"Published in conjunction with the exhibition Polished to Perfection: Japanese Cloisonne from the Collection of Donald K. Gerber and Sueann E. Sherry at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California (May 28, 2017-February 4, 2018). This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art"--

Learn the things you need for a complete game, such as translations and tutorials, and improve the things you've already written to raise their standard to a professional level. This is a practical guide covering every discipline: art, music, writing, and code. In the case of the latter, code examples are included to demonstrate how to implement functionality to make the game shine. Polished Game Development acts as a comprehensive checklist of everything your game should, and should not, do, in order to be as good as it possibly can. It is more than just a book on theoretical game design principles. Explains the difference between a pet project, and a professional one. Covers how to test for the problems and bugs you don't know you'll have. Details simple, but effective, visual improvements that can be done with very little effort. Regardless of platform (web, mobile, or console), or language (C++, C#, JavaScript) there is a wealth of common (and specific) tips within these pages that will enable you to make the most professional games you can. What You Will Learn Learn what essential elements are often missed Stay on-brand, visually and verbally Use audio to enhance your game Improve game balance Test effectively Who This Book Is For Game developers looking for a guide and checklist on how to get their game finished to the highest possible standards. They will know how to write a game, and get it released, but not necessarily how to make it shine. They will be professional developers, indies, university students and graduates.

Perfect for the beginning plastic modeler who wants to learn more advanced techniques, this photo-driven guide includes an introduction to airbrushing and sections on brush painting, spray painting, weathering, and applying finishes.

How the very best get to—and stay at—the top From the arenas of professional sports to the boardrooms of major businesses, a thin slice of peak performers dominates every field. What is their secret to success? Few people know what drives these world-leaders like sports agent Molly Fletcher. Not only has Fletcher herself risen to the top of a tough, male-dominated field—CNN dubbed her "the female Jerry Maguire"—but she has also represented hundreds of successful athletes, coaches, and broadcasters in baseball, golf, basketball, and football. Her experience reveals exactly what it takes to play like "the best." Breaks success into accessible strategies like smart negotiation, likability, and personal brand-building Features interviews with such notables as Home Depot cofounder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, future Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, and football legend Roger Staubach Connects high performance to values by showing how the best give back No matter what you do or what game you play, Fletcher's authoritative and inspirational look at the top 1 percent will help you win.

A novel about heiress Mary Philipse's relationship with George Washington, based on historical accounts, letters, and personal journals bynine-time New York Emmy Award-winning journalistMary Calvi. “Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore, contended that it cannot be resisted.” —George Washington Did unrequited love spark a flame that ignited a cause that became the American Revolution? Never before has this story about George Washington been told. Crafted from hundreds of letters, witness accounts, and journal entries, Dear George, Dear Mary explores George’s relationship with his first love, New York heiress Mary Philipse, the richest belle in Colonial America. From elegant eighteenth-century society to bloody battlefields, the novel creates breathtaking scenes and riveting characters. Dramatic portraits of the two main characters unveil a Washington on the precipice of greatness, using the very words he spoke and wrote, and his ravishing love, whose outward beauty and refinement disguise a complex inner struggle. Dear George, Dear Mary reveals why George Washington had such bitter resentment toward the Brits, established nearly two decades before the American Revolution, and it unveils details of a deception long hidden from the world that led Mary Philipse to be named a traitor, condemned to death and left with nothing. While that may sound like the end, ultimately both Mary and George achieve what they always wanted.

How does good writing stand out? If its purpose is to convey facts, findings, or instructions, it need be read only once for its content to be clear. If its purpose is to entertain or to provoke thought, it makes readers want to come back for more. Revised and updated, this guide covers four essential aspects of good writing: • Individual words - spelling variations, hyphenation, frequently confused homonyms, frequently misused words and phrases, irregular plurals and negatives, and uses of capitalization and type style to add special meanings • Punctuation - the role of each mark in achieving clarity and affecting tone, and demonstration of how misuses can lead to ambiguity • Syntax and structure - agreement of subject and verb, parallel construction, modifiers, tenses, pronouns, active versus passive voice, and more • Style - advice on the less hard-and-fast areas of clarity and tone, including sentence length and order, conciseness, simplification, reading level, jargon and clicheÌ s, and subtlety Filled with self-test exercises and whimsical literary quotations, Grammatically Correct steers clear of academic stuffiness, focusing instead on practical strategies and intuitive explanations. Discussions are designed to get to the heart of a concept and provide a sufficient sense of when and how to use it, along with examples that show what ambiguities or misinterpretations might result if the rules are not followed. In cases where there is more than one acceptable way to do something, the approach is not to prescribe one over another but simply to describe the options. Readers of this book will never break the rules of language again - unintentionally.

In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance, Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano's startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose biography also tells us much about Vasari's own early career. Vasari's original and soaring vision plus his acute aesthetic judgements have made him one of the most influential art historians of all time.