Halloween 2005 Originally uploaded by bcompetent.
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Category: Art
From the best of my feeds:
Malcolm Gladwell calls the New York Times on their misleading story about the costs of prescription drugs.
Jason Kottke explains how brands that are so recognized actually run the risk of losing their trademarks due to people’s everyday usage of the words (did you know Escalator was a brand?)
Brad Bird’s classic The Family Dog on YouTube. Brad Bird directed Pixar’s “The Incredibles”. I remember watching the Family Dog as a kid on Stephen Spielberg’s Amazing Stories.
25 years in the making The Thief and the Cobbler (youtube playlist) is a collection an unofficial clips from a fan restoration of the world’s most ambitious animation project. Directed by Richard Williams (of Roger Rabbit fame), play all for an enchanting peek at what might have been.
Update: Cartoon Brew just posted a great interview with Garrett Gilchrist the person responsible for The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled.
Even with the broken links, I’ve decide to leave this page up for posterity.
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Pixar’s New Movie a Winner
I just read a “review on Cars” by Michael Howe and in case it’s hard to tell, I’m so excited to see this film I’m about to explode!
From the review:
It’s been over 1 ½ years since Pixar released their last film and — if anything — that last extra half-a-year has probably added to a growing eagerness to see this film. In this day and age, it’s difficult to find decent films, let alone those that will leave families feeling that their hard-earned money was well spent. For those who may be wondering, “Cars” is definitely worth it and more. Pixar has never talked down to their audiences, and it shows. The parents will get some of the jokes, and the kids will laugh at some, and then later — when they grow up — they’ll go “Oh, that’s what he meant.” I’m already planning to see it again with my friends when it comes out, and I know they’ll enjoy it as well. Personally, this is the first time this year I’ve been so eager to put down $9.50 to see a movie again!
Update: Ok, I went to see the show last night and I absolutely loved every minute of it. Actually there was one thing I did not love but I’ll get to that in a moment.
First off the technical aspects of the movie, (ie. the rendering and animation) are brilliant. Pixar has really outdone themselves on this one; if it wasn’t a great story, this movie would still be fun to watch just for the amazing imagery. The animation was also extremely well done. I love how something as stiff and inflexible as a car normally is can be turned into a living personality with feelings and emotions all the while keeping the cars realistic by not turning them into some kind of mushy mess.
You’ve also got to love the personalities in this movie. They all have their perfect place and I didn’t feel that any one character was overdone. I agree with Michael Howe’s review that Paul Newman did a particularly fantastic job as Doc Hudson, The Hudson Hornet. It was a magical moment seeing Doc race around the dirt track hitting that turn just right.
But the thing about this movie is that it’s FULL of magical moments. Every character has their moment and their chance to shine.
Now for the one thing that I did not love. I’m the kind of guy that occasionally likes to stay and watch the credits after a movie I liked has reached the end. For a Pixar movie, it’s a given that you’re going to stay to watch the cute “extra” jokes they through in at the end. I was particularly looking forward to it as I’ve heard from some of the early reviews that this movie has some good ones.
The credits came up and before they could even get going—SQUEEEEEEEERTCH! The focus went really bad as the film either jumped off its track or started to bunch up in the projector. Either way the show was over and I didn’t get to see the “post credits” jokes. I guess I’ll have something to look forward to the next time I watch Cars, because it’s worth seeing again. Seriously everyone who goes will love this movie—and if you don’t, well then, it’s time you started to let yourself feel again.
Oh I should also add the One Man Band short, while cute wasn’t nearly as memorable as the Boundin one from The Incredibles. Having said that, one pre-movie bit of entertainment that really stoked my fire was the sneak peak at Pixar’s Ratatouille (Apple Trailer) coming out in 2007.
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If the Earth Were a Sandwich
I’ve been watching ZeFrank’s The Show for a couple of months now. I think he’s a brilliantly witty guy and I’m amazed at what appears to be the very little effort he seems to exert in coming up with clever and humorous shows on a daily basis.
A couple of weeks ago he discussed the possibility of “making the earth a sandwich” by placing two pieces of bread simultaneously directly opposite each other on the globe. I didn’t even bother investigating the “find the opposite tool” because (I thought) I knew that from here it was all just ocean on the other side of the world.
Now for the good news.
It turns out that near the small town of Manyberries, AB (just a short drive from Lethbridge) there is an area of land that is situated exactly tangent from a small island on the other side of the globe that google has labelled as French Southern & Antarctic Lands.
Do you know what this means?!!! Ladies and gentlemen there is a good chance that I’ll be able to help in MAKING THE EARTH A SANDWICH! I just need to discover who in French Southern & Antarctic Lands reads my website, and then see if they would be willing to lay a piece of bread on the ground at these coordinates: 49.34843 by 69.4363? Both pieces of bread need to be sitting there simultaneously for the sandwich to exist so one of us might have to go out in the dark, which I’m totally willing to do.
Is there anybody out there on French Southern & Antarctic Lands? Hello? Anybody?
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Elephants Dream
Elephant’s Dream is a computer animated movie, released on DVD format and online under a Creative Commons license. That means even if you’re living in the States where peer-to-peer file sharing makes you feel all icky with downloader’s remorse, you can aquire a copy of Elephants Dream and still feel like a good netizen the next day.
‘Elephants Dream’ is the result of almost a year of work, a project initiated and coordinated by the Blender Foundation. Six people from the Blender user/development community were selected to come over to Amsterdam to work together on an animated short movie, utilizing Open Source tools only.
I haven’t watched the completed film yet, but the Elephants Dream teaser is intriguing.
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John Lasseter Interviews
I really enjoyed reading CNN Money’s interview with Pixar’s John Lasseter. The piece has the most extensive comments I’ve seen from Lasseter regarding the Pixar/Disney negotiations. My favourite quote is the comparison of Pixar taking over Disney Feature Animation being like Nemo swallowing a whale.
I’m not sure if the Von Dutch trucker hats are still considered trendy, but somebody certainly still thinks Von Dutch is pretty cool. Recently on Ebay, Von Dutch’s personal paint and pin striping box sold for $270,000.00!
From the description on Ebay:
Von Dutch – The Personal Paint and Pin Striping Box
Without question, the all original Paint Box we have the pleasure of offering here is one of the most important personal pieces of Von Dutch memorabilia ever offered for sale to date. This is the actual paint box carried by both Von Dutch and most impressively, his father throughout both their legendary careers. The story begins in the 1930s with Walker Howard, father of Kenneth Howard aka Von Dutch, who was one of the most respected sign painters in all of Los Angeles. The young Kenneth Howard was said to accompany his father on many of his jobs, and legend now relates that Howard could paint and letter at a professional level at the age of 10. Though the paint box first belonged to Wally Howard, it was passed on to his son, Kenneth Howard now known as Von Dutch, who continued to use and treasure his paint box and family heirloom for the rest of his painting career and life.
This got me thinking, I should develop a “Milner” font-face and paint into onto a box like this. Who knows, if I become famous then maybe one day my descendants can sell their valuable family heirlooms for oodles of cash too.
Future descendants you have my permission to sell any personal artwork you inherit from me if you can get at least $270,000.00 for it (adjusted for inflation of course).
(via Hypnotik Eye)
Animation Lesson — Two Legged Full Bodied Characters, has to be the most difficult lesson so far. I created what I thought was a pretty good rabbit, but upon comparison there were a lot of inconsistencies between mine and the original.
I redrew the whole thing and then made new comparisons. Not much better so it’s rinse and repeat, and again and again and again.
What I find hard about my correction method, (perhaps some of the other students or even John K (the instructor) have some advice for me) is that when I start to look for inconsistencies, I begin to draw without using the “construction” technique (ie. turning basic shapes into more detailed shapes) but in more of a straight ahead method (ie. Just moving lines to look more like the finished product). Am I tackling the problem correctly, or should I also go back to construction method again when making corrections?
Anyway through trial and error I’ve got something that almost matches up but of course it certainly won’t win any awards:
I don’t even want to show you the duck, but at least I can say this was only the first attempt:
And here is the latest version of the duck:
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Lesson 3 Part 2
It took me quite a few attempts but even though it’s not perfect I’m ready to move on to the next lesson because I don’t want to fall behind. I started this one completely from scratch and I find it interesting how I kept making the same mistakes. I’ve pretty much cleaned up a lot of what was wrong before, but it’s amazing how the small differences continue to show up so dramatically in the animated overlay.
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Lesson 3 Part 1
In lesson three, John asks us to overlay our drawings on top of Preston Blair’s and identify differences. Here are mine:
Any other inconsistancies that I missed?