My First Star Sighting!

I have been in L.A. for over a year now and it wasn't until today that I had my first star sighting! While at Simply Wholesome, a health food restaurant and store, I actually spotted Delroy Lindo coming in for a bite to eat.

My friend tells me that this type of thing is common where we were. He said that stars do live around that area. Of course, not knowing the town, I have no idea where we were.

Even though I didn't talk to him or anything, it was cool.

I actually started working on the Understanding Chaos page yesterday. It should be up in a couple of days at the latest. The other "past project" pages will follow very quickly as I have now, at least, laid the foundation for how such pages will be built.

I am getting a bit further into my next anime project. It will be a feature. Not much more to be said of it yet. There are some other things going on which may affect how it all turns out.

I am still cleaning up the Hartz manga. I turned in a good number of pages today and will keep plugging through it for a meeting next week. This is not going to be a quick job. Rushing is what got us here in the first place.

For now though, I am off to no-so-sunny L.A. for some shopping.

Animax Asia!

Of course I should have known that there was a huge 24 hour anime network in Japan, and of course I have heard of WOWOW, but apparently this Aninax network is bigger and better. According to Animation Magazine, Sony is planning to exapnd this network into other markets with Animax Asia.

Based in Singapore, Animax Asia will be the first 24-hour-a-day network outside of Japan dedicated to popular anime.

Launched in Japan in June of 1998 as a partnership between SPE and anime studios Toei Animation, Sunrise, TMS Ent. and Nihon Ad Systems, Animax has become the number one cable and satellite network in Japan.

TODAY IS THE DAY

It's D Day! Or maybe I should say DVD day. It marks the day of the release of my first major label DVD release. Anime: Concept to Reality, published by TOKYOPOP, is actually shipping! Not only that, you will find that it is in stores today.

This is a pretty historic moment for Studio ArtFX. How long have I been saying that I wanted to get my works on store shelves and in major distribution? I see great things happening from this point. Think of all the places this one event could lead. This is, of course, only the beginning.

I am now to dig in to the final polish pass on my Hartz manga so that I can enjoy my next major label release, and my first graphic novel. I must also continue striving for wide distribution and introduction into the Asian markets with my current works and with an updated making of and a few new segments. Finally, there is my first feature. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a short road ahead.

As I wrap up one of the last freelance gigs I have going, it's time for a bit of refocusing.

Of course, there is still the World of Hartz manga to do. As I wrote a while back we are now doing a polish pass on it to really make sure the book is a solid release. That is probably at the top of the list of things to do. I cannot, as well, forget that there is much to do on this very page. Had I thought about it, though, there is plenty of information from the previous pages I did that should make putting this one together rather quick.

There is also the issue of introducing, in a large fashion, my work to the Japanese and general Asian market. Efforts to localize my two previous films for those markets will commence shortly, with a few possible additions as well. That will likely be a short term project.

I have been saying for many many months now that it is feature time. Is it feature time?

FINALLY A FANTASY!

According to this Gamespot article, Square Enix in Japan is going the movie route one more time, and this time they're doing what should have been done in the first place. Now don't get me wrong, I am one of the few, the proud, who like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. This is probably because I didn't rush out to the theatre to see it, and heard all that could be said ill of it before I saw it on DVD. Still, It was not a true Final Fantasy in the fan sense. This time it is.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children apparently revisits characters from the Final Fantasy VII game with updated character designs and a new story taking place two years later. Character design and direction seem to be in the same vein as Final Fantasy X. I wish that had been the Final Fantasy movie, but oh well...

You can see the teaser trailer if you RIGHT CLICK and SAVE from here.

"Made-for-video production is one of the largest growing -- and often overlooked -- segments of the entertainment industry," said Scott Hettrick, editor-in-chief of Video Business.

The newly formed, annual Video Business Video Premiere Awards acknowledges the breadth and quality of made-for-video productions, which represent $1 billion in annual revenue.

Did I not say that DVD was the place to be for us indies? Revenues in the home video market have more than doubled in the past couple of years. Some companies getting into DVD have seen 980 percent increase in annual revenue. Where is this all going?!

A WAYS TO GO

It has been said of modern visual effects technology that now anything is possible in film. While I believe it is true that nearly anything is possible given the time, budget and talent, the point where we are today is not quite the level I would hope to see. Many of the best effects today, though creating things that were certainly impossible to even consider in film in the past, do not hold up to multiple viewings or the scrutiny of still stepping possible in the home video medium.

This, of course, gets into questionable territory considering the costs involved. Should the effects in the film be made perfect such that no matter how many times it is viewed and no matter how many years later it still looks perfect? It probably can be done, but how much more would the movie cost? Is it better to make the effect good enough that people will be floored on first viewing and maybe the second? Is it good enough to fool the audience, or should they really see what they think they are seeing?

LOADED

On the heels of its unreal performance at the box office, Warner Bros.’ blockbuster sequel The Matrix Reloaded continues to rake it in on the retail market. The second installment in the Wachowski Bros.’ sci-fi trilogy debuted on DVD an VHS Tuesday and sold around 4 million copies before the close of the business day, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

DVD is the market folks! This is where the indie, even those of us who make our own titles can have the freedom to reach our audience. How do I know? A friend out in Tejas asked me about DVD manufacturing prices recently. I went and checked at the place where I had my DVD's done and found that it now costs an amazing $1.79 per disc!! Can you believe this?

The crew on one of the projects I am working on had plans to get a duplicator and do DVD's themselves. I told them this news and it astonished them. You can't do it yourself cheaper than $1.79. You can't even get blanks for that let alone cases, printing and wrapping.

Now I am not at all saying we should expect to sell 4 million units in a day like Warner Bros. can. But the door is open and nothing can stop us!

I am back from another TOKYOPOP meeting that I must say went really well. I wanted to show you a bit of something I have been working on, but that project strangely causes Mirage to instantly disappear at the moment. That will have to be looked into.

I met with a guy named Carl, whose last name I no longer remember. He was big at Marvel and DC for many years and very experienced. He looked over my stuff and gave good commentary. Overall it was a good meeting and I am getting a good idea where we're going with all this now.

I will try to post an image as I get this little software issue worked out.

JET LI ON PS2!

Now this is interesting. According to the official Jet Li website, Rise to Honor is a Playstation 2 game coming this fall and starring, of course, Jet Li.

What was most interesting to me, though, was the fact that this game not only features the actor in MOCAP sessions and having creative input into the story and game design, but also features fights choreographed by Cory Yuen, known for fights on The One and Kiss of the Dragon among others.

Now fighting systems in games have almost always been a big disappointment to me. With the exception of a few one-on-one fighting games, generally they are quite horrible. It's as though no thought was put into making the fight flow as they do in a film. I am hoping this effort will finally overcome all that!

OH! I totally forgot to mention that while I was there at TOKYOPOP, I got a copy of this:

You may have noticed the lack of a link to my webstore in this new webpage, and certainly a lack of the Chaos and Shadowskin DVD's. Well, the reason for that is this project.

Anime: Concept to Reality will be available in stores, and wherever you buy videos, at the end of this month! This product includes both Understanding Chaos and Shadowskin as they were seen on the original DVD's. This product also contains a newly edited and updated making of feature showing how it was done! You can find out more about it here!

I am very excited at the potential for wide exposure for these previous works. I am talking Best Buy, Suncoast, Tower, Borders, you name it, it will be IN THERE! This could be huge! I have been saying for a long time that I was working on seeing these titles in stores. Well, it seems to have finally arrived.

Well, I am back from my meeting with TOKYOPOP and, as usual, things like this are never as bad as they initially seem. Don't get me wrong, we are all in agreement that the book needs a good polish pass. That is the real goal here. It was rushed and looks it. Now it will be truly finalized. The key is making sure we get the time to do it right. Where, after all, is the logic in yet again rushing to do the polish?

I also got to watch a very cool Video Toaster 3 demo and we picked up a VT[3] for one of the video gigs that I am doing. The crew is picking up their ultimate system on which to run it all. It will be fun setting it all up and doing some production!

Anyway, It's back to the drawing board with the manga. I have some good reference to study and will be doing some practicing, mainly in the areas of backgrounds and line weights. Then I will touch up a few pages for a meeting next week. If we are all on the same page, then we push through the big polish pass on pretty much the entire book.

DELAY!

There has been a major delay with the manga project. Apparently it will not be meeting it's ship date. The publishers are not happy with the quality of the book.

It's no marvel really. Going back and looking at the work, having been away from it for over a month now, it is quite horrible. There is a major difference in quality in the original preview pages I did and the finals. "This is what happens when you rush a project", my editors told the higher ups.

To give an example, this month in the Shonen Jump anthology, there is a preview manga of Ruroni Kenshin. Let's just say that my manga is nowhere near in that kind of league. It needs work.

It's funny how much this is starting to remind me of my Westwood Studios experience. Anyone who was there will know exactly what I mean. They'll say, "We have to get this done! We have only 4 weeks!" You take the four weeks and nearly kill yourself doing the work. You suffer many long nights and generally don't take good care of yourself, but it gets done. Then, after another two or so weeks, they come back with the word, "The higher ups aren't really happy with what we did. They want it fixed. We have 6 weeks to get it right."

OH, what quality could have been done if we had just taken the full three months from the start! This became standard operating procedure at Westwood. Maybe this plague has infested every artistic industry there is. Maybe this is to stand as a reminder as to why I went the route of Chaos.

What's it like in your industry?

It's amazing how things work themselves out in the end. In my toaster quest I ended up talking to a place called TS Computers. Not only that, the guy there actually heard of me.

So as we talked about the VT[3], it turns out the guy was an old Amiga user, same as I was. He is a big fan of Mirage as well! Like me, he was just waiting for an Amiga style paint tool to find its way to the PC.

The thing is, they didn't have the board in stock at that moment, so they had to order it. The manufacturer was uncertain as to whether they could get one out to the store that fast. Apparently, just as they were talking, the president of the company happened by and it was mentioned that the product was for me. The word came back, according to the guy, that the president said, "Take care of him. Whatever he wants." The board will be in tomorrow.

I haven't been writing much lately. There really hasn't been any breaking news worth writing about of late. Do you wish to read of the mundane?

I just got through talking to DV Warehouse about a VT[3] system. This is, of course, the latest incarnation of the Video Toaster from Newtek.

I was incredibly impressed with how knowledgeable the guy I spoke with was about the technology. I am used to calling stores where I know far more than the guy on the phone and cannot trust his word. Not the case here. They knew the system inside and out. These are fans and users of the technology.

Our conversation eventually veered off to the subject of the new JVC prosumer HD camera. Once again, it was cool to talk to someone who plays with the stuff and is as excited about it as I was. The guy actually had the attitude I had. He was surprised to be talking to a potential customer who actually knew something! Anyway, I see this camera as playing a considerable role in possible future plans.

That is another story...

Remember when I said I would devote at least one day each week to working on an aspect of this page? Well, today is supposed to be that day. I have a lot of studying to do, however, so it may not happen this time. I also have to refocus my efforts for the new project. Changes need to be made.

Were it to happen today, though, I would first open up the World of Hartz page. The book is coming out soon and I want to give as much information about it as possible. I was at Fry's the other day and saw that TOKYOPOP manga is getting serious prominence on shelves there just like I have seen at other stores, even major book stores. I can't wait to see how Hartz hits the market!

In the past I remember encountering, in diverse forums or groups on the net, a number of vicious attacks on the concept of Earth Maiden Arjuna. Some even went as far as to attack the creator of the show. At the time, I didn't really understand it.

Considering the show as a whole, I gained an insight as to why people might be so adamantly against a show and even its creator and why they seem to hate both with such a passion. They see the show as an attack on them or, more importantly, their lifestyle.

You see, if people were to choose to believe or take to heart the messages presented in the show, they would feel a responsibility to change the way they live. They would feel a responsibility to stop eating certain things, to stop going to certain places, to stop wearing certain items, to stop using certain skin creams.. They would have to change. Who wants to hear that?!

Did you know that I have spoken to people who, as they were picking up something to put in their mouth I would say, "You know what's in there, right?" and as I start to read the ingredients, they would yell at me? "I don't want to hear it!" They would say. It makes it sound like they would rather continue eating something bad, in ignorance, rather than be told. You see, the reality is people know. But who wants to truly face that?

GameCube Sales Spike with Price Cut

From Animation Magazine:


Nintendo’s aggressive move to better position its home video game console in the holiday market is apparently paying off. Since the company dropped the price if its GameCube to $99 last week, the company reports that sales have more than quadrupled.

Ever since Resident Evil Zero, I had seriously thought about getting this system. On the whole though, the type of games available on the system do not appeal to me. Sad to say, in actuality, very few games do. The last game I truly enjoyed was FFX. ICO before that was a blast. I tried a couple of things since then and it never caught on. Why don't companies follow examples of games like ICO?

Of course, when it's all said and done, do I really have time to be playing games?

I have returned with the VHS deck. Why do need it? Well, as you may know, my Vaio has front composite RCA ports for video in. With this I use GigaPocket, a TiVo type of software that comes with this system, to record old items on VHS to the computer. From here I can easily make DVD versions of those old tapes before they die or something.

Originally I had a simple Sansui (yeah I know, I haven't ever heard of them either) VCR to use but I think it had been dropped one too many times and the picture flipped and the sound was full of noise, among other issues. Now I have a simple Panasonic machine and it seems to work perfectly.

It's amazing to think how cheap VCR machines have become. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for a good 4 head VCR. Now I got this one for $69.99. Of course keeping costs down has its price too. Though the machine was cheap, it is also cheaply made. Not in the sence of the internal guts. The quality is fine. The case, on the other hand, is like unto a plastic toy. I feel I could squeeze it too hard and it will crush or shatter.

Still, it's good to see technology go this route. This just means that there will come a day when the 65 inch, SXGA, high definition plasma screen that I want will also cost $69.99 :)

ComputerCafé Becomes CaféFX

From Animation Magazine:


After 10 years in business, ComputerCafé founding partners Jeff Barnes and David Ebner are renaming their feature EFX studio CaféFX (www.cafefx.com) and are creating a corporate umbrella, ComputerCafe Group, for the company’s two divisions. Last year, ComputerCafé acquired Santa Monica’s Pacific Data Post and added a commercials-and-music-video division dubbed The Syndicate.

Interesting news as I know a few guys over there. They have been one of the Lightwave houses to watch for quite some time. I have always been impressed with their work in both features and television.

Anyway, I am off to Fry's to get a VHS deck of all things...

DIC Goes Totally Sonic! at MIPCOM.

From Animation Magazine:

DIC Ent. is coming to Cannes with a healthy sampling of its Sonic the Hedgehog library under its arm. The Totally Sonic! package consists of 91 half-hour animated episodes including digitally re-mastered, color-enhanced versions of original episodes from Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Christmas with new contemporary music and main titles.

The release of Totally Sonic! coincides with the launch of the new Sonic the Hedgehog landmark video game from Sega, which debuted this month as the No. 1 selling video game on the Nintendo platform.

Now this is what I find the most interesting. This game is on the Gamecube? Remember when Sonic was directly antagonistic to Mario? Sega create this property and the games therein to stomp over Nintendo's flagship character. It was like a war between these two master game creators.

Now Sonic and Mario shall grace the same system. Is there a truce?