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The first episode of season 2 of Tron: Uprising aired tonight. (Some episodes are online, depending on your TV provider, or through iTunes, but it's crazy-expensive there.) Tonight's episode was "The Reward", in which Tesler offered up a shiny-new car to whoever turned in The Renegade. Needless to say, that worked well. Because there were dozens of Renegades turned in. Way to clean up the streets there, programs. Of course, none of them were the real one. Beck decided to lay low in hopes everything would just kind of work itself out. At least, until his friends were going to be executed as sympathizers with someone else who was framed. So he stole the car from the guy who turned in the other guy and rescued everyone. Cool car. It was a good episode, although the whole execution scene was reminiscent of how villains try to kill James Bond in the slowest, most overly-elaborate means possible. With no guards around. Yeah... that always works. Next week: Tron gets irked.

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 to know about this, since I was the one who gathered all of the data. It's all online. IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia. Feel free to look it up. I was curious about it after seeing this chart, so that's what I did. Now, this is strictly box offices grosses. Not home video sales. Not video games. Not TV series. Not advertising revenue. Not merchandising. Or theme park attractions. T-shirts. Candy. Underwear. Just box office grosses. The actual revenue these properties have earned is known only to the studios. However, it is known that Cars alone rakes in about $2 billion per year in merchandising. So you might think then, "Cool... I bet CalArts is just rolling in dough, right?" Uh, no. Just to clarify that point, that would be a "no". In case anyone was wondering.

So Disney bought Lucasfilm today for $4 billion. Lock, stock and Jar-Jar. I'll admit this took me by surprise, even though Disney and Lucas have teamed up in the past: Indiana Jones (the ride), Star Tours and all of its related merchandise, plus other more questionable crossovers like this: As a friend of mine who works for the Big D pointed out, Leia is now a "Disney Princess". (shudder) Anyway... the question is - is this acquisition a good thing or a bad thing? Well, let's take a look at the bad. Umm... Give me a minute here. Bad... uh... Well, I guess that the Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties are now owned by a massive, heartless, entertainment conglomerate that cares more for marketing than anything else could be considered a bad thing. Except for that fact that that really hasn't changed. I mean c'mon... Lucas. Am I right? The Phantom Menace? Attack of the Clones? Revenge of the Sith? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Nuke-proof Refrigerators? A steadfast refusal to stop tinkering with beloved movies and release them in their original theatrical forms? Jar-Jar? Really... apart from The Clone Wars TV series, Lucasfilm isn't exactly batting a thousand lately. Or even crossing the Mendoza line. So would the properties that have already been (in some views) irreparably damaged fare any worse under Disney? I don't think so. In fact, I'm hopeful things might actually improve. Even though Lucas is going to hang around to give input to Kathleen Kennedy (who will be running the Lucasfilm branch of Disney), he isn't calling the shots anymore. And frankly, I think that's a good thing. I think George did great with Star Wars (the original film). But maybe he was more lucky than good. Empire was more Ivrin Kershner's film than George's. Return of the Jedi had more input from George, and look what happened to that big, Muppety Ewok-turd of a movie. And the prequels were, in my opinion, effectively a waste of six-plus hours of time. The Clone Wars TV series has, at times, been excellent, but those aren't directed by George. He's had input into them, but I think they've succeeded more because of other peoples' creative direction. Part of today's announcement was that there will be new Star Wars films, starting with Episode VII to be released possibly in 2015. Now, there's every chance that under Disney's guidance they could be just as big of stinkers as the last three Star Wars films were. But I don't think they could be any worse, and with George not directing them, I think that improves their chance of being better. (Not that Disney has any great track record in making films, mind you.) There are many, many things that could go wrong, of course, but I'm hoping they avoid enough of them to push the movie franchise in a positive direction for the first time since Empire. Had The Clone Wars series not reached some of its heights, I wouldn't be nearly as optimistic. Even then, it's a cautious optimism. As for any concerns that Lucasfilm is somehow "selling out", think about that for just a second. Star Wars has always sold out. From Darth Vader Underoos to C-3PO's breakfast cereal, the only franchise to shamelessly merchandise themselves as much as Disney - if not more - has been Lucasfilm. So I don't see much change there, except to see more merging of Disney and Star Wars characters. Nothing new there. Legos and Angry Birds have already been there, done that. George sold off Lucasfilm because he said he wants to see Star Wars continue on for future generations, and doesn't want to do it himself. Disney makes the most sense. They have the money, resources and marketing machine necessary to handle Star Wars. Nobody else does. Plus they had the money to buy him outright, so George can do whatever he wants to now for the rest of his life without worrying about any of it earning a dime or pleasing any fans. Before, he had to worry about Lucasfilm turning a profit, now he doesn't. Disney now owns Star Wars. All of it. All of the characters, licenses, movies, games, everything. Even the Star Wars Holiday Special. They also own Indiana Jones, Lucasarts, Skywalker Sound and ILM. Disney just bought themselves a big chunk of Hollywood. Frankly, I think $4 billion was a bargain. Disney owns The Muppets, Pixar and Marvel, and haven't made any major mis-steps with them. At least, no more than any other studio would have. (I'm looking at you John Carter and Cars 2.) They've had their fair share of hits and misses, but in the long run Disney is undeniably successful. Whether that comes with anything vaguely resembling artistic integrity or not is debatable. But again - Lucasfilm has done no better. If anything, they've had even more vehement vitriol heaped on them by their own fans over the years. Certainly, this all bodes extremely well for Disney. They've just added a huge new weapon to their already considerable marketing arsenal. I'm hopeful we might even see something fans have long-since written off as impossible: the original movies on Blu-ray. Unaltered. Disney has been doing this with their own theatrical shorts and films for years. This sort of thing is right up their alley. Besides, it'd be a great way for them to cash-in on their newly acquired intellectual property. Certainly, there are some concerns. Will they continue The Clone Wars on its current path, or try to make it more kid-friendly? When they took over Marvel, several ongoing TV series were canceled and rebooted, much to the consternation of fans. Although with Marvel, its various properties were scattered to the four winds and different production companies anyway. Disney has attempted to reconsolidate those properties under one roof. With Lucasfilm, everything has been under one roof the whole time. So we'll see if they stay the course. Hopefully, they'll leave The Clone Wars be. At the very least, I'm sure we'll see it move to Disney XD. There's also a concern about fandom. Lucasfilm is pretty lenient about letting fans make fan films about Star Wars. It's a very open universe, relatively speaking. Disney... not so much. So there could be a culture clash looming on the horizon. We'll see if Disney is smart enough to understand its newly inherited fan base and work with them, not against them. At any rate, it's all very interesting news. Fanboys are all at once rejoicing over the news of new movies, while at the same time lamenting the fact that Disney now owns everything. Others are glad that George is gone, and at the same time worried that Star Wars has lost its visionary. But was it really his vision anyway? Or has it actually belonged to the fans all along, and George was just along for the ride? Well, I guess we'll find out. Just please... no Ewok/Tinkerbell crossover direct-to-video movies. Because that would make me pretty-much throw up.

Hey everyone, Back then, Richard Williams had a dream. He promised to make the greatest animated film of all time. It took 30 years just to get close to finishing the film. Unfortunately, it never was finished. Only 85% was done, and then the film was taken from Richard William's hands. It was finished by other people, but butchered beyond relief. Several scenes of amazing animation were cut, and third rate songs, voice-overs, and animation were put in. Richard Williams created a work print before Thief was taken from him, and that reflected his vision. It has been horribly bootlegged to death though, and many copies are almost literally unwatchable. But, in 2006, a man named Garrett Gilchrist created a nonprofit restored version called The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut. This version has many old deleted scenes, and many discovered storyboards and pencil tests. He is still updating the film, and is planning to release a Mark IV version for free online sometime next year. Please help spread the word and support this great man. I am only a fan that is trying to create awareness. Here is his youtube channel. You can watch the whole Recobbled Cut for free. http://www.youtube.com/user/TheThiefArchive And this is also his official production website. He has several other projects and a forum as well. You can even donate too. http://orangecow.org/ Have a great day everyone, and please enjoy and preserve this lost masterpiece of animation.

First Tron: Legacy, now Wreck-It Ralph: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPSQOomMWro I'd first heard of this years ago (it's been in development for ages under different titles) and was skeptical of it, but it looks pretty good. I've heard some good reports coming out of the studio about it as well (in fact - they have a number of arcade classics set up there for "research"). (Edit: replaced trailer with higher-quality version, without annoying introduction)

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.

So yesterday finally brought the long-awaited return of Star Wars... in HD! Yep, that's right! Season 4 of The Clone Wars debuted on Cartoon Network! What? You were expecting a write-up on some other "Star Wars in HD" event that took place Friday? I can't imagine what that would be... Anyway, season 4 started off with a two-parter, Water War and Gungan Attack. In the first episode, there was a war under water, and in the second one... well, I don't want to spoil it, but something attacked. The episode takes place on the homeworld of the Mon Calamari. You know, the fish-like aliens of which Admiral "It's a Trap!" Ackbar is one of? He's there, but he's a Captain in this episode. So it takes him what... 25 years to make Admiral? Maybe it would have been better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a small fish in a big pond. Anyway, they're fighting against their squid-faced neighbors, who are supported by the Separatists, and are being led by a guy with a shark for a head. So after 35 years, Jaws finally goes head-to-head with Star Wars! And the fish are a-flyin'! Not flying fish, that is, but rather sushi. There's seafood everywhere. The shark guy is on a seafood diet - he sees food, and eats it. (Don't worry, I'm bound to run out of fish references sooner or later. ) The usual Jedi are here - Anakin, Ahsoka, Squid-head (I forget his name at the moment), and Padme is along to get into trouble. The king of the Mon Calamari gets knifed (probably with one of these), and so his young son has to take up the mantle of leadership. Now this is a common theme in The Clone Wars, and I'm guessing the reason is to appeal to their target demographic. Letting the young viewers at home wonder what it would be like to enter the excitement of battle, fight alongside Jedi, and have your parents killed right in front of your eyes. Now that's television. (As an interesting aside, some Mon Calamari are floaters when they die, and some are sinkers. All of my goldfish were floaters when I was a little kid. But then they all became flushers. I wonder if that's how the Mon Calamari bury their dead?) So, after the attack of the giant cyborg jellyfish (now if that doesn't get you watching the series, nothing will), the battle turns against the Mon Calamari (Ackbar never even gets to say his "it's a trap" line, which was disappointing), and so the Jedi call for some help. Now then... whosa can they think of that has an army of beings that live under the water? Yep. Gungans. That's right baby, Jar-Jar's back. So, another battle ensues, and I've gotta tell ya', they are impressive battles. First, they're underwater, so I'm sure that brings some challenges with it, since you have the added dimension of height, rather than armies just fighting on the ground, plus there's all that swimming animation they have to deal with. Then, there's the sheer number of characters involved in the battle. The scope is pretty massive, especially when you consider this is a made-for-TV cartoon show. The animation, production, effects, modeling, rendering, staging, acting... all of it continues to improve. There are some pretty cool shots in these episodes: the shark-guy attacking the prince by trying to break through a plexiglass tunnel, shark-guy attacking Mon Calamari warriors with his teeth, the Gungans deploying by jumping off of moving ships into the water (yes... for a brief instant, Gungans were cool), Anakin knocking over an entire building using The Force, Squid-head swimming around like a Jedi Mark Spitz, the Jedi's ship getting nuked and sinking to the bottom of the ocean... there's just a lot of cool stuff there, and it's a really good start to the season. The battle wasn't resolved, and at the end our heroes were on the ropes, so this story line will continue into at least next week. They've also shown a trailer previewing this season, and it looks like Anakin is going to be taking some more steps towards the Dark Side™. If only they'd been able to do some more of this stuff with his character in the movies, then maybe the prequels wouldn't have been so completely awful. Maybe we would've cared about the characters more, and seen Anakin as a tragic, fallen hero, rather than some whiny punk. All I know about that, is that if they ever put out the whole saga on Blu-ray, I'll probably just skip the prequels. They did what?

Tron: Uprising debuts in June on Disney XD. Looks stylish! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ds_ukdV7Kw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K17aH76uNv8 Not quite sure about the lead character, Beck, though... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfmNxKLDG4

Currently, it's 11:41 PM, and I'm sitting in a movie theater, waiting for the first showing of Brave. Now, I'm not usually enough of a movie nut to go on opening night (or in this case - opening morning since the movie starts at 12:05 AM), but 1) I was bored and 2) I've learned not to go see Pixar films during the day, because parents tend to take their kids to those showings. I'm talking kids in strollers. Crying. Not how I want to spend my movie going hours. Usually this late, there are very few people at the movies, especially on a weeknight. I'm here because I don't have to work tomorrow. But surprisingly enough, there are quite a few people here, and this isn't an IMAX or 3D screening either. Must be mostly kids out of school for the summer - upper high school and college age kids, based in no small part on the couple behind me making small talk. Sounds like they're on a first date, since the topics are running the gamut from what they want to do with their lives (him - something to do with fishing, her - orthodonture) to movies, pets, etc. I got tired of listening, so I thought I'd get a head-start on this entry. Before the trailers* start, I have just enough time to mention I'm seeing this film for free. A couple of weeks back, I went to see The Avengers for a second time, and the picture was messed up. There were giant yellow splotches on the image (not the screen itself) which meant someone had smudged the blue panel inside of the digital projector. This ruined the movie for me, to the degree where I submitted a complaint to the theater chain - which is something I've never done because generally theaters are poorly run and nothing would be done to resolve he situation anyway. But I figured, "why not?" So then... Oh, time for the movie. Back later. (About 2 hours and change later...) Right. Well, it turned out that blogging was a pretty good way to kill time before the movie started. I'll have to keep that in mind for future excursions. Anyway, back to the complaint. I used their online feedback form, which only lets you rant in 256 characters or less (something like that). So that made it difficult to adequately describe the problem with their projector (which, incidentally I've run into before at work, which is why I knew the cause). But I sent it off anyway and figured that was that. Then, some days later, I got an e-mail from the the theater chain, profusely apologizing, telling me they were going to look into the problem, and offering to send me a couple of free passes for my trouble. So I thought, "cool - free movies". And that's why I didn't have to pay to see Brave tonight.** But I would have. Gladly. It's excellent. I'll admit, the trailers worried me a bit because it felt a little bit like it was going to be a typical "Disney princess" movie. You know... where the princess isn't happy with her lot in life and has to go off seeking better things (insert "wishing song" here). And while there's a little bit of that, a typical Disney princess film, or for that matter, a typical Pixar film this is not. Although in all fairness, it's a little hard (sequels notwithstanding) to pin down exactly what a typical Pixar film is. At their best, they manage to reinvent themselves with each new project, and Brave feels unlike any other Pixar film. But it does share one trait with their best work - it's astonishing quality. As an aside, thanks to a Free Preview Weekend recently on U-Verse, I caught up on watching Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda 2 and How To Train Your Dragon. KFP2 was pretty good for a sequel, but largely more of the same. It paled though in comparison to HTTYD. That was easily Dreamworks' best effort to date, and was at times really quite stunning. In fact, there were some concerns in the animation circles that because it came out first, Brave would be unfavorably compared to it (both films being based in ye olden times, featuring mysterious beasts and Scottish accents). However, as good as HTTYD was, Brave simply blows it away. The look of the film sets a new benchmark, even for Pixar. The scenery is often breathtaking, and it's very easy to forget you're watching animation. But what really makes Brave work are the characters. The animation is first-rate (especially the bear), their designs are excellent (they take CG hair to new levels), their personalities are engaging, and every one is well-acted and extremely likable. I really enjoyed the story, and while I was able to see a few plot elements coming, much of it took me pleasantly by surprise. The film was, simply put, a joy to watch. It's probably not a film that really little kids will enjoy. There are some pretty intense scenes in the film, and while there are great comedic moments peppered throughout the film, there may be more drama and dialog than could reasonably hold their attention (besides, they got Cars 2 last year, so it's the adults' turn this time). And while most of the humor is well done, I really could have done without the butt jokes in the film. The film was strong enough so that they weren't really necessary. But the audience laughed, so maybe I'm in the minority there. I just find that stuff cringeworthy nowadays. The sound design, music, editing, etc., are all spot-on. It's really hard to find flaws with the film except the aforementioned butt jokes, and a couple of plot points were telegraphed a bit too heavy-handedly. It certainly was worth the price of admission. Even if I would've had to pay for it.*** Also showing with Brave is the new Pixar short - La Luna. It's another one of their shorts that's a little hard to define. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but engrossing. They form their own little world, with its own rules, and neatly tell a story about it. Reminds me a lot of the films from where I work, actually. (And incidentally, Brave was directed by two CalArts alum - Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews. Go CalArts! Although it's a little weird going to Pixar films now - since I've been at CalArts so long, it's getting hard to keep up with all of our alumni's names in the credits.) Anyway - go check out Brave. I'm not sure whether or not it's Pixar's best, but it's definitely up there with the best of them. (And be sure to stay through the end credits.) Brave gets 8.5/10 * The trailers started off with one for The Oogieloves. I have never felt less a part of a particular demographic in all of my life. ** Except, of course, $11.75 for popcorn and a drink. That's absolutely ridiculous, and one of these days I'll probably stop paying for that, and just go out for a nice dinner afterwards instead. *** After the theater chain sent me the free passes (which, by the way, are unrestricted, and have an expiration date of 12/31/2099), the manager of the theater also e-mailed me, and sent me four IMAX tickets, plus a note that they were ordering a new optical block for their projector. Now I know why my popcorn was so expensive.

Well, I just wrapped up the end-of-year shows for the Character Animation Program at CalArts. Again. For the 18th year in a row. And I feel like I've been sleep-deprived for 18 straight years, although it's really only been 3 1/2 weeks. But it's been a long 3 1/2 weeks, with no weekends off, a bunch of 12-hour days, and at least a couple of 18-hour ones thrown in for good measure. I stayed home today, and mostly slept. Our full show (the Open Show) was on April 28th, was about 6 1/2 hours long, and had 155 student films in it. We had 300 people show up to our impromptu movie theater in the Main Gallery, and by all accounts the show was a success. Canon was nice enough to loan us a spiffy HD projector for the evening, so we were finally able to have the Open Show in full HD for the first time. Nice. I didn't take any pictures, because my iPhone does a terrible job of taking pictures in an otherwise-completely-dark room with a white-hot-bright projection screen at one end. Basically, you just get a picture of a big, white rectangle. Last night was our Producers' Show - a "best of" exhibition of faculty-juried films running just over an hour. In previous years, we've held it at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood - which is part of the Emmys' organization (the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences). A nice theater, and where we've been for that show since 1994. But... they don't have HD equipment. Last year we had to go to considerable expense to bring in sound and video rental gear to upgrade the theater for the evening. Plus, we had another "little" problem... that theater "only" holds 600 people. Every year, we've had to turn people away. This year, we stepped up a notch. From the Emmys, to the Oscars. Last night, we were at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Yeah baby... that's what I'm talkin' 'bout! This is part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - the Oscars' organization - and is one of the top screening facilities in Los Angeles (a sound engineer at work who goes to a lot of screenings says it is the best one). They hold premieres there, special screenings, retrospectives, the Student Academy Awards, etc. They're one of the last places that can still show 70mm (and they'll be showing 70mm prints of Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World this summer, among others). And now, it's home to our show as well. The reasons we moved were twofold: First - the theater has state-of-the-art HD projection and sound. No renting or fussing required. Second - it holds 1012 people. So we didn't have to turn people away this year! And while we weren't at capacity, 850 people isn't too shabby either. That's 250 more than we ever could have had before, and I suspect we'll have even more next year. The theater is amazing. There's not a bad seat in the house. Sound and picture were flawless. We had to rent an HDCAM deck and Dolby E gear at work to output a tape that we could use there (since HDCAM decks start at $50,000 and we don't otherwise have much call for them), but next year we're moving to a DCP (Digital Cinema Package). This is what gets played at your local movie theater now, instead of film. We had been researching DCPs, but fell about 3 days short of being able to actually create one for the show (and we would have had no way to test it). But we're working with a company that makes software for creating them (and used to make DCP recording and playback systems), so we expect to have this worked out well in advance of next year's show. The new theater was quite different from the previous one in a whole bunch of ways. Probably the most surprising difference was the amount of security. There had to be a dozen security people there, and everyone had to go through a metal detector to get in. Very strange, but that's just how they roll in Beverly Hills. We also had to pay to have a latticework fence and hedge (yes - a real one) put up outside to block the sidewalk from the street traffic. I didn't get why, until after the show. The lobby, as big as it is, just can't hold that many people, so they need a place to spill outside onto. Effectively, it makes it into a nice patio area, and the hedge completely blocks you out from the insanity that is Wilshire Blvd. Oh yeah... Wilshire Blvd. Just avoid that if you can. In an area renown for its crazy drivers, Wilshire is right up there. But it's all crazy people driving Bentleys. I kid you not. Also, while the theater is only about 32 miles from CalArts, it took me 90 minutes to get there for our tech run-through the day before the show. That's the one bad thing about the new venue - getting to it. I think we must have started a half hour late because of all of the people still arriving after 8:00 PM. Anyway, the show was a success. It played without a hitch, and the audience really seemed to enjoy themselves. It's hard for me to get a read on it so soon afterwards, but all of the feedback I got last night at the reception was positive. Hopefully, this will result in jobs for our students. More hopefully, it will result in more money for the school. So then, here are the films from last night's show. As more become available online, I'll add links to them. (I would've embedded them, but the blog software won't let me embed more than a few in a single post. Stupid software.) Trevor Jones and others - Opening Titles Eusong Lee - will (2012 Walter & Gracie Lantz Animation Prize winner) Toniko Pantoja - The Crayon Dragon (2012 CalArts Peers' Pick Award winner) Brian Carter - Princess of the Magical Tears Sabrina Cotugno - Kagemono Tahnee Gehm - Can We Be Happy Now Louis Thomas - le ballet Hannah Ayoubi - Story Time Confessions pt. I-III Theresa Latzko - Days without accident Jisoo Kim - The Bathhouse Michael Piazza - Under a Big Tree Zesung Kang - In This Grave Hour Jacob Streilein - Swelter Mallory Dyer - Lapsena Taylor Price - Below Jasmin Lai - When I Grow Up Sun Jae Lee - The Princess Who Never Smiled Jason Reicher - The Red Tide Paul Flores - Camping Chaos John Kim - You’ve Been Mimed Natalie Wetzig - Royal Pain Tom Law - Love (aka Cactus Film) Sam Kremers-Nedell - Know Me You can check out even more of our films from this year on our Vimeo channel.

Watch this teaser trailer for Pixar's Brave... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYg0VgPy6Uk Then this trailer... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHWDA_6e3M Then this extended scene... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4EZULqhP2E Sounds like typical Disney fare, right? Where you have a girl with hopes and dreams, but has to break free of society's conventions and expectations of her to find true freedom and happiness. And probably some dude to hook up with. But then watch this trailer... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzSqWUmlts Which film are we going to get? I'd much rather watch the one from the Japanese trailer, than the dumbed-down one aimed at American audiences.

I've ranted about Sallie Mae before. I'd even mentioned how I had come to personify the company as some crotchety, cantankerous, vindictive old geezer, sitting on a rocking chair (next to her sister Fannie and her inbred idiot cousin Freddie) on the porch of an old house packed to the rafters with cash stolen from bankrupt college students, taking pot-shots at passersby with a shotgun, screaming, "Git away from mah MONEY!" BLAM!! Something pretty-much like this: That's Freddie in the background, picking his nose and scratching his butt at the same time. Obviously, the talented one of the family. Anyway... I've been paying down my last student loan as fast as possible. At the expense of, well, pretty much everything else. Last week, I sent in my last payment. Hang on... I want to savor that for a moment... Ah, yes. Very nice. Of course, they couldn't even make that easy, could they? Of course not. They don't want anyone to pay off their loans, they just want people to keep paying on them. Racking up that interest. In this case, when you go to pay it off, they give you a 10-day payoff amount, which includes potential interest for 10 days that accrues if you mail in the final payment. Since of course, it would take them fully 8 days to open the envelope, and type the amount into their computer. But I didn't want to mail it in. So there's an online payment option, which says to account for "up to 2 days" of interest while that's being processed. That worried me. I could just see Sallie not processing the payment in time, leaving me with some fraction left that I owed, causing more headaches in trying to pay that off, or more likely, them not telling me about it for 25 years, and then me having to pay them with a house. Or something. So there's also an option to apply the payment on the same day. It may not show up for a couple of days, but it will be applied to the date that it was submitted. So, no guesswork about interest owed. Naturally, they charge some $15 for this. But it was worth it to pay it off and know it was all paid off. But that brought up a little problem - there's no way to find out exactly how much you owe "today". You either get the 10-day amount, or you can go over to a payoff calculator (hidden away on the site in a completely different area) to calculate it out based on what day you want the payment to apply - but the calculator will not let you plug in "today" as an option. It only works for dates in the future. Idiots. So, I had to call them, and explain this whole thing to them, and find out how much I actually needed to pay, that day, to pay off the full balance, with interest, and of course, the fee to actually make it apply to that day. That was Friday. And the payment was supposed to take "up to 2 business days" to be reflected on my account. Today was Wednesday, and the payment finally cleared. You do the math. I'm tired of math. Suffice it to say, if Thursday rolled around and the payment hadn't cleared, Sallie was going to get a really irate phone call. Anyway, much to my surprise, my balance actually, finally, honestly read $0.00. That freeloading old coot is off my back. So that calls for another cartoon. Me evicting Sallie Mae. And the real kicker... I saved thousands in interest by paying the old bat off early. Money she won't get. I hope she's having a really bad day. But at least she stuck the landing.

Been piecing away at this one for a few weeks now... May 5th, 2011... Remember this entry? It featured the first appearance of the HD can-of-worms which we were just about to open up at work. Four years ago. Well, in honor of us finally achieving high-defness at work, I decided to finish it up in color. Ooooooo... I painted over the original sketch in Painter, and it just looked better with the sketch left intact, rather than a clean background. Not sure why. Maybe I'm just too used to seeing the original sketch in all its messy goodness. Nothing ruins a perfectly good sketch like going back in and trying to make it look "finished". Anyway... So yes, we finally went full HD this year. 23.98 fps, 1920 x 1080p. All of the students in the Character Animation program had to produce their films in that format this year. We used Apple's ProRes 422 (HQ) codec, since it maintains broadcast quality*, but at manageable file sizes and bit rates. The reason for 23.98** is that it goes more places without conversion than 24 does. DVD, Blu-ray, broadcast TV, SD NTSC, all take 23.98 with minimal fuss. Plus in the extremely unlikely event anyone needs to go to film, it's a very easy matter to convert it to 24 (or if going to PAL, to 25). Seems to me I mentioned that we were making the leap to HD before. Ah yes... here we go. Now, despite some server-related headaches (especially in the first semester, where the word "plagued" comes to mind) the whole transition went pretty smoothly. Much more than I expected. In fact, out of 145 films turned in, only about 10 were in the wrong format, and those were fixed by the students pretty quickly. Some years we've had 25 - 30 wrong, and they tended to be more wrong than the relatively minor issues from this year. I think some of that improvement came from the awareness there had been a major format change, so the students knew they had to pay more attention. Some of the improvement also came from the format itself, since with our old standard-def production path, we were using 29.97 fps as the target (which involved 3:2 pulldowns and other icky stuff), and the codec we were using (DV-NTSC) used non-square pixels. Try explaining those concepts to a student sometime. I think the biggest piece of the puzzle though is that our technical faculty did an excellent job of getting the information out to the students, helped out by the fact that we were able to hire on a full-time position for the first time in years, so the students always had someone on-hand to go to with production questions. Still, until all the films got turned in, I had no idea how it was actually going to work out. Prepare for the worst, hope for not-quite-so-much-the-worst and all that. Oh right... did I mention I was going through our Open Show crunch again? Yeah, that just happened. I'll recap. Student films were due Monday, April 25th. (Edit: Hard to believe it's a month ago now.) As usual, I came in for a few hours over the weekend before, then I was at work about 18 hours on Monday. The films were due at 4 PM that day, but our Program's Director decided to extend the deadline a couple of hours (which pretty-much happens every year). So there's this mad rush where all of these films just come piling in at once. It then takes me until 2 or 3 AM to sort through everything, check all the films, then e-mail the students who have problems they need to fix. The next few days are spent dealing with fixed films and stragglers who missed the deadline, assembling the show, and mixing the audio. A lot of my time is spent just with file management and keeping everything sorted out. Every year I worry that somehow, I'm going to miss including someone's film. So far, as best as I can recall, that only happened once, and it was so long ago, I don't even remember when it was. But the whole thing is like juggling cats. Angry cats. Angry cats that are wet, and don't want to be juggled. Once the films are all finally correct and sequenced in Final Cut Pro, then I go through and spend a day or two "mixing" the audio for the whole show. Now I say "mixing" with quotes because it's not really mixing as such, but more like really roughly adjusting the audio levels so as to not cause the audience any undue pain or ear bleeding. In the last couple of years, I spent way too much time fixing audio problems within films. Boosting weak dialog, rolling off sound effects that were too loud, etc. But I decided this year not to do that because a) it takes way too long and b) it really doesn't let the students hear why they need to pay more attention to their sound in the first place. So I went back to what we used to do, which was just balancing the levels from film to film, so the whole show played at a reasonably consistent volume. This still takes some time though, since the show was 5 hours and 21 minutes long. That's just one pass through it, so to go back and forth through the whole show and mix the whole thing took about 12 - 15 hours. Fortunately though, because we've really made a major effort over the last few years to improve our curriculum in regards to sound design, the overall sound of the films was better this year than it's been in a very long time.† Now, that may seem like a long show, but that's actually pretty short for us. In recent years, we've had shows with about the same number of films that were 7 1/2 hours long. This year, for whatever reason, there were just a lot of short films. And frankly, I think that was a good thing. Maybe students are realizing that completing a more manageable project is better than turning in an incomplete "epic". The show was finished up Thursday (the 28th), at which point I sat down and watched the whole thing, beginning to end. Usually I have to do this anyway, as the show was output to tape. But this year - no tape. Still, I felt it important to make sure the whole show played properly, and at a consistent volume. I have a really nice production HD monitor on my editing station at work, and the films just looked amazing. The difference in detail, clarity, and image quality was startling. I rendered out the final show into three large chunks (as opposed to 145 little chunks), and I went home to get two hours of sleep. Friday was spent getting in the rental equipment for the sound system and prepping the playback systems. In one room ("The Palace"), we would be running the films for the faculty (so they could judge them for our Producers' Show - a smaller selection of films shown to the animation industry), starting Saturday around 9:30 AM. Then starting at 2 PM Saturday, we'd start the Open Show in the Institute's Main Gallery for the students and public. So I have to have two systems in different locations, running the same material, but offset by a few hours. The Palace also had to be set up with tables, power strips and extension cords for the 35 or so faculty (and their laptops) who would be watching the films and then scoring them using an online form. (While online scoring requires more setup, we no longer have to tabulate the results by hand which used to take hours.) This setup took a lot longer than expected, so I didn't even get around to starting on the playback systems until around 10:30 PM, Friday. Fortunately, there is already an HD projector and sound system in The Palace, so I only needed to make the playback system play nice with it. Then I had to retrieve the projector for the Main Gallery, then calibrate and test it with its playback system so there wouldn't be any surprises on Saturday. We ran the shows straight from Mac Pros through HD interfaces (one from Matrox, the other from AJA), and into the projectors with either HDMI or component connections. But since I'd never used those interfaces with those projectors before, coupled with my already sleep-deprived state, it took me until 4 AM Saturday morning to get both playback systems working properly. Then I had to be back at work by 9 AM. Three whole hours of sleep. But at least the judging setup was all done before I went home. (Somewhere in there, and I'm not sure when, I also had to make the judging forms for the faculty screening, and the printed programs for the Open Show. That might have been Thursday. It's all a bit of a blur, now.) Saturday, we had to transform the Main Gallery into an impromptu movie theater. We used the same set-up as last year: four 15" JBL Eon speakers plus two 18" powered subwoofers for the sound system (rented from Location Sound, and kindly set up by a couple of my fellow techs who were nice enough to come in on their day off), a 20-foot-wide screen (rented from and set up by American Hi-Definition), and 300+ chairs. This all had to be done before the show started at 2 PM. (Fortunately, in addition to the techs who came in, we had a lot of help from our T.A.s and other students.) That just left the projector. Since I had stayed up the night before calibrating and testing it, I just basically had to point it at the screen, plug it in, and focus it. Mostly. Now, you might notice that the worms in the cartoon above aren't actually high-def. If they were, that image would be 1920 x 1080. There's a reason for that. I got about halfway through painting it, before I realized I was working with a low-resolution scan. Such are the side-effects of sleep deprivation. I decided to just leave it, since for a blog entry, it wouldn't really matter. But it's somewhat apropos that it isn't in high-def. You see... the Open Show wasn't actually in high-definition either. Oh, the films were all in HD. The show was edited in HD. The playback files were all HD. The computers were outputting HD. The faculty got to watch and judge the films in HD. But the Open Show itself wasn't projected in HD. Not in the Main Gallery. It was projected at a meager 1024 x 576. About 1/2 of HD. Why? Well, without getting into politics, let's just say that the cost of renting a true HD projector for the Open Show was deemed as "too expensive" so we had to use what we had on hand. From my standpoint, I thought that the expense would have been well worth it. After all, this is the only show where all of the students get their work shown in front of an audience. But hey... not my call. I made my case the best I could. Still, the picture was a lot better than in previous years. Except for the glitching. You see, the projector didn't like HD. In fact, the only signal we could feed it from the interface that it would even display was 1280 x 720i at 59.94 fps. So the image was already being scaled down once, and then the projector scaled it down to its native resolution - 1024 x 768. But it had to letterbox it, since we were feeding it 16:9 video, and the projector was 4:3. Apparently, it was all a little bit more than the projector could handle, because anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes apart, there'd be a horizontal glitch across the bottom of the image - just like noise on a video tape. Two steps forward, three steps back. Despite that, the show went really well. We had to have a break in the middle from 6:30 - 10 PM due to another event taking place in an adjoining space, but because the show was shorter overall, we still wrapped up around 11:30 PM. Much earlier than previous years.‡ Except for sneaking out to grab a quick lunch, I had to stick around for the entire show (in case of any technical problems) and during the break as well, since when the judging was over (around 7 PM), I had to sit down with the Program's Director to tally all the results for the Producers' Show. I eventually left around 2:30 AM, because I had to stay and break down the equipment and put it away. Then after another three hours of sleep, I had to be back by 7 AM Sunday to meet with the screen rental company for pickup. I finally got home just after 9 AM Sunday, and could finally collapse and start catching up on some sleep. Sort-of. May 14th, 2011... Between then and May 12th, I had to get things ready for the Producers' Show. This is a lot shorter of a show (this year, only 67 minutes), and much easier in most regards to putting it together. For me, anyway. Not so much for our sound faculty - Ben - who did 5.1 surround mixes for all 23 of the films. This is his second year of doing this, and the difference it makes is like night and day. But with sound. My week is mostly spent getting the program put together. Students design it and create artwork for it, but all of the typesetting, final layout and prepress work is done by me (and, of course, it has to go through several rounds of approvals). Then I have to work with the printer to make sure it gets done on time (this year, it was delivered at 2 PM on the day of the show... we need to work on that for next year), while coordinating with the theater and the outside companies we'd be working with on the day of the show. Once the sound mixes were done, I then had to cut the show together and render out the final playback files, test everything, and make any necessary tweaks. After a couple of last-minute fixes, I finished the final output files about Noon on the day of the show, and then packed up everything to take to the theater. This year - with the move to HD and the extra work being done for the sound mixes - we did get to put some money into the Producers' Show screening. After all, this screening is for industry big-shots (who also pay to sponsor the thing), in addition to our students. The show takes place at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Theater in North Hollywood. In previous years, we played back standard-definition Betacam SP tapes, which only used two-track audio. You could get Dolby 2.0 (Lt Rt) surround off it, but at best that was only sort-of surround, and the theater had no HD video playback capabilities. So we hired American Hi-Definition to bring in a Christie Roadster 18K HD projector (about $90,000 worth), and Dolby (yes, that Dolby) to set up the surround system there to support true 5.1 surround. Now, while we'd had American Hi-Definition set up screens for our Open Shows before, we'd never worked with them for the Producers' Show, nor had we worked with Dolby there. So I had no idea what to expect, how long setup would take, what sort of problems we might encounter, or how any of it might work with the Mac Pro and AJA Io HD we were bringing for playback. Our show was scheduled for 8 PM on May 12th, and we were going to meet up at the theater at 4 PM that day. I was seriously worried we wouldn't have enough time, since I'd never done any of this before, and we had to start seating people at 7:30 PM. The fact that I left for the theater later than I wanted to and showed up exactly at 4 PM (and not 15 minutes early, like I'd wanted to) only added to my anxiety. In fact, I remained stressed-out until shortly after 4 PM when they started setting up in the projection booth, and it became clear that our show was in excellent hands. Within maybe 30 minutes, everything was basically set up and ready to go. 30 minutes. 35, tops. My stress over this had been building up for weeks, if not months, and the last couple of days had been nearly unbearable at times. And within minutes - gone. The word "professionalism" only scratches the surface with these guys. They were well-practiced, efficient, calm, knowledgable, self-assured, and absolutely, thoroughly professional. It was a real joy to watch them work, and immediately put all of my fears to rest (plus, the sheer geek-factor of the gear they were using was pretty awesome, too). The fact that they all knew each other (it's a small world after all...), and had all worked at that theater before helped, since everyone already knew what everyone had to do. I basically just had to set up our computer system, plug it in, and the picture and sound were perfect. No muss, no fuss. I especially can't speak highly enough about the projector. The picture quality was astonishing. Razor sharp, crystal clear, super bright, saturated, and perfect color. In the 17 years I've been doing this (that's about enough...) this was the first time I've ever been completely satisfied with the presentation of the show. There's always been something in past years I haven't liked, but this year it was flawless. Now, that's not to say I still wasn't nervous during the show. We'd brought two pre-configured Mac Pros (one as a back-up), plus a third copy of the show on an extra hard drive, just in case. Once the show started, I never left the projection booth until the last frame of the show was off the screen. Admittedly, it made the show a lot less enjoyable (projection booths are noisy places with lousy views of the screen), but I never would have been able to relax if I'd been down on the floor. Next year though, I'll have a better idea of what's going to happen, and I think I'll be in a lot better frame of mind for it. I'm also hoping we can get a MacBook Pro with a Thunderbolt hard drive for playback, since those Mac Pros are heavy. The screening by all accounts was hugely successful. Or so I'm told. Because we had no safe place to lock up the Macs, I had to load them into my car immediately after the screening ended, and drive them back to CalArts. I couldn't stick around for the reception afterwards. I would've liked to have heard what people thought of the presentation, but I'll just have to go off of second-hand accounts. But everyone seemed suitably impressed. With any luck, maybe they were impressed enough so that next year, we can rent a proper projector for the Open Show as well. Fingers crossed. With that, here are the films from this year's Producers' Show (not all are online yet, but I'll update links as they become available): Opening Titles - Jeff Liu (and many others) little boat - Nelson Boles Marooned 3 - Tom Law Paraphernalia - Sabrina Cotugno Sharkdog - Eric Anderson My Grandfather's Ship - Trevor Jones Shell Out - Sunmee Dong Origin - Jessica Poon Shape - Eusong Lee The Trackpad Jam - Jeff Liu Brave - Jasmin Lai Berdoo - Miranda Tacchia GrandMugged - Jacob Streilein We'll be fine, probably. - Sam Kremers-Nedell Hummingbirds & Holograms - Jeff Liu Vampire Gastelbrau - Hannah Ayoubi Give Me Space - Brian Carter Bottom Feeder Blues - Colin Howard Blueberry - Glenn Williamson The Funny Thing About Lois - Amelia Lorenz Lemur - Takehiro Nishikawa 500 Days of Winter - Natalie Wetzig Eyrie - David Wolter And while the following films didn't make the Producers' Show, they're some of my favorites from this year: Ima Loose Cannon - Tom Law a.breeze.from.mt.Parnassus - Vitaliy Strokous Unlocked - Tahnee Gehm May 26th, 2011... Since then, besides recovering (it takes me weeks to get back on a normal schedule, and I'm still not there), I've been mostly working on getting the DVDs of the show authored and duplicated (including the labels, inserts and cases), and getting projects lined up for the summer. At some point, I'll be making Blu-ray discs of the shows. But that can wait for a little while. I've got some other projects to deal with, first. And some time-off to take. *Actually, most "broadcast" HD is so badly compressed by the time it gets to your TV that everything we're doing ends up looking far superior. **Yes, I know. It's actually 23.976, but most production software rounds it off to 23.98. †1994, to be exact. That was the last year where every 2nd through 4th year student was required to have a sound mix. After that, we went digital, so everyone could do their own sound. This is good and bad. Good in that students have far more control and flexibility in regards to their soundtracks. Bad, in that many of them wait until the very last second to do their sound, and tend to just hastily slap their sound together without giving it the attention it really needs. ‡When we used to have the Open Show in the cafeteria several years ago, we couldn't even start the show until after dark, because it had windows on all sides. That meant sometimes the films would run past 4 AM, and then we'd have to take everything down and clean it up.

Oh sure... you may love Anime, but do you love it as much as these people? Well, in that case, you've likely been at the 2008 Anime Expo. Even more likely, you're into Cosplay. And frankly, you're creeping me out just a little right now. That said, it's time to check out the Expo's Cosplay photo galleries, and play everyone's favorite game... Dude... or Chick? Play along at home! Just peruse the galleries below, and ask yourself whenever you see someone festooned in all their costumed splendor, "What is that?! Dude... or Chick?" It's not as easy as you might think. Have fun! Day one, part one Day one, part two Day one, part three Day two, part one Day two, part two Day two, part three Day two, part four Day three, part one Day three, part two

Season 3 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars kicked off a few weeks ago, although I've been too busy to either a) watch all of the episodes or b) write about them, until now. Last season, the series really began to mature, and it grew on me quite a bit. The characters had more depth, the plots were better, and the production values and quality of the animation increased. Season 3 started off with more of a whimper than a bang, but it has already had some high points. The whimper was because the first episode - Clone Cadets - was basically a character piece about a group of clone trainees and how they needed to band together as a team to get through their training. However, since this was a flashback episode about a group of clones we saw waaaaay back in season 1, there was no real doubt about the outcome (admittedly, I'd forgotten about this being the same group, until I read about it online someplace). Still, while not exactly action-packed, there were some interesting behind-the-scenes revelations about how clones get trained and who trains them. And more so, what happens to clones that weren't left in the test-tube quite long enough. Does the name Quasimodo ring a bell? The second episode - ARC Troopers - was shown back-to-back with the first one, since it again featured the cloning facilities on Camino, as well as Quasimodo, and the surviving members of the squadron of trainees, most of whom got killed off in that other episode from season 1. (Oops... uh, spoiler alert! There.) Anyway, the droid army decided to attack the cloning facility on Camino (not Camano), since if they could take that out, then hey - no fresh troops to fight! What was interesting about this episode, was that they mentioned that since Jango Fett died, they were having to stretch out his DNA samples (insert your own joke here), and that some of the more recent clones weren't turning out quite as sharp as a result. So learning a little bit more about the background of the clones (and why eventually there weren't clones in the latter Star Wars movies) was kind of cool. There was also some nifty lightsabering between Anakin and Ventress and Obi-Wan and Grievous, although I think they tend to pace the fights a little too fast, and they aren't as fluid as they should be. The most impressive part of the episode (and the series) are the space battles. Seriously... they had battles in this half-hour cartoon that blew away anything in Return of the Jedi. It's really quite astonishing the amount of work all of that must take (although anymore, it might be just as well to write a video game that contained all the ships, and fight it out real-time on a PS3, and just show that on TV). The third episode - Supply Lines - brought more proof that George just can't be trusted with Star Wars anymore, as once again, Jar Jar reared his ugly head. For whatever odd reason, I was glad Ahmed Best came back to do his voice, because the only thing more annoying than Jar Jar's voice, is some other voice actor trying to do Jar Jar's voice. There were some more impressive battle scenes though, and some nice moments with Senator Organa. (Y'know, with all of his galaxy-trotting, he may not even have been on Alderaan when it blew up. Maybe he was just trying to get out of child support.) Anyway, they had to go somewhere and do something... save some of those blue tail-headed people by negotiating with some neutral planet to let them land for medical supplies and accordions or something. I don't know... I kind of tuned that part out. The fourth episode was Sphere of Influence. Okay, remember the cute blue girl senator from season 1? Well, her chubbier, less attractive sisters get kidnapped by Greedo, and so she teams up with Ahsoka to go find them. Meanwhile, her father and some other guy also go after the kidnappers, and eventually everyone is all happy. And Jabba the Hutt is there, and we get to see his little son, Quonset. I think. Anyway, it's all full of political dreariness intrigue. Something about trade blockades, or treaty violations or something. Whatever. Then, there was Corruption, which was a morality story about how kids having access to soda machines in schools is making them fat. Or in this case, dead. Y'see, there's (another) trade blockade of some sort, so there's a black market for soda ("tea") that's been diluted with antifreeze ("blavin" or something). Why didn't they just dilute it with water? Wouldn't that be cheaper than poisonous chemicals? I'm a Mooga, he's a Mooga, she's a Mooga, we're a Mooga, So of course Padme's on the case, because she's buddies with the senator on that planet, and together they unweave a web of corruption that goes to the very heart of the government of this planet that nobody really cares about - Mandalore. You know - it's where the guys that the Fett's stole their armor from are from. But none of those guys are in this episode. Just lots of talking, a bunch of kids getting sick on expired soda, and a warehouse full of antifreeze burning down. Seems to me the whole thing was just a missed opportunity to slip in a reference to Slurm. After that, we had The Academy - in which Ahsoka is back, and on assignment to teach the just-poisoned-but-now-better students on Mandalore what "Government Corruption" means. They need a 14-year-old to teach them that? Can't they just Google it? Anyway, after taking the lessons to heart, four of the kids go all Scooby-Doo, and go searching for said corruption, and find it. And of course, get into trouble, and have to be bailed out by Ahsoka, who manages to kick butt and save the day without the benefit of a lightsaber. It's actually a pretty good episode, overt educational content notwithstanding. Also, it brings up a point about Ahsoka. She's turning into an interesting character, even more so as the series goes along. In Sphere of Influence, she used a Jedi mind trick for the first time, and was able to levitate another character out of harm's way. So in a way, it's cool to see her turning into a more full-fledged Jedi. Plus, she's picking up some of Anakin's tendencies (and we're seeing more hints of his dark side as well), so it will be interesting to see how this all works out. George said in a recent interview that they have her story arc planned out (and therefore an end to it), but won't get to it for "hopefully a few more years". Will she turn to the dark side? Be killed by Anakin or someone else? Or does some other fate await her? We can only hope she won't turn out like Lindsay Lohan. I'll admit, I'm more engrossed in The Clone Wars than I expected to be by this point. The animation is much improved over the first season (although it's still rough in spots) and the locations, sets, design, detail and scale of everything is unparalleled in any made-for-TV "cartoon" (much less sci-fi in general). The characters are likable for the most part, and they've started to develop a decent roster of villains, too. The plots are often still hit or miss, but the series now has a good overall arc going, and it does add some much-needed depth and backstory to the prequel trilogy. Also, it's apparently bringing in a whole new generation of Star Wars fans, for whom this is Star Wars, because it's what they're growing up with - not the originals, not even the prequels. Man, do I feel old...

So last Friday saw the second season premiere of The Clone Wars. It started off quite well with a two-parter about the bounty hunter Cad Bane, attempting to steal something called a Jedi Holocron in the appropriately titled Holocron Heist, and then using it to get some critical information for the Emperor in Cargo of Doom. The animation seems a bit better this year (still some wonky walking), but the plot was a definite improvement. First, Cad Bane is an excellent character. Unlike the utterly useless Fetts, this is a bounty hunter who can actually back up his reputation with cunning, ruthlessness, and serious skills. The series is getting a little edgier too, since they show a Jedi (sadly, not Anakin) getting tortured to death by him - on screen. In a "cartoon". Heavy stuff. Second, Anakin's apprentice - Ahsoka - is starting to show a bit of a dark side. Or maybe... a bit of the dark side. Maybe it wasn't so bright to give him his own Padawan... ya' think? It'll be interesting to see how that all pans out. I'm sensing tragedy afoot. Anyway, the characters and plots are starting out more interesting already than last year ended. With luck, we can stay away from Jar Jar and the whole Anakain/Padme romance for awhile. Now if AT&T would just carry Cartoon Network in HD here... Also on Friday (or Fryday) the SyFy channel (formerly the SciFi channel in what's probably the most pointless name change since this guy), debuted the latest in the Stargate series of er... series, with: Stargate: 1999 I mean... Stargate: Voyager No, that's not it either. Lost in Stargate? ? Anyway, it debuted Friday. And it comes up with the brilliantly original idea of stranding a bunch of people from Earth on something hurtling out-of-control, lost in spa... er... the universe, trying to survive, find and explore habitable planets, and of course, find a way back to Earth. There's a scientist on board who's responsible for them being there, that nobody trusts. I forget his name, so we'll just call him Dr. Smith. You have a fat video game nerd/genius (gee... appealing to the target demographic much?), and a whole bunch of generic actors I don't recognize at all. Supposedly, Lou Diamond Phillips is in the series, but I think he was in the pilot all of 5 seconds. Tops. So maybe next week we'll get to see him. Or not. I couldn't possibly care less. (If they were looking for a B-grade sci-fi actor for the show, you can't get any better than Mark Dacascos. There's always the off-chance he might yell "Allez-cuisine!!" during an episode, and that would be worth watching.) Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping and Michael Shanks from Stargate SG-1 all made rather useless cameos in the pilot (I know Anderson's character is supposed to be laid back, but there's laid back, and then there's just phoning it in for the paycheck). Just to keep connection with earth (apparently so the producers can bring in more interesting guest stars from time to time) the... what are they... Universians? ... anyway, they brought along a set of communication stones, that allow them to instantly swap brains with someone on Earth... several billion light years away. Uh... yeah. Look... I'll grant you pretty much any plot device in science fiction, but that's pushing things. There should be at least some time delay or something. I'm not sure I'll keep up on this one. Stargate Atlantis was already pretty weak sauce, and there's nobody - nobody - on board this tub that I really want to see any more of. Well, maybe Ming-Na.

If you grew up on: Batman, Scooby Doo, Batman guest-starring on Scooby Doo, and, well... ... then you have got to watch this (an excerpt from Batman: The Brave and The Bold): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvQYfM-M2fU

...there comes an uprising. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sakyg8srKU (Actually, this looks pretty cool. But I couldn't resist taking a cheap shot at Taco Bell. )

The trailer for Cars 2 has been released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFTfAdauCOo It looks pretty good. I'll admit I was skeptical about Cars 2, since contrary to most Pixar films (where they put story first), I'd heard reports that Cars 2 was green-lit and scheduled before a story was even in place. Why would Pixar do that? Simple. The Cars franchise pulls in some 2 billion dollars a year in merchandising. Two. Billion. With a "B". Now, the idea of a spy story centering around a world Grand Prix race is hardly new (see also: Speed Racer - the TV series), but it hasn't really been done very well at a feature film level (see also: Speed Racer - the movie). Of course, with Cars, it's a natural. And while I'd like to think that the Pixar folks decided to go this route* because they came up with a good story, I have a sneaking suspicion the conversation went more like this: Marketing guy #1: We need to capitalize on Cars. That means more characters to merchandise, and that means a sequel. Marketing guy #2: Why don't we just make a series of short films? Marketing guy #1: Not enough box office potential. Nope, we need a sequel to milk this for all it's worth. Marketing guy #2: Well, how can we improve the appeal of the brand to the target demographic of 5 to 12 year-old boys? What's more appealing than cars that talk? Marketing guy #1: How about cars that talk... with spy gadgets!! Marketing guy #2: Awesome! That has huge marketing potential! And how about if they transformed into giant robots? Marketing guy #1: Don't be stupid. Nobody would buy that. Anyway, I'll go see it. Even though at first I didn't care all that much for Cars, it grew on me after awhile. In part because I played the PS2 game, and the whole concept lent itself perfectly to video games. So I got to explore the world, interact with the characters, and because the game design so closely mimicked that of the film, the two media blended together nicely. And Cars 2 looks even more geared* towards the inevitable video game tie-in. Besides, the villain's henchmen are AMC Pacers and Gremlins. How can you not like that? * puns not intended Also out recently, is the trailer for Disney's next traditional animated film: Winnie The Pooh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbFz--GCkOM I wasn't all that much of a fan of the first one... so I'll probably pass on this one. I suppose I should feel guilty for not supporting the animation industry more, but the fact of the matter is, I'm not going to plunk down $20 to go see a movie I'm not interested in. If they make more films I want to go see, then I'll pay to go see them. Case in point: I still haven't decided if I'm going to see Megamind yet or not. I can't say I'm all that enamored with another Dreamworks re-hash of a concept Pixar already did (see also: Toy Story/Small Soldiers, A Bug's Life/Antz, Finding Nemo/Shark Tale). I also doubt I'll go see Tangled. From what I've heard (from people working on it) it looks great, and the animation's amazing. The story? "Pretty good." It's yet-another-Disney-princess-film, and all of the panicked, last-minute re-branding they've attempted with it just won't change that. Sorry, but I'm not really in that demographic. But if some people from work go, I'll tag along. But I reserve the right to skip out to get popcorn during the "wishing" song.

So, I finally got around to seeing DreamWorks' MegaMind. Last week. Yeah, I was a little late with that, and then forgot that I'd watched it, so I'm late writing the review, too. Anyway, MegaMind is DreamWorks' take on the superhero genre. You know... like Pixar did a few years ago with The Incredibles. Sort of like how Pixar did Toy Story, then DreamWorks did Small Soldiers. Or how Pixar did A Bug's Life, and DreamWorks did Antz. Or how Pixar did Finding Nemo, and DreamWorks did Shark Tale. Or how Pixar did Monsters, Inc., and DreamWorks did Monsters vs. Aliens. Just sayin' is all... Anyway, MegaMind manages to differ itself from The Incredibles pretty well by being nowhere nearly as good. Plus, the plot is different. MegaMind is effectively a SuperMan parody, but instead of focusing on the (bland) superhero, the focus is instead turned on the villain - MegaMind. The movie was okay - entertaining enough, but without being anything special. Will Ferrell (MegaMind) wasn't nearly as irritating as I thought he'd be. The problem was, he wasn't nearly as funny as he should have been. The whole movie generally fell kind of flat, humor-wise. Sure, there were some funny moments, and a few good action sequences, but not really enough of either. Tiny Fey was entirely wasted as the heroine/love interest/damsel in distress. Any competent voice actress could have done the exact same job with the role that she did. Not that Fey was bad in it, but rather she just wasn't given much of anything to do. As for the hero, I spent the entire film thinking he was voiced by George Clooney, when it was actually Brad Pitt. Eh... whatever. Same thing. The story had some nice twists, but it was still pretty predictable. Overall, it was just entertaining enough to hold my attention. There certainly wasn't anything else in the theater to distract me - my friend and I were the only two people there. (Although his snoring was distracting a couple of times.) Which brings up the inevitable question... if we hadn't shown up, would they have still shown the movie? The animation and character models are years behind where Pixar is. Fey's character (a TV reporter - of course) looked especially bad (weird eyes and misshapen forehead), and there's a nerd character (her cameraman) who looks entirely too much like a fat version of the main human character (Linguini) from Ratatouille. The texturing and detail just weren't quite there, either. The whole thing lacked much in the way of a unique identity or visual style. "Bland" would be the best description, although the villain's lair had some potential, and the villain's sidekick looked cool. In fact, the sidekick was the most entertaining character in the film (which is far too often the case in animated films). I saw the film in 2-D, so I can't speak to how well the 3-D did or didn't work, but there are times where they were intentionally throwing things at the camera for the sake of 3-D, which in 2-D just looks stupid. Overall, I'd give MegaMind a 6/10. That may be a little generous, but the popcorn was good, Will Ferrell wasn't bad, and if you can see it for cheap on Netflix or wait to watch it for free on TV, there are worse ways to kill an hour and a half.

Well, I was going to try to go through the entire month of February without a new blog entry* (just to see if I could), but decided I couldn't let something pass by without griping about it: The Annie Awards. The what?! The Annie Awards. The animation industry's annual awards for (supposedly) excellence in animation. Well, actually, it's ASIFA-Hollywood's awards. What is ASIFA-Hollywood? It's the L.A. chapter of the The International Animated Film Society (how they got ASIFA out of that...). Is it like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Nope. Is it like the National Cartoonists Society? Nope. ASIFA lets any schmuck who pays them join. That means, anyone can vote for the Annie awards. Industry members, students, fans, whoever. Vote early, vote often. But... isn't that a good thing? Isn't the whole problem with industry awards the fact that they never allow the general public to vote and therefore never reflect the public's opinions of what good film/TV/music really is? That's not the problem here. The problem here, is that there is no process whatsoever for screening applicants. For determining who is voting. Or more to the point - if certain studios are voting in disproportionately higher numbers. Everyone who pays (or is paid for) gets in. Friends, family, lackeys, anyone. This makes it possible for a given studio, let's say - hypothetically - Dreamworks, to rig dramatically influence the outcome of the awards. In fact, Dreamworks Animation makes a point of giving every employee that walks through the door an ASIFA membership. Why am I even bringing this up? Because Dreamworks' Kung-Fu Panda swept the awards. It didn't dominate. It swept. In almost every single category it was nominated in. The only two it lost in were "Storyboarding in an Animated Television Production or Short Form" and "Writing in an Animated Television Production or Short Form" (keep in mind those categories while you think for a moment about Kung Fu Panda being an animated feature film). They submitted DVD bonus material for consideration. Fine. That's within the rules. But having it win in four out of six TV/short form categories? For DVD bonus material? Okay... we'll give them the benefit of the doubt for a minute, and just assume that all of the rest of the TV/short form nominees just had a bad year. That could happen. And maybe the bonus material was just that awesome. (I haven't seen it.) But for everything else, it actually did sweep all of its nominations. Ten out of ten for feature film awards, plus "best animated video game". Ten out of ten. Think about that for a moment. Nothing else, except two TV productions, won anything in any of the categories Dreamworks submitted Kung Fu Panda for. Now, if Wall-E had been a critical flop or box office disaster, I could possibly, maybe see eight out of ten happening. Maybe. But that wasn't the case. And we're talking 15 out of 17 total awards here, for an awards show that only gives out 24. That's just patently ridiculous. Really. If Skeletor Jeffery Katzenberg wants to buy up some awards for his films, he should at least not make it so obvious. Now, does this mean ASIFA is corrupt? No. I'm sure there are many fine things they do as an organization. But if you're going to have industry awards, you'd better make sure that they reflect the attitudes of the entire industry. The Annies have become a complete joke. Highest bidder wins. They need to clean up their act, or any shred of remaining respect these awards may have at one point brought with them will be gone. In my book, it already is. (And for opposing viewpoints, you can slog through these comments if you'd like.) And for what it's worth - I liked Kung Fu Panda. * I've sort-of been cheating on the blog thing anyway. So it's just as well.

Are you in college, planning to go to college, or planning to send kids to college someday? Don't ever, EVER take out a student loan from Sallie Mae. Be wary of any loan company that might sell your existing loans to them, as well. They're evil. I will be well-rid of these conniving, thieving, dishonest, money-grubbing, manipulative, opportunist robber barons, the day I finally get my last loan paid off. I don't "hate" very often, but I hate Sallie Mae. I've come to personify the company as some crotchety, cantankerous, nonagenarian old broad, sitting on a rocking chair (next to her sister Fannie) on the porch of an old house packed to the rafters with cash stolen from bankrupt college students, taking pot-shots at passersby with a shotgun, screaming, "Git away from mah MONEY!" BLAM!! She's been freeloading off of me since the day I graduated, so I've been trying to pay off my loan as fast as I can, so I can finally kick her out of my house. This has been to the exclusion of doing other things - like going to CGExpo or California Extreme this summer. Or buying a new computer. This year, I've managed to pay down the loan quite a bit. I was expecting when I got to the end of this year's payment book (they send out a booklet each year with payment slips for each month), that they'd send me another, and I'd keep making my monthly payments as usual, and just end up paying the loan off early. Right? Make sense? No. They didn't send me a new payment book. I called them. They said they'd mailed me a new one, and it should be arriving soon. It didn't. I called them again. They weren't going to send me a new payment book. I didn't need to make another payment until 2013, because I'd "paid ahead". Ummm... no. That wasn't the point here. The point was to take payments off the end. Not to pay ahead, you idiots. Can I get a new payment book now? No. I didn't need to pay again until 2013. Therefore, the new payment book would arrive then. Then I asked them the question they didn't want to answer... "But isn't my loan still accruing interest during that time?" "Ummm... I'll have to check on that. (Long pause) Yes, your loan is still accruing interest daily. But you don't need to make a payment again until 2013." Riiiiight. So now it becomes clear. They were going to suck another THREE YEARS of my money away as interest, without communicating this to me in any way, shape or form. Evil, greedy, stupid, lousy, useless (insert long string of expletives of your choice here), money-grubbing crooks! So in the end, I find out I can pay on the loan now anyway, but I have to go to their website to find out how. And pay on it I will. As fast as I can financially afford to. I want to deprive them of as much interest as I possibly can. Then I'm going to kick that old broad out of my house. And I'm going to enjoy it.

So, it's 5:00 AM, and I'm wide awake. This is a side-effect of this time of year at my job. As with last year and the year before, and for that matter, the previous sixteen or so years, I've been burning the midnight oil at both ends (how's that for a mixed-metaphor?) getting our end-of-the-year showing of student films put together. The first show was on Saturday afternoon (May 1st), and from Friday through Sunday morning I was awake about 40 hours straight, minus a short cat-nap in my office on Saturday, and only went home long enough to shower (mercifully) on Saturday morning. I didn't bother tracking my hours for the week this year, but in previous years it's been about 80-100, and it sure feels like about that many again. I've been trying to catch up on my sleep, but unfortunately, my body is dictating when that's happening. Consequently, I'm awake a lot earlier right now than I'd like to be. So I'll write up a blog entry until I feel I can either get back to sleep, or just give up and start the day. This year's show was "short", compared to the last few - "only" six hours. But still, that was about 135 student films*, which is impressive by any means. And as always, there was some downright entertaining stuff in there. Hopefully, I can get some of it put up online sometime. This has been a goal of mine for a couple of years, but it's just been difficult to find the time to make it happen. Due to sites like YouTube being commercial, we can't just upload them there, since we're only allowed to use the films for non-profit, promotional purposes. So we'll have to get our own QuickTime server up and running. We did improve a few things from last year - we added a pair of 18" subwoofers to the sound system, which helped fill out the sound; we hired a crew to put up the huge 15' x 20' screen (which saved considerable time and stress); and we rented another 100 chairs - and filled them. I'm not sure of the numbers, but it had to be more than 300 again, which is pretty amazing since we only have about 146 students in the program. (There are a few pictures available on Facebook, but it's hard to get an accurate impression of the scale of the room, or size of the screen.) At the moment, we're between our two shows. The one last weekend was "The Open Show", in which we run everything that the students turn in. Next Thursday (May 13th) will be "The Producers' Show", in which we screen the top 25 or so films (as selected by faculty) for the animation industry at a 600-seat theater in Hollywood. I'd be happy to invite you to attend - except the show sold out weeks ago. This show takes a lot less time to assemble for a number of reasons. First - there are fewer films. Second - the students have already turned in their films once, so any technical issues with them will have been addressed. But for the first time, there's a new reason: Third - our faculty (Ben) who teaches the sound design class is mixing the audio for all of the films. Usually, I end up going through all the films and not-so-much mixing but "fixing" them, trying to balance out the audio from film to film, and crudely tweaking any trouble spots just to make the soundtracks listenable. For the Producers' Show, that's not such a big deal anyway. But doing this for the Open Show takes a lonnnng time. Remember, that's a six-hour show, so working on the sound alone takes about three times that long, and that's just a quick 'n' dirty pass at it. The problem is, many of our students wait until the last minute to work on their sound, and so don't give it the time it needs. Besides that, we don't have a proper listening environment for them to work in. They just use headphones for the most part. What Ben is doing for the Producers' Show films though is a proper mix, using ProTools, with the students' original audio tracks, sitting with the students in our school's mix theater, using a professional console and a properly calibrated 5.1 surround system. His estimate was that it would take about an hour per film. Impossible for the 135-film Open Show, but doable for the 25 Producers' Show films (which this year will run about an hour and fifteen minutes in total). Actually, prior to 1994, we did have sound mixes for all of the upper-class student films. But that was when we were still cutting our audio on magnetic film stock, and so we had to have sound mixes done for us. But they were done as early as February (so there was ample time), and the first-year students weren't allowed to do sound, so it cut the numbers down considerably. Once we went digital in '94, the organized sound mixes went away, since we didn't need the specialized equipment anymore, and students could edit their sound whenever they wanted to, and weren't bound by a mix deadline. The problem with that was that the quality rapidly went downhill, since we lost the expertise of having sound engineers lending an ear to all of the students' soundtracks. What we're starting to do now, is reintegrate mixes back into the production path, to correct that for at least some of our students. We had a handful of students in the Open Show get their sound mixed, and we required it for all Producers' Show films. So hopefully, this is the start of improving the students' understanding, appreciation, and knowledge of sound design. After all, we're teaching filmmakers here... not just animators. I look forward to hearing the results. (Incidentally, there's an interesting list someone put together showing the impact some of our alumni have had on the feature film industry in recent years.) *I should probably mention that our "films" are completely digital. We don't actually use film anymore.

So many YouTube videos... so little time. So I thought I'd help sort through a few that are worth watching, to save you the trouble. First up, animation: Insane cardboard animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18usd0iV3eI Insaner bunny animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLUAbkRUvVQ (A making-of video is available .) Animating with sheep. No, I'm not kidding. This one even features Pong! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw A sort-of poignant story, featuring bubblewrap (language possibly NSFW): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p5GnB3mDAw One of my meets "Weird Al" Yankovic!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnW5FjcT69k And now, a message from our sponsors: A classic commercial from my childhood. I still remember the alternate lyrics my sister and I made up for this... over 40 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFEkfipbI3Q "McDonald's is your kind of place With hamburgers in your face And french fries up your nose And pickles between your toes The last time that I went there They stole my underwear McDonald's is your kind of place!" Hey whaddaya want... I was three. A brief musical interlude: One of the all-time great recordings of the 60's, and the best cover of "Summertime" ever. (Ignore the silly cowboy hat.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xrhcQcAJSI And finally... three very funny Tron parodies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26W0zdJ1fds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sufw0-2TjV4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwdU2FO9jOw Enjoy!

(Addendum: The 3-D I'm referring to is stereoscopic 3-D, rather than 3-D computer graphics - although this is a CG film.) About six weeks after its release, I finally managed to get out and see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs this week. Anymore, it's pretty surprising to still find a movie in the theaters after that length of time; more surprising was that the movie was still in a first-run, digital 3-D theater. Having largely avoided 3-D after that whole sordid Chicken Little affair, I decided to give the film a shot in 3-D, rather than boring old, pedestrian 2-D. So, after paying the extra three bucks for the privilege, myself and the seven or so other patrons in the audience donned our goofy-looking specs and buckled-in for the adventure. (That would be figuratively buckled-in, as there were no actual seat-belts in the theater. Probably some sort of fire ordinance... spoil-sports.) The 3-D itself generally worked pretty well. A few of the movie trailers were in 3-D too, which was nice since it gave you a little time to adjust to the effect. Where it didn't work very well were places where there was motion blur, or cross-dissolves (where one scene fades into another). The motion blur, and indeed any fast moving objects, are harder to see clearly in 3-D than in 2-D. Exactly why this is the case is lost on me, but I suspect it has to do with the frame rate of film (24 frames per second), and how we're used to actually perceiving real-world motion with depth-perception. 24 frames per second is pretty minimal for moving images as it is. The brain is using persistence of vision to assemble the still images into something we recognize as movement. The more frames per second used for film, the smoother and more believable the resulting movement is, since it's closer to what we're used to seeing in real life. When you're asking the brain to reassemble fake movement and fake depth perception using a bare minimum of acceptable information, then it isn't always going to work well. The faster something moves on film, the worse it looks because you have fewer frames (and therefore less visual information) to put the picture back together. I got the opportunity to see a Showscan demo once. This was a new film format that special effects wizard Doug Trumbull created originally for the movie Brainstorm. It utilized a large format film stock run at 60 frames per second, resulting in the most immersive, realistic film experience I'd ever seen. Far more than even IMAX, which again is hampered by its lower frame rate. Higher frame rates have never been adopted because of the cost involved - both the extra film stock required, but also the need to retrofit or outright replace older projectors. However, film projectors are now being replaced with digital ones, and film is going by the wayside in favor of digital formats, so it's possible that at some point higher frame rates may become adopted by movie studios. I sure hope so. Oh, and the reason cross-dissolves have problems? Well, if you're dissolving from one scene with a particular depth-of-field to a completely different one, the end result is that everything tends to flatten out. My guess is this is either because your brain can't figure out what to do with four sets of depth information (when both scenes are onscreen), or the 3-D effect itself is lessened as each scene is dissolved because there is less information available for your brain to reconstruct each 3-D picture. Anyway, that's a guess. The reason for the 3-D push lately (on the off-chance I haven't already blogged about this) has less to do with giving theater-goers something they can't get at home, and more to do with the studios trying to 1) cut down on piracy and 2) force theaters into installing digital projectors and ditching film. The former since 3-D films are much harder to make copies of, and the latter for a variety of reasons: more durability (no damaged prints or degradation), reduced distribution costs (films are distributed on hard drives which are reusable and cost far less to duplicate and ship), a greater degree of control over the releases (the digital "prints" expire after a time, and can't be played at all without a digital key), and probably a whole host of other reasons. Of course, theaters really don't care about such things since they make most of their profits off of stale popcorn and flat soda anyway, and film has been good enough up until now, so why spend all of that money to make the change? But by studios releasing 3-D films digitally (which is the most practical way to do it), this forces theaters to buy digital projectors if they want to draw in those crowds. Basically, I think 3-D is mostly a fad that will probably disappear again after a few years when the audiences realize that it doesn't really add all that much to the moviegoing experience, the theaters have all moved to digital projection, and the studios get tired of the extra work and cost involved in making 3-D movies. So much for my unintentional discourse on 3-D. I don't have anything against it, but i have yet to see it be used successfully for anything other than a gimmick. We'll see how other films fare down the road. Gimmick or not though, I'll still be one of the first ones in line to see Tron: Legacy in 3-D. Because that will be cool. Anyway, I guess I better actually say something about Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, since this is supposed to be a movie review of it. Overall, it's a pretty good film. The animation is excellent, and on a par with almost anything else out there (including Pixar). Particularly impressive is the physical comedy, and how they were able to animate the wooly mammoths' dialog - when you can't even see their mouths. Where it falls a bit short though is in pretty-much everything else. The characters are mostly one-note personalities, with nothing much in the way of development arcs. Nobody grows or learns much of anything, except in the most superficial and clichéd of ways. The story really doesn't have much depth to it either (no pun intended), with everyone basically ending up right back where they started. The visuals, while very good, are almost exactly what you'd expect: the world looks like a cartoon ice age, and the underground "lost" world they discover looks like a giant cavern with plants and caves and such. There isn't the sense of "Wow - I've never seen that before", or the wonder that some of Pixar's films evoke. Ice Age doesn't look bad - in fact it looks very nice. Well-modeled, nicely textured and rendered, good effects, etc.; it's just that in a medium where your only limit is your imagination, why not take full advantage of it and design something amazing? That said, it is an enjoyable film to watch. The humor isn't anything particularly clever, but it's good enough, and the slapstick animation (particularly the segments with Scrat) helps to make the film fun. The best character in the film though is the newest one - Buck - who has all of the funniest lines and best gags (including a great pterodactyl chase near the end of the film which evokes Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back). The 3-D was used to some good effect, except for the issues I mentioned above, although I never really got the feel of being in the vast environments I was watching on screen - everything beyond a certain point just seemed to flatten out. Whether this is a limitation of the media, or the filmmakers' choice, I don't know. I was also disappointed that they didn't use the 3-D more effectively as a tool to help with staging and direction - to focus in more on areas of importance, action or interest, and help draw the audience through the movie. If it's still around, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is worth a matinee and a big bucket of greasy, stale popcorn. The humor is good enough and mostly suitable for all ages (although you may have to answer some questions about clam shells and milking yaks), the characters are fun to watch, and the whole film is really well animated. I just hope Blue Sky Studios can break away from the Ice Age franchise, and push themselves to new levels. 7/10