I would of posted this yesterday, but I was busy, so I'm typing this just before that Dell bloke arrives to replace my hard drive. Yesterday was our year's Induction trip to Brighton, whioch was about 2 hours away on the coach. We got there about 11, and were split into mixed groups of 5 to go about and do this induction Assignment Activity, which was to design 5 post cards based on a theme we're given for Friday. I ended up in a group of 3 Girls from fashion and 1 from Graphics, so much for getting to know the animation lot a bit more!
Anyway, we were right by the pier so we popped down there, took photos and came up with ideas which we decided on and sorted in a near by pub. We were decided on what we would do by about 1.30, so we split up to look about. While they all went off to find shops, I stayed by the pier where there was a Doctor Who Exhibition at the end of it in a big dome, with tatty rides scattered around it. It was six quid to get in, and I had a tenner on me so I decided to give it a look.
Earier, when we were driving thorugh to out stopping point, I spotted a old-fashioned cinema that had a large Howl's Moving Castle poster at the front. Because they are not going to be showing it in Southend, I thought I might pop in there later. Sadly didn't have time though, and decided that I'd pop up to Balsidon to see it soon, and see the Doctor Who thing instead. They had all sorts of stuff from the first six episodes of the last series, including props, models and of coruse...full scale Daleks. I was kind of hoping they'd have one out that you could touch, because I wanna hug one, but they had "Do not touch, we are watching, there are only two ways off the pier!" signs, so never mind.
I waddled about in here for about 45 minutes and it was worth a look. At the end of it there was what I presume was computers set up to have the website on it, but they jus had the default windows desktop open, so I opened up MSpaint and left a little present. Here are some photos I took, scattered about. Click to enlarge.
After that we went to some greyhounds race place, which was a bit boring to be honest, then got back at about 6pm. As for the postcard design of mine, I made it last night (Which was why I didn't post this blog then.) and I'll be posting it on DevArt later. For now though, I'm waiting for the Dell bloke to arrive, although now this computer seems to want to work. Bah.
Met up at 9 this morning with the new animation degree lot, who I'll be part of for the next 3 years, though honestly we barely got to know each other today. We were first talked to and given letters and junk from our tutor, and the ice breaker was skipped those things are bloody embassing anyway). Ended up having a 2 hour break until our Introduction, so me and Shaun (who was in the same college course with me, so obvesresly I already knew him) and some other tutors we used to have killed some time playing table football (which I'm shite at). After the intro thingy, I had to get the enrollment junk sorted, and that was it really. Didn't end up going to that Wine and Cheese thing, as it was only optional.
So in the end not a lot happened first day at all, really. What's more, we have nothing planned tomorrow because that's the day their sorting out the 2nd and 3rd years, although I have to go get my ID card sorted tomorrow. Tell you what though, the actual course timetable (which starts next week) looks challenging, yet exciting. I'll be doing either 2 or 3 days a week (depending on which group I'm in when they split us into two groups for the computer lessons), with lessons that include mucking about with stop motion animation on one of those funky "Lunch box" things (which I previously used for Rocket No.9), Drawing visual interplutations (i.e - gping out and drawing people walking about, something I've never honestly done, but very much need to get a better understanding of animation) and research skills, which doesn't sound so bad when I consider it's all going to be about animation, which I can ramble on about for ages.
There's also going to be all sorts planned for us, such as popping off to cinemas for the latest animation stuff (Howl's being first!), as well as stuff like animation festivals (one of which is gonna be on 19-22 October in Norwich, which is one day before I'm off to New York for the half term. It's £150, so I'll have to see more to decide if I'll bother). On Wednesday we're off on some trip to Brighton, as a sort of ice breaking thingy with a mini project slapped in. The rest of the week is kind of hasy at the moment. Anyway, looking forward to it.
As for my sodding PC, it was still playing up after all that mucking about before, so Dell rang up while I was out and made dad do the same mucking about on it, which included reinstalling windows and resetting the hard drive this time. Good thing I did back everything up that weekend (except my fonts, which I can't find any older backups of currently ;_;). So when I got back at about 3, I had to start getting all my ruddy stuff back up. So far I have my most important files and most of my programs back up, so it didn't take as long as I feared it would. Appanetly the hard drive should be fine now its been reset and such. I hope so, otherwise if it plays up again, then they're getting a boot up their arses.
Btw, ignore the bad spellings. I haven't been able to get Word Processor back up yet.
Finally got around to trying to sort out my PC's constant problems with it starting up, which have been getting more and more frequent. I'm never phoning Dell's helpline again though. They made me do all the checks and stuff over the phone (rather then, you know, actually coming over themselves, which they should do as we have a insurance out on it that means they'll fix any problems with it) which took about 2 hours, mainly because the person on the other end of the line talked really slow. Half of the time wasn't even spent talking! Gah, well hopefully it's alright now but if it plays up again then they reckon the hard drive is damaged and ill have to replace it. Bugger.
The other day, HMV had a "Up to 70% off sale". Not much in there apart from one copy of Viewtiful Joe for the Gamecube for £4, which I obversely snapped up. I almost picked up the game before about six months ago when it was in there for a tenner, but I'm glad I waited a bit longer now. I also picked up Ninja Scroll: Special Edition on DVD for £8, which was alright except for the fact its in a big box for just two discs of which have the same exact content on them, bar for the 2nd disc having a "wide screen" version of the movie (i.e: The top and bottom of the picture chopped off to make it fir, losing detail). They could have at least put the two discs in one of those cases that holds two discs, rather than two separate cases. The film itself is still great though, and has replaced my VHS copy.
Howl's Moving Castle started today. Despite the two reviews in the local paper though, it's not showing down here in Southend. At least, not yet. Apparently they have so many films screening currently that they will have to squeeze it in once some others are coming to there end which should be by next week sometime. They are showing up in Basildon from today, which is about a 45 minute drive away, but if I wait a little longer I'll get to see it just a short walk away and when they have a student discount, which means I'll only have to pay about £4 to see it, which is nice.
Last but not least, I'll be finally starting Uni on Monday! This summer holiday has been far too long, and I'll be glad to be doing something other than sitting about at last. Monday is the induction day, with Wine and Cheese, apparently. Why do they go together anyway? It's not like you dunk cheese in wine like you would biscuits in tea, or am I out of touch? There's one mate from the previous college course I was in doing this degree too, so that's cool.
Yeah, this won't mean anything to you lot, but I finally found out what this weird big eared toy is. It was one of my sisters' old childhood toys, which was left at my house when she moved out, and currently sits near my computer desk, for some reason. I posted a photo of my desktop at DeviantArt, and someone there pointed it out as a toy from a cartoon called "BlackStar". I looked up the cartoon, and sure enough, the toy is from a group of characters from the toon called "Trobbit". At first I was thinking of a later 80's cartoon called "BraveStarr" but it turned out to be an even more terrible looking 1981 cartoon that was 5 years before my time. I found a website that had lots of details on the toon, however (Which played the theme tune in MP3 format on every single page on a loop) Here's the best screenshot I could find of the big eared one (See Right), along with one of the action figure sets that contains a very similar character in it (See Below Right)
If you're interested in seeing the website I found these on, it's HERE, although as I already warned, if has a looping MP3 on every page, and it's only going to interest you if you remember it (which I sure don't) or get a kick out of 80's trash like this (It actually makes He-Man looks good). Thank god for the internet.
In other news, I've updated Tea N Crumpets. The Animation section has not only got those two new shorts on it, but was almost completely reprogrammed as it's design was a bit messy before (It was the first page of the site I made) which took it's total file size down a bit. The Labbox has also joined the characters on the first page.
I like cheese, actually, it's just I swear when I first heard Guitar Vader's "Magical Girl" in Jet Set Radio years ago, I thought that's what the lyrics were saying, and I only found out last year it's actually saying "She's a magi, got a Gun". I had this short animation idea around that time, but after giving up on it the first time around, have only now gotten around to producing it in full. As you may of heard me mention here before, I started this animation not long after uploading The Labbox, and excluding about 2 days, I've been working on it since. It was originally going to be a never ending loop, like a lot of he animations up on Weebl's website, but it ended up being a 2 minute music video of sorts. And it ended up being wide screen shaped, which gave me more freedom and will be probably using more.
It's not quite as "Animated" as Labbox was, as there is only two main scenes, which are moved about a lot, but it's a lot more complex in the amount of different layers and symbols used to make it all work. The biggest problems I had were getting the protesters mouths to synch up to the lyrics. There's quite a bit of tweening in there, along with some shape tweening on the feet that went surprisingly well. The file I've posted at DeviantArt (HERE) is 1.72MB big, mainly because of the video file I used for the waves Flip rides on. There was no way I was going to be able to animate the waves (at least not with my currently limited skills, and the fact I wanted it to be nothing more than a quick experiment), so I grabbed a video clip of Getty images, as you may of noticed, as it has that annoying watermark you can see the end of. I also did make a more compressed version (1.21MB) which will be the one I'll probably upload to Tea N Crumpets.
A few more things to report. Found a second hand tablet at a boot sale for £4. It’s at least 3 times bigger than my one, but of a cheaper make, and it sadly has the pen and software missing. Mum phoned up the company that makes them however, and they’re going to send the missing parts for free! At least, they didn’t mention having to pay for it, so in about a weeks time I’ll be able to try it out. Also got some White Stripes and Chilli Peppers albums (in brand new nick for £2 each), some GBA bits (a 4-player adaptor and better light screen thingy) and some manga books (3 volumes of Rangarok (Has nice art and all, but I might just read them then get rid of them again). Oh, and I also finally found out the origin of "GOT EARS", that weird big eared toy from childhood thanks to a DevArt member, but I’ll go into that tomorrow. I’m tired.
EDIT: Seems the lyrics I read on a site were wrong as well. It's actually "She's a Magical Girl", which makes a lot more sense with the title.
After all the controversy over it's annocement about six months ago, Loonatics finally hits this Saturday on American TV, and the critics that have gotten their hands on it have given their say. Is it as bad as it was being made out to be? Judging by these six reviews on Toon Zone of the first episode, the answer is unfortunately yes. In the right hands, this idea could of worked, but the result is poorly animated, badly exceuted, lazy, souless money grubbing trash. But don't take my word for it (Really, don't, because I haven't seen it yet), check out what these guys had to say. Each article is linked to at the end of each quote.
Never has the phrase "Trying way too hard"” applied to any series more than it does to Loonatics Unleashed. It tries so hard to mimic the shows that inspired it that it looks like a little kid in a Superman cape running around in circles in his backyard going "“Whoosh!"” - ConeKiller
If this show doesn't tell you that the animation industry needs help, I don't know what will. - MaWilliamsillams
The show seems to have had no effort, no passion, no energy put into it. I can't seriously imagine a Looney Tunes enthusiast being proud of having his name inshowsshow's credits. I just don't. It's Space Jam. On acid. - Javeman
Avoid Loonatics Unleashed at all costs. It seems Warner has forgotten that an authentic diamond that requires a certain amount of hard work to obtain is far more precious than an artificial one cooked up in a lab. - G MahlerThe bad news' —and there's plenty of it'—is that the new series just isn'’t very good on its own. From character designs too obviously intended to cash in on the faux-anime craze to limp writing that slides in at about the level of Krypto to backgrounds seemingly borrowed from Batman Beyond, Loonatics Unleashed feels pitched at the lowest, cheapest, and most derivative level. - Maxie ZeusThere was one review that had something nice to say about it though:Some people argue that these characters are hallow, sacred, and should not be defiled in this way. To them I say that these characters are universal and transcend the boundary of time. We owe the younger generation a chance to get to know these characters in their own way, and Loonatics Unleashed may be their opportunity to do so.
- MCSarah
So very strong words there, and for what sounds like good reason. As much as they all said to avoid at all costs, I'm grabbing this as soon as a torrent pops up to judge for myself, although I doubt my view will be much different in the end. I sure do hope this will be a flop, as i sure as hell doesn't deserve to do as well as, say, Teen Titans, which was surprisingly well done with great character acting and a good mix of drama, action and laughs. Warner need to get their act together, not just for he sake of their classic characters, but for the sake of how things are run there in general. This is full evidence that it is run by a bunch of big-wig exces that don't know a thing about cartoons.
In other un-related, un-interesting personal news, got a new pair of glassies today, and it's two weeks from yesterday till I start Uni. Woot. Oh, I'll be updating Tea N Crumpets as soon as I finish this "Cheese must go down" short. It's just another random muscial thing, really.
It's great to hear that Mind Game (see a few articles below) has finally gotten a screening in America, at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal Mark Mann, and it's already pulling in plenty of critical acclaim, including praise from Amid Amidi of Cartoonbrew.com, my favorite blog site for animation news and links. In his own words:
"MIND GAME stands alone as one of the most fearlessly original and creative pieces of animation ever produced. This film heralds the arrival of a new age of the animated film where art, technology and story will be integrated in previously unimaginable ways."
Check out his article on the film for your self HERE, which also has links to about 5 other reviews. What I'm trying to say here is everyone please get this film known. Spread the word. This film is already going by un-noticed by many, which would be a major loss to the animation industry over here. It needs to be known about and seen by more people. This is Oscar material everyone's missing out on here! Even Miyazaki's Howl Moving Castle would have a push to beat it to one of those, as much as I'd love to see Miyazaki win another won, as his latest is looking likely to be nominated, with not much competition.
In other news, Naruto debueted on Cartoon Network in the US on Saturday. I downloaded the first episode of the dub to see what it was like and I must say I was quite impressed with it. The new intro music isn't bad, although I've never been a fan of anime intros changed to just random footage slapped together. I was surprised how much they kept in though, including the Sexy No Jitsu, and blood (All I noticed edited out was a nose bleed, which most kids over here wouldn't get anyway). Hell, they're rarely ever allowed to even say "Kill" on TV anymore (Or hell for that matter), but they got away with it in this. I'm actually anticipating the UK release now, so I'll have a reason to watch Toonami again. When you compare this to the disaster that was 4kids job on One Piece, which has so many pointlessly stupid edits it's painful. There's a website that lists and displays most of these edits HERE.
Speaking of 4kids, it seems the voice actors of 4kids dub on Sonic X have replaced the games voice actors, without them even knowing. The news has sprend around the sonic communinity like wild fire, with evidence of the new cast seen in a trailer for Sonic Riders' action-figure-like cut scenes. This is just another nail in the coffin for the francaise, so here's hoping the next-gen game can bring it up to speed again. See what I did there? Yeah, that was pretty daft.
Oh yeah, and not long after I finished the labbox, I started another short animation, which I'm about half-way through completling now. It's actually about 2 minutes long and called Cheese Must Go Down" but that's all I'll say for now. Stay Tuned.
I finished off that animation I've been working on on and off since Thursday today. It's the magical story of a box that...Er.. sings a short bollywood song, along with backing singers and crunched up paper for a background. You can currently view the animation at DeviantArt here, and I'll be most likely uploading it to Tea N Crumpets tomorrow.
This was the first time I used the tween toolbar from the properties, rather than creating new motion tweens all the time (which makes more files in the .FLA), as well as the first time I used shape tweening. The most difficult part of the animation was getting the 3D like spin, which I tried some tutorials for that didn't help to much, then finally decided to get the 3D spinney look with the shape tweening, and some spin lines that help it look convincing enough.
Not much else to report, except that a new issue of Manga-Gaga is online. Make sure to Check that out too, when you can.
Lots of news has been popping up all over the place to do with Sonic recently, with two new games account just this week. The of these is Sonic Riders, which is a rather daft "eXThEmE" hover board game with some rather unimaginative new characters added in, but at least it doesn't look quite as disastrous as the Shadow game, of which a new Hollywood-action-movie trailer popped up on Sega's FTP site. I'll probably rent it when it comes out, but I can't see myself buying it. As long as it plays well, I might pick up Rider though, once it's cheap. (You're listening to someone who hasn't bought Heroes yet, because haven't found it cheap enough to make it "worth it") However, here has been one announcement to excite me that just appeared today, the next-generation consoles first Sonic game.
A wobbly video of this was recorded from this years E3 expo where it was secrely screened along with other next-gen Sega sequels, but now an official accouncement has been released including some rather lovely looking screenshots. This is said to be a "Re-Birth" of the franchise (I'm sure that's what they said about Sonic Adventure back in 1998 too) and is stated for a X-Box 360 and Playstation 3 release possibly sometime next year (No Revolution release stated yet though.) Wherever or not the game will actually look like this is unknown, but these are defiantly not FMV renders. What I'd love to see from this is world exploration, rather than separate levels, where you can literally run everywhere. I also hope this game will stick to just Sonic and Eggman, as the series has most certainly been crammed with far too many pointless characters over the last few years. One thing I'm glad they have mentioned is it'll be all about speed, which is what Sonic has always been about, but they seem to have forgotten about it with recent games like Heroes. I'm eagerly anticipating more information on this beautiful looking game.
In other news, my books I ordered from Amazon arrived today, and I finally got my mop of hay (Read: Hair) cut, and got out two more books fro the library : The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbles, which has been one of my favourite comics ever since I read one of the books in high school (and seems to have about 50 of the pages in it twice, for some reason), and Animation: 2D and Beyond by Jayne Pilling, which has a few pages on Studio 4C which interest me (among other things in it). I've also started animating a random short based on a daily doodle I did a while back, "The Labbox", which is literally a box with legs that dances to Bollywood music. Don't ask, I have no idea either, I just want to get some exercise in because my Uni course starts in a couple weeks.
Mind Game is a movie by the Studio 4C, who you'll have most likely heard of for their shorts in The Animatrix. Ever since I saw the Trailer for this (Check it out at the official site here) I've been dying to see it. The import DVD costs way too much for a risk buy (espcailly as it has no english subtitles), so because the film hasn't yet to be lisense for a relaease over here (As far as I know) I downloaded it of a torrent site. I must say I havn't been this impressed by an Anime movie since Tokyo Godfathers, and the less you know about it before you see it, the better.
I don't want to spoil any of it for you, but all I can say is that it's a very difficult movie to describe. The art direction in it is nothing short of incredible, though, with styles and techniques dramatically changing every scene from a section done entirely out of abstract paining to close up shots of faces done using photos of actors with outlines drawn on them. It really is unlike any movie I've ever seen, but if I had to give you some movies to compare it too, I'd say it has moments that'll remind you of Monty Python, The Yellow Submarine, Fritz the Cat, and even to an extent the toons of the golden era.
Anime has certainly come of age in the last 5 years or so. Animated features like this, along with works such as FLCL, Dead Leaves, and Tokyo Godfathers have shown that the style of anime is now growing away from the "less-animation-more-detailed-art" approach and is now going the other way around, and the characters in this about just about as animated as you can get. The Japanese are using the digital age to great use in enhancing their animation, rather than just using it as an excuse to be lazy. This could be the "Golden Era" of Japanese animation we're about to see here, and I can't wait to see if more movies like this occur in the near future.
I've had these two books out of the library for a little while now, and today decided to purchase them off Amazon. One of them was "The Animators Survival Kit" by Richard Williams, who has been in the business since the 1950's, and was taught what he knows from the golden era veterans. This is a great book on the technical aspects to making animation work well. There's a lot of pages dedicated to walking, because it's apparently one of the most complex things to animate, and no one walks the same. NO ONE.There was one bit near the start that really caught me, and that was the "First Lesson" about never listening to music while animating, as he was so dramatically told when he asked Milt Kahl once. Of course, Milt was a master of the craft, so he knew what he was talking about. It's a brilliant guide through and through, and I've just started taking advantage of it yesterday with this animation that has now made it onto the Tea N Crumpets loading screens. This was animated using the good ol' bouncing ball technique explained in the book, and without any music on, which does indeed help. It's not perfect (especially the bobbles movement, which I sort of guessed and tinkered with till it looked convincing):
Other than changing all the loading screens of the sections, so they have this critter bouncing across the screen, I have also updated a few sections. These include two new (well, new to the site, they've been on DevArt a while now) Illustations, Indie is your Freind (Made for Perks site which he still hasn't got online) and Fingertips (Which has replaced "The Bag"), some tweaking to the information (With the heroes replaced with REAL heroes, rather than people that just make me laugh) and of course a link to this here blog. Lovely Jubbly.
That book cost about £15 on Amazon, which is nice as it's RRP is £25, but so I could get free delivery I needed to bump my shopping basket up to £19. To do this I also bought Azumanga Daioh Volume 1 for about a fiver. I had already rented this as well, and have also seen all of the anime series (When the DVDs pop up cheap or in a boxset, they're mine). For those not in the know it's not your regular kind of manga. The manga is a 4-panel layout much like all those comics in the newpapers, and the humour is more like Peanuts than Excel Saga. Osaka is by far my favorite character in it.
I've been hooked on the series for about a month or so now so it's about time I actually owned something of it, really. I'd even recommened this to people who are not into manga/anime. Speaking of which, I've sketched up some rather random art crossing over Azumanga with my characters from Azumanga for some reason or another today, here they are below (I might make more of these soon. I did do 3, but I left one out as it was rather poo. Click to see full view):
Yeah, I went and got a Blog thingy. Isn't that lovely? For those of you who have walked in from browsing random Blogs, I'm The GagaMan. The extra N is optional. I'm an animation and video game nut, who wants to get good enough to work in aniamtion, or something. I have two lovely little websites, Manga-Gaga (a webcomic that takes the piss of Otakus) and Tea N Crumpets (My portfolio type thingy site). I also have a Devaintart account. These can be checked out by the side of ya. No, that side, to your right. Yeah, there they are.
This is going to be taking place of the jorunal posts I do at DevArt, just because, I guess. For those interested, I'm about to go into a Digital Animation degree at Uni at the end of this month, so I may show you stuff I'll be working on then, as well as random doodles, and stuff like that. ISN'T THIS EXCITING?
I'll be tarting this place up to look more personal at some point, but for now, it's BLANK. Woo, this reminds me of my first ever website, about 5 years ago, only that was typed up on a Dreamcast. Hoo Hah.
Ok, so now I have nothing interesting to talk about. If you wanna see older blog typr posts, read my DevArt Journals. Oh, and drink British Tea.
IT'S GOOD FOR YOU.
I would of posted this yesterday, but I was busy, so I'm typing this just before that Dell bloke arrives to replace my hard drive. Yesterday was our year's Induction trip to Brighton, whioch was about 2 hours away on the coach. We got there about 11, and were split into mixed groups of 5 to go about and do this induction Assignment Activity, which was to design 5 post cards based on a theme we're given for Friday. I ended up in a group of 3 Girls from fashion and 1 from Graphics, so much for getting to know the animation lot a bit more!
Earier, when we were driving thorugh to out stopping point, I spotted a old-fashioned cinema that had a large Howl's Moving Castle poster at the front. Because they are not going to be showing it in Southend, I thought I might pop in there later. Sadly didn't have time though, and decided that I'd pop up to Balsidon to see it soon, and see the Doctor Who thing instead. They had all sorts of stuff from the first six episodes of the last series, including props, models and of coruse...full scale Daleks. I was kind of hoping they'd have one out that you could touch, because I wanna hug one, but they had "Do not touch, we are watching, there are only two ways off the pier!" signs, so never mind.
After that we went to some greyhounds race place, which was a bit boring to be honest, then got back at about 6pm. As for the postcard design of mine, I made it last night (Which was why I didn't post this blog then.) and I'll be posting it on DevArt later. For now though, I'm waiting for the Dell bloke to arrive, although now this computer seems to want to work. Bah.
