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06/29/2004:
THOUGHTS . Van Helsing Animation


Somehow... a copy of Van Helsing: The London Assignment landed on my hands yesterday. I haven't seen Van Helsing (the movie yet) and I'm still waiting for its DVD release. These days I prefer seeing things on DVD rather than watching it on a bigger screen. When I'm inside a movie house I get this feeling that that big screen would morph into a huge fang-filled drooling mouth and devour the viewers in one quick bite faster than one can reach the third syllable of the word 'No!' (Yes the word has three syllables although you probably are hearing a single syllable only which proves how fast it is by default).

Although it is just a 30-minute animated film, it is filled with good animation and '3D-like visual effect' which 'power-ups' the animation these days. I first saw that style when I was watching Blood (a Japanese vampire-slaying anime) last year... or was it last last year.

Months ago, TechTV even featured a graphics software that makes 3D objects appear as if they're 2D in steroids.

What caught my attention more are two of the Special Features that is included in that DVD: Van Helsing: Behind the Screams (a look of the things that goes behind the scenes, a 'the-making-of-the-movie' sort of) and a preview of the Van Helsing Game.

It also includes an Animatic to Animation feature which places both the storyboard illustrations and the actual animation itself. Cool feature if you ask me.

No... we'll not discuss here how the movie fared and its numbers. We don't care about those things unless if the gross income when divided with its budget results to the derivation of the golden number (But that would be good for another blog post for now).

... nor the movie reviews.

Honestly I don't give a damn about reviews. Besides you know a good movie when you see one not when you read about it. And personally I would refrain from giving out bad feedbacks to something if I cannot make a better version of that thing. If great minds like that of Spielberg or Lucas gives out 'bad' reviews about a certain movie, probably I would listen to them. But have you heard them doing that? No. That is because they know the effort done when creating one... even if it fails to please a lesser part of the population whose IQ is below the three digit mark but still rants and rants about the pitfalls of a certain movie.

OK... the reviews are disturbing. Really... but who cares.

But this is not what this post is all about.

Let's just say even the movie didn't received that much good reviews, the Behind the Scenes which includes the process of how the whole movie was created was fun to watch.

In a way that's what TechBlogs are for. We want to see and share (on the techblogger's part) the things that go on behind a certain project. How things are conceptualized... how things are tackled. You'd be surprise how healthy this activity is for the digitized soul.

If you jump around the 'net these days, you'll find out that there are a lot of tech-related companies out there that's doing good with this process of sharing. Redmond is one. And there are more out there.

We humans that deal with these bits of things that emerged out of the marriage of mathematics and machines are interested with what the other humans who's into a related quest are doing. The process and problems and that human as well.

So move your arse and start those tech blogs of yours. It doesn't need to be software/database development related. It can be about Photoshop or HTML-related tricks you've uncovered, the details on how you slaughtered a thirteenth century version of that Michelangelo virus, teleportation, brain transplants or anything. Safe sex with the CPU perhaps?

Even Leonardo da Vinci was blogging things during his time. Although of course the medium was different. And 500 years later, Bill Gates purchased one of those journals for a whoopin' 30 million dollars.

Who knows what the future holds for your blogs.

Oh... for heaven's sake don't blog things for the money, sport. Do it to share things.

What's that again, Yoda?

Yoda: A good motivation... money is not.