The short CGI film Autonomous began life as a demo for a bigger story, and was completed by two people in their free time over the course of 2 years. Aleksei Shulga did directing, modeling, shading, vfx, and compositing, while Mihhail Kohtov did riging, animation, sfx and sound design. The music they used was created by Mikhail Pridonov. I did not find an mention about who wrote it and did the storyboards, but my guess would be Aleksei.
I couldn’t find a single new genre release in western Movies or TV, but there are a few eastern titles this week. Tokyo Ghoul √A – Season Two continues the war between Ghouls and Humans, cranking up the action and horror as old friends transform and new perils arise. Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign brings the first dozen episodes of the potential extinction of humanity as the vampires grow ever more numerous and hungry. In Shirobako: Collection 2 the five friends once in the animation club are now reunited and ready to create their first professional Anime, if only they can make it work. This was one of the most impressive Anime programs of 2015 for me, both for its recursiveness (an Anime about making an Anime, in the tradition of Golden Boy and Anime Runner Kuromi) and for its fond waves of recognition to some of the most amazing Anime creators in the industry today. I can’t say it anywhere near as well as others already have, so let me pass along links to a few of the better articles about it, from Rocket News 24, from Kotaku, and from Otaku USA. It also indirectly made public some of the sadder details, like the fact that many of the animators and voice actors that work on these projects are only paid a dollar an hour, not exactly a living wage. If you have ever wanted to create your own anime, this is a must-watch!
Starting this week, Marvel has its own in-house news/promotion show, THWIP! The Big Marvel Show. They will put out new episodes every Wednesday both on their web site and on YouTube. The first episode runs about 15 minutes, I don’t know if that is going to be the standard or if it will fluctuate depending on the material available each week. This could be fun, or it could get really old fast; there is no way to know based on a sample set of 1 how it will work out, but we will find out. Thanks to THR for the heads up on this one.
This is Alf Lovvold’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Zombies And The Killer Plants On Some Serious Acid, a tasty trailer done by just one guy. Check out his interview in 3DArtist for an idea of how he went about creating this.
Movies has The 5th Wave, a tale of alien invasion based on the first book of a Rick Yancey trilogy. 400 Days has astronauts flying a simulated mission to another planet that isn’t as simulated as they think it is in this movie from Syfy. While it isn’t genre, it is worth mentioning that A Royal Night Out is also being released on disc this week, based on a true story. If there is any genre TV this week I managed to miss it.
In Anime RWBY 3 is the third volume in the series of high powered combat with monsters and other humans. While hidden political agendas and secret plans fight to determine the fate of the world, we slowly learn that their own history has been hidden from our 4 heroes and their various allies. Gundam Evolve is an interesting release because it contains 15 short pieces that were originally aired at conventions and/or packaged with kits, and is now compiled onto DVD for the first time. They are outtakes or side stories from a range of Gundam series done using a number of different animation techniques.
Tan Le developed a wearable EEG, and the other week a team of engineering doctoral students at the University of Florida used it to control drones in a competitive race as the first step to developing a brain/robot interface. One of Tan Le’s more elegant contributions to this telepathic headset was the algorithm that lets it unfold the convolutions of the brain, making it much more accurate and a lot easier for anyone to put on and start training with. This has major implications for everyone from the physically disabled who will gain previously impossible degrees of self reliance, to the military research teams trying to create their own personal Gundams. The major breakthrough’s that made EEGs wearable were developed in parallel in a number of different research projects around the world during the early part of this century, and affordable (as little as $500 a pop) the early part of this decade, and so far every year since has seen major improvements in their functionality. Another major player in this field is Ariel Garten, so I had to include some commentary from her. It seems like her system is a lot lower rez then Tan Le’s, only able to trigger actionable input from the whole brain state (Alpha, Theta) rather than specific mapped neural sites. But they are both on the market with a cheap neural computer interface as are a number of others, and there is no way to know who might come out with the advancement that pushes us into the future.