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I have sat through a lot of tutorials about how to do things in a 3D CGI modeling and animation software package before, and this one just made me grin. Jay Johnson has a kid who had an animation project in mind, which he shared with his dad. Dad installed the full free DAZ Studio Pro software suite on his computer, the child beat on it for half an hour getting nowhere, and gave up in frustration. Jay then showed his kid how to use the software to make his project come to life in about 20 minutes, and he reports that two days later the end result was amazing according to dad.

That event caused Jay to assemble this 20 minute Quick-Start Guide for DAZ Studio Pro, paring the process down to just those components needed to get a project started and come up with a final product. Mind, he did jump to the various library segments that he knew held the components needed for the specific project to hand, so you can expect to spend a bit of time looking through each area for the building blocks required for yours. But the important part is the way he trimmed back the process to just the bare bones required to complete the task. Follow that process, and save your work often under incremented file names so you can go back to any step of it later. Once you get the first one built, you can go back and tweak any aspect of it to your hearts content until you get it perfect, but this tutorial should help you get started (and finished) a lot quicker than you expected to.

I have been waiting for this week! This Wednesday we get Interstellar in a limited number of theaters around the country (check here to see if there is one near you). In my part of the country it will be at the Lockheed Martin IMAX, National Air & Space Museum in 70MM, but on Friday it opens everywhere. Also beginning Friday, Big Hero 6, from the creators of Frozen and based on the comic book of the same name from Marvel. And if you are in the mood for a bit of reality, the docudrama The Theory of Everything, about the life and love of Steven Hawking.

The best movie coming out this week is definitely Maleficent, which includes the best performance I have ever seen Angelina Jolie deliver. The special effects were also quite good, and it really put Sleeping Beauty into perspective as quite a different story than the one Disney told in 1959. Also this week is Hercules as played by Dwayne Johnson, and the family-friendly Planes: Fire and Rescue.

I didn’t see any genre TV coming out this week, but we do have White Collar: The Complete Fifth Season, which is always a fun show. Season 6 begins Thursday, and will be their final season.

Anime gets a couple of choices. Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: Season 2 continues the rather strange and amusing tale of the guy being protected by three of the Old Ones of C’Thulhu, who shape shift into cute girls to blend in. Yes, it is a romantic comedy. Ben-To is also a comedy, about the food fights that take place when Bento boxes are marked down to half price.

The entire collection of excellent audio from Kill Dil, the Bollywood variation on Kill Bill, sort of. Except with a different plot, a great collection of music, and you can dance to it! It should only take you about 40 minutes to go through the entire collection, and you can follow that by watching the trailer. It will be hitting the big screen on November 14th, but I have not confirmed in which country. Enjoy!