how to make/build things. Kickstarter; more for it’s purpose and what it has been accomplished through it than for it’s design (which is good too), Digg; relaunched, looks neater, better, more modern but they have to find a way to drive up engagement, Branch; which is what forums should look like in this decade; Then there’s Medium selective and curated blogging platform which is super neat and clutter free. Both backed by 2 of Twitter’s founders. Polygon the exquisite looking gaming online magazine (because calling it a blog would be underselling it) from the same folks that brought us The Verge in 2011. (how do they get these .com URLs???)

Car of the Year: The Tesla Model S it’s beautiful, it’s electric, it’s fitted with fancy tech. And a bunch of car mags also selected it as their car of the year.

Footballer of the Year: Messi C.Ronaldo and Iniesta were 1st 2nd & 3rd for the Ballon D’or and rightly so. I’m a fan of Messi. But we’ve been hearing of those three for some time now. So I’m giving my player of the year to someone who popped up on our radar with spectacular performance in 2012. It’s Atletico Madrid’s Falcao.

Stan Lee on Screen Savers

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 02:15:06 +0100

Kevin Rose: "Did you have any really bad flops, or something you really thought was gonna take off?"
Stan Lee: "Excuse me, you're talking to Stan Lee!"
Kevin Rose: "Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry"

On Nigeria's oil based economy

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 13:00:26 +0100

Dad: ...oil is more likely to become obsolete before it becomes depleted...
Me: It should have by now, it's just being delayed by some people...

Stuff I want to do in 2013

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:59:34 +0100

Last year I created a similar list and even though I didn’t accomplish all the things on it (mostly because of NYSC), it was still a great year for me nevertheless. And I think making the list kinda helped. I had compiled this year’s since January but wanted to wait till NYSC was over to post it. To be honest, it feels like the new year starts for me once I return to Lagos. So here goes (in no particular order):

Make a shitload of money; continuing my freelance/contract UI design and Illustration gigs. And working MyCash.

See one (or more) of my side projects to completion; I’m gonna go through all the abandoned personal projects and W.I.Ps on my computer and make sure I finish something.

Get back into the stock market; I used to be active after I left high school but didn’t touch or look into the small shares I had accumulated for years. From what I hear though, the bull is climbing up the stairs and now I have the time and a little more money than I had then, so the timing couldn’t have been any better.

Relearn playing the piano; I learnt how as a kid, stopped in my teens, but now I will try to pick it up again. This time without a teacher, just the piano in our house and the “Smallwood’s” (if I can still find it.)

Learn to code; At the time I wrote this on last year’s list I was totally blind to the conditions I would be facing during NYSC. I didn’t write a single line of code (not even HTML) during that time. So this is like a carry-over. I’ve already signed up for Code School, Codecademy, and have a bunch of tutorial vids on my hard disk.

Experiment with 3D, Animation and VFX; this one too is a carry-over from last year’s list. I didn’t take my new laptop with me. But now I’m home with it so…

Try to dress a bit better; emphasis on the words “try” and “a bit”. I know I dress like a schmuck. I’ve never really cared (somehow still don’t). And being a ken doll just takes too much time, effort and quite frankly is expensive. But this year I will try small small to pay a little more attention to my appearance.

Be in a serious relationship; last year I said I wanted to “meet someone” and I kinda sorta did but it’s nothing solid. Hopefully by the end of this year I would have left teamforeveralone. (I ain’t getting any younger)

Keep a daily workout routine; not exactly looking to be Mr. Macho or any thing just ripped enough to be considered sexy if I take my shirt off. Something light like a couple of push-ups and sit-ups every day and lifting my brother’s pair of 10kg dumbells and maybe jogging on saturday mornings.

So that’s 9 things, same number as last year. I hope and pray I’ll be able to accomplish everything on this list by God’s grace. So help me God.

How did my 2012 go?

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:20:00 +0100

Here goes…
Stuck indoors because of fuel subsidy protests throughout most of January.
I’m the UI designer for MyCash.
Then there’s this thing called NYSC.
Collected call up letter in February; got posted to Niger state. Everyone freaked out ‘cept me. They said Camp would be in Kwara and that redeployment would be easy. Not. Minna is freakin’ hot. Camp was hectic not fun. Made only one new friend (A she. And she is a fine geh. FYI.)
L.I is a woman. Opposite of nice. PPA is some village school. They didn’t get our accommodation ready quick enough, we squatted for about a month. The community has barely any electricity which is a bummer. It costs me 50Naira to charge my phone. CDS group is FRSC. I get to direct traffic.
It’s close enough to Abuja that I can go there to work or play. Yay. I find a cyber cafe. Thank you Jesus! It becomes my second home.

After turning down web design gigs from Namzo, I know I can’t go on like this. Thank God, Ajibz comes along with a decent UI design gig. I do it. I’m freakin’ slow. It’s not my fault; between teaching, chores and the lack of electricity, there’s very little that can be done in a day. I turn in the work. I get payed. More than I quoted? Yay! Thanks Ajibz! Timing couldn’t be any better ‘cos we haven’t received allowee in over one (our first) month.
So, I’m a teacher (or “master” as they call it). JS2 Basic Technology (what used to be known as Intro. Tech.) Teaching village kids is not easy at all o. And since we have no say over where we are born, anyone of us city people could have ended up like them. Gives me perspective, makes me super grateful to God and reminds me to stay humble. I tell myself I won’t flog. Who am I kidding?
Another UI design gig comes along. Higher profile client. Again, thanks Ajibz. I turn it in. They’re impressed. I get paid. Thank you Lord.
I [finally] buy my first smartphone. The Galaxy S2.
I go to Abuja. Catch up on movies. Attend GZG. Fun! Fun? Fun. Dubstep. School goes on summer break.
I come to Lagos (aah Lagos, I’ve missed you). I visit the CCHub for the first time. Mom disturbs me about getting a masters degree. Spent only 2 weeks but still get queried by the L.I. She was bluffing. Ojebi. Spend some time in Abuja. My friend Keri is a great host. I get to work with him and Deji (Breeze) on a game. This game. I said I wanted to draw and paint more, haven’t had the chance. Illustration gig comes along. It’s a bit underpaid but I take it anyway. Starts good, gets kinda sour, ends with a sigh. Another UI design gig comes while I’m in the middle of illustration gig. Much higher profile client. Much higher pay. Again thanks Ajibz. Catch a flu. Continue with work.
My birthday. I throw an impromptu party. It rocks. (People who know me know I’m not a party person so that’s a big deal). Electricity is still an issue and juggling 2 gigs is suicidal. I go to Abuja every weekend 4 times just to complete both gigs as fast as I can as I’m already behind schedule at this point. This time Deji is the great host. Thanks a million man. I take a second teaching job (I’m greedy? I know).
I fall terribly ill. Malaria. Out for one week. No teaching. No design. I get better. I buy a gen. PES2012. I finish both gigs.
The school starts exams. They put me on invigilation duty. SS3. Dem no born you well to cheat. I hate marking. I come home to Lagos (aah once again!).
Whoa! my brother pulled a Taylor Lautner! I do some drawing. Eating everything in sight. Tarkwa Bay. Christmas!!! Relax. Hangout. Crossover vigil.

Happy new year!!

I had this unfinished for a really long time. I finally drew in...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 20:09:47 +0100

I had this unfinished for a really long time. I finally drew in her head. Not too happy with the results though and regret leaving it for so long.

Merry Christmas. First thing I did when I woke up Christmas...

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Merry Christmas. First thing I did when I woke up Christmas morning.

I hope I finish this one

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 13:26:00 +0100

I hope I finish this one

"You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest..."

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:49:00 +0100

“

You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk.

- yours sincerely, Facebook.

”

Don't Go To School

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:53:22 +0100

Don't Go To School :

I couldn’t have said it better myself. This guy puts into words my exact feelings about my college education and what a nightmare it was.

The societal pressure to get a masters degree (esp. outside the country) just goes to show how worthless a first degree is now. The whole system is pretty fucked up. And what’s worse? Those who are passionate about education -who should be advocating a change- are stuck in the same system themselves.
If it’s this bad for us, then what will it be for future generations?
I really pray things change for the better as it will never be able to hold up in this rapidly changing world.

The best Instagram alternative IMHO

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0100

The best Instagram alternative IMHO:

There are so too many mobile photo sharing social apps out there. All trying to compete with Instagram. A lot of people were displeased with Facebooks acquisition of Instagram, and there was a lot of talk about migrating to alternatives. The one feature I wish Instagram had was albums. And Popset has it. In addition to Instagram’s current feature set. If it’s still possible that any mobile photo sharing app will overtake Instagram, it’ll be either Piictu (which doesn’t have albums) or Popset. Popset (which used to be known as Eeve) even allows you to import your Instagram photos (Hopefully Instagram/Facebook doesn’t feel threatened and revoke that access) They both should get their acts together and release Android apps pronto.

I joined Instagram

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:13:00 +0100

…and you guessed right, my username is @dpencilpusher on there too.

The Android app can be really annoying and uses a lot of webviews. It loads EVERYTHING even things that change infrequently like usernames and profile pics and bios. Twitter does a much better job at caching stuff. There are a lot of spammers (commenters) too.

But I like the stuff I get to see.

I’m following some friends & family;
Istagrafite (instagrafite) & Estria (estria) - for graffiti;
@myspacetom (Tom Anderson), @tobbinator (“Tobbie Maguire”), @tosinpedro (Tosin Pedro), @nerdx (nerdx), @ryanvandal (Ryan Vandal), @bunnyrel (Arielle Nadel of Danbo fame) - who all take beautiful photographs, even though I think taking a photo with your DSLR, editing it in Photoshop or Lightroom, cropping it and then posting it on Instagram is cheating ;-)
And some artists and designers I already follow on Twitter and Dribbble

It’s tempting to hop into the app a few times a day even though it takes a toll on my cruelly conservative data plan.

My toughts on the iPhone 5 (and new iPods) launch

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:57:25 +0100

So I went to the nearby cyber cafe and plugged in to follow liveblogs of the event.
CNet was the fastest and most clutter free of them http://live.cnet.com/Event/CNETs_Apple_event_live_blog_Wednesday_September_12

So as I was watching the liveblog, I was typing my thoughts in a text file.

They didn’t stall too much before unveiling it.
All the leaks and speculations were right; Apple really needs to double down on security/secrecy.
They are playing catch up to other devices. Still no NFC.
Lightning: Did they really need to name the new connector?
Went through the iOS 6 features pretty quickly (‘cos we’d seen it in June)
New Maps icon; indicates navigation.

The Photostream app with commenting and social features is IMHO a direct competitor to Instagram and similar photo sharing apps.

“Here’s the question: which is the killer feature? It feels like the iPhone 5 is more of an overall refinement and re-engineering, as well as offering speed boosts across the board (4G, A6)” -Scott Stein

There’s nothing on the iPhone 5 that’s entirely exclusive to it. Nothing Android didn’t already have.
I’m surprised they did the iPod + iTunes presentation after the iPhone one. Maybe it’s because everything there is to know was already known before hand.

I like the design of the on-device iTunes store and App Store. They’ve switched to a matte looking UI from (last decade’s) glossy one.

New iTunes looks sexy. but I’m in doubt about it’s usability/UX (till when I try it myself).
doubleTwist came up with the “Up next” feature first.
I guess new iPods were the bigger surprise.

“New 7th gen iPod nano. Looks like an iPod Touch meets Nokia Lumia.” -Josh Lowensohn

Wow! they used circles [not rounded squares] for the app icons. Looks weird but refreshingly different.
Thank God they kept the FM radio.

The new iPod touch is IMHO way prettier than the iPhone 5 and I wished Apple would’ve return to the rounded back on the iPhone.
Music app has been redesigned; white/grey matte instead of blue glossy.
Not so sure about the different colored iPod touches. Until I see them live.
EarPods. Hmm… looks different. The old ones used to hurt my ears. I hope these don’t. The cables don’t seem to have been altered so they might cutting due to stretch just like before.
The packaging for the EarPods is beautiful.
Wait! No black front iPod touch? That’s a no no.

Beauty is Luck

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 08:01:32 +0100

Beauty is Luck

Keke On The Run A game I’m working on with my friends Deji...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 07:41:00 +0100

Keke On The Run

A game I’m working on with my friends Deji (@Breezinstein) and Keri (@iCodeMonkeyD)

on Android

Actual pixels on my DeviantArt

Photos of the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0100

the browser

swipe from bottom bezel to reveal running apps

BlackBerry AppWorld

back

left side

right side

top

Photos of the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device

Brave - what I thought

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:00:00 +0100

This was a beautiful film. It was colorful and lush; a visual delight.
Satisfying, Enjoyable and down-to-earth.
Funny when it needed to be.
But, hearing that this was a fairy tale and that our main character’s a princess I feared it would land in “Disney Princess” territory. Well, even though it borders on it, it doesn’t have a Prince Charming for our princess to ride off into the sunset and “live happily ever after” with. I hope Disney doesn’t tie it in with the Princesses thing.
One main thing that fuelled this concern was that Pixar characters when human are known to be very stylized.
But Merida and her Mom -the main characters- weren’t. (most of the other characters were). They were both appropriate height (about 7 heads), muscles well defined, and no exaggerated parts. They looked too realistic; Merida even had slim, angular, (dare I say “sexy”) fingers. The main thing that’s recognizable about Merida is the shape of her head, an her big, ginger, frizzy hair (which took a lot of effort to animate) which I appreciate. It’s not really a complaint, it’s just something different and uncharacteristic of Pixar. Let’s look at other Pixar duos: Woody’s tall, skinny, limp and made of cloth while Buzz is short, stocky and made of hard looking plastic. McQueen is curvy, red & shiny while Mater is rectangular & rusty. Carl looks like he’s carved out of a block of wood while Russell looks like a balloon animal. WALL-E and EVE look like a PC & Mac (circa 1999) respectively. The only contrast between Merida and her mother is the hair and while it’s a very obvious contrast I felt there could be more.

I thought the movie might have something to do with the origin of Stonehenge but was a little disappointed when it didn’t.
Enough about that. Now the story. The story was awfully predictable. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, but there was no twist, no surprise, it just went smoothly like rowing on a straight & familiar river (not that I’ve ever rowed before). It was almost as if I knew what was going to happen before it did. This made the movie [feel] quite short.

The Dark Knight Rises - what I thought

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:32:00 +0100

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

What I liked:
-Anne Hathaway as Catwoman; when it was first announced that she’d be playing Catwoman I had my doubts but I belived in Nolan and I gotta say, she’s the best Catwoman I’ve seen.

-The cast; Inception alumni; Michael Caine, Marion Cotilard, Jason Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy, Cilian Murphy. In another universe it could be Ellen Page as Batgirl and DiCaprio as The Riddler (which I read he was actually interested in playing).

-The reference to the comics: it had parts of “No Man’s Land”, parts of “Knightfall”. Especially the scene where Bane brakes Batman’s back, recreated accurately from the comic.

-The vehicle chases.

-The fights between Bane and Batman; I caught myself thrusting my fists at the air while they were duking it out.

-The subtle inclusion of a Robin. I suspected this quite early in the movie but I read somewhere that Nolan didn’t like the idea of sidekicks (which is pretty much what Catwoman was).

What I didn’t like:
-A little too much talk and less action. A little too much Bruce Wayne and not enough Batman.

-Bruce Wayne came out of the hole twice; first at the beginning of the movie and then literally towards the end. Seeing Bruce with a full beard looking messed up felt kinda repetitive.

-The Bat. There were times when it looked cool. But at other times when it was in flight and in full view, it looked like a giant mechanical cockroach with it’s wings surgically attached to its underbelly.

-The motive of the villan. I like that the stakes were high. I understand that Bane was working for Talia Al Ghul. But she wants to avenge her father (and to purge Gotham of organized crime & corruption) does that warrant blowing up an entire city just to get one man? I like the severity, it’s the motive that just doesn’t hold water IMHO.

-Batman recovering too quickly, it seemed a bit unrealistic; his leg in the beginning, his back in the middle and then after being stabbed at the end.

-There was absolutely no mention of the Joker. None. A hallucination of Ra, his daughter, a photo and flashback of Harvey Dent, even Dr. Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow) made his third appearance but no one even name-dropped The Joker. It’s as if the guy never existed.

-I know I hate it when action films dwell on romance. But the relationship between Bruce Wayne/Batman and Selina Kyle felt very hollow. He even seemed to be more into Miranda Tate (and that’s not just because he slept with her).

-Secret Identity. While Bruce Wayne and Batman went into hiding for different reasons, they resurfacing at the around same time shoulda given it away. It made everyone, especially Commissioner Gordon (whom I assumed already knew) and Selina Kyle (I couldn’t tell if she was just playing along, but “my powerful friend”? Really??) seem stupid.

-I hate it when in movies (or books) someone just explains the plot twist in one fowl swoop through a series of flashbacks instead of the thing coming together by itself. That’s what happened here.

Summary: Despite all my nitpicking, I really really enjoyed the movie. Definitely one of my favorite films of the year. Totally worth seeing in the theater. Totally worth revisiting. But seeing as I couldn’t pick at this many dislikes in The Dark Knight, I’ve gotta say the, the 2nd film is the best of the trilogy.