Today, a third trailer for “The Simpsons Movie” has been released. The previous trailers showed very little of the actual animation that would be found in the film, but this new one shows quite alot. You can see it here. The General John Manfre has already posted the link in The Smorg, but I wanted to chime in with some of my own thoughts.

Personally, I haven’t watched an episode of The Simpsons in years. I was a big fan back in the day when it was first on TV, but have since lost track of it. Recently, I caught a newer episode (the date in the credits was 2005 I believe). I turned it on when Homer and Marge were trying to ditch the kids in a montage parodying the opening credits to Catch Me If You Can right down to the John Williams score. While that opening segment to the Spielberg film was pretty awesome, I failed to connect with it at all in this eposide of The Simpson. It seems like a streatch, and was more likely something you’d see in an episode of The Family Guy than The Simpsons. However, a week later I caught another episode that was clearly older. They were still using cells as opposed to digitally inking and painting in this episode. Here, Homer was at a fast food joint, and was ordering burgers faster than he could shove them into his mouth. It was instantly hilarious. The way it was composed, edited, and treated was a million times funnier than the extravagant bit taken from Catch Me If You Can.

So as you can see, I’m not a huge fan of The Simpsons anymore. So what is my take on the moive? Well, for starters I’m happy to see a mainstream animated film done in 2D. I wouldn’t doubt there was many meetings over weather or not to make this using CGI. I can hear the tagline now: “Its The Simpsons like you’ve never seen them before…IN 3D!!!” Thankfully, that isn’t the case here. The animation itself is slightly higher grade than TV broadcast standards. Things move around pretty well, but its not over cooked. Which is fine. There is limitations to the Simpsons character designs which doesn’t lend to fuller animation. For example, I can’t stand when they show the characters from a frontal view. They look totally odd.

The Castlevania game franchise is one of my personal all time favorites. When Konami released the now classic Symphony of the Night, series director Koji Igarashi felt that the manliness of the Castlevania series should be toned down. They enlisted the aid of self taught illustrator Ayami Kojima to help usher in a new look for the series. In place of the muscle men were womanly muscle men. It’s been 10 years since this transition, roughly 7 games later, and now I just want my barbarians back.

It worked for Symphony of the Night where you play as Alucard, the son of Dracula. In vampire lore, vampires are usually seen as “beautiful people.” Alucard’s look was actually really perfect. He has a super pale almost corpse like complexion, flowing long white hair, and a genderless face. The dude is a vampire, it works.

I like Alucard & this picture a lot, but dude, look at the size of his left hand compared to his other hand, let alone his head. He could crush pumpkins with that thing.

Last night Frank and I went over to Joe’s place to record some additional dialogue for the next episode. Originally, we thought this was going to be a quick one, but it has turned into much more. I can safely say that this will be our longest episode yet. In fact, we have more than twice the dialogue in this episode than we have in any other one. If everything goes well, this episode should be ready to roll within the next few weeks. Until then, enjoy the image from the storyboard.

UPDATE: As you may or may not have read from my previous post, I have a tendency to throw my back out during the most inane things. Well, today is no better. This morning while I was brushing my teeth, I managed to wrench my back again. That’s right, I was brushing my teeth. I assure you not an ounce of extra effort was being expended to clean the plaque from my teeth. I just suck. I am probably the most out of shape I have ever been in my life.

The price we pay to animate…

Hey, did you notice that there aren’t many sections up at the top anymore? Yeah, we decided to clean up the site a little bit and even freshen up all of the pages. What you’ll find is a site that finally works as one cohesive whole. As a refresher, here is how everything is laid out.

“What’s New” brings you to the Nerdlog, as does the “Shamoozal” logo in the banner. The ‘Sodes’ are now called ‘Episodes’ and you can find all of your favorites in there with a new handy bar that lets you pick through them no matter which one you’re watching. The Smorg hasn’t change, and the Podcast section now features all of the podcasts to choose from. The “shop” is a bit of a merger between the Cafepress store and the music store. Finally, contact and legal info have been combined into one.

We’re thrilled with the new changes and look for the site, and hopefully everyone else will be too.

A buddy of mine sent me a link to some really impressive illustration work by an illustrator named Mathias Verhasselt. From what I can tell, its all done digitally with a tablet in I would guess either Painter or Photoshop. The samples I’m giving here have been scaled down to fit the page, so I highly suggest clicking the link to go to Mathias’ site as they’re highly detailed and exceptionally well done.

If there’s one thing I have to say in criticism of digital painting, it is that all the brush strokes are clearly a replicated pattern that is used to duplicate an actual brush as the stylus is dragged across the tablet. This creates a repetition of the brush strokes across the picture plane and for me has a tendency to flaten the image. While a digital brush does employ pressure sensitivity, it is generally relegated to the tapering of a line and does not take into account the varying opacity or other attributes of an actual brush. The end result is often a series of practically exact shapes that have been massed in by the digital brush. However, this is a minor gripe and the images on Mathias’s page are certainly done by a highly skilled illustrator.

Another thing that is great about his site is that clearly the web design blows, but it doesn’t even matter because everything is just plain awesome. However, do make sure you check out some of his links he has listed as there’s a bunch of really great stuff to be found there, too.

In a surprise move, I managed to worm my way out of seeing Ghost Rider tonight. Instead, we opted to see Bridge to Terabithia, which has now come up in three out of the four posts from today.

My post about Disney not marketing this movie correctly was completely on target. This movie is absolutely nothing like the commercials lead you to believe. This is not a Harry Potter or Narnia knock. It’s not a cheap cash in at a fantasy movie. Instead, what they have here is a refreshing breath of fresh air, a children’s movie that takes it audience seriously, and deals with real issues.

The movie is essentially a coming of age story about a young boy, Jess played by Josh Hutcherson. I made a crack earlier about Josh resembling Harry Potter, but at least Josh proves he is a more competent actor. Anyway, Jess is your average troubled boy, who is at a point in his life where he is unsure of the man he should become. He’s picked on, different, has absolutely zero confidence, and doesn’t seem to have the greatest family life either. Instead of facing reality, Jess hides behind his sketch book, drawing out the things he really cares about. Enter Leslie, the quirky new girl at school who quickly befriends poor little Jess with her brilliant way with words. It isn’t before long where the two begin sharing ideas in an effort to cope with reality, hence the birth of Terabithia. What follows is an amazingly imaginative movie that flows at an excellent pace, with strong themes and a fantastic highly emotional finale.

LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing. It’s where a bunch of people, likely between the ages of 16 – 45, get together and act as if they are warriors, wizards, thieves and elves, among various other types of fantasy species. Together they fight, throw pieces of paper in the air, and ponder over such ethical questions like, “If we don’t kill nature, how will we build our houses?”

Usually one of the elves or wizards has the ability to conjure video cameras from the future and record these battles. That same person also owns a PC and spends an afternoon adding hard rock music to the battles, highlights the various “serious scenes” and might even add in an effect or two.

In one case, I was inspired enough by a particular clip that I felt compelled to add some effects to it. With the help of the soundtrack of the movie “The Last Samurai,” an awesome quote by Sun Tzu I got from the back of the Ikaruga box, and a bit of technical modern day wizardry (After Effects) I was able to take your average lame LARP scene and make it into an above average LARP scene. Kudos if you spot the Grim Reaper from the original Castlevania.

If you read John’s movie theater releases for the weekend, then I’m sure you probably know I’m being drug off to Ghost Rider (my wife is a fan of the comic), and also read about the movie “The Bridge to Terabithia.”

If I didn’t read John’s update, I would have absolutely zero idea what Terabithia was about, and that is why this movie is going to flop completely this weekend. It could be getting the best reviews in the world (after a quick glance at Rottentomatoes, it’s doing quite well) but no one knows what the thing is about.

The first time I saw a commercial for Terabithia I wasn’t paying much attention. It just seemed to me that these guys were trying to capitalize on the fantasy genre with a movie that looked like Narnia and a main character that looks like Harry Potter. However, I kind of dig movies with creative looking monsters like something out of Jim Henson’s shop running around, so I decided I’d pay a little more attention to the commercial the next time I saw it.

The commercial comes on, and it tells you absolutely zero about the movie. All we learn is that there is a big creature that is ticklish because a dog runs between its toes and it laughs. Seriously, I’ve seen the commercial roughly 47 times, and each time I try to see if I’m missing something. Nope. All we know is that there is a ticklish monster in it.

I guess I’m the unofficial “movie guy” here at the Shamoozal. Probably because I go to theaters for flicks and watch DVDs more than most people I know. I don’t know if this will be a regular weekly update or not. We’ll see. But anyway, here are the FRIDAY THEATER RELEASES!!!!! YEEEEEEEAH! I wish I had cool sound effects that could go off when you read the title or maybe a little CSI Miami opening David Caruso one-liner sound but oh well. All I get is stinkin text!

Yeah, I’m good. I feel like my skull is on fire, but I’m good.

GHOST RIDER – Cage + Comic Book Superhero = Recipe for….. DISASTER!!! I gotta admit I love Cage. Nicolas Cage has made some quality movies (of course this is my opinion and not actually held in the majority of the general public). I’m a fan of Con-Air, The Rock, Raising Arizona, The Weather Man, Gone in 60 Seconds, Adaptation, Matchstick Men, Face/Off, Snake Eyes, 8MM, National Treasure, and World Trade Center. But I have to admit this movie looks like absolute GAR-BAGE! Even a diehard Cage fan like me would never see this movie in theaters. I guess it’s going to provide some laughs, not purposely though. Have fun Phil.

Do I Creep You Out?