What's inside your cellphone?

Ever wonder what demonic creature is unleashed when you stick your cellphone into a microwave oven?

Watch:

Pointless, but cool nonetheless.

What has this got to do with Cadbury's milk chocolate?

I don't really care. All I need to know is that there's a gorilla hitting the drum solo from one of my all-time favorite songs.

Really good CG, I must say.

Still not gonna get me to buy Cadbury's chocolate bar though. I don't like milk chocolate.

Mr Men coming to TV!

Wow, I remember these characters from when I was a kid! They're soon to have their own show on the Cartoon Network. For some reason, probably because of their simple geometric shapes I thought there could not have been more than about ten characters altogether, until I went to their Wikipedia page. I hadn't even heard of most of them.

Will Mr Strong be making an appearance on the TV show? That kindly egg-gulping red square was my favorite. Maybe the Egg Board should adopt him as a mascot.

A Gentleman's Duel.

I just finished watching Blur Studio's most excellent recent short film, A Gentleman's Duel as part of the Siggraph 2007 Electronic Theater. This entry was easily my favorite out of all of the shorts I saw. It had a great story, the animation was well-acted, pretty good lighting, and to top it all off, the main characters dueled each other aboard cool steampunk mecha!

What I really noticed the most was the character design in this film. It may very well not be easy to design human characters for an animated film, but a lot of major studios seem to go out of their way to make their CG humans look creepy.

I mean, compare these ugly characters from another film franchise. They all look like transgendered clones of John Lithgow. These characters are utterly bland:



Now look at the characters from A Gentleman's Duel. With these characters, you only need a quick glance to divine their individual personalities:



The character designers used a more cartoon-style plastic-like solid surface with painted streaks to represent hair. These guys decided not to have them fitted with CG hair, which I think worked out for the best. CG hair is a pain in the ass to achieve the right look, and if you don't get it just right, it will look odd and swishy, ultimately distracting the viewer from the story.

Great job guys!