Go Academy behind a new 3D animation? Enter Ibn Batutta!

I dug out a picture I took at the WCIT - I think it was the GO Academy booth. They are working with an impressive idea as well and trying to differ from the Saladin formula MDeC is using.



Check out the picture of the figurines: on the right are two versions of Ibn Batutta, the young and the old.

It was refreshing- Ibn Batutta a historical and scientific figure is the lead. From history itself, he has plenty to tell; traversing across the globe and learning cultures and languages of the people he meets. More at Wiki- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta .

I'm thinking a kind of Indiana Jones epic somewhat...A lot adventure, interwoven fact-fiction. The idea is to be more factual in this case of course. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was a flop TV series but it made people (like yours truly) more interested to read up on the history portrayed. Similar to frank Miller's 300 - based on a true story, it can make anyone want to at least go to Wikipedia to read up on the stand the 300 Spartans made (Battle of Thermopylae) to defend their land.

And Yes. I agree I do get tired people hyping up on the same old stuff, when there's more out there...Good work after all deserves the due good credit! Here's one to the Batutta team! Kudos to you!

Check out the styling of the characters. Sorry, I forgot the name of the Prof. Dr. in charge of the project. It's been sometiime. I'll dig it out.

Les Copaque's Sneak Media Preview

NOT really recently (I think it was 25th August, 2008), Les Copaque had a media-industry screening of its upcoming Geng: The Adventure Begins movie (here's a newer link to older preview and here's a newer link). I've been keeping tabs for a while now - animation was my forte' when I was with a tech section- of a local daily newspaper...

Your's truly was there to witness history in the making. The small auditorium at the MDeC HQ was packed to the brim. So far it looks great! What can I say - taking into consideration that this is a first effort. I guess, I should say that after seeing all that the team has gone through, I'm guilty of being a bit more forgiving. But still, I have some things to say, that might be potentially glaring to the avid 3D animation nit-picker - regular audience for a nice animated movie will not ponder too much and will defintely enjoy this marvelous, marvelous movie!

What I still remember though (and this might still change later still during the final cut) is that the movie was still a bit longish. Nizam and gang were all there to take note of the feedback that we all had. Some suggested that the editing needs to be tighter and the removed scenes can be made into a director's cut version on DVD - good idea.

The merchandise is key here people! Like Bill DuBay, used to say when I met him "It's the ancillaries that count. The lunch boxes, the bedsheets etc." Nice guy. Heard he's gone of to Pixar. He's a veteran with comics, Marvel Productions and buddies with Stan 'the Man' Lee. Already Les Copaque, has this in the roadmap. Kudos for them!

Geng: The Adventure Begins to my thinking has something to offer just about everybody in the audience. For good measure I took my kids along as well: my son aged 9 and my daughter aged 4 and my wife for good measure. Note: here's when you will notice that kids will laugh off queue compared to an adult audience. Some people would want to capitalise on these nuances- depends however to whom the movie is tagetted towards to.


My former editor, Ahmad Faiz Daro' Abd. Rahman, now a corp. comm. manager at Petronas, was also there. He noted that some of the scenes needed to be made punchier - true enough. He also suggested to change the character 'Kopek' to another usable name, for obvious reasons 'kopek' is also a slang word used to denote a woman's bust in certain *ahem* parts of the country. Sure enough this was taken note off, however the dilemma now is trying to find another name which will fit into the lip-synching for the word 'kopek' or 'kopet.'

Af for some of the self-inflicted injury or pain displayed by some of the forest creatures, I personally thought they were OK- simply because they were funny and taking into consideration of stretch and squash cartoon concept, they shouldn't be too offensive to animal lovers. They are caused by accidents and self-inflicted due to carelessness etc. Of course those scenes which could potentially cause animal lovers to cringe should be taken out. Can't remember any though.

The scene where the heroes enter the cave and leading in to that scene, a remiscent to several great moments in other movies: think Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom and even yes, the Ring Wraiths in search of Frodo in Lord of The Rings. Still cool though - it is after all a first time effort and using formulas that work will be the right thing to do. Besides, most kids wouldn't have known any better.

Another thing, that I didn't really think too hard about was the characters not changing clothes - suspense of disbelief sustained me enough to just put it away to rest. After all, who has time to change clothes with all the action going on?

The voice acting was actually relatively good and in some cases with regards to the smaller kid characters, I thought were actually really good, especially Upin, Ipin and Raju.

Storyline was engaging enough even if the implementation was in some scenes a bit draggy. However, I was pleased enough that I was surprised still of how certain scenes developed into what was a bit unexpected. Some scenes however, being a veteran *ahem* movie watcher, I was able to fathom the possible outcome - still let's not forget this is mainly for kids anyway.

Sound wasn't there yet as the mastering was not completed yet: sadly enough this still has to be done outside the country. Similarly so stuff like transferring to 2K plates for the final print for cinemas etc. (I might be off a bit on the technical specs, but there you go). Makes you wonder eh? This means local productions still need to be sent to Thailand or some other neighbouring country to make them usable for the local cinemas. Sad isn't it? Oh well, maybe someday someone will want to FINALLY do it and have someone FINALLY support the cost of doing it.

Overall, the boys and girls of Les Copaque did a really fine job transforming the story into great visuals crunched at MIMOS using some heavy duty cluster computing. We are still not where Shrek is, but this is a great start i.e. in comparison say to Singapore's Zodiac movie, I should say. That was of course a few years back...Nizam and the boys, for their age are quite proficient I might add on cinematic principles- I cannot help to be impressed: breaking the 4th wall and Chekov's gun are quite adhered to. Kudos to them and good luck to them!

As it is, I would give it overall 4 1/2 stars out of 5 based on the merits and what I've seen. Just can't wait to see the final cut!

Les' Copaque and a writer get's some due recognition ;-)

FINAS recently had a sort of a media appreciation night. I rather not tell the story already told so just go to the links:

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/National/2279835/Article/index_html

http://gengmovie.blogspot.com/2008/07/malam-penghargaan-industri-filem-27-jun.html

But I really want to thank Nizam, Tn. Hj. Burhanuddin, Fuad of Saymohm and of course the voracious advocate of the digital arts Chris Gomez- it was with their input that I wrote the story. The story mind you, could have been much more potent if not for *ahem* guidelines and all that stuff...

Want to make short films?

Have you tried going to BlameSociety.net? No? Then you should. Check out Chad Vader, Darth's supposed twin on Earth...

Making short films and getting them noticed
By: Hazimin Sulaiman

full article: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/techNu/Monday/Notebook/20080310123933/Article/index_html

IF you love films, surf to blamesociety.net and fromheretoawesome.com (FHTA for short). Similarly, you can also go to Youtube.com and search for both. They serve as examples that filmmaking has been democratised: as long as you have a video camera and some software on a computer to do some editing, shooting a short film is not a problem. The problem is getting your short film distributed to make money.

This is where FHTA’s idea of getting noticed by harnessing the power of the Internet comes in.

Blamesociety.net’s claim to fame was through its Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager episodes; a hilarious parody series of Star Wars’ Darth Vader’s supposed brother working at a supermarket (on present day Earth, it seems).

Founders Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda, who not only write, produce and star in their many other short films since 1993, have garnered a lot of attention. The success story, Chad Vader received over 15 million views online, broadcasted on Good Morning America, Spike TV and G4 and was selected by George Lucas himself as Best Star Wars Fan Film of 2007!

Getting noticed means opportunities in this business. In fact, both Sloan and Yonda now make films for a living. They owe it to public access stations which they describe as being video-business incubators which teach the young about skills and all aspects of broadcast communications.

They feel public access to television is important to local communities, hence their efforts to save a Wisconsin public access station (www.saveaccesswisconsin.org).

The FHTA is another avenue for indie movie-makers. Think of FHTA as a virtual film festival as it’s unlikely for most independent movie-makers to get noticed and go to an actual film festival in the first place.

In August 2007, Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and Mike Belmont (We Are the Strange), both indie movie-makers, came up with a concept to create a virtual conference film festival. On their Web site, they say that they “decided that the virtual event would be an experiment to connect filmmakers with audiences and the event could become a model for open content distribution, which allows filmmakers to have a say in how their films were reaching audiences.”

FHTA claims that their experiment is off to a great start. From the looks of the corporate logos and icons on their site, it has garnered an amazing list of partners. These partnerships will be leveraged to distribute across mutiple platforms such as mobile, online, theatrical and direct into living rooms. The main idea? To design the fest in such a fashion that the revenue goes directly into the filmmakers’ pockets.

Filmmakers will get to set their own price, retain rights to their work and be able to reach global audiences directly. All that with no submission fees and let the audience judge the works. A three-minute submission will be determined by the judges on whether it should be expanded into a longer film and the prize is a worldwide distribution via FHTA.

How FHTA works is described on their Web site. It seems like a plausible method to get around distributors who often want a great portion of whatever profits a film can rake in these days.

Will such an idea take off here? Who would fund this? Local independent filmmakers should band together because they will then have a bigger pool of talent and resources to tap into.

Personalised Google Themes

Google Teams Up with Leading Artists to Create Fun New Themes

INTERNET giant Google Inc., has teamed up with leading artists to creatte new themes for iGoogle. Google recently launched a collection of new themes created by leading artists, designers, actors and other personalities for iGoogle, Google's personalized homepage.

With iGoogle, users can choose and arrange the content they want to see on their Google homepage to personalise their Web experience. Google has collaborated with almost 70 artists from around the world, inviting them to use iGoogle as their canvas by creating unique, dynamic themes for users to decorate and personalize their homepages.

My iGoogle page:

Of course you can customise by changing artist themes and adding gadgets

The entire list of participating artists and their themes from around the world, can be found at www.google.com/artistthemes.According to said Derek Callow, Marketing Manager, Google Southeast Asia, Google has teamed with artists and other public figures as a way to give iGoogle users more fun, cool options to personalize their Google homepage. “We’re providing users
with some great new homepage designs and giving these artists a way to be discovered and to express themselves to millions of people on the Internet,” says Callow.

Participating international and Asian artists include Akira Isogawa, Alice Mak, Anne Geddes, Carrie Chau, Coldplay, Dale Chihuly, Diane von Furstenburg, Dolce&Gabbana, Jackie Chan, Jeff Koons, Kwon Ki-Soo, Young-Hee Lee, Mark Ecko, Mark Morris, Michael Graves, Nigo, Oscar de la Renta, Philippe Starck, PPAPER, Robert Mankoff, Rolf Harris, Tezuka Osamu, Tory Burch and Yann Arthus-Bertrand.All of the themes are dynamic, which change throughout the day.

The new collection provides users with a diverse selection of themes to reflect personal style on personalised a Google homepage. Can't decide? Google has a sampler theme that rotates
through all of the participating artists' themes.

Review of Lenovo's X300 up at autaspace.blogspot.com

Lenovo's new anorexic baby, the X300 is really thin...In fact, it can be lighter than Air, the MacBook Air that is...

Product review at: http://autaspace.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-lenovo-x300-lighter-than-air.html

Cybercafes are here to stay!

Gaming in cybercafes will be on the rise for sometime, especially given the rather low broadband speeds we have in Malaysia...I was with some journalist in Bali for an IT event, the one from Singapore said that he is getting 10Mbps (there are faster services in Singapore as well) and the one from Hong Kong had a 15Mbps connection. He Hong Kong journalist also said that PCCW also provides fiber-to-the-home, up to 100Mbps...Me? I was to ashamed to say. Of course, I already knew that we're really behind after covering some international broadband forums before...

Here's a link to a rather obscure story on cybercafes and why they're not afraid about hotspots and braodband to the home: http://autaspace.blogspot.com/2008/04/cybercafes-not-worried-about-hotspots.html