SCI FI DYNASTY

It seems that Sci Fi has put up a page on UFO's next feature Dragon Dynasty. This is the absolutely favorite of all the films I have worked on at UFO so far. Not just because it features James Hong and Peter Qwong of Big Trouble in Little China fame, nor because it has some of the best effects we have done, but because it also happens to be a really good, fun movie. I hope people enjoy it and flock to watch the premiere.

Working on live action films by day has taught me a lot. It has not only taught me not to be afraid to believe I can do some of the live action ideas I have, but it has taught me how to do a lot with very little, something I can apply to both live action and anime projects. This also happens to be the most fun job I have had since I started in the business years ago. I hope to make many more cool movies.

THE LAST VIDEO

The last thing I was doing on that old Sony Vaio was compressing a video. It was a test scene I did as the result of a spark I had Friday. The idea was to do the exact same test scene I had done previously, which is referenced in an earlier post titled Test of Assurance. This time, however, I would do it entirely on the Mirage Nomad.

As I was beginning to suspect, it didn't take days to do this test as some might have thought. In fact, it didn't take that much longer than the original test. Maybe twice as long or just over that. The thing is, if you factor in the realization that I didn't have to model the characters seen in this test, or better stated, that the previous test was created with models already done, then this test actually went much faster. Even creating characters from reusable elements wouldn't make up the difference, but I intentionally drew characters for which I would have had no elements to choose from.

What this means is that in order to do the first sequence, in truth, I would have had to model two new characters. Even with elements I could reuse like clothing, hairstyles or bodies, that would have been a day per character. This means it would not be until the third day before I could really see anything happen on screen. On the Nomad, however, I just get in there and start doing it. I see results immediately. There is a definite gratification to be found there.

I can't say that what I learned here seriously impacts m current show yet, but it is worthy of further testing. You can see the results of that first test by clicking here. More will surely follow.

THE RECOVERY CONTINUES

Both drives, pulled from the death of the Vaio that dieth, have been successfully place in tight, smooth "Ultra" external USB/Firewire cases and can be attached to either the Mac or the Motion Computing LE 1600 Tablet PC, aka Mirage Nomad, with all data intact. In addition to this, with the purchase of a new sleek, cool external dual layer DVD burner to add to the tablet, I was able to install Vue 5 Infinite, Google Sketchup, Vegas 6.0d and modo on the tablet. I have tested them all with great results. It is almost time.

There remains a few things to do on the Mac side of things. The Mac may be taking on all web, music and sound duties and maybe even editing. With my Vaio no more, my WACOM Intuos 2 tablet s now attached to the Mac so I no longer use a mouse, which has seemed foreign to me for a long time anyway. There needs to be some testing of programs like Garage Band, iWeb and even an interesting tool I never heard of called "Comic Life" which seems like it could become a great manga tool in combination with the Nomad's abilities. I am getting real close to feeling like I have a workable studio again.

Oh, and that new DVD burner happens to be a Sony, so we'll see how long the "Sony Timer" gives me on that one.

THE RECOVERY BEGINS

In response to the recent demise of my main system, I just had to share with you this comment received from Yasuro Kawata.

"It's been widely believed among us Japanese that all Sony products come with a built-in timer called "Sony timer", which goes off right after your warranty expires and destroys the product.

It's so widely believed that recently Sony *officially* denied the existence of such a timer."

Be that as it may, the recovery process begins now. I just went to Fry's and picked up an external DVD drive to hook up to the Motion Computing LE 1600 Tablet PC, also called the Mirage Nomad. My first order of business will be to get Vue 5 Infinite and Google Sketchup going on that machine. It is my hope that among the backup discs I have made, the most critical data I need will be found. If they are recent enough, I will have all the keys and licenses I need.

Data for the show is not an issue. I backed that up just days before the end. But a folder full of updates, drivers, license keys and other data may be months old. But that is only phase one. I will also get Vegas up and running on the Nomad. Anyway, I picked up a couple of external USB/Firewire cases and will attempt to put the drives from the now defunct Sony Vaio in them and pull what I need from them to use on the Nomad. If successful here, things will continue, but they won't be the same.

Because I only have an old parallel port hardware key for Lightwave, I won't be running it for the time being. I tested it in demo mode yesterday and it certainly runs and renders fast enough on the Nomad, but I am not going to be waiting around for however long it might take to get a USB key either. I am considering new avenues...

DEAD FOR GOOD?

Can it be? My main system, the Sony Vaio that has served me well for three years appears to be dead for good. Can this be?

I was in the middle of compressing a video that I really wanted to show you when SNAP, it just went off. I figured QuickTime had simply crashed royally and was restarting the system, but no, it was off off. I hit the power switch and nothing happened. Even now there is no response. Could it have been heat? Could it just be age? Could the power supply have given out? Being no expert, there is no way for me to know.

The video in question was not actually made on that machine, so I didn't lose my work. I also just backed up my show not more than a few days ago, so that's likely not a problem either. I expect the drives are fine anyway. I could still get that video up and online if I simply reassemble it here in iMovie on the Mac, where I am typing this.

The real question is, what does this mean for production? Do I do it on the Mac? It is allegedly a faster machine so that wouldn't be the issue. That would mean moving over Lightwave and getting a new USB hardware key. Moving over Mirage, Vue 5, Sketchup and other tools. It's not a small deal. Maybe I do it on the tablet PC. I have yet to try Vue 5 or Sketchup there. That could be interesting. I guess I will have to find out.

THOUGHTS ON SPEED

There is a factor which I did not consider as I continued to tailor my visual style to return to the speed and fun factor of Skeleton Man. While working I was doing some random doodles and started to notice something in that regard. Just like with my work on my main system, using the Mirage Nomad, while sticking with standard DV resolution and attempting a more simple, cartoon style, also brings about a considerable speed increase.

This brings me back to that issue of what is easier and faster and, of course, I have to pick my battles. For example, is it worth it to build a model of a character that appears in only one or two shots? Certain hairstyles, beards and clothing styles always seem to come across better in hand drawing or require time consuming cloth simulation or setup to do in 3D. After how many failed simulations would it have been quicker to draw it?


In the case of the motion library, there is no question. 3D wins hands down for speed. But then there are those other cases. For example, in a recent scene I did I had a hard time posing the character. The scene was a hold on a single frame, so it wasn't complex, but getting the pose right was important. The character was rather close up, so I couldn't select the bones I needed and do the pose from the camera view. I had to keep going out of the camera view and work on the pose and come back to see if it was right. Usually it wasn't. Even after getting it, the render still needed a bit of touch up in 2D to be called final. Had I pulled out the Nomad from the beginning, I could have just drawn the thing and been done with it. These are the considerations.

Time is also a major consideration. If I was working full time on my web series, I would certainly do some things differently than now where I can work a couple of hours each night after work. All these issues come into play and must be considered for the long haul since this is a series and not a one-off short where I can drive hard, finish it, and rest for months.

BACK IN THE SCENE

With my characters for this sequence built, I am back into creating scenes. I was able t knock down four tonight and I am pretty pleased. One of the things I notice as I return to a style more akin to Skeleton Man, as that I find myself more able to take what's in my head and get it the screen. I remember a day when this was a difficult feat.

Part of the reason behind this is new and better tools. In this case, the tools are Sketchup and Vue 5 Infinite. Sketchup allowed me to create the building objects for this environment in record time and on top of that, it was both easy and fun. These objects import directly into Vue 5 Infinite, textures and all and are ready to go. Because Vue 5 is geared toward environments and scenery, I don't have to spend a lot of time getting the look I want. With easy settings for adjusting the sky, fog color and depth and lighting, Vue 5 makes getting the backgrounds I need a joy rather a struggle.

I hope to cover this type of thing, and the process behind it in detail in my upcoming podcast series. I think it would be good to break down some of these scenes into their components and show how they were achieved.

ON MODEL

Some days I really just don't want to model anything, and some days it seems to be the exact opposite. Today I didn't get any new scenes done because I had to model two characters in order to proceed on the show.

Today was one of those days in which I did not dread making models. Using modo, because of its tolset can often be fun. I feel I have a certain freedom of creativity when I model with it. Normally I would draw something out on paper or in Mirage before jumping into the model stage. Lately, that is no longer necessary. The same is true for creating sets in Sketchup or putting together environments in Vue 5 Infinite. This is the freedom I could have only dreamed of back when I started this kind of work on Skeleton Man. Now the potential to do an actual series really has manifested itself.

The second character was done in Lightwave. In this case, it was easier with the pieces available. He is constructed entirely of previous assets which makes for both quick and rewardig work. I think this is a case where the true power of resuable assets really shows. I hope with this that I can get to doing some actual scenes tomorrow. Even if model work wasn't a dreaded experience today, it still feels as though as it slows down the overall creation process. I know this isn't true since the assets created will get a lot of use, but I would rather be animating.

ENOUGH TESTS!

I could easily get caught up in the endless cycle of tests, but there is time when one must move forward, unafraid of the consequence. I always say it is better to have something wrong to fix than nothing at all. The production has begun. It's not yet going as fast as some of my initial tests led me to believe, but it's not going slow either.


I am actually moving at a pace quite a bit faster than I did on Understanding Chaos actually. I attribute much of this to IK Booster and the Motion Library, not to mention six years of improvement in technology. My computer is just many times faster than that one. Vue 5 backgrounds are rendering in under a minute, some less than 30 seconds. Characters, when 3D, are rendering in about 7 seconds per frame. I think soon the time will come to start breaking this stuff down in a regular video blog or podcast showing how it is done. I have a lot planned.

MODIFIED

In getting back to that look of my original work such as Skeleton Man, I realized that in that day I did my cel shading a bit differently. Lately I had been using the "bump edges" feature in the cel shader itself and the line work came out quite differently. The basic result was that they were too thick for what I am doing now. I also, as those who saw my DVD may remember, did a number of color tests to get the right colors for the screen.


Tonight I have made some modifications to my cel shader settings to return to something more closely resembling what I did back then. I did a couple of test shots and put them up on the screen to see how it would play. I think now I am ready to get some actual scenes for this show rolling out. If the speed of my tests is any indication, the dream of a series may sooner be a reality than I originally thought.

MACIFIED!!!

In my ongoing efforts to overtake the web with new dreams and films, another new tool had to be added to the arsenal. This marks a day I never thought I would see come. It is the day I bought a Macintosh computer! Today I purchased a 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Mini with 1GB RAM and an 80GB SATA hard drive. As you can see in the image, it plugs nicely, via a digital DVI cable into my new screen for crystal clear, colorful image.

So what does this latest tool bring to the table? Well to start with, it's a dual layer DVD burner, which was on my list of purchases anyway. Now with iDVD I can do dual layer discs equal in every way to the majors and do them very easily. More importantly, though, it comes with the entire iLife suite of software which, while containing fun tools like Garage Band for music and iPhoto for picture sharing, my greatest interest is in iWeb for the next phase of my site. A phase which will include podcasting.


The ability to do things like podcasting, setting up a series of some type on iTunes and even video blogging becomes a near one-click operation with the tools I have here. PJ showed me earlier how easy it is to set up a video cast and how iWeb can automatically syndicate it, setup easy subscription options and even publish it to iTunes. That sealed my decision. Imagine regular video casts of how to make anime with off the shelf tools and hardware anyone can afford. Imagine the same for an actual running anime series.

One of the things I am noting lately in articles in Wired and Business Week, some of which I already posted about, is that many people with new ideas, new dreams and films, are finding a home on the web. No longer interested in getting that big "Hollywood deal", they see that they can reach their audience directly and make a good living doing so with tools available to anyone. They see this as the future. I see it too. That is why this Mac has joined my arsenal of tools, and I will cover, both in writing here and soon in video casts, how this all plays out to make dreams into reality in the coming months.

KINGDOM OF GAMES TO MOVIES

Last night I played a little Kingdom of Paradise for the PSP. It's a pretty amazing game and very cinematic. The music would make for a good score as well. All around, the game seems primed to be made into a big budget Chinese film in the vein of The Promise orHero. And why not? Games becoming movies is a big deal these days.

Dark Horizons has a considerable photo gallery from the upcoming game to movie translation of Dead or Alive. The movie teaser I saw a while back was a bit worrisome, but on the plus side, the movie is Directed by Cory Yuen (So Close, The Transporter) and features some pretty substantial martial arts talent like Colin Chou (The Matrix: Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions), Robin Shou (Mortal Kombat) and Kane Kosugi (Son of the legendary Sho Kosugi). It also features the beautiful Devon Aoki (Sin City) along with many other eye catching females to properly round out the cast of a Dead or Alive game. It looks like there's even going to be some volleyball.

Another popular fighter making its way to the big screen is Tekken, from the number one selling Namco arcade game. Set to star Takeshi Kaneshiro (The Returner, House of Flying Daggers) as Jin Kazama, the film looks to be a co production between American, Chinese and Japanese producers. No fight choreographer is yet listed on the imdb page for this film, but I imagine that with the right choice, we could be in for some major entertainment.

So what does all this game to movie business mean? That Hollywood is out of ideas? Well, we don't need to see games to movies or remakes of old TV shows to know that. It means that if a property is built up enough, and can find its audience, even in other media, the big boys take notice. It means that the audience response to the property is still king. So do you need millions or, in today's economy, tens of millions to live the dream? Absolutely not. You can start building that dream right now. All the tools are available to open to door on the net to millions being able to see your dream, and if millions come, then you can be sure that big licensing deals will follow.

NOW I AM READY

You might remember when the PSP media manager came out from Sony. On account of my PSP show this was of great interest to me, even though I used PSP Video 9 at the time. I thought that the day would come when I would have to get it. Well, no more.

Apparently these tools have all been added to Vegas and come with the latest update. To confirm this, I exported the test clip from the previous post to my PSP using the simple Export to PSP option added to the Vegas menu. You're given simple presets for widescreen aspect and bit rates and off it goes. You can export to any folder, but I had my PSP hooked up so it exported directly to it and created a thumbnail for it too!

Seeing the clip on the PSP was very inspiring and now I am ready to spring into action. I have a lot of great ideas for this show and can't wait to see many of them playing both on that small screen and on my other new screen.

TEST OF ASSURANCE

So, in keeping with the idea I mentioned in previous posts about getting back to where I had fun and created in freedom, I decided to do a little test. The idea was to return to working like I did in the days of Skeleton Man and see if the speed, life and fun came back with it. This clip was done in about three hours of work. Work even sounds like far too strong a term to apply to it. It was fun!

All the while I edited in Vegas, I was seeing the project come alive on the new screen. Getting back to the DV tools reminded me of why I chose that path in the first place. There is power there! Processing scenes takes no time at all, and the rendering of 3D elements is so quick I can watch it render. The advantages are too numerous to mention. It goes deeper than that though. The idea of getting back to that feeling of a real cartoon brought more speed enhancements that I previously considered. For example, no need for global illumination or radiosity in backgrounds. That changes working in Vue 5 immensely! I also switched to one of the new anti-aliasing methods in Lightwave for another speed gain. I will go into detail about this stuff later, but for now, you may see the clip by clicking here.

GETTING SERIOUS

Some of you may remember how my setup used to look in past times, but as I moved around and experimented with different methods of creating content, the overall setup became such that it was not conducive to serious editing. I began to long for something like the setup I had back in Vegas.

Back in the day in Vegas, I bought my first Sony Vaio computer, and with it my TRV 9 Mini DV camera which I still use to this day. With that setup, I created some of my first demo material, both my demo reel for my work, and later I used the same to create Skeleton Man.

In that day I felt that some serious power was suddenly in my hands. I could create in freedom and do so in a quality that rivaled what the majors were doing without millions of dollars or a major studio behind me. That was fun, so in an attempt to recapture the spirit and power of what I did in those days, I decided to do a bit of shopping earlier today and pick up a little edit monitor to sit next to my original system.


While I can also watch DVD's on it, like Escaflowne seen here, I now have something through which to route my camera again and see the output from Vegas as I edit my show. As for doing my current show using the DV format, as someone mentioned in a previous post, I did the test.

Mirage has some of the best image scalers I have seen since the old ADPro on the Amiga computer. With those scalers I tested footage from Chaos and J4A being scaled to HD for future viability. The result, which was not surprising to me, looked just fine. I had done this before though, having taken live action footage shot with the 3 CCD TRV 900 and scaling it to 1280x720P with surprisingly good results. So I will go where the speed, productivity and most fun resides. I will work with my DV setup, and now with a screen to view my output I have everything needed to bring back that energy seen my older work!

NOSTALGIC CLIPS

I went through some old stuff today and decided to go back to the beginning. I dug up one of the first, of this modern era anyway, anime clips I ever did. Those who have the Anime: Concept to Reality DVD have already seen it, but I felt like posting it anyway as it made me think.

The clip can be seen here.

It seems there was a simplicity and a life to what I was doing then that has somewhere been lost attempts to attain ever more realism. That clip feels like a cartoon, and it is alive like a cartoon. It seems some of my recent efforts feel more like live action shows that happen to be animated. Now granted, I have heard many people say the same thing about Jin-Roh, Ghost in the Shell or even The Prince of Egypt, all shows which I like, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what I want to make. That older work seems more fun.

I also found a clip from the only completed episode I ever saw of the Justice 4 All show for which I was hired to do animation. It's the only time I saw it with vices, music and sound. Even though that show is interlaced, prepared for NTSC broadcast (if I may get technical), I like the feel of that too.

The clip can be seen here.

Don't get me wrong, I am very happy with my recent achievements, but I was that old style fun and freedom back too. The tools should be liberating, not confining. Each new development, be it Vue 5 Infinite or an upgrade to Lightwave, should sweep obstacles out of the way and make doing all of this more fun. For my current show I'm going to go back. "How far back?" Way back, and I am going to bring back that fun and freedom.

BACK UP AND RUNNING

So the transition wasn't as horrendous as I may have thought. I am back up and running now with service on 1and1 servers. I can say to those who asked that there 150 GB storage and 1.5 Terabytes of traffic are, in fact, true. There is a great post on the dreamhost.com blog about how and why this is true. (Dreamhost was another contender I thought about)

To sum it up, web hosting services can offer the seemingly outrageous because they know very few users, less than 1% they say, will ever actually use it. True, if a user does, the cost to them for that user could be hundreds per month, but with thousands of users not even using one percent of all the space and bandwidth given them, it more than averages out in favor of the provider and so they can offer that for $8/month.

The other side of that is that those who do use it, (like someone streaming porn for example) are amazed they can do so without getting booted, and as result rave about the provider and tell their friends, thus bringing more business to the provider. So even the guy who costs them a bit more to host, is bringing a reward for that cost.

Now that I have this power, I can begin the next phase of my site, which will be very media focused. More on that as I have time and energy. I am quite under the weather at the moment.

GOING DOWN

After several years of good service, my current web hosting plan is no longer even remotely competitive with what's out there on the market in terms of price and features. I currently pay about $50 a month for a mere 300 MB of disc space and only 7 GB of traffic allowed. This would not go over well trying to do my PSP show. Many popular web services today are offering over 100 GB of storage and hundreds of GB of traffic for $20 a month, and so the time has come to make the switch. I expect because of this, the site will be down for a couple of days during the transfer. Be back soon...

THE QUESTION

So I mentioned finding a solution to my HD issues in the form of a codec known as Cineform Connect HD. So what does this codec offer?

Connect HD extends the performance and capabilities for editing HDV streams within Sony Vegas 5, Vegas 6, and other Windows applications. Connect HD includes CineForm Intermediate? technologies to allow substantially accelerated editing performance on multiple HD video streams, plus motion titles, color adjustments, dissolves, wipes, page peels, picture-in-picture and much more. Connect HD offers an online Digital Intermediate workflow, which means you never have to work with proxy files, and you never have to conform a project at completion - you're always working with full-resolution source material using CineForm's Visually Perfect CFHD codec format.

That's what it says on their site and what I confirmed via my own tests with the trial version. Basically it's like having a DVCPRO50 HD codec, the same format as used in the Panasonic HVX200 camera I often mention. Unfortunately, there lingers a question. The same question was asked by JasonN in comment to my post on the pipeline, and it is a very valid question:

Maybe I'm just asking an odd question, but why do you "need" to use HD resolution? I mean, if the project (I'm assuming it's the PSP show) is going to be for a handheld player format (like PSP or iPod) followed by a DVD release, why not just use a "DVD" resolution and then downscale the video to the respective "handheld" resolution?

Add to this that working in HD comes with its own train of difficulties. There are much larger files to deal with. More pixels on screen mean not only more detail needed in the art, but more processing power to, well, process the images in post. Even on my current system, when all is considered, it's almost like attempting to do Chaos on my 500 Mhz Vaio all over again. It is slow. If, however, I did DVD resolution as suggestion, imagine the advantages over that six year old computer. So the question is very worth considering.

CG PIONEER PASSES ON

According to Animation Magazine, Academy Award-winning computer animation pioneer Bill Kovacs died Tuesday from stroke complications in his home in California. The 56-year-old was best known as the co-founder of Wavefront Technologies, which was started in the early 1980s and eventually merged with Alias Research to become Alias/Wavefront which produced the popular Maya 3D animation software.

Working for Robert Abel and Associates, Kovacs and Roy Hall developed Wavefront's Advanced Visualizer computer graphics system, which was the forerunner to today'?s off-the-shelf computer graphics and animation packages. The achievement also got them recognized with a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in 1998.

That's what it says in the article. I personally remember that when I got into computer graphics using Amiga computers in the late 1980's, to be able to do what Wavefront could do was an absolute dream. Rippling water with actual reflections, what seemed, at the time, to be realistic digital cars and many more Wavefront demos made me wish I had the $100,000 or more it took to get set up with an SGI system and the software.

I went to a broadcast demo at a studio called Rhonda Graphics, where they showed their latest Wavefront technology based animations and Ultimatte compositing. This was back when Ultimatte was a huge hardware system costing tens of thousands and before it made a name for itself in shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation. Of course, now it's just a little AfterFX plugin. Back then, trying to draw anime on my Amiga, it was little hope that I would ever enter into that world of high end Wavefront graphics.

In just a couple of years, those very same technologies filtered into a little known program called Lightwave 3D, which was a part of the Newtek Video Toaster system on the Amiga. The revolution to put that power into the hands of the people had begun. Without the developments from guys like Kovacs, where would the dream be?

LAYING THE PIPELINE

There is a lot of discussion in the 3D world about pipeline these days. In fact, an article on CGSociety is announcing a prerelease of Eon's Vue 5 Xtreme plugins for Lightwave 3D or Cinema 4D, allowing seamless integration of Vue 5 and the packages. The release of modo 201 has many considering how to integrate it into their workflow. I use these tools, but I , of course, am doing what is essentially a 2D movie following 2D rules. There is still another pipeline aspect that I need to nail down, and that is working in HD.

I created this establishing shot for one of the sequences in my show. You can view a 3MB WMV file of the scene by clicking here. With tools like Vue 5 Infinite, Google Sketchup and Mirage, creating it was the easy part, but getting an HD workflow with which to finish a movie is another matter altogether.

Once I had all my elements in Mirage, my original expectation was that the latest version of Quicktime 7 would have a DVCPRO 50 HD codec that I could use for both export from Mirage, and editing in Vegas. Turns out there is no such thing. I have been doing some checking around and that thee might be a free codec from Matrox, but its a Video For Windows codec, and my goal is to use Quicktime. Things don't look too good.

This type of thing is, of course, transparent on the Mac. With Final Cut I would be set and have everything I need to do a full HD pipeline. I figure something similar must exist in Vegas. I was hoping the Connect HD tools would offer it, but need to read up on it more. Who would have thought that it would be such a hassle to find a good HD format?

IP PIRACY

Imagine you come up with a great idea. Visualizing it playing on the big screen in your head you get excited. So you write. For many years even you write. After much sweat, heartache and polish you have a gem of a screenplay that you know Hollywood will go for. You have your shot. Now Imagine you get it across the desk of big studio execs and there is genuine interest, but then the calls stop coming. One day, you walk into a theatre, and to your great shock, your idea plays on the screen before you, yet you never received so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a penny. Can something like this happen?

Apparently that is precisely what happened to Reed Martin, according to this MSNCB article pointed out to me by Mauricio Hunt of Planeta 3. He slaved over his screenplay while teaching film marketing at Columbia University and New York University. After ten years, he got a big break: a Hollywood talent manager read his script and loved it.

"I started to hear that a similar film was in production," he said. "And that I was potentially dead in the water." The similar film turned out to be "Broken Flowers," starring Bill Murray and directed by the pioneering independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. The plot and characters were nearly identical to Martin's script.


"When I saw the film," he said, "I was shocked to see that we have five girlfriends: one who has died, a former girlfriend who lives with bikers, another girlfriend who keeps a photograph of a Labrador retriever, the cat scene, the comedic nude scene of the film ... "

Martin is now trying to sue Focus Features and the director of the film, but he may be in for an uphill battle. Federal copyright law doesn't cover ideas -- only the specific expression of an idea. That means by simply changing a few things in someone's script, someone else can make it different enough to legally call it their own.

A California Appeals court may have a different idea about this though, based on a recent case involving the script for the Miramax movie Rounders. While stealing someone's script may not make for copyright infringement, the court chose to see it as a breach of contract, stating you don't have to actually have a contract, if someone reads your material with intent to buy, they are implying the contract. Martin's attorney seems to be using this angle to make a case.

A similar case built around the script for The Last Samurai has also been filed, and a slough of similar stolen screenplay suits may not be far behind. Hollywood and the MPAA have always been ready to bring out the Royal Navy when it comes to digital piracy of their films. Now it seems that they must admit they have also had their hands in Davey Jones' locker.

BANKING ON ANIME

According to VARIETY, Development Bank of Japan and New Bank Tokyo are underwriting a new scheme for animation content development, backed by the Tokyo city government. Development Bank of Japan intends to supply $460,000 and New Bank Tokyo $640,000 for the initiative.

In July of last year, the Tokyo city government announced an official policy of supporting the local animation industry through financial and other measures.

Nearly 80% of all Japanese animation companies, including majors Toei Animation, famous for Dragonball and One Piece, and the academy award winning Studio Ghibli, are headquartered in Tokyo, and the industry has become an important revenue generator for the city.

To implement this policy, the government joined with Tokyo-based production house Think to launch Anime Innovation Tokyo, AIT, with the government investing $920,000 in startup funds. Total capital has since increased to $2.7 million.

AIT is raising investment funds from corporations and financial institutions with an interest in animation content, including DBJ and NBT. At the same time, it is soliciting proposals for original animated projects from both young animators and small to medium-sized production houses. After selecting the most promising of the projects, AIT will launch limited partnerships to make 30-minute pilots, using mainly its own funds, together with contributions from the projects' creators.

AIT is accepting project proposals until June 30. It will produce 15-20 pilots over the next four years for presentation to potential backers both in Japan and abroad. Production budgets will average $156,000 for each pilot episode. The limited partnerships will distribute revenues from sales of rights and DVDs to their backers.

"We will work closely with the creators on each project -- we're very hands-on," Think CEO Yuji Mori said at a symposium sponsored by the Tokyo International Anime Fair. The basic idea, he added, is to make pilots "with the potential to become something far bigger," be it a TV series or feature film.

Now how's that for supporting the little guy?! Here in America the indie is left out in the cold and doors are closing by the minute. I was just talking with someone in the industry yesterday about how the sheer marketing costs of a project presents a heavy barrier to major studios picking up a small project in which they do not have a major financial stake (meaning they take it from you completely), making it more difficult for the indie, even if their project is great, to get in the door. This initiative from AIT is exactly what the American animation worlds needs.