And so, my blog entries keep coming in later and later. Unusual especially for this week as it hasn’t been as busy as it has been the past few weeks. I think, after all those assignments, I kinda got a bit on the lazy side the last few days. Hey, you gotta relax sometimes too, you know. And I AM a chilled out kinda guy. I know this whole Digital Animation program is all about focus, dedication and all, but much like anything in life, too much of one thing is not a good thing. And like the great prophet Homer Simpson said, “No TV and no beer make Homer go something something…”.

Oh, I did get some stuff done over the weekend but mostly Photoshop work. Actually got caught up in colorizing some sketches of mine, and doing some other cool manipulations to it. Turned out alright I think. But yeah, it was all personal artwork so no actual homework was accomplished. At least I still got to exercise my creativity though, which in the long run is still beneficial.

Anyway, I’m gonna take a little side trip this week away from my usual anime and music rants and talk about the movie, Beowulf, which I just saw last night. Gotta say that I was quite disappointed with this one. Right off the bat, the first thing that’s wrong in the movie are the characters’ movements, more specifically, the eyes. I dunno how Imagemovers did it, but aside from the obvious lack of emotion, they also managed to have the characters’ eyes lose focus every now and then. That’s not so much of a problem with John Malkovich’s character, Unferth, coz I think the actor himself does tend to do that loss-of-eye-focus thing. But when the REST of the characters are doing the same, yeah there’s something terribly wrong with that. And like our 3D Design teacher said in last week’s lecture, “we all tend to look at the eyes first, so you gotta do the eyes right”. SO true…Second thing you notice that’s wrong, is the body movement of most of the characters. How did they mess this up when this was motion capture! You’d think with mocap, and a whole bunch of animators working on tweaking the movements, they’d at least get the characters to move right. Honestly, this was one of the more awkward looking CG movements I’ve seen in quite some time. I think Polar Express was way better, and THAT was done with motion capture. Even Final Fantasy: Spirits Within puts it to shame, and that was released back in 2001 and I’m pretty sure that was just purely animation.

I don’t wanna be one of those negative-ass critics that just bash the hell out of a piece, without a single positive word or constructive criticism. There are some good sides, I think, to the movie. For the most part, the character modeling was done quite well. Basically, they modeled the actors that were playing the part, and I’d say they modeled it pretty close to reference. Looking at a character from the front and side views, they pretty much got it right on, except for a few differences you notice in ¾ view. This I can totally understand from a modeling perspective, as it’s pretty hard to get the ¾ view right. You just really gotta have an eye for it. Some of the environments and lighting effects were pretty good as well. I say “some” because there are also other scenes that look pretty flat. The golden dragon in the climactic scenes looked pretty cool too, although this might be a bit on the biased side, since I am partial to dragons hehe.

Well, go see the movie if you can anyway. Like an instructor of ours said, “you can always learn something from the good and bad movies“…Uh, word of advice though…just make sure you learn the RIGHT things from the bad ones.

P.S. On an entirely unrelated note, I’d like to give props to my countryman, Manny Pacquiao, for his impressive victory over Juan Manuel Marquez last Saturday night, March 15, and therefore claiming the WBC 130-pound title! I’ll admit, the bout was too close, with both fighters landing lots of power punches in a calculated bloody brawl. But in the end, the difference came down to one point. The point known as the Manny Pacquiao left hook that rocked Marquez to the canvas in the 3^rd round. HA-HAAAAA!!! Yeeeeah boi!!!…Thanks Pac, as always, for making the Filipino people proud. Mabuhay Pilipinas!

 

What a tiring week…Normally, I’d have done my blogging by about Wednesday but this time around I’m blogging on a Saturday morning (it would’ve even been on Friday night, which would be pretty sad and lame, had I not been so tired from the lack of sleep in doing the 3D animation weightlift assignment). Suddenly I find myself overwhelmed by all the assignments thrown at us. I thought the past week was bad, now we’ve got even more work coming. All this and we’re only 3 weeks into the 2^nd term! There’s practically an assignment for every class, and in some classes we even have more than one (is that even legal?!). This is seriously throwing my whole time management plan out the window. And I was doing so well the first couple of weeks, too! Now, time management basically means that every waking hour must be spent on doing JUST homework, with a few short breaks to refuel my stomach, maintain a decent sense of personal hygiene, and take our dog out (or suffer the consequences of her crapping all over the carpet).

So all of our 1^st term marks are in. I did alright, I guess. Although, I’m quite disappointed with some of the marks. Disappointed in myself, that is, for not doing better especially in 3D Design and 3D Animation. I tried pretty hard on both of those classes, but at least this is my wake-up call that I really have to raise that bar and go all out for this. Like I always say, I don’t care much for the actual marks in this program, but more so for what they mean. They’re supposed to be a gauge of what level you’re at, and it seems I have a long way to go.

Alright, on to better things. This week’s music pick is the track “Kom Igen” by Outlandish (featuring U$O, ADL, and Salah Edin). Check this, Outlandish is a group based in Denmark, with three members: Isam, Waqas, and Lenny. Their backgrounds respectively are of Moroccan, Pakistani, and Cuban/Honduran. Isam and Waqas are Muslim, and Lenny is Catholic. And their influences are hip-hop, soul/R&B, Arab, Indian, and Latin American rhythms. So yeah, you‘re gonna need a few translators for this song. In fact, in “Kom Igen”, the lyrics are in English, Danish, Spanish, Urdu, and Arabic. How’s that for diversity?! Anyway, I first heard this song off the Fifa 2007 soundtrack, and the insane beat just got me hooked. But what makes it even better are the lyrics, and the positive message it conveys. The chorus says it all…”Wish for my brother what I wish for myself / Try to love the world less / Put my ego to rest”. And “try to love the world less” is meant in a spiritual way. Outlandish even categorizes their genre of music as Life Music. For more, here are the lyrics, with translation: http://www.outlandmoro.com/outlandish/discography_ctv.php#kom_igen. And here’s the video, check it out:

And my anime pick for this week…isn’t even a movie yet. Trippy, eh? It’s a demo/promo/pilot for an anime film titled “Even If You Become The Enemy Of The World”. WHY, you ask, did I pick this? Check out the video, and you’ll see why. The animation and art direction is simply amazing. All that stuff we learned in our animation and production classes (timing, anticipation, staging, holds, strong artwork, character design and appeal, etc, etc) is all here. I like what they’ve done with the color schemes as well. This video is actually part of the anime/music compilation entitled Amazing Nuts (yeah, the Japanese think up weird names) done by Studio 4C. You may be familiar with some of their works, such as The Animatrix (Studio 4C produced The Second Renaissance Part 1 & 2, Kid‘s Story, Beyond, and Detective Story, as well as collaborating on the other 4 episodes). They also did the animation sequences in the Nike/Lebron James Chamber of Fear commercial which aired back in 2004.….Another unique thing about this video is that apparently this was released as 3 things in 1 – a standalone music video, a promo pilot for a film, and as part of a standalone DVD release. But really, I can’t wait to see this released as a full-length feature.

Well, that wraps it up for now…..I wish I could say the same for the rest of my homework.

So my wife just called my blog boring…..Such loving and encouraging words, especially considering that was only my FIRST blog entry. Hehe. Man, I tell ya, she is my toughest critic. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that she is! Seriously, every time I’m working on a school project or even just a simple sketch, I always get her to critique it. SOMETIMES to her it “looks good”, but most of the time she’ll pick something out right away. And then I’d spend the next few hours, sometimes days trying to correct that little mistake. Imagine if she had the critiquing powers of the Dreamcrusher…I’d never get any piece of work done. But hey, that’s what you’re supposed to do right? Get some critiques on your work. I try to get critiques wherever I can. Whenever I show my work to my classmates, practically the first thing I ask is “Can you tell me what’s wrong with it?”. Although, I think everyone in class is still kind of at that stage where they may be a bit hesitant to crush my dreams hehe. But then again, there were times when we were viewing some past students’ demo reels and once someone got the ball rolling, man everyone would tear that reel to shreds. Scary…So now I’ve added another piece of motivation to excel in this Digital Animation program. And that is, not wanting to end up in the “crap” pile of demo reels that the instructors love showing to the future students. The horror…..

Anyway, I guess I gotta spice this blog up a bit. After reading all my classmates’ blogs, I noticed most write about what they did in school. Which is probably why a certain someone said that my blog was the most irrelevant. Thanks Sharon…Hehe just kidding, it’s all good! Again, I welcome any critiques. Sorry to disappoint though, but I still won’t focus my blog on school stuff (maybe only part of it). I’m just going to throw a few more things into the mix, aside from just anime (which I GUESS, could be boring to some people, obviously not me).

And what else do I fiend for? Music! No specific genre. I’m pretty varied in my tastes, although I have heavy influences from hip-hop, beach house, chill out, lounge, acoustic, and some R&B. If you like any of the above, then you’re in luck. So I think every week I’m going to introduce a dope track, album, or whatever. This week, I’ll start with one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard in my life. Yeah, it’s THAT good! It’s a Japanese song titled “Shiki No Uta” (Song of Four Seasons), sung by MINMI (who does such an awesome job on the chorus especially…beautiful, beautiful voice). And the jazzy chill out hip-hop beat done by Nujabes is out of this world! Here’s a link to the lyrics (Japanese and English) if you’re interested: http://www.spookhouse.net/angelynx/comics/champloo-endthemes.html. And yes, this song is from an anime series called Samurai Champloo (don‘t let the somewhat corny sounding name fool you, this is an excellent series…definitely gonna talk about it in the future). If you want a more instrumental version of this, the beat actually came from Nujabes’ earlier album, and the track’s called “Beat Laments The World”. And by the way, this song is gonna be the soundtrack to my demo reel, so nobody take it! Hehe.

And of course, I’m not gonna forget about my anime pick. From one of my favorite songs of all time, we move to one of my favorite anime movies of all time: Toki Wo Kakeru Shoujo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time). It’s a subtle comedy, and the title really speaks for itself, so no need for me to go into detail. Otherwise, I might ruin the story for anyone who’s actually going to go and see it (hey, if you like spoilers, go check out Wikipedia or IMDB…they’ll be sure to give away the story in the first few lines). But again, there’s brilliant storytelling in this movie, and the animation is pretty good as well. Like Paprika, it’s in 2D though, so that might disappoint some people in our 3D Animation Program. But I say, if you really are a fan of animation, it doesn’t matter if it’s in 2D or 3D. As long as it’s done well. So here’s the trailer:

 

So that’s it for now. Wow, I’m on a roll today…more than 700 words already. I wonder if I can use this for next week’s blog quota…Hehe just kidding. Time to do more homework. See ya in a week!

Alright, here goes. Time to do something that, as I recall, I promised myself I would never do. And that is, to start a blog. I’m not even very good at replying to people’s emails, let alone write a regular blog. But since this is for marks (hehe), then I might as well. By the way, I’m initially typing this on MS Works right now coz the stupid wordpress.com website won’t load. And that’s right, I’m using MS Works not MS Word coz my computer at home is quite ghetto.

Since I have to talk about something, I might as well talk about what’s gotten me addicted the last couple of years, and that’s anime. Thankfully over the transition between first and second term in our Digital Animation program, I got some down time to check out a few fairly recent anime movie releases (most of which I think have not made its way to North America yet). And when I say “fairly recent”, that means these titles were released in Japan at least within the last couple of years or so (which isn’t too bad considering I’m here in Canada, and it takes forever for Japanese anime titles to make their way across the Pacific).

Anyway, just the other day, I got the chance to see the movie Paprika. It’s a 2D feature film animated by the acclaimed (and definitely one of my favorite production companies) Madhouse Studios, which also animated such award-winning films as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Millennium Actress (if you ever get the chance by the way, do yourself a favor and go watch these two other titles as well!). But back to the topic at hand, Paprika has a very DEEP, engaging, and somewhat bizarre storyline about a female psychotherapist and her colleagues who use a new form of technology that allows them to see into a person‘s dreams. They plan on effectively using this technology in the treatment of their psychiatric patients. But before they could make further use of this breakthrough, the devices are suddenly stolen. Worse is that the culprit has started to use the devices to intertwine the dream world with reality, in order to manipulate the real world into the culprit’s ideal dream. The thing about Japanese storytelling that has really impressed me over the years is that they often have very unique and interesting storylines and are not afraid to push the envelope, especially in their animated pieces. Paprika definitely does not disappoint in these areas, and deservedly has won awards both in Japan and internationally. If you enjoy thought-provoking storylines and clean animation, then go check out this movie. Even the replay value alone is well worth it.

Here’s the link to the Paprika website with movie trailer (you get way better resolution there compared to the Youtube vid below): http://www.sonyclassics.com/paprika/

 

And since I’m not the best movie critic out there, here’s the IMDB link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0851578/

Next week, stay tuned for more anime rants from your friendly neighborhood anime crackhead…