If not for Duane Mark and Lloyd Templeton’s budding friendship, this year’s Calgary Stampede boot design would have never existed.

While the boot was only constructed in recent months, the process began when Templeton, a Calgary-raised artist in his early 20s, approached Mark with a request to use images of the Stoney Nakoda teepee-holder and educator for artwork he was preparing for the Calgary Stampede.

The two clicked from the get-go. By November, after hours together, Templeton’s piece featuring Mark — dressed in full regalia standing in the foreground of the Calgary Tower among a diverse group of parade participants — was chosen as the 2024 Stampede poster artwork.

On Thursday, Templeton’s art was unveiled as the design for this year’s Stampede boot — now the second product of their friendship that’s been produced for this year’s 10-day rodeo and fair.

“What comes to mind is the growth of a young man named Lloyd,” Mark said, when asked what he sees in this year’s boot design.

The artwork on the exterior reflects key Stoney Nakoda First Nation and Treaty 7 iconography, Templeton said at Thursday’s unveiling. Stitchings of Alberta’s mountain range and the golden eagle flying through a rising sun — two important symbols for the First Nation’s culture — line the outside of the boot.

The boot’s interior has the words Oyadé Gichiyabi, Ahogichopabi Îyûhabith inscribed, which roughly translates in Stoney language to “be empowered to foster peace and respect,” which was selected at Mark’s recommendation.

A recent graduate from the Alberta University of the Arts, Templeton is becoming a household name in Calgary’s arts community at a pace that’s not lost on him.

“Just last year I was making school projects, and a year later, there’s going to be people wearing my art. That’s nuts,” he said.

Working in three dimensions was a new challenge for Templeton. To start, he would tape paper to the back of the boot to get a feel for the shapes he needed to produce. He then drew the designs by pencil, scanned them into his computer and produced it into a special file that allowed it to be etched by laser onto the boots.

“My poster was oil paint, a very traditional process,” he said. “I was kind of making it up on the go to see what worked. I liked the challenge of that.”

Margaret Holloway, the Stampede’s 2024 First Nations Princess who also provided input on the boot design, said she was “breathtaken, speechless” when she first saw the design. Breaking from tradition, this year’s design will be available on five different shades of boot. Alberta Boot normally creates one special boot for each Stampede.

The 22-year-old jingle dancer is the first person from Stoney Nakoda to be named First Nations Princess in more than 20 years.

Holloway’s family teepee at the Elbow River Camp has three large eagles on it, she said.

“Back home, we see the eagles fly and we feel blessed by their presence, and we feel amazed just by their beauty of soaring in the skies. To see that on this year’s Stampede boot was absolutely unbelievable.”

With their latest creation publicly revealed, Templeton and Mark’s friendship will extend far past their artistic collaboration.

“He’s the coolest dude. We have a lot in common — a good sense of humour, listen to the same music and movies. We make a lot of the same jokes,” Templeton said.

Mark said he’s watched the young artist grow and mature in front of his eyes. Over the past year they’ve discussed “deep Indigenous philosophy,” which Templeton has evidently absorbed into his own life, he said.

“We became the best of friends and will continue to be the best of friends,” Mark said.

mscace@postmedia.com

X: @mattscace67

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Huawei announced the Pura 70 series today, and once again offered no details regarding the chipsets. However, early benchrmarks confirmed they feature a new platform called Kirin 9010, which has an 8-core CPU, identified by apps as 12-core unit due to hyperthreading.

Hyperthreading is nothing new in the chipset industry, as the Taishan cores have been supporting the technology for some time; it has been part of the Kirin 9000s and now is a part of the 9010 as well.

First Geekbench results revealed a minor improvement in raw performance, coming from slightly faster core speeds. The numbers show improvement single digit percentage improvements in both single core and multi core tests.

Kirin 9010 vs Kirin 9000S on Geekbench

The actual octa-core combination of Kirin 9010 is as follows: one 2.30 GHz Taishan Big, three 2.18 GHz Taishan Mid and four 1.55 GHz Cortex-A510. The GPU remains Maleoon 910 at 750 MHz.

Via

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“You can save the world, or you can help punish it for its sins.” That’s the crux of Warhorse Studio’s “behemoth” of a sequel to 2018’s Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The sequel, which is slated for release later this year on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PS5 will be bigger, more fun, filled with adventure and more diverse thanks to its setting in the 15th century Bohemian city of Kuttenberg a city that creative director Daniel Vavra says is “really big, it’s even too big in my opinion.”

New weapons like the crossbow and primitive firearms will also make their debut in the continued story of the squire Henry (Tom McKay) and the knight he accompanies, Hans Capon (Luke Dale) as they leave the country behind.

Here’s the trailer, which features gameplay, cinematics and discussion from the actors and developers. Be sure to watch until the end to see the bit about the music. A full choir and orchestra in a beautiful Eastern European cathedral? Just gorgeous.

“What we are making now is what it was supposed to be in the beginning, but we weren’t able to do it because we didn’t have enough resources and experiences and all that stuff,” Vavra says in the video. “We’ve proven the concept works, so now we can take it to another level, which is what we always wanted.”

“This is a behemoth of a game in comparison to the first. In my opinion I think it’s got so much more energy and pace and adventure and action and fun and trial and tribulation and everything you can want,” McKay says in the video.

The game will be “much bigger in scope” with a more in-depth story and a world roughly twice the size of the first. The story has evolved from a small-scale conflict to one about “the problem with kings,” Vavra says.

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Kingdom Come Deliverance II, like the first game, is not a fantasy RPG like Skyrim or The Witcher, but one that attempts to create a historically accurate world down to the weapons, costumes, locations and people. There are no magicians or dragons or elves here—but there will be plenty of adventure, exploration and knight errantry.

Pretty exciting!

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