If you ever wondered what it was like going through a Tsunami, this footage from Japan should spell it out for you. This is brutal to watch when you consider how many of the people you see in this film did not survive, including the driver of the car doing the recording. The sad part is, this is not science fiction, or even a mundane disaster film. This is the way the world really works, although thankfully it doesn’t do this very often or in very many places at a given time. But sometimes it happens, and a town of 17,000 people only has 7,000 survivors (one Japanese town’s real statistics out of a coastline of several dozen towns). I know the actual events were months ago now, but the impact will last for years, if not decades, on the surviving residents. They need all the help we can give them.
Sometimes silly commercials are actually fun. While these may not be sci-fi, they are silly, and that counts for a lot with me. Plus, commercials invoke a discipline most audio/video creators never have to work within: tell your entire story and get your message across in 15 seconds to 3 minutes. If that sounds easy, give it a shot, and see just how it works out for you. I was surprised at the results I got the first few times, but as I worked at condensing the plot and action, I got better at it, and the stories themselves had a lot more punch in a lot less screen time.
We already knew that Japan was not the only source of world class Anime; both Korea and China have major studios that have been cranking out some quality animation, with the three of them often working together, and with the US, to create the finished product. This wonderful little ultra-short story (8 minutes and change) isn’t from a mainstream studio, but seems to be a small team trying to break past the limitations of their animation shop into real production. Considering how good the Doctor Who Fan Built Anime was, all I can do is cheer this group on as well, since they have already exceeded the other. Did I mention that this video impressed me? Way to go, WolfSomke, and thanks to Escapist for the heads up on this one.
I love quality animation, and Pixar has some of the best. Their very first animation test was of a couple of lamps playing around, and the lamp became their logo for opening their films. This wonderful little parody from Collage Humor shows the consequences of that action.
This may be the best fan-made Anime I have ever seen, and certainly the best Doctor Who fan built Anime. We are talking Classic and Retro here; the Doctor in this one is Jon Pertwee, and the Master is Roger Delgado, using some excellently edited sound bytes from the 1970s episodes. On the Anime side, Bubblegum Crisis, Dirty Pair, and Macross all contributed to the animation style, although I don’t speak quite enough Japanese yet to vouch for the Nihongo quotes (but I expect they are as well done). I do suspect a lot of them are from those series, which puts our Doctor Who influences from the 70s and our Anime influences from the 80s, and gives us a nice familiar jumping off point to explore this totally new combo creation from them. Did I mention this may be the best fan-made Anime I have ever seen? It even uses the old-school minimal animation sequences with the modern flash minimal animation sequences. They may sound the same, but you create them using totally different techniques. Thanks OtaKing 77077, also known as Paul Johnson for creating this incredible animation!! He has a number of Tutorial animation videos as well, you should watch them all!
I recommend watching it full screen, in case you were wondering: it is just that good.
This trailer for Robert J. Sawyer’s book The Terminal Experiment is a little hard for me to follow (since I don’t speak Hungarian), but is quite nicely done. This one appears to be publisher created, although without a translation I am just guessing, but some quite excellent book trailers have been created by fans.