Robots AND animation. Better than sex? Not quite, but it will suffice at the moment. The style kind-of reminds me of the French movie (animated in Czechoslovakia) La Planète sauvage. which blew my mind when I saw it. The dance-techno in this is meh, but the animation rocks.
BIRDY NAM NAM - THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.
Wow, I have watched a lot of bad anime lately. Really bad. One was called "Claymore" which was the standard (way overused) super-hot girls fighting demons with swords and martial-art super-powers fare, in which the hot girls are part demon themselves. Claymore suffered from what I call "DBZ Syndrome" which is a severe case of chronic over-exposition. They would explain a technique, the technique used was so fast all they had to animate was a blur, and then the dying demon would ask what technique it was so they would explain in in more painful detail again. Then they would discuss the technique. All of this while standing perfectly still, just moving their mouths, no matter how dire the fight going on was supposed to be. It's a tired way of filling up time cheaply.
The second serial anime was I have no idea. I still don't know the name and I really don't care. It was the standard corporate super-soldier girls that are part demon which totally betray their corporate handlers (duh), escape and all move in together with one teenage guy despite their murderous hatred of each other. (DUH!) I was kind of encouraged at the opening title sequence which was a slow-pan over co-opted artwork of Gustav Klimpt with the main character in the kiss-pose and nicely-arranged orchestral music instead of an insipid Japanese knockoff pop song. My hopes were dashed quickly as the first few scenes featured an office girl who's schtick was always dropping the coffee she fetched for her man-boss. The animation wasn't even very good. Eviscerations and buckets of blood do not a good anime make.
With satisfaction, I did get my hands on a copy of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, which I haven't seen in a long time. Billy Crudup plays the lead while Billy Bob Thornton does a great job playing the Monk, which is a rich role. Minnie Driver adds her sweet accent to the Lady Iboshi, which is a stronger female role than 99% of American movies ever made. (The only American female lead I can think to rival her strength is Vivien Leigh's Scarlet O'Hara.) Sure it's got teenagers fighting demons, but it's got such a good screenplay and it's filled with full frame-by-frame action with no skimp on the detail. While it's not my favorite Miyazaki movie, it is fantastic, and did well as a filling main course compared to the tastless and weak aperitif.
The guys from Daft Punk commissioned Interstella 5555 from animator Leiji Matsumoto, the man behind the legendary Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) and Captain Harlock, cuz like all awesome nerds, they loved his stuff as kids.
I was going to post each individual vid separately, as only a few months ago I could only find them that way.
But I've found it's all there in one glorious click for over a year and 400k views. I re-post it here. It's got everything you like. A willowy blue girl, space ninja and a flying V spaceship. An hour well spent in animationmusiccloudland.
Feel free to full-screen that baby... or go buy it and watch it with me.
My one HP post. If Harry's glasses are so magic they don't need lenses, can't he just lose the glasses all together?
Or are the frames a construct to hold the magic that allows them lenslessness perfect-vision? Magic is confusing.
and... is that a beard?
Not yet anyway, but if you're looking for a gift for me, any of these will do... except any transformers themed shirts. I wouldn't even burn a transformers shirt as it's a waste of perfectly good fire.
Check it out.
101 Robot T-shirts!
Ah. Max's VF-1D Valkyrie Veritech in full armor. Guardian mode would have been preferable, but superawesome.
I have a new favorite poster designer. His name is Martijn Van Dam and his style is something I'm going to be homage-ing very soon. You better believe there's robots.
Champion Sound - Spacecraft Illustration from Super Silo on Vimeo.
For the first viewing of Ratatouille (and second following closely afterwards) I was amazed and inspired. Not only by the spectacular animation, but by the exceptional writing which has differentiated Pixar above Disney.
The wrap-up is particularly noteworthy, as it not only speaks truth to creatives, but to bloggers who bitch about crap but never seem to produce anything of their own. It hit close to home:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new... needs friends. [...] Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
I can't afford a 3D program and I have wanted one ever since I lost my irretrievable copy of Studiomax in a hard-drive crash nearly a decade ago. (Has it really been that long?)
Since then, It's been like riding a bike, apparently. I discovered Google's free download of Sketchup, a fairly nice and easy-to-use 3D drawing program. I found it in response to my recent interview with the OKC Chamber and the discovery that downtown OKC only has 4 buildings in 3d on Google Earth. One was from Google itself, and the other 3 are from some guy in Austin, which is something I will rectify.
Of course Sketchup is extremely limited, even compared to my 2000 copy of StudioMax. There's no rendering. No lights (except the sun). No bells or whistles. Not even a lathe tool or basic booleans, which seems a little counter-intuitive for a 3D program.
But it was free and in the 24 hours since learning of it's existence and downloading it, I built my house.
It isn't exact-exact, but it's close. I didn't have my blueprints to work from so I had to physically measure with a tape, which took more time than actually building it. Despite Sketchup's for-free shortcomings, it's super fun and just gave me more of an itch to get back into 3D modeling and animation. Guess a big-ol flat-screen HD will have to wait.
In the mean-time, I will begin building downtown with Google's foresighted help to get the public to add to their content, which is our content too. Whether the credit goes to me or to the OKC Chamber is up to them at the moment, as I feel the interview for the position of Interactive Media Manager went very well... but you don't know how well until you know.
Woots for guys my age!
First, new Beasties soon... Sept 15th to be exact. 
Then, Green Day.
Green Day - "21 Guns" - HD
I recently re-met someone who(m?) was in my graduating class. The only thing she said to me that stuck was "Slippery When Wet was the greatest album of all time." Now I don't really have a leg to stand on when telling people to stop living in the past, but stop living in the past. And no, it isn't. Never was. Not even close.
A video of social interaction via:
Pixelmaverick.com's blogpost
and
Funnel Design's tweet.
