Moby Dick 2

Because the days between Christmas and New Years Eve are always a bit funky, here's a nice treat to squash some of that time. 'Moby Dick 2' is in my opinion absolutely the best online Flash Game I've played in a long time. It's got some awesome programming done by Denys Moysin at Mostro Games and excellent artwork by Mexican artist Enrique Magaña Cruz with Dulce Villavicencio Diaz. Check out the main site of these guys at La Ventanita and Monstro Games.

Have fun guys, use the left mouse button to swim faster and make sure to upgrade when you're ready with the spacebar. But be aware: this thing it's absolutely addictive!

NewTek to release LightWave 11.

If you have ever watched any of the great sci-fi TV shows like Star Trek Voyager / Deep Space Nine or Enterprise, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica or Stargate SG-1 you have witnessed some of the impressive 3D effects and animations NewTek's 'LightWave 3D' can accomplish. Another great example is Nickleodeon's animated series 'Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius', which was created by DNA Productions using LightWave 6 and Fori Owurowa's Messiah Studio.

On 11.11.2011 NewTek announced the new LightWave 11 and introduced a pre-release version, an advanced beta form, for their registered users and hardCORE members. The final release was slated for late December but I suspect they're not gonna make that deadline after all, so it seems like we're gonna get another present early next year! LightWave 11 will ship with some great new features like a Virtual Preview Renderer for onscreen real-time rendering and an 'Anaglyph Stereoscopic Preview' for real-time interocular anaglyphic 'red-blue' seperations. Here are some of the newly added features which will be used to create the coolest sci-fi shows of the coming years:

Instancing and Flocking.

You can now duplicate vast number of objects in a scene with very little memory overhead. Scale, position, rotate, and surface randomly cloned objects for realistic detail and create huge polygon groups with great detail while retaining reasonable render times.
Using a new motion modifier you can now animate realistic motion of grouped objects such as birds, fish, insects, animals, aircraft, spaceships, and more. With Flocking you can calculate crowd avoidance of neighboring objects, target alignment, and cohesive attractions.

Bullet Dynamics and Fracture.

Bullet is a fast, production proven, open source physics engine that is used in many high profile, effects-driven films and real-time game engines. Bullet features 3D rigid body dynamics originally created by Erwin Coumans. LightWave 11 features the Bullet dynamics engine directly in Layout so that it can be used with the new Fracture tool in Modeler to create compelling physics-based animation. Things like collapsing buildings, explosions, and even natural placement of items in a random pattern, would otherwise be difficult to do by hand.

A new Modeler tool that is designed to complement Bullet Dynamics in Layout will let you Pre-fracture objects that are ready for destruction. There are a number of different methods and associated settings to fine tune the look of the pieces as they are broken up. You also have the ability to create an Endomorph of the resulting fracture, which means you can animate the explosion, with or without using dynamics.Weight maps can also be applied to the source object to control the density of where the fracturing takes place.

Virtual Studio and Interchange Tools.

LightWave 11 includes support for new controller types, such as the Sony PlayStation Move and allows users to easily control and record the item results with a LightWave channel. The Virtual Studio Tools first made an appearance in LightWave 10, as a way of using third party controllers to animate items in your scene. LightWave 11 expands on this concept by allowing more controller types. Also, and this is very important: the new LightWave will be able to import and export model and texture data to Pixologic ZBrush software with GoZ technology!

GoZ is an interchange technology from Pixologic, that allows applications to send model and texture data to and from ZBrush for sculpting detail on a base mesh. The GoZ implementation in LightWave Layout and Modeler allows you to exchange model data, along with all the associated texture maps. The Modeler implementation even lets you use ZBrush for sculpting Endomorphs for things like facial morphs. Check out NewTek's awesome demo below to see all the new features in action!




NewTek, founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas by Tim Jenison, became famous for their award winning post-production video tools and live broadcasting hardware such as the NewTek TriCaster. In 1986 Paul Montgomery left Video Game producer Electronic Arts (EA) for NewTek and helped turn it into one of the most acclaimed desktop video pioneers with the release of the 'Video Toaster' in 1990, which won the Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993. Montgomery became Vice President of NewTek, but unfortunately died at the early age of 39 of a sudden heart attack in 1999. He is listed as one of the 25 most influential people in the history of video development. The company is now based in San Antonio, Texas.

LightWave 3D was originally designed by Allen Hastings and Stuart Ferguson in 1988 as 'Videoscape' for Aegis Software. It was incorporated into the 'Video Toaster' at it's release in 1990 as 'LightWave 3D'. Since LightWave 3D 8 in 2005, a 64 bit version is available and unlike other 3D software packages, LightWave consists of 2 seperate modules: 'Modeler' to build 3D models and 'LayOut' to create animations and render them out.

Merry Christmas!

Hey, everybody! What would Christmas be without some classic Santa stories? First up, Santa is having a tough time with some polar bears in the great little story 'Santa's Problem', published by Dell Comics in their 'Santa Clause Funnies' from 1960.

Next is the very moving 'Santa and the Chimney Sweep' from Dell's 'Santa Clause Funnies' from 1954, so a little older even. Beautiful artwork with absolutely great covers! As always, click to enlarge. Enjoy everybody, and have a marvelous Christmas time! Ho ho ho!

Winner in the Daltile competition

Congratulations to Elizabeth Jurgeleit, WSU sophomore interior design student!!! She received a Merit Award in the 2011 Daltile/ASID Interior Design Scholarship Competition.

2nd year Fall reviews

Naugty Dog unveils 'The Last of Us'.

Hot off the release of  'Drake's Revenge', the third installment in their PS3 exclusive 'Uncharted' video game franchise, Naughty Dog now reveals the first trailer for a completely new game called 'The Last of Us'. 
Resembling Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' (if you haven't read the novel you will no doubt be familiar with John Hillcoat's successful movie starring Viggo Mortenson) It's a survival/horror game in which most of modern civilisation has been wiped out by a virus. Main characters Joel and Ellie are trying to survive this post-Apocalyptic world in the abandoned cities of what remains of the United States, fighting off zombie-mutants and looking for anything that will help them make it through another day.

Ellie, described as a 'brave teenage girl who is wise beyond her years', looks supsiciously like Ellen Page to me, but she's really voiced by actress Ashley Johnson, also responsible for voicing the character Gwen Tennyson on Cartoon Network's succesfull 'Ben10' animated series.

Creative director Neil Druckmann revealed on Twitter that the game has been in development for the last two years already. If you really dig it, you can hook up with the Playstation store now and get some early goodies (avatars) that have been made available for your console.
No doubt that this game will push the PS3 to the limits to deliver the best graphics possible to date and will become ND's next franchise in 2012. The trailer for 'The Last of Us' was first revealed this weekend at the Spike Game Awards and can now be viewed online. Check it out here below, or visit the official site.

'Little Spirou' gets animated.

Animation software producer Toon Boom has announced that LuxAnimation is creating a new animated TV-series based on 'Le Petit Spirou', the popular Belgian comic book series by Tome (Philippe vandevelde) and Janry (Jean-Richard Geurts).78 Episodes will be produced of 7 minutes length each, using the Toon Boom Harmony pipeline. The French TV channel M6 and RTBF, the public broadcasting organisation of French Belgium, will be the first to air the show in the spring of 2012.

'Le Petit Spirou', or 'Little Spirou' is a comic books series with short stories about the trials and tribulations of childhood, featuring a young adolescent Spirou, a tongue-in-cheeck spin-off of the original adventurous Spirou stories, started by Tome & Janry with a volume of shorter Spirou stories collected in 'La Jeunesse de Spirou' (Spirou's Youth'), the 38th book in the series published in 1987 by Dupuis. Nineteen books have been published so far, including four 'Little Spirou presents' comic books. While Tome and Janry have stopped creating stories for the original series in 1998 after fourteen books, they continued creating 'Little Spirou' short stories.

Above: two covers of the comic books. 'C'est pas de ton age' (That's not something for your age!) and 'Tiens-toi droit' (stand up straight!) published in 2000 and 2010.

For the animated series, LuxAnimation (based in Doncols, Luxembourg) works together with HLC in Paris and Dreamwall in Marcinelle. The series is produced by Léon Perahia (Dupuis) and Eric Anselin (LuxAnimation) and directed by Virginie Jallot. Although the studio has only been founded as early as 2002 by Lilian Eche and Ariane Payen, their list of animation productions is very impressive, including 'Iron Man, The Animated Series' (2007), 'RobotBoy' (2005) and the CGI animated theatrical features 'Dragon Chasers' (2008), Tim Burton's '9' (2009) and 'Luke and Lucy: The Texas Rangers'(2009), based on the longrunning popular Belgian comic book series 'Suske & Wiske' by Willy Vandersteen and his studio.

Above: The creative team at LuxAnimation. In 2006 the company was acquired by the MoonScoop Group, the French company that also owns Mike Young Productions in L.A. ('Voltron: the third dimension', 'He-Man and the Masters of the Universe', 'Bratz' and 'Clifford, the big red dog').

Above: Animation on '9' started with LuxAnimation and Attitude Studio in Luxembourg and ended with Arc Productions (then known as 'Starz Animation') in Toronto, Canada. It was produced by Tim Burton and Russian director Timur Bekmambetov. Directed by Shane Acker, it is based on his animated short by the same name, a student project at the UCLA Animation Workshop which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. Bekmambetov himself became very succesful in 2008 when he turned the Top Cow comic book 'Wanted' (written by Mark Millar's with art by J.G. Jones) into a hit action movie starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy.

Spirou: past and present.

In 1984, French publisher Dupuis chose Tome & Janry to succeed the team of Nic Broca and Raoul Cauvin, who had created three books in the Spirou comic book series. Popularised by Belgian authors Jijé (Joseph Gillain) and André Franquin between 1943 and 1968, the original character was conceived in 1938 by Rob-vel (Robert Velter) for Dupuis' famous comic magazine 'Spirou' (Which is still published today). Velter himself had worked operating the elevator at the London Ritz Charlton as a young man and thus created his character working as a bellhop too. Up to today, Spirou remains dressed that way throughout the series. When Jijé started working on the series in 1943, after Dupuis had aqcuired the rights, he added the character Fantasio, Spirou's best friend and fellow adventurer. Another important character, the Marsupilami, was introduced after Jijé handed the series to André Franquin, who was then his assistent.

Above: cover for the first comic book published in 1950 and the fourth book, which introduced Franquin's longtailed yellow Marsupilami in 1952 (right).

Franquin, who like Tintin creator Hergé has a god-like status in Europe, created a total of 20 books in the series, cooperating on several titles with fellow artists Will (Willy Maltaite), Greg (Michel Regnier) and Jidéhim, Jean Roba, Gos and smurfs creator Peyo (Pierre Culliford).
Jean-Claude Fournier took the series upon him after Franquin retired and created nine more books between 1970 and 1980. After Tome & Janry, the comic was again created by several other creators, including the teams of Morvan & Munuera and Yoann & Vehlman. Below: All three covers of 'La Face cachée Du Z' ('The shadow side of Z'), the 51st and lastest book by Yoann and Vehlmann, released on October 21.

ANNCast talking with FUNimation.

Zac Bertschy and Justin Sevakis of the ANNCast crew (Animation News Network) just uploaded their latest podcast interviewing Adam Sheehan and Lance Heiskell, marketing manager and Director of Corporate Strategy at FUNimation, one of the biggest importers of Anime in the US.

In the hour and half long interview, Adam and Lance talk about Toei Animation's bestselling 'Dragon Ball Z', the long wait for the second season of Tensai Okamura's 'Darker than Black' and the the much anticipated HD releases of 'Hellsing Ultimate' and Ryutaro Nakamura's newly restored 'Serial Experiments Lain'. If you want to know everything FUNimation is up to and stay on track with their plans for the new year, make sure to check that stuff out.
Funimation Entertainment was founded in 1994 by Gen Fukunaga who's uncle, being one of the producers of 'Dragon Ball', was looking for a way to distribute the anime series in the US.

Small girls with big guns: 'Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, the  Complete Collection' is one of the high def releases planned by FUNimation for January 2012. This Anime series created by Koichi Mashimo's Beetrain is based on the 'Phantom of Inferno' PC game developed by Nitroplus and is currently being ported to the Xbox 360 with new and improved graphics. Also scheduled for a US release next year Februari, '.Hack/Quantum' (pronounced 'dot-Hack Quantum') is the latest installment of the popular Japanese franchise. This three part OVA (direct-to-video) anime series, based on the Playstation video games series developed by CyberConnect2 is the first in the series animated by Kinema Citrus instead of Beetrain, who created the five earlier series between 2002 and 2006.

In the .Hack anime series the characters live inside a virtual role playing game world. The first animated series .Hack//SIGN was created by character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (known for his work on Evangelion) and Kazunori Ito (writer of 'Ghost in the Shell'). A 3D CGI animated movie titled '.Hack//the movie' has been produced by CyberConnect2 and is slated for theatrical release on January 21, 2012 throughout Japan.





Above: A typical days work at Tokyo based CyberConnect2, who beside working on a beautifully animated CGI movie, also delivered stunning work on their soon to be released action packed game 'Asura's Wrath' which is developed for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and is scheduled for release in februari 2012 (trailers for both collected below).