The Hollywood Reporter, usually referred to as THR, released a set of interviews at the beginning of this year covering all aspects of the film making industry, each featuring a collection of the top creators within that subset of the art. The one that had me mesmerized was the Full Animator Interview (capitols intended, as are most of the puns I often include, but I do not normally admit to them). If you have an interest in creating animation, or just appreciate amazing stuff when you see it, it would be worth a bit of your time to check this out.
Terrestrial Human
This week we get I, Frankenstein, a movie based on the graphic novel I, Frankenstein which surprised me. When I first saw the trailer I figured it was based on the Dean Koontz Frankenstein series, but I guess it just borrows heavily from it. In case there is a difference, they also have a Motion Comic of the prequel episode.
After Death brings together four siblings who gather for their inventor father’s funeral, who then discover their father and deceased brother (killed years ago in another of dad’s experiments) may not be as dead as they all supposed. I know it sounds like a plot for a horror film, but this 2012 UK feature film is actually a quirky comedy in the British style. I mention the year and country because there is a 2014 American movie by the same name that is a horror film. The superhero movie this time is Iron Girl, in Japanese with English Subtitles. The actress playing the lead role is famous in Asia for her genre work, but it is not the same genre I mean when I use the word, so put this one in the NSFW category, just in case. In Japan it is listed as 12Up (pretty much our PG13), in Korea it is listed as 18 (somewhere near our R), the US release is flagged as Not Rated, and the trailer looks like a PG13 Action film. So I certainly have no clue, you can decide for yourself whether to check it out.
While there aren’t any TV shows as such this week, The Doors: R-Evolution is a music performance compilation that includes their early TV appearances and highlights the evolution of their image presentation as they gained more control over how they were displayed on the small screen. It includes early music films (video did not yet exist) through later professional cinematic productions, and is as interesting for the evolution of the artistic style it promoted for other bands to follow, as for the music it showcases.
In Anime we have one new release this week: Medaka Box Abnormal: The Complete Collection. In season 2 of the series, Medaka Kurokami has to use every hidden resource of the Student Council in her possession, including the super power wielding Abnormals, in order to defeat the dark plans of their enemies. Her War God Mode will not be enough to save the day by itself this time.
The first video by Qooland is called Sea Lice And Bear, more or less. It was posted 3 weeks ago, and is from their upcoming 6-song EP being released on February 12th, called something like Tear Your Classroom To Pieces. Sea Lice is the 5th track on the new EP, while Bear is the 6th, they did a nice job of melding them together. The second track came out almost a year ago on their full album Telecaster so you’ll still play. I have to point out these are my own interpretation’s of the Google Translate results, I don’t read Japanese yet, and still only have between 50 and 100 words of spoken vocabulary, so I have to interpolate a lot. The music is fun, though, and you get some interesting related j-rock results when you plug the band name in over at Last FM.
Another excellent collection of creative software for the artist, animator, movie maker, musician, and publisher built into a Boot-From-DVD Live distro, Ubuntu Studio is ready to help you make some amazing stuff. While they don’t have the huge range of software Open Artist contains, what they do have still covers a lot of ground, and almost all of it is very powerful, stable, intuitive, and user friendly. There is a definite advantage in having access to tools you don’t need to go through a steep learning curve to get a useful result out of, after all.
The workflows they cover are audio, graphics, video, photography and publishing, and within each workflow they include an entire suite of tools for each step of the process. And while I dearly love the large selection of utilities in Open Artist, it can get a bit confusing at times when you just want to crank out your project. It is very nice to have a toolkit available where the best (or at least most commonly used) program for each step is at your fingertips, leaving you no ambiguity about what to launch as you go through creating your masterpiece, in whatever medium.
The latest release is built on Ubuntu 13.10 (Codename: Saucy Salamander), and it has all the latest and greatest updates for all the software. But because it is that new, and not fully vetted for the long haul, it is only supported for the next 4 months. Early adapters will want to go that way, but most folks will probably find the build layered onto Ubuntu 12.04 (Codename: Precise Pangolin), which is supported through 2017, a more reasonable way to go.
Any way you approach this software package, I suspect you will find it a very valuable addition to your creative arsenal. I certainly keep booting the disc over and over and use it to create new things, so I suspect you might find it as interesting after you have seen it a few times.
I find these characters looking a bit strange in 3D, but I am looking forward to this blast from the past being reborn on the big screen. Mr. Peabody & Sherman was a part of the whole Rocky and Bullwinkle experience, along with Dudley Doright and Fracture Fairy Tales, and will be hitting theaters on March 7th.