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Behind the scenes of the film's biggest beasts.

The post Tips & Tricks for Creating Fantastic Beasts From the Artists of ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Virtual animation studio platform Artella reveals details about its recent shot, 'Duel,' debuting exclusively on Cartoon Brew.

The post 46 Artists From 16 Countries Made ‘Duel’ Using Artella’s Online Platform [Exclusive] appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The only thing worse than being the last man on Earth is being the second-to-last man on Earth.

The post ‘After the End’ by Sam Southward — Exclusive Premiere appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Autodesk, the developer of Maya computer graphics software, offered new details yesterday about its transition to a subscription-only software model.

All is not what it seems in this Maya walk cycle tutorial by Nathan Hibberd.

In a nice bit of Halloween-themed marketing savvy, Sony has released a free character rig of a zombie bellhop from "Hotel Transylvania."

Barcelona-based Josep Bernaus gets a lot of mileage out of basic cube forms in his short The Lindy Cubes. The expressive movement was created in Maya with deformers. The tune is Slim Gaillard’s “Communication.”

In what may be a first for a major award-winning animated short, filmmaker David OReilly has released all of the character rigs from his short The External World. OReilly follows in the footsteps of filmmakers like Blender Open Projects and Nina Paley who have also released animation production assets for the educational benefit of the community. Says OReilly:

You can use and modify them in any way you like as long as it’s for a non-commercial purpose. Showreels, short films, indie games, all that stuff is cool – just give credit. If it’s web based – include a link to my site. I’m releasing these without a how-to (or support of any kind) but it should be very straight forward. They are extremely low-weight and easy to animate with, all are compatible with versions of Maya after 2010.

It’s almost a guarantee that when you see a student film from the French animation school Supinfocom, it’s going to look beautiful. But few of the school’s films push narrative boundaries or challenge the viewer like J’aurai ta peau (I’ll Have Your Hide). The provocative CG short is based on interviews with people talking about skin and their relationship with their bodies.

Nothing could be more familiar to the average person than one’s own skin, but the extreme close-ups in J’aurai ta peau transform human skin into an exotic, foreign landscape. The atypical marriage of photoreal rendering and abstraction is startling, beautiful and discomforting all at once. Suddenly, we see the commonplace in a new light, and perhaps feel an urge to examine our own skin more closely.

The daring quartet responsible for the short is comprised of Victoria Jardine, Vivien Ebran, Alexis Koch and Nicolas Trotignon. Credit also belongs to Benoit Duvette for sound design that adds a lot. Toolset was Maya, Photoshop, Nuke and Avid.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Alexis Koch, Maya, Nicolas Trotignon, Supinfocom, Victoria Jardine, Vivien Ebran

Not long ago we had the pleasure of featuring poet, Maya Ganesan here and she was also gracious enough to provide a copy of her debut collection, Apologies to An Apple for our Summer Madness Giveaway. Tonight, I'm pleased to share an interview with this impressive artist.

Susan:
I read that your parents hired a writing coach for you when you decided you were serious about your poetry. Tell me about your coach and what you’ve learned from her.

Maya: Her name is Katherine Grace Bond, and without her I couldn't have even come close to publishing Apologies to an Apple. She introduced me to so many new poets I'd never heard of before, helped me through the process of getting published and requesting blurbs, and showed me how to revise and fine-tune my work. I'm so grateful for her help and glad that she was there to lead the way into a place I'd never been.


What came first: the overall theme of the collection you wanted to put together or selecting your best work?

Selecting my best work came first, definitely. The whole concept of a theme half-formed while I was picking and choosing what I thought were my best poems--I think I started rejecting more serious pieces because I wanted more of a lighter, whimsical feel to the collection. I actually reworked one of the pieces, which was about death, to make the poem less depressing.

Once we'd decided that we wanted three separate sections, I split the selected poems into the three smaller themes I'd seen emerge. One group of poems had more of a nature theme to it, another group involved some interaction between nature and people, and the third group was focused on people.

What were your expectations for Apologies, your vision? Did you achieve what you set out to accomplish?

I can't say that I achieved my expectations because I honestly didn't know what to expect. I'm just extremely thankful for all the support. So many reviews, recommendations, mentions, interviews...thank you to everyone who's been encouraging and spreading the word about Apologies to an Apple. It really means a lot to me, and the fact that I've only received positive reviews so far and that everyone who's read it has loved it is just so incredible. I don't know what kind of response I was hoping to receive, but I'm thrilled with the response I'm getting. It's been amazing.

What was the most rewarding part of putting your collection together? What was the most challenging aspect of putting your manuscript together?

The most rewarding part of putting

I've been wanting to post on Monday Artday for a while now. Discovered today that I could put up my artwork as well. Here's a Pen & Ink that i made recently that i'm sort of happy with. Hope to be back soon with more.

by Chon A. Noriega

In late November, I had a chance to see the first advance screening of the completed version for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto , which will be released this month. The film is being promoted as the first Hollywood film in an indigenous language, set in the pre-Colombian era, and shot on location using local talent both in front of and behind the camera. Likewise, the marketing of the film reflects a strategic alliance between Latino business and Latinos in the entertainment industry. We would appear to have the makings of a "perfect storm" with the convergence of a Hollywood "A" list actor-director's production with Latino demographics, income generation (for Latino business), employment opportunity (for Latino actors and behind-the-camera positions), and media representation (of the Latino population). So, how do we reconcile Gibson's apparent altruism toward Latinos with his recent drunken tirade against women and Jews? Is the latter just an aberration that now undermines the former? Or is there a larger logic, or dare we say Conspiracy Theory (to reference a Gibson film), at work? I turned to Apocalypto for an answer.

The film appears to be set 500 years before the Conquest, and yet it ends with a shot of ships setting anchor. It depicts the Mayans, and yet shows them engaging in ritual sacrifice—which was the Aztecs. So in terms of historical detail, the film—co-authored by Gibson—has enough faults to negate it as an accurate depiction of the Mayans. Instead, it must be seen as doing something else: offering an allegory about the evil of any societal organization beyond the familial and (small) tribal. It is the big city—with its slave trade, free markets, government, and organized religion—that results in the downfall of the Mayan civilization (and the small tribes it enslaves). When the Spaniards arrive, it is clear that things will only get worse. Whatever the film may say about Mayans, or Latinos, it clearly makes a general statement against modernity. In other words, the film argues against the very type of higher-level organization that Latino groups are undertaking to market the film! Therein lies the paradox of Gibson's appeal: his message has been that of the loner who suffers great pain, yet triumphs, even in death and even as the entire world is going to Hell. But that appeal depends upon and is a commodity within a global news and entertainment industry—which is to say, modernity.

In the end, Apocalypto is the Chantico of Hollywood cinema. You may remember Chantico as that short-lived Aztec chocolate drink from Starbucks, the one whose marketing I found problematic on several fronts, and yet whose taste was sublime…. Well, Gibson knows and excels at the most fundamental thing about cinema, the moving image, such that Apocalypto could easily have been a silent film, and not just a subtitled one. Beautifully shot and edited, the film visually conveys physical movement and broad characters and emotions within a simple chase narrative. The performances, like Gibson's own roles, are more pantomime than "realistic" or dialogue-driven. I could not help but be impressed that, as I picked apart the holes in the story and its message, the film-as-film captivated me. Alas, as with Chantico, consumers may want more….

Chon Noriega, Director and Professor

Reprinted by permission from UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
December, 2006 Newsletter

CHON A. NORIEGA is Professor in the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. He is author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minnesota, 2000) and editor of nine books dealing with Latino media, performance and visual art. Since 1996, he has been editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the flagship journal for the field since its founding in 1970. In July 2002, he became Director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

La Bloga Blogmeister note: La Bloguera and Los Blogueros appreciate reader Dr. Concepción Valadez' efforts to bring Chon's critique to our pages. La mandamos un abrazisimo for her thoughtfulness.

La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. When you have a thought, an inkling, or a full-fledged piece you'd like to share, send it along.

(continued from Jan. 4th's post)
On our way to a coastal village near the port of Progreso we pass lagunas of flamingos; signs read "Vívoras Venenosas", but our host and guide Tony assures us we're safe if we don't go looking for the slithery things. He introduces us to local fishermen whose primary source of income, the pulpo-catching season, has just ended. Ordinarily, they can subsist off the ocean, but don't prosper off-season.

Tony is assisting 15 families with an ecotourism project, to supplement their income without degrading the ecosystem. The men ferry us out in lanchas to remote beaches, where they tell us los cocodrilos won't bother us if we don't bother them. In a kayak my wife and I make our way past sandbars up to handmade fences that protect a bird refuge, from us. Most have migrated, but the pristineness of the place will one day make it a vacation destination.

The fishermen tell us the names of the fish, birds, other wildlife, in English, even. Despite their commercial means of income, their world is filled with cocodrilos y pulpos, the natural. I envy them, though I try to keep from noble-savaging their existence. When I see the new four-wheel black, American truck one of them purchased with his season's profits, any thought of noble savage disappears. Our influence of keeping up with the Joneses will ruin the place--which is why I won't reveal its location.

To head back to the village, I decide to change lanchas, though I don't know why. As the other boat begins disappearing on the horizon, I'm sure I took the wrong one. Until the dolphins show up. Unscheduled, unannounced and randomly leaping for only seconds. So, Ek Chuah, the Maya god of travelers, must have whispered in my ear. These descendants of ancient dolphins who once shadowed Maya pescadores stay with us long enough to determine our intentions harmless, I assume. The seawater stings our eyes, the wind threatens to take our hats, the small lancha teeters threateningly as it bounces hard over larger incoming waves, but however much I cringe at capsizing in dark waters, at least los delfines blessed our stopover in this bit of undeveloped world.

Profe's fishermen connection gets a restaurant opened just for us, no matter it's off-season. We're served pescado frito caught that morning, snails I've never eaten, and more ceviche than we can gorge, chased with rounds of Mexican beer. I could stay here forever.

The restaurant owners' young kids, Evelyn and Jasmine, run around with a large bundle wrapped in a blanket. I tease them until they unveil a huge, blonde, Anglo-skinned doll. Even unto the toys of poor, Yucateco children...

We return to Progreso for a service learning project, volunteering in the Comedor Comunitaria, a "soup kitchen" serving a meal a day to the needy, sometimes over a 100; today it's spaghetti and meat sauce. We have a great time preparing, cooking, and packaging. While we wait for the clientele, I ask the older women volunteers if I can photograph them, assuring them I have a setting that'll take twenty years off them. One of my targets responds I need a setting that takes 20 pounds, or more, off. I had them laughing before, but now we're all howling. This is not a vacation, it's life.

Another student and I get the task of giving out tickets at the door. It's embarrassing handing them to people who say gracias, as if I'd paid for the food. I replace de nada with éntrale, por favor, which sounds better, feels right.

A frisky, diminutive old woman in a homemade camouflage-material dress, bejeweled and made-up like she's headed to Sunday mass, is one of the last to leave. She puts us both in stitchs as she proceeds to hit on me like she's 50 years younger and I'm a lot less married, so I pretend the female student with me is my wife. This doesn't phase the viejita, who retorts she's only looking to borrow, not keep, me. Our profe shows up, his twice-her-size distracting her long enough to spare me the thrill of a Maya anciana romance. In certain ways, this can be dangerous country.

We spend an afternoon with residents of a Casa de Ancianos, a Church-run retirement home. Thankfully, we don't play bingo, but we do bring Santa Claus, Profe, all done up in sweaty costume, even though los Reyes Magos don't bring gifts until Jan. 6. Back home he might have been called Scrooge for handing out candies and bars of soap, but here, Santa's warmly received and applauded.

I chat with Ramos, a not-yet-ancient resident, who takes me out back, away from the crowd. He still does carpentry, earning money for personal items, and proudly shows me hurricane shutters he constructed. He's in charge of the housedog, and we trade stories about pets. When I gotta pee, he leads me to a nearby unit where a guy's snoozing in a hammock. On our return we run into one of the nuns who run the home. She gives me a forced smile. I think both guys are in trouble; one for not attending the activities, Ramos for letting me use a non-visitor bathroom. The nun needs him for some task, and I don't see him again.

I stay with the others, not wanting to get anyone else in trouble. A woman volunteer and her daughter tell me they take English classes to improve their chances of employment. We have fun practicing counting to 20, and they're not embarrassed by how badly they do, maybe because they must learn it to survive. The tentacles of tourism reach almost everyone.

Later I realize how the ancianos' response to bars of soap connects to my American privilege. The passage of NAFTA was calamity for them, forcing down Mexican fishing, agricultural and other prices, impoverishing many. Poverty rose considerably with the '95 devaluation of the peso; wages decreased 20 percent. This led to the Zapatista uprising and dramatically increased illegal immigration to the U.S.

I will hear about NAFTA's "benefits" many times. From a young mother whose son asked why she had to work the Sun. before Xmas; she explained because she could once buy herself 7 dresses a year, but this year, only 1. He understands because NAFTA took the home they been paying on for 8 years.

Or from university business professors who, despite their individual, entrepreneurial spirit and success, acknowledge NAFTA was detrimental to Mexico's lower classes.

Or from an older portly woman who survives from the tourism. One of her sons, an electrician, moved to California and rarely calls. She doesn't know his address, but hopes he's doing well. I ask her her impression of Americans' behavior: she hates how they never want to pay regular prices and always try to get her to lower her prices. If bartering is Mexican "tradition," maybe it's because of America's "traditional" economic leverage. After this, I don't bargain with any vendor; I don't want the association.

And as our chauffeur drives us down Avenida Montejo, he explains we're passing the homes of los ricos. I ask him what these houses cost, and he quotes a price equal to my middle-class American home. That fact emphasizes how interrelated my relative "wealth" is to Mexico's absolute poverty, exacerbated by NAFTA's continuation.

We go on until our driver takes a road meant only for four-wheels, to get us to a remote cenote. It is not open like those at the ruins, and we climb a ladder made of limbs and rope into the grotto where we briefly disturb the bats. The water's 150 feet deep, and if you dive for bottom you go on the last cruise of your life into an underground river that ends at Xibalbá. A limb and rope crucifix up top could be of such a swimmer. I didn't bring a suit, so I content myself with relishing a site used by the ancient Maya, and snapping photos. There's so many bared, pale gringo swimmers, I have to use the backlight feature.

Both at Dzilbilchaltún and Uxmal, we arrive too late for the winter solstice and the sun breaking through doors or windows. From the pyramid we are allowed to climb in Uxmal, we can see other monuments of Maya civilization, tourists below and the monte. They don't call it a selva, a jungle; those are further to the southwest, down into the Peten where the Maya began.

From up here, though, I get a sense of what these pyramids imparted to a people who lived thousands of years amid a growth of deep foliage. Yes, from the ground they could see the stars or stand on a beach where their world opened up, but only on these structures could they gaze at all the stars and overlook the canopy. The Rocky Mts. give this feeling, and going up a skyscraper mimics that. But I stand atop a pyramid closer to the first of 13 levels of the Maya heaven Caan. In repeated bursts I know I am feeling some of the same awesome sensations, the exhilaration the pyramid builders felt upon completing their work. If I sacrificed Mel Gibson for the distortion in his film, I'd let him stand quietly here, to learn one last thing.

Later we have drinks by the Xcanatun Hacienda pool, no lights on. The sky is different here, enough to disorient me, 17 degrees above the equator. Bats swoop low over the water. It's a quiet time, the students enjoying a chat. Everyone seems mellow. Our time together is almost ended.

We return to Uxmal for the light and sound show, a telling of a creation myth and another tale. It's our last night, and we load the cooler with beer to sneak in. I'm not surprised, since we've been immersed in ourselves as well as Spanish for a week; the hectic schedule wore on everyone. But I do wonder if these Americans of European heritage would drink beer at Stonehenge.

One place I never get to is the Experimentos Científicos being done of the Chicxulub Crater, the impact site of the K/T meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It's on a drilling rig miles out in the Gulf. Profe suggests I hire a boat and go out there. What would they do if I just showed up uninvited?

But I'm old now, it's not Dec. 1974, and it's not easy doing daring deeds. (I later learn of a Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project on the Yaxcopoil Hacienda, on the road to Uxmal.) I only wanted to sit at the site, relish its import, and take in the remnant ambience of a 10km.-wide, falling star smashing into the Earth; there must still be some. Then too, my second graders would have loved some impact breccias or melt spherules from the K/T boundary sediments. Next time.

Still, I return with special memories, but not of museums, mercados, merchandise, restaurants or architecture.
Because of the class curriculum, our Profe's adeptness in Mexican ways, the very cordial Maya people, a bit of luck--and by shedding some of my own verbüenza--I got to do more than visit the home of the Maya people.

© Rudy Ch. Garcia 2007

TOMORROW, Saturday, we post a review written by Chon Noriega about Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which one of his UCLA colleagues thought Bloga readers should see. Check it out.

continued from Dec. 28th's post

Our hotel's a few blocks from Mérida's main plaza (referred to as a zócalo throughout Mexico). We hit the regular tourist spots: Artesania Craft Market, Parque Santa Lucia, Plaza de la Independencia, etc. It's a job we can't shirk; we're tourist-students: we must find and purchase bits of Yucateca arts and crafts to take home a whisp of our experience.

Not surprisingly, Mérida's downtown smells like New York City, given that it's more ancient, though not as densely populated. But these people are in no hurry--slowed by the humidity--and often take time to smile or greet us, sometimes in English. Of course their economy subsists on us tourists, but their amiability goes deeper than that.

Mexico's "white city" has a reputation for the overall light tones of its architecture and its cleanliness, some of it I think attributable to rains washing away the calles' trash, into the quickly filling sewers, up to street level; this peninsula is only a few meters above sea level. They have a slogan here I love: "Ponte chulo, Mérida," and trash bins are marked organic and inorganic in keeping with one of the most progressive recycling programs outside Costa Rica or Boulder, Colo.

A guide tells us the history of the main cathedral, of course built on the former site and from stones of a Maya pyramid that stood here, at the end of the 16th century. The altar's 21-foot, second-largest-in-the-world sculpture of Christ, carved by Maya converts, seems like an amateurish attempt by the conquering clergy to erase the pyramid's former grandeur.

The north floor is lined with stones engraved with the names of worshippers who restored the church after a fire. To get to the altar, at times we're forced to walk on the names, some of which are Chinese, many names already blurred from countless footsteps. At Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, you're no longer allowed to erode the pyramids' history with your shoes. In Mérida, the Catholic hierarchy lets us grind down these testaments to the sacrifices of the devout. Some institutions continue their conquerer attitudes.

During our stay, I repeatedly encounter one family of Maya vendors in traditional attire--a mother, two daughters, one of high-school age. She's one of few who carries a chip on her shoulder, maybe about tourists, maybe about having to degrade herself selling goods in public--I don't know which, but I share her disgust. But it's the daughter as old as my second graders back home who gets to me. My tourist guilt nets me a belt, purse and ten pulseras faster than my wife can grab my arm. By trip's end, we'll do more transactions with them, but never enough to assuage the older girl. In the long run, maybe no one can, except Marcos.

On the outskirts of Mérida at the Universidad Marista, we tour an aguaculture facility, a system integrating fish, fowl, water and crops, civilization's attempt to refine how Maya rural people feed themselves. It utilizes aboveground, four-foot-high concrete "ponds" the gov't built for the indigenes to store water. The Mayas gave up using them because of small children drowning in the rainwater. This new system keeps the level low, sparing the children, but deep enough for tilapia and ducks to thrive. The entire exhibit is about conserving, recycling valuable agua dulce to embellish the Yucateco diet.

I ask the techs if they considered using duck poop as pond sealer, as done elsewhere in the world. Over time, poop that sinks to the bottom solidifies and turns impervious. But there's little topsoil on the peninsula, limestone below, making digging difficult. This didn't stop the ancient Mayas from digging their own rain barrels. I don't understand why, with rented jackhammers and indigenous labor, such couldn't be done again, eliminating the cost of concrete, no doubt a burden on villagers.

But I'm just a tourist, not expected to know much, and either my poor Spanish or the camera around my neck prevent my words being taken seriously. I decide the techs maybe already considered the idea unfeasible and take a photo of the ducks.

Under a hut where beehives are housed, we get more info on the cycle of life, food and culture. A Maya gardener who's been trailing us while working begins explaining something. As the whole class listens, he transforms from university gardener into shaman-historian, describing indigenous practices still conducted in remote areas.

It is a tale of communal ritual, of elders sharing the harvest, their pueblo's wealth. It is a story of dark forces vented on those who violate the good of the community. It is a transcendental glimpse of the Mayas, maybe thousands of years old. Though this might be the gardener's usual spiel to thrill tourists, I let him take me, I accept his words as true, and for several minutes, I'm his willing receptacle--not of the words and story, which I've already lost, but of the "sense" of elsewhere. If I try, I can almost smell burning copal, hear the hombre espiritiste and make out quiet drums keeping time to a chant in an exotic tongue. Whatever his intentions, if only for moments, he's given at least me a different perception of the soil I stand on.

I'd prefer to stay for more, but we head into the university to hear a university professor's lecture on the Maya. Through no fault of his own, he will have a difficult time capturing my ear.

The Maya professor Jose speaks Mayan and laces his history of Maya civilization, their astronomy, math and study of time with Mayan words and phrases. It sounds more exotic and melodious than what I heard in the theater from Mel Gibson's cast. The film isn't available here, except pirated, until next year, so I don't ask him which sacrificial ritual should be used on Mel.

Jose gives us enough Mayan orientation that we'll go around for the next days sprinkling our speech with xmá (no), maló mac (ate well) and in caba Rudy (my name is). Half a million Mayas are bilingual, another 50 thou, monolingual in some dialect. We're not parroting a dead language. (Jose only taught us orally, so my spelling is probably a bit off.)

At lunchtime, the cafeteria is opened just for us, and we eat prepared Maya dishes with our host, the university professor Tony. I can't feel guilty about our privileged status, since I chalk it up to our Profe's skills at building personal relationships, the way it's still done in Mexico.

Wandering the almost empty campus (it's Xmas fiesta time), I hear construction workers talk about going to ask what our lunch would cost them. A couple go to the counter and return with ample plates. Then another half dozen go over. From the smiles on their faces, I think they got free meals since there's no one around to eat what we didn't; it would just go to waste. I feel good the presence of our tour inadvertently fed someone else.

Hugo, the artist in our bunch, is out too, with pen and pad in hand. I ask if he's going to draw a tree with huge, splendidly variegated gold and yellow leaves; he responds it would take him weeks. I snap off one of the leaves, press it between the pages of my spiral; it makes a better memento than most things I will purchase.

As part of our total immersion, each night at dinner we do oral presentations of the day's activities. I love this stuff--the opportunity to talk to a captive audience, in any language. After a seafood lunch on the coast (details in my next post) that shamefully equaled an ancient Maya lord's feast, we dine at La Casa de Frida, a Vegas-type recreation decked out with Kahlo reproductions, a poblano menu to match. For my report, I try combining recent events into un acertijo, a riddle: Qué pesa más que una puerta del Consulado Americano? Tres platos de ceviche en Progresso.

I think I'm being clever, but even the Profe can't understand the joke. Despite not having drunk more than soda, I have to explain literally every word, thus totally deflating my future propsects as a Chicano Cantinflas. I decide the remainder of my stay will be filled with fewer prosaic trabalenguas, but more of the Yucateco people, as detailed in my final installment.

© Rudy Ch. Garcia 2007

The last installment of this will appear tomorrow, Friday, in lieu of Ramos's regular post; he needed some time off.