Check out this snazzy student film out of Montreal's unheralded (least in animation) Concordia University. Enjoy it. Let it envelope you.

My Little Pony is changing the world, one bronie at a time.

Check out Tibor Banoczki's short Milkteeth which soaked up a few festival awards a while back.

The creator, Tom Schroeder has done some fine work since Bike Ride, but perhaps none better than his latest, Marcel King of Tervuren. It's kind of a beautiful Bukowski/Sophocles tale with roosters. Best short animation of 2013 thus far. You should see it at many festivals. If not, those festivals should have their eyes shot out.

 

Brace yourself, for FMX is about to unleash a VFX storm, an Indie Games tornado and a flood of other highlights ranging from Crowdfunding and Open Source to Animation both mainstream and Wild 'n' Strange. The current and future releases of Pacific Rim, Crysis 3 and the arrival of Ed Ulbrich and bestselling children's book author Cornelia Funke make you jittery? Then you'd better take a seat and read this calmly:

The preview of this year's FMX program is now online!

 

What’s clear is that HTML5 is here to stay and it will change the face of application development. Whether it reaches its full potential next month or two years from now, its evolution is continuing apace, bringing new capabilities and new kinds of developers into its sphere of influence. Intel continues to show a keen interest in optimizing the platform for its hardware, as both the power of available hardware and of the platform continue to grow.

One advantage of a true cross-platform technology like HTML5 is that developers no longer need to rely on native technologies to deploy their apps on specific hardware platforms. That means being able to potentially circumvent app stores that demand costly native development and take a portion of the profits. The downside is that often the support of these proprietary app stores can make the difference between sinking without a trace and being the featured app of the month and reaching an audience of millions. For developers that perhaps have less need for the support that app stores can offer, HTML5 offers a significant advantage over native development, particularly when combined with native code whenever it makes sense.

 

Until now most, if not all, of my blogs have been inspired and dedicated to reflections on deeper human issues. The very last one shared my intense experience of the conflict between Israel and the West Bank, likely one of the most complex of topics. The last 6 months, which seems to be the magic period of time I spend in various places around the world, I lived in Los Angeles. Going there I anticipated being turned off by the plasticity and artificiality, even superficiality of the people, and the environment there. And so, for the initial period, one in which I was subletting in Beverly Hills, of all of the places, my expectations were fulfilled. People were polite but yet in the kind of insincere way we can be towards each other. But then I moved to another location and people as well as the character of the environment changed to, becoming less plastic, less fake, less bogus. This was a welcomed change. And thus Los Angeles grew on me. And so, now having just departed this vast entity, at least for now, after spending the last couple of weeks in Venice Beach there, to culminate the experience and unwind in preparation for the challenges ahead, I thought to reflect upon some of the beauty I encountered there, and was truly touched by. Wishing to make this purely emotional and subliminal, I shall refrain from further words and allow the images to speak for themselves. I do hope you shall enjoy them and find in them some calm and peace.

We all need to detox from one thing or another in life.  Whether you are cleansing your system from years of alcohol, drug or food addictions or you are looking to just rid yourself of the emotional toxins that have built up from years of wear and tear, you may feel the need to cleanse at some point in your life.  One area you might want to consider purging is the emotional and physical drain on your energy and psyche caused by the stresses of work. When your work environment resembles a toxic waste dump, it’s time for a career cleanse.

 

Remember when we were limited by the physical nature of recording? Film, tape, vinyl? Yeah, me neither. Many of those forms of technology didn’t die out all that long ago (after all, the first voice overs are still less than 100 years old) and yet, we quickly repressed those memories in favor of the newest, most convenient technology.

From Logic to ProTools to the stuff we carry around in our pockets, advances in technology have increased our ability to create great products, to do so cost-effectively, and to cast the projects efficiently.

 

“The Croods” is a film about creativity, and discovering curiosity. I enjoyed the opening sequence, where the entire family works together to get a hard-earned meal. It was interesting how they all cooperated to obtain an egg for their breakfast, and how little food they had at the time. The film is a great movie for kids, with a lot of wit and imagination. The movie is very humorous, especially in physical humor; such as when one of the Croods catches on fire and fights through dry grass. Another thing that was funny was that Grug was always hoping that his mother-in-law would die, probably because she was burdening the group. The visuals are stunning, such as the endless shades of green in the rainforest, and the color of the various creatures of the Crood’s universe.