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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

 

Zootopia - Spoiler-free movie review

Sometimes, working at CalArts is a good thing. Like on Thursday. Co-director Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) held a screening and Q&A session for his latest Disney animated film - Zootopia - which opens in the U.S. Friday. So hey - free sneak preview! Now, I thought Wreck-It Ralph was excellent, so I was hoping for good things from Zootopia. As the first trailers trickled out for it, the film looked like it would be funny and well-animated, making for a nice, cartoony return to the "talking
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

Yet even more further still behind

These showed up yesterday: Yeah... I know. Now I'm even further behind with my reviews. But it is nice to finally get my hands on some of the games I worked on. (I didn't have anything to do with Epic Adventure. But it's on my list of games to review.)
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

China, or platinum

Depending on which list you go by, 20 years is either symbolized by gifts of china or platinum.   China, as in plates and stuff. Not necessarily things made in China. Although I'm sure you could easily enough find china made in China, thereby removing any sort of potential confusion.   Except for the whole platinum thing, which doesn't really make sense since it's actually more valuable than silver or gold, so shouldn't it be up higher? Like 75 or something?   Anyway… 20 years. That's how
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

Sloggin' through Sweden, Mixing it up in Mexico

Usually, I post one WRC blog entry for the season, then just add comments for each subsequent rally. But since I had already named this year's entry after the first rally in Monte Carlo, I thought I'd post new entries for each of the other rallies too (or every other rally... or every third rally...). Rally Sweden was a bit of a disappointment in that the weather was unusually warm, and so what's supposed to be the only full-snow rally of the year turned into a slushy mud bog. Now, driving o
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

Avengers: Age of Ultron - Spoiler-free movie review (plus free bonus rant!)

Okay... let's try this again.   After my last attempt to see Avengers: Age of Ultron, I was so fed-up with going to the movies, I really had no interest in trying again. But here I am, in a different multiplex, ten minutes away from my second attempt. I'm not holding out much hope, since I've since read several articles that state that movie theater chains intentionally tell their employees not to correctly change over their projectors from 3D to 2D, since it costs time and money and they don'
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Money, money, money... but where's the love?

I rarely blog about my job since hey, it's a job. But this post isn't so much about my job, but rather my alma mater. Both of which just happen to be the same place. CalArts.   Y'see, the LA Times posted a little article today about how films that have been directed by CalArts animation alumni have collectively grossed over $26 billion dollars worldwide. Billion. With a "B". Like Carl Sagan would say: "Billllyuhn." There's a handy little "infographic" about it on CalArts' website.   I happen
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

One and Only

About a month before passing away last Summer, Maynard Ferguson recorded what turned out to be his last album. It's just been released, and is now available exclusively through Maynard's website (and iTunes).     I was rather disappointed with his previous album, MF Horn VI: Live at Ronnie's. Of course, recording live albums is always hit-or-miss. However, since that album was recorded, Maynard had gotten into better shape physically, and his playing had improved dramatically, according to
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Arrival - Spoiler-free movie review

Even though it had... appeared? ...been released? ...shown up? ...landed? No... that's not the word I'm looking for... Anyway, even though Arrival first came out in movie theaters back in November, it took me until a little over a week ago to finally see it. Much to my surprise, there were still quite a few theaters (in the Seattle area) showing it, and there were actually more people in the theater seeing Arrival, than when I'd seen Passengers a few days before, despite Passengers being a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Making Labels - Part 3

Part 3 - More Coloring     Color Space   This is probably a good point to mention color space. A color space defines what primary colors are combined together, and how they're combined, in order to make a full range of colors.   RGB (red, green, blue) is what you see on your computer display.   CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) is what printers use. Technically, this image is only CMY. But it's a good comparison against RGB.   Printers can not print all of the colors that you c
Guest

Guest

3
 

The Work Thing

Ahhh... the tsunami of work has finally subsided. Fortunately, I managed to hang onto some debris and survive.   I don't discuss work much in my blog since, well, it's work. I don't really feel the need to discuss work much outside of work. But, I tend to do that anyway, since work pretty-much dominates my life (bad habit to get into - not recommended).   So I work at CalArts as the technician for the Character Animation program. Video production equipment, a couple of Mac labs, file server
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Taking a Detour

Coming in 2013, from the makers of Robot Chicken...   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yRNXFhboBI   What's particularly cool, is that even though Robot Chicken's Star Wars specials were done with the permission of Lucasfilm, this is being created by Lucasfilm.   More videos at the official website.
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 2 - Iron Man

On with the next movie - Iron Man.   I think about half the reason I enjoyed Speed Racer, was because visually it was so interesting.   With Iron Man though - it was just a good, fun movie.   Robert Downey Jr. made a perfect Tony Stark. Even though I don't remember a lot of the comic book personality (I haven't read Iron Man in nearly 20 years), he made a great character out of him. He was both a self-centered jerk, and yet completely likable. He had a self-effacing manner about him, and a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Tomorrowland - Spoiler-free movie review

Okay.... if you read my last review, I was pretty-much done with going to the movies.   So, yeah. About that...   After that final disappointing trip to the theater, I began to realize something: going to the movies had become a chore. And it had been for quite some time, too.   Besides the two trips to see Age of Ultron, I'd been to a string of bad screenings. Dim projection, bad sound, dirty screens, and just really poorly run theaters. Snacks were marginal - flat, diluted soda, stale po
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

When is a cartoon not a "cartoon"?

When it's an "animated film". This year's Walter and Gracie Lantz Animation Prize winner, Yonatan Tal, said the other night when accepting the award, "We can make cartoons... but we'd rather make animation." That's a pretty interesting distinction, and one that wasn't lost on me when watching our student films this year. For many of the films, they felt less like traditional cartoons, and more like short stories that happened to be animated. As with last year, and the 22 years that preceded
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 3 - Thor

Okay, true story - I've actually known two people named Thor.   One of them was a co-worker, and the other a student (who is now a director).   I also knew someone whose last name was Batman. I bet she got teased a lot as a kid. But that's off-topic.   I went to see the movie Thor today, despite being somewhat underwhelmed by the trailers for it, and despite that I've always felt Thor was somewhat of a third-stringer, superhero-wise. But I decided to go see it since I enjoyed watching Iron
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Homebrew Art, part 9 - Strat-O-Gems Deluxe contest entries

Strat-O-Gems Deluxe (2006)   Strat-O-Gems Deluxe is John Payson's excellent color-matching puzzle game. I followed it during development and really looked forward to the game's release. But despite how much I liked the game, when the label contest rolled around, I had absolutely no luck coming up with any ideas for it.   When the contest began, I'd had an idea to make cartoon versions of the gems. Perhaps on some level I was inspired by the classic commercial, but I can't say it was a co
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

The Martian - Spoiler-free movie review

Continuing the trend of semi-reality-based science fiction epics set in the undefined yet not-too-distant future that give Neil deGrasse Tyson something to Tweet about, we have The Martian. Having never read the book, I only had a passing interest in seeing the movie, since from the trailers it looked to be little more than the middle film of a trilogy set between Gravity and Interstellar, explaining how Matt Damon got marooned on a distant planet (although how all of Mars gets sucked through
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Black Panther - Spoiler-free review

I wasn't planning to go see Black Panther. During the time I actively collected comics ('84 - '91), I really don't recall seeing the Black Panther very much - and I bought a lot of comics back then. He may have appeared in some of the Avengers stories, but I don't really remember. All I do remember was thinking, "Sheesh... he looks a lot like Batman." At any rate, I had no real familiarity with the character. Not until the movie Captain America: Civil War anyway. Also, I was getting kind of
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Movie review - Quantum of Solace

Well, it took me awhile to see the new James Bond film - Quantum of Solace - but last week, see it I did.   I thought Casino Royale was an excellent restart to the Bond franchise, which had really ground to a halt. As much as I thought Pierce Brosnan should've made a good James Bond, the films he was in just never distinguished themselves, and seemed to all sort of blur together.   In Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig firmly establishes himself in the role, much in the way Sean Connery did. Th
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
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