Jak and Daxter in HD.

It's exactly ten years ago that the first Jak and Daxter game came out, and if you like 'Uncharted' and are looking out for Naughty Dog's 'The Last Of Us' you will definately like this: Next month Naughty Dog's Jak and Daxter trilogy will be released in HD on Blu-ray for the PS3. The three games they made previously before entering the Uncharted frachise were my personal favorites on the PS2 for years and if you've never played them you must definately get this one.

'The Precursor Legacy' and it's two sequels were fighting for attention along with Insomniac's 'Ratchet & Clank' franchise, which had really similar gameplay but was even a bit more sci-fi. (Naughty Dog and Insomniac even shared the same building at the time). Although the graphics may seem somewhat outdated today, the game play will definately make up for that. the three games have been completely remastered in HD and include trophys. If you like action, strange fantasy creatures and funny gags mixed with some mind boggling puzzles this one is certainly for you. Release date: Februari 24.

Napoleon Dynamite is back!

Some characters are just so far out, they just get stuck there in your brain and no matter what you do, you just can't seem to get rid of them! Napoleon Dynamite is one of those guys, and to make matters worse... he's back!

Based on the ridiculously funny movie from 2004 starring Jon Heder, FOX aired the first two episodes of the brand new animation show 'Napoleon Dynamite' Monday. The animation looked great and the overal look of the show resembles 'The Simpsons', which is no wonder with Mike Scully on board, who was executive producer on 'The Simpsons' between 1997 and 2001. What amazed me the most was the incredible speed of the show, it just goes on and on and the gags just keep coming. there wasn't really any time catch a breath.

The show is created by Jared and Jerusha Hess, who are also responsible for the original movie. They also created 'Nacho Libre' with Jack Black in 2006 and 'Gentlemen Broncos' in 2009, which starred Sam Rockwell. The original cast is also back, with Heder voicing Napoleon. In the first episode, Napoleon uses an anti-acne cream that was banned by the various health departments and has some pretty nasty side effects. When he loses the ability to feel pain he suddenly becomes the ideal candidate for the local underground fight club. In the second Napoleon and his girlfriend Deb are mismatched by Scantronica 3000, an outdated computer used in his highschool science class, who pairs him with a Japansese girl with a huge Katana sword while Deb apparently is perfect for the local bully. Thirteen episodes have been ordered by FOX so far! Official site.



Above: Napoleon daydreams of playing volleyball against aliens and accidentally beheads a member of the opposing team. Below: Jon Heder with Tina Majorino ('Deb') and Efren Raimrez ('Pedro').

If you want to catch even more new animation shows, watch for FX's new series 'Unsupervised' which will premiere tomorrow, featuring the voices of Justin Long, Kristen Bell and David Hornsby, who also created the show with Scott Marder and Rob Rosell. Hornsby is also known for his voices on Nickelodeon's 'Fanboy and Chum Chum'.

More news on 'The Last Of Us'.

Johnny Minkley of EG was rushed away by Sony to meet the team of Naughty Dog in Santa Monica and talk about their next title 'The Last Of Us'. Exclusive interview with Creative Director Neil Druckmann and Game Director Bruce Straley with some nice concept art from Maciej Kuciara. Check it out below. Cool!

Devils, Angels & Dating finally done!

After 5 Years of Development, 3 Years of Online Production by a Global Online Team, 2 Years of Animation, with a 0 dollar budget, 'Devils, Angels & Dating' is finally completed and released online! Michael Cawood has been working on this film since 2006, collaborating with a worldwide team of artists and animators. Entirely developed in public online, his short has become a fantastic resource for Animation students and professionals alike. Along the way, Michael has done almost everything imaginable to get his project funded (I said 'almost'!) and you can still pre-order the artbook to help him with that.

Watch 'Devils Angels & Dating' below or go to Michael's official site.You can also go behind the scenes and check out all kinds of videos on different stages of the development process on his Youtube Channel. Congrats Michael!

Happy New Year!

Okay, so who was it that hit me on the head with a huge hammer and got away with it? I feel like I've used pepper spray on myself and have a vague recollection of trying to convince people I really did see a dwarf in my living room. I guess when Aliens visit our planet the most questionable thing they will never understand is the concept of 'partying'! Haha! Happy New Year!

Okay, 'nuff said. Just wanted to remind you that today Eddy Russell of Digital Tutors uploaded several new Photoshop video series on their site, including one showing the complete workflow for doing conceptual artwork and digital character designs in 2D, which can later be used to turn out a completely rigged stylised 3D character for games and animation.

Being part of one of the greatest sources for up-to-date training in CGI, Eddy frequently brings new stuff to D.T. that focusses on previsualisation and doing conceptual work in 2D, an important part in the creation of CGI. Certainly if you're working in a team, you want to make sure everybody is on the same page and understands what needs to be done. Especially, when there's a way of stylisation or branding is involved, that is typical for the product you're working on, being it a game, animation or regular 3D stills, used in ads and stuff. 'Creating Stylised Female Character Concepts in Photoshop CS5' as the series is called, is therefore really interesting as it focusses on doing characters that deviate in some form from the typical anatomical contruct (hence the title 'stylised').

In the 4 hour training series Eddie focusses on doing Comic influenced designs and manga or Anime resembling characters. He talks about creating a background or biography for your character and working with reference images while doing different sketches, varying your apporach, redefining the model up to the point that is reflects your original vision, in this case, an attractive voloptuous corporate secretary (Well, wouldn't you know!).

Lot's of interesting tips here, like using Photoshop's Liquify filter for quickly altering your character's features and creating completely different looks. He also talks about the importance of keeping your character dynamically balanced when doing non-orthographic poses, enabeling the rigger/animator to stress test the model after the character has been sculpted. He also touches on digital inking and goes into coloring using cell shading to differentiate the highlights and shadows. His other series 'Using Texture to Enhance Digital Paintings in Photoshop CS5' is also available as of today and deals with integrating different types of textures in your 2D artwork. Check that out here.

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.