I still think the eyes are a little off on Emily, but at least it doesn't recoil in horror as much as Beowulf or Polar Express. They used a video of an actor and then mapped those actions onto a CG model, but they also claim they won't be able to make them realistic until 2020.
via Times Online
At Comic-Con this year, James Jean brought a few advance copies of his new book, XOXO which quickly sold out quickly. Unlike his other books, this one is a postcard book containing 30 illustrated postcards. His two previous books Process Recess, and Process Recess 2 : Portfolio are out of print, and both fetch prices substantially over their cover prices now. I suspect that the same thing may happen to this wonderful book as well, and at $10, it's pretty reasonably priced.
The Totoro Forest Project is an international charity effort to save Sayama Forest on the outskirts of Tokyo, which was Hayao Miyazaki's inspiration for the film "Tonari No Totoro" (My Neighbor Totoro). They will be auctioning off works from over 200 international artists to raise funds for this charity on September 6th at Pixar in Emeryville, and tickets for the Totoro Forest Auction are now on sale.
Forest Friend - $100 - includes regular admission book. ($40 tax deductible)
Forest Sponsor - $200 includes admission book, signed limited edition print ($135 tax deductible)
Forest Champion - $300 includes middle VIP live auction seating, book, signed limited edition print, gift certificate to Blowfish Sushi ($185 tax deductible)
Forest Hero - $500 includes front VIP live auction seating, book, an original drawing by one of the artists ($340 tax deductible)
Some of the original drawings that the "Forest Hero" ticket gets can be seen here, and include works done by Ronnie del Carmen, Dice Tsutsumi, Bill Presing, Scott Morse, and Enrico Casarova.
The book will be available for sale online after the auction, as well as at the Cartoon Art Museum with the artworks go on display.
Today, I made a trip up to the city to attend the gallery opening of Stella im Hultberg's new show, Silent Spring at Gallery1988 SF. I arrived there to take a look at the paintings and sketches before the huge crowd started to fill the gallery; even on a rainy Friday evening, there were at least 75 people inside the gallery when I left.
I spoke to Stella before I left, complimenting her on a wonderful showing, and thanked her for doing a show in San Francisco. Stella was both amazed and impressed by the crowd, and seemed appreciative of all the fans who came out tonight.
On one wall were large oil on canvas paintings, while the other featured ink and oil paintings on tea stained paper.
All the pieces for the show can be seen here.
Comic Book Artist Paul Pope has been enlisted by DKNY to design a future forward collection called 2089, which envisions the style of New York City in 2089:
One of my favorite Disney movies is Lilo and Stitch, which has a great combination of great writing, humorous characters and heart. The franchising of Lilo and Stitch has not fared so well; while the tv show and the followup direct to dvd movies have done well money-wise, the storytelling and comedic aspects of these efforts have suffered. The news today is that Disney is developing a new Stitch property fills me with both anticipation and dread. Developed jointly by Disney and Toei Animation's Madhouse (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) and titled "Stitch!", the setting has moved from Hawaii to an fictional island in southern Japan (very similar to Okinawa), and introduces a girl named Hanako as Stitch's new sidekick. Madhouse has managed to produce some great anime series in the past such as Deathnote and Dennou Coil, and contributed to the Animatrix in the "World Record" short.
Each panel in Hall A is split between two presentations, giving each presentation about a half hour to show the trailers/bonus material, and then time for a question and answer session. Howard Berger of the Prince Caspian Special Effects department was there to answer questions.
This panel began with the showing of the trailer, which included some incomplete CG shots -- the CG critters were smoothly rendered without the application of fur or hair, and the centaurs were just wireframes.
Questions in the session included "Do you hope to make them all?" (Yes) and which is your favorite character (Mr. Tumnus). Most of the post-production work is being done in New Zealand by WETA, and they're still working on finishing the movie.
For Wall-E, Andrew Stanton of Pixar "came all the way from Emeryville" (across the bridge, basically for all those who are not familiar with Bay Area geography) to show us the extended trailer of Wall-E, as well as three clips from the movie: Wall-E shows Eve his truck, Wall-E leaves Earth, and Wall-E on Eve's ship.
Talking about Wall-E, Stanton said that the inspiration for Wall-E came from Luxo Jr, the animated lamp in the first Pixar short, and also from him playing with binoculars at an Oakland A's game, in which he realized that you could attach emotion to the movement of the binoculars --happy, sad, happy, sad. Someone asked whether Johnny Five of Short Circuit had any influence on Wall-E's design, and the answer was that he saw the movie once. When designing Wall-E, Stanton said he didn't want a humanoid robot for Wall-E, he wanted a machine. The design of Wall-E was dictated by Wall-E's function; the box for his body is because he needs to compact the garbage, the treads are so that he can move over obstacles, and the eyes mainly came from the binoculars.
When asked what kind of story Wall-E is, Stanton replied "It's a love story", and hearing the crowd reacting with groans, he added "it's a good one!".
Wall-E is not intended to be a True-3D film -- the first one that will be is Toy Story 3.
Stanton said that he was totally geeked out working with Ben Burtt, who did most of the sound effects for Lucasfilm, who is now at Pixar, making sounds for Wall-E. Look for Pizza Planet in the first 20 minutes of the film, and John Ratzenberger has a speaking role in this film as well.
Last year, when I went to Japan, we visited Roppongi and saw this giant sculpture of a spider.
Since War of the Worlds had been released the previous year, I overheard people who believed that perhaps this was a movie tie-in. I knew this probably wasn't the case as Martian war machines have three legs, but I took photographs of the sculpture, and then forgot about it, until I recently saw this photo taken in London:
Thirty-five foot tall spiders made out of bronze aren't something you see everyday, but this time I had more information. The work is called "Maman", and the original one made out of stainless steel is located at the Tate museum at London. The sculptor is Louise Bourgeois, and there are six bronze full-size castings of her work located at:
A visit to Prada's website reveals a short movie (accessed by the Japanese character for film on the top of the page) of Appleseed: Ex Machina, and along with clips of the film, also reveals a couple of clothing designs by Prada used within the film.
Appleseed: Ex Machina has chosen to go with a very CG looking art style, one that could be classified photorealistic anime, much like the Final Fantasy series.
The Haruhi dance has become something of nerd pop culture, and now some intrepid person has sourced and cut together footage from around the world to showcase otaku from around the world doing the Haruhi dance:
There's also the study abroad student doing the Haruhi dance in various locations in Japan:
For comparison, here is the original animation upon which all other Haruhi dances have been based:
