I’m happy to say that animation production on the new short is under way. We spent the last week or so doing some prep work on the characters, building a new BG that I posted earlier, and making sure the animatic worked. I showed it to a few friends of mine and they got some laughs out of it, and that’s all that’s really important.Today, I’ve been working on a shot that is a bit more drawn intensive. When I board the shorts out, I try to keep them as ecomonical as I can so that we can get them done, however I try to put one or two shots in there that have a bit more meat to them. My aim is to make the shorts have a certian level of quality to them so that they bear repeated viewing. Most shots are really just shot-reverse-shot of a talking head or maybe an arm gesture to accentuate a line of dialog. Its nice to be able to pick a moment or two someplace in the story to say “here’s a spot that I think can use some love”, and then devote some time doing something a bit more fleshed out. In the last short, it was the shot when Hipster shoves that accusatory finger in Grey’s face as he rudely spits out his name.

One of the biggest mistakes I often see in animation production is not picking your battles. You can spend an eternity noodling a scene and still not get it right or have it be to your satisfaction. In this light, I can understand why George Lucas has the ever consuming need to fiddle with the Star Wars trilogy. I know damned well that I’ll look at our work and think to myself that I should’ve done something different here or there, or maybe spent more time on a shot. However, what I’ve come to see is that that you have to let certian things go,  accept them as they are, and learn from it.

This morning when I woke up I saw my Wii flashing. I checked my messages and found that the Nintendo Channel has been launched today, so I jumped in the Shopping Channel and nabbed the free download.

The first thing I saw when I got into the Nintendo Channel was a video clip being played welcoming me to the new channel and telling me what to expect from it. After its over, I’m brought to the main menu which is essentially a list of trailers and video clips of some new and a handful of older games. WiiFit was in the front of the pack with Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Kark Wii taking center stage as well. Clicking through a hanful of the clips here, it reminded me of what they did last summer when Metroid Prime 3 was nearing its release. Nintendo hosted a Metroid Prime 3 Preview Channel that gave weekly tidbits and sneak peeks of it in a similar manner to how this part of this new Nintendo Channel works. The video quality is fine and passable, and clicking on the clip will scale it up to full screen which is a nice little touch. Everything loaded up a decent pace as well, so the browsing experience went smoothly.

I’m Not There – a biography of popular musician, Bob Dylan. Uniquely portrayed throughout his lifetime by several different actors such as Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett, and Richard Gere among others.

First Sunday - Two criminals (Ice Cube & Tracy Morgan) decide to rob a church in order to pay off a debt. When they get stuck inside with all the parishioners, they realize they got in a little over their heads. Katt Williams also stars.

Here’s a new background for the short. A good deal of it is going to take place behind the GFGames store by the garbage.

Clay’s got another great interview up over at Animationpodcast.com. This time its with Ken Duncan whi Clay has worked under while he was an inbetweener at Disney’s in the early 90’s. Ken was the lead animator on one of my favorite Disney heroines, Meg, from Hercules. Ken’s a bit more more reserved than say, Nik Ranieri, but has has a ton of professional experience to draw from, and he has some interesting things to say about how he animates. Its good stuff, so go check it out.

Last week, Nine Inch Nails released a new single Discipline to a mysterious, untold album. The track was a free download off of NIN’s website. Buried in the metadata of the MP3 was a message saying to come back to the NIN site on May 5th. Today, they released for FREE their latest album, The Slip, as a thank you to the fans. You can get it in a variety of flavors from MP3 to FLAC off their website. A physical CD is still being planned for a July 08 release. The Slip is a shorter album than Year Zero, but its a pretty tight package. You gotta hand it to Trent Reznor for coming through with this amount of quality material over that past few months. NIN is planning a tour starting off this summer in all major cities. Trent’s been a busy guy!

It’s Over Rock!
Check back over the course of the week to hear the final product.

Relatively early on in GTA IV, Niko is introduced to Roman’s good friend Brucie, a bald-headed ‘roid junkie who can’t stop bouncing off the walls. The thing is, any Pure Pwnage fan may immediately recognize some of Brucie’s mannerisms from FPS Doug. Even my wife who has a very casual knowledge of Pure Pwnage noticed the similarities before I even said anything about it. Now, obviously Brucie isn’t spouting off Doug’s well-known catch phrases like “BOOM Headshot” or “I can dance all day!”… but a lot of things he says and the delivery sounds just like him. Of course it might just be a coincidence… but is it possible that someone at Rockstar was making Brucie a subtle homage to FPS Doug?

Take a look at these two YouTube videos (NSFW Language) and decide for yourself, after the jump. The following contains very minor GTA4 spoilers that occur about 6-7 hours into the game.

I came home from work today and after eating dinner ran a few races in Mario Kart Wii. I’m finally on the 150cc circuit, and it’s proving to be worthy of the Mario Kart title as it seems every time I play it now I become enraged by an onslaught of Red and Blue Shells at the finish line. I found little solace online either as for some reason or other every one there was destroying me, too.

In an effort to keep myself from throwing my Wii Remote out of the window, I popped Chicken Little into the ol’ PS3 for some Blu-Ray goodness. It’s been sitting on my shelf at least since last September, but I always forget I have it there. It had a decent idea at its core, but it somehow got off track in multiple parts throughout the movie. I feel like the committee that was running Disney Feature Animation at the time was too busy trying to cram in as many pop-culture references as possible, and I’m sorry but the pig character has to go. I don’t even remember his name, but I do know that he was Chicken Little’s equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks. Every word out of his mouth made me cringe.

Another Marvel hero for the big screen.
A man being a maid of honor.
Lets be honest, one of those up there is going to be HUGE!
Its the first weekend of SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS!!!!!!

Can’t get any more perfect than that.

Iron Man – Robert Downey Jr is Tony Stark. He’s an asshole billionaire weapons maker. He’s abducted by terrorists and builds a massive iron suit to escape. After escaping he decides to upgrade his clunky suit and start taking matters into his own hands regarding the people that captured him. Also starring Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges. Directed by Jon Favreau.