Skip to main content

Happy Halloween to all, the official holiday of Cosplay combined with a generous helping of candy-fueled extortion in the Trick Or Treat tradition. The first one is the Dragon Con 2014 COSPLAY Showcase put together by MLZ Studios, a group that covers a lot of Cosplay at events. The second video is the Best & Hottest Cosplay of San Diego Comic-Con 2014, which as you might expect features fewer Anime characters and more Comic/Manga folks (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, etc.), plus the expected TV and movie tie-ins. That one was from Inside The Magic. The third video is from the UK, from the recent MCM Comic Con (London’s Comic Con amazing event), and that concludes the examples for this Halloween. Enjoy!

It is not a joke, and it fits in perfectly with the end of the last set of episodes. Twin Peaks is returning to TV after an absence of 25 years. Not for very long; only about 9 episodes, and a short and simple mini-series. But still, any new Twin Peaks will always be a bonus! Then again, there is always the band Twin Peaks doing their song Making Breakfast, which I figure has to be a tip of the hat to Kyle’s addiction to Coffee and all things breakfast.

You could not fit in the drivers seat and roll out with this prototype model on the highway quite yet, but I love the fact that there is a crew of engineers working their butts off to build an actual working transformer system! Looking at their progress to date, I guesstimate something in the 10 to 20 years range to have working versions you could actually use to commute to work. Thanks to Tech Crunch for the heads up on this one!

This is another excellent tutorial from Small W Studio with a Halloween slant, because the topic this time is Film Noir. He covers a number of different aspects of the CGI 3D animation process, but the two I got the most out of were resources and techniques for building the set, and using lighting to set the mood. The later is particularly important for Noir, since it is all black and white, and what is in the spotlight or in the shadows helps advance the story, not just create the atmosphere. This particular tutorial was created for the Reallusion iClone software suite, but the principles and most of the resources will work with any 3D modelling and animation package you have. That includes free projects like Blender and DAZ, so don’t think you have to pay an arm and a leg to get creative and make your movie.

So far I haven’t found any sci-fi or fantasy movies this week that aren’t horror, which I suppose makes sense, Friday being Halloween and all. So this might be a good weekend to check out something you haven’t seen yet from previous weeks, or re-watch a good one. I am considering going to Guardians of the Galaxy for the 5th time, as a for instance, possibly my third time seeing it in IMAX, if it hasn’t left the IMAX theaters yet…