Monday, November 27, 2006
movie wii soup wii wii magic magic anime
Movie
I have to blog about Happy Feet and Casino Royale, but they're in my backlog now. Actually I've already written the entries, I just have to post them. But I'd rather post about more recent stuff, than movie reviews. But, like Ching, I'd recommend Happy Feet. Casino Royale was pretty good too.
Wii
I heard from Ray that BestBuy will have 20 in stock Friday morning, at all Bestbuy locations, and then I also heard there would be 110 online, at 10:00 am. I had to work, so I couldn't line up, so I asked for Duy's and Isaque's help. And then I tried to get one online.
Fast forward to 9:59 am on Friday. I add the wii to the cart, and then I proceed to checkout. I ended up being a bit slow, because I had to input the 'security code' for my credit card because they didn't ask for it before, and I had to login again. So come 10:04, I hit "submit", and... they told me the 'wii in my basket is sold out'. So that failed.
10:05, Alan comes online, and I ask him, "Where's Duy?" And Alan says "He's sleeping". So that also failed. Alan then proceeds to tell me that he and them would probably try to look around for one when they leave, so around 2:00pm or something. Umm... yeah. good luck with that one. They looked around 5 places, from zellers to wal-mart and etc, but to no avail.
Soup
Friday afternoon, Isaque tells me of this animation show (Animation Soup) happening that night. So I get home, and then Hawk, Duy, Jia, Issan (Hawk's bro, let's call him Eagle), and I drive down to Toronto to go to Animation Soup.
Animation Soup is hosted by a few Japanese people, and they were really Japanese. I think they flew down here for this - they knew a bit of english but they spoke really Japanese-like. Anyway, the 2 hour show featured a bunch of short, 3-10 minute films using a variety of mediums, from pencil, to drawings, to cut-out, to cg, to even an animation made of light.
So we came a bit late, got in, paid $12, and got seats spread around the place, so we didn't sit beside each other. It was a small room, with maybe 50-60 seats.. now that I think about it, i sat in the same position I did for 2:37 - frontmost, rightmost. It actually was a good spot this time though. Jia sat Midright, Duy and Hawk sat Midleft, and Eagle sat Frontmid.
During halftime (um, intermission) Isaque spoke some Japanese to some of the artists and singers and got some autographs, and a bunch of us ate a big Mr.Big bar (because we didn't eat before we left). Anyway, on to the cartoons.
The cartoons/animations were pretty good, or I should say, they were pretty interesting. (I'm going to talk about the cartoons now, and try to explain them - but of course it you were there then it's much easier to understand, but I'll try anyway. I'll ask Hawk later if he can find them on the web, but it might be hard..)
I'm just going to discuss my favourites, or the most unique, and my least favourite.
My top two are:
Obscure Village
and Kakari, I think it was called.
Obscure Village was an animation made by 3 10-13 year old boys, I think using a stop-motion camera. They would draw on a piece of paper (so it's stop motion, so they would draw a bit, get their hands out of camera's way, and take a frame, and etc) - so they would draw something, and then start cutting it and then it would be like a popup book, and it would pop up. Some things they would cut out and move around.
I love popup books. So anyway, I thought this was very nicely done, and it's even cooler that 3 young boys thought of it. And it's very unique, and it wins spot #1 in my list.
Toward the end of the festival, they showed us Kakari, a pencil animation. I guess Pencil isn't very unique, so this one wins because of... story. It'd be about 20x better if you saw the animation, rather than me talking about it. But it has us all (Hawk, Duy, etc) talking. It was so... weird and awesome and stuff. We can invent a catchphrase or something and some actions we can do ourselves...
My two Honourable Mentions:
Light animation - it's an animation with light. So they would film a place with long exposure, so that you can use a flashlight to draw. And they did that, and it ended up being pretty unique. They kept it at a steady 30 or 60 fps so things looked very chaotic, but they still managed to do some nice effects that didn't look all chaotic. I was impressed by the bouncing ball. Anyway, it was pretty unique so it belongs in my honourable mentions (or 4th place).
My other honourable mention is something I was thinking of doing myself - I'd like to call it "efficient animation", and now that I've seen what it looks like, I think I can try it too. It's the animation about the girl and her horse, where every scene, each character would have 2 frames of animation, the background would have 4 frames of animation, and the music is 2 seconds long and repeated.
Using very little frames of animation to tell a story is pretty efficient I would say. It was a bit... annoying, because the music kept repeating and it's loud and weird, but that adds to it I think. So I liked this one, so I give it 3rd place.
The ball (4 corners) thing was kinda clever, although I didn't think it was that unique. OH Shelley was weird. Not as weird as Kakari though, hehe.
Worst of Show is quite an easy choice, and most of us would agree. It's called Sleep and Rain. There's this guy with a fever and it's raining outside. Okay, the first minute was okay. The boy's mom is in the room and administrating medicine for the boy, and then she leaves. He's in bed, sleeping, and turning and turning. It was kinda interesting, because each frame was almost the same but there were subtle differences between each... sometimes the bed would have 4 legs, sometimes 3, sometimes none, and the boy was turning in his bed so sometimes you see his eyes, or the back of his head, etc...
But then it didn't stop when the mom left the room. it didn't even stop a minute after. It went on for maybe 6 minutes. The guy was in his bed, turning. And sometimes it would show the window and it would be raining outside. OMG. The execution of the animation was pretty bad. It started off good, and just ended up bad. I started falling asleep watching that animation. I don't think I missed anything though.
Anyway, this entry's getting a bit long, so I'll skip a Wii and Magic Magic, and briefly mention one Wii and Anime.
Wii
Isaque tells me that Zellers is getting 8 Wii consoles Saturday morning, so our plan was to line up at 6:00 am. So we did. We get there, and the line is quite long already, far more than 8. But instead of quitting right away, we line up. We find out there are 16 wii's and 3 PS3's, and that at 8:00 they will come out and give out tickets.
Later we find out there would only be 14 Wii's, but we only had to wait about an hour and a half to find out, rather than 3 hours, so I think it was worth staying. In the end, they had 15 wii's... and we were 17th in line. So we didn't get one. (I mean, if they had 17 wii's, we would've gotten one - not that nobody in the first 15 wanted a ps3...).
The 16th guy came around 6:00 also, but the 15th came around 5:00. So that failed. Went to McD's, had breakfast. Dropped Jia off, went to Loblaws cuz Isaque had to, and I checked out Electronics. Turns out they get Wii's too, but they don't know when they're getting them, or even what time. But I wouldn't mind camping INSIDE Loblaws, haha.
So, obtaining Wii this weekend was a failage too. Maybe next weekend? Maybe next time we do a 2:00 AM thing? With chairs and blankets? Hehe, we'll see.
The next Wii was about Wii playing at Ambrose's, and then we had two magic events, one at Ambrose's and one on Sunday, which I might blog about in an e-mail or in the other blog. Oh yeah, something quite chaotic happened just as we were about to go to Ambrose's... but still, too long of an entry, so I'll blog about it later. And lastly:
Anime
My friend Amy is going to DTAC this Sunday, and apparently it's free. If it wasn't free, she wouldn't go, hehe. But it's free! I'm not sure what DTAC stands for, but let's pretend it's Downtown Toronto Anime Convention. She asked me if I wanted to go, so I thought about it. I don't know Amy's friends at all, so it would be awkward. So I asked Hawk, and now Hawk is thinking about it. So if Hawk goes, I'll go. And if we go, who else wants to join us? It's a free anime con. Haven't been to an anime con for a while.
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Movie I have to blog about Happy Feet and Casino Royale, but they're in my backlog now. Actually I've already written the entries, I just have to post them. But I'd rather post about more recent stuff, than movie reviews. But, like Ching, I'd recommend Happy Feet. Casino Royale was pretty good too. Wii I heard from Ray that BestBuy will have 20 in stock Friday morning, at all Bestbuy locations, and then I also heard there would be 110 online, at 10:00 am. I had to work, so I couldn't line up, so I asked for Duy's and Isaque's help. And then I tried to get one online. Fast forward to 9:59 am on Friday. I add the wii to the cart, and then I proceed to checkout. I ended up being a bit slow, because I had to input the 'security code' for my credit card because they didn't ask for it before, and I had to login again. So come 10:04, I hit "submit", and... they told me the 'wii in my basket is sold out'. So that failed. 10:05, Alan comes online, and I ask him, "Where's Duy?" And Alan says "He's sleeping". So that also failed. Alan then proceeds to tell me that he and them would probably try to look around for one when they leave, so around 2:00pm or something. Umm... yeah. good luck with that one. They looked around 5 places, from zellers to wal-mart and etc, but to no avail. Soup Friday afternoon, Isaque tells me of this animation show (Animation Soup) happening that night. So I get home, and then Hawk, Duy, Jia, Issan (Hawk's bro, let's call him Eagle), and I drive down to Toronto to go to Animation Soup. Animation Soup is hosted by a few Japanese people, and they were really Japanese. I think they flew down here for this - they knew a bit of english but they spoke really Japanese-like. Anyway, the 2 hour show featured a bunch of short, 3-10 minute films using a variety of mediums, from pencil, to drawings, to cut-out, to cg, to even an animation made of light. So we came a bit late, got in, paid $12, and got seats spread around the place, so we didn't sit beside each other. It was a small room, with maybe 50-60 seats.. now that I think about it, i sat in the same position I did for 2:37 - frontmost, rightmost. It actually was a good spot this time though. Jia sat Midright, Duy and Hawk sat Midleft, and Eagle sat Frontmid. During halftime (um, intermission) Isaque spoke some Japanese to some of the artists and singers and got some autographs, and a bunch of us ate a big Mr.Big bar (because we didn't eat before we left). Anyway, on to the cartoons. The cartoons/animations were pretty good, or I should say, they were pretty interesting. (I'm going to talk about the cartoons now, and try to explain them - but of course it you were there then it's much easier to understand, but I'll try anyway. I'll ask Hawk later if he can find them on the web, but it might be hard..) I'm just going to discuss my favourites, or the most unique, and my least favourite. My top two are: Obscure Village and Kakari, I think it was called. Obscure Village was an animation made by 3 10-13 year old boys, I think using a stop-motion camera. They would draw on a piece of paper (so it's stop motion, so they would draw a bit, get their hands out of camera's way, and take a frame, and etc) - so they would draw something, and then start cutting it and then it would be like a popup book, and it would pop up. Some things they would cut out and move around. I love popup books. So anyway, I thought this was very nicely done, and it's even cooler that 3 young boys thought of it. And it's very unique, and it wins spot #1 in my list. Toward the end of the festival, they showed us Kakari, a pencil animation. I guess Pencil isn't very unique, so this one wins because of... story. It'd be about 20x better if you saw the animation, rather than me talking about it. But it has us all (Hawk, Duy, etc) talking. It was so... weird and awesome and stuff. We can invent a catchphrase or something and some actions we can do ourselves... My two Honourable Mentions: Light animation - it's an animation with light. So they would film a place with long exposure, so that you can use a flashlight to draw. And they did that, and it ended up being pretty unique. They kept it at a steady 30 or 60 fps so things looked very chaotic, but they still managed to do some nice effects that didn't look all chaotic. I was impressed by the bouncing ball. Anyway, it was pretty unique so it belongs in my honourable mentions (or 4th place). My other honourable mention is something I was thinking of doing myself - I'd like to call it "efficient animation", and now that I've seen what it looks like, I think I can try it too. It's the animation about the girl and her horse, where every scene, each character would have 2 frames of animation, the background would have 4 frames of animation, and the music is 2 seconds long and repeated. Using very little frames of animation to tell a story is pretty efficient I would say. It was a bit... annoying, because the music kept repeating and it's loud and weird, but that adds to it I think. So I liked this one, so I give it 3rd place. The ball (4 corners) thing was kinda clever, although I didn't think it was that unique. OH Shelley was weird. Not as weird as Kakari though, hehe. Worst of Show is quite an easy choice, and most of us would agree. It's called Sleep and Rain. There's this guy with a fever and it's raining outside. Okay, the first minute was okay. The boy's mom is in the room and administrating medicine for the boy, and then she leaves. He's in bed, sleeping, and turning and turning. It was kinda interesting, because each frame was almost the same but there were subtle differences between each... sometimes the bed would have 4 legs, sometimes 3, sometimes none, and the boy was turning in his bed so sometimes you see his eyes, or the back of his head, etc... But then it didn't stop when the mom left the room. it didn't even stop a minute after. It went on for maybe 6 minutes. The guy was in his bed, turning. And sometimes it would show the window and it would be raining outside. OMG. The execution of the animation was pretty bad. It started off good, and just ended up bad. I started falling asleep watching that animation. I don't think I missed anything though. Anyway, this entry's getting a bit long, so I'll skip a Wii and Magic Magic, and briefly mention one Wii and Anime. Wii Isaque tells me that Zellers is getting 8 Wii consoles Saturday morning, so our plan was to line up at 6:00 am. So we did. We get there, and the line is quite long already, far more than 8. But instead of quitting right away, we line up. We find out there are 16 wii's and 3 PS3's, and that at 8:00 they will come out and give out tickets. Later we find out there would only be 14 Wii's, but we only had to wait about an hour and a half to find out, rather than 3 hours, so I think it was worth staying. In the end, they had 15 wii's... and we were 17th in line. So we didn't get one. (I mean, if they had 17 wii's, we would've gotten one - not that nobody in the first 15 wanted a ps3...). The 16th guy came around 6:00 also, but the 15th came around 5:00. So that failed. Went to McD's, had breakfast. Dropped Jia off, went to Loblaws cuz Isaque had to, and I checked out Electronics. Turns out they get Wii's too, but they don't know when they're getting them, or even what time. But I wouldn't mind camping INSIDE Loblaws, haha. So, obtaining Wii this weekend was a failage too. Maybe next weekend? Maybe next time we do a 2:00 AM thing? With chairs and blankets? Hehe, we'll see. The next Wii was about Wii playing at Ambrose's, and then we had two magic events, one at Ambrose's and one on Sunday, which I might blog about in an e-mail or in the other blog. Oh yeah, something quite chaotic happened just as we were about to go to Ambrose's... but still, too long of an entry, so I'll blog about it later. And lastly: Anime My friend Amy is going to DTAC this Sunday, and apparently it's free. If it wasn't free, she wouldn't go, hehe. But it's free! I'm not sure what DTAC stands for, but let's pretend it's Downtown Toronto Anime Convention. She asked me if I wanted to go, so I thought about it. I don't know Amy's friends at all, so it would be awkward. So I asked Hawk, and now Hawk is thinking about it. So if Hawk goes, I'll go. And if we go, who else wants to join us? It's a free anime con. Haven't been to an anime con for a while. |