http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapunzel_%28film%29

According to some Disney insiders, the studio's upcoming animated feature Rapunzel is going to look a little different from other mainstream animation. That's because the animation will be done via CGI while resembling traditional hand-drawn animation.

While it's far too early to jump to any conclusions (after all, the film is slated for release next holiday season), this approach seems somewhat counterproductive to me. If they want to emulate the look of classic 2D Disney animation, why not just make a 2D-animated feature? The use of CGI comes across as a bit pointless.

Having said that, it is doubtlessly an ambitious undertaking. It will be interesting to see what the finished product looks like.

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/the-first-iron-man-2-trailer-is-here

This is a new trailer for Marvel's upcoming and highly anticipated film Iron Man 2. Overall, I'm really looking forward to this film, and the trailer does a great job of showing viewers what to expect without giving away too much. Most notably, the visual effects seem to be a step up from the original film, quite an accomplishment considering the excellent effects of that film. During work on the first film, director Jon Favreau worked extensively with Industrial Light and Magic to combine rubber and metal versions of the titular character's armor with digital effects.

I found that last bit of trivia to be interesting because it marks a step in visual effects towards a path that combines old with new, traditional special effects with newer digital effects. This will allow special effects artists to make the most of the strengths of both sides while minimizing the shortcomings. All-in-all, very interesting stuff; I look forward to seeing more.

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/should-avatar-be-considered-for-best-animated-oscar

This article by Brad Brevet questions whether James Cameron's latest film Avatar merits consideration for this year's Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Brevet quotes Academy regulates on what constitutes an animated feature: "An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of at least 70 minutes, in which movement and characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's running time." The takeaway question Brevet poses at the end of the article is: When is CGI no longer considered visual effects and when is it considered animation?

Having not seen the film, I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but if advance reviews and comments about it are any indication, I say yes, Avatar does indeed deserve to be considered an animated feature. Although it makes use of motion capture technology (as do some of the films being considered for Oscar contention), reactions to the film's groundbreaking and extensive use of CGI indicate that it has crossed the threshold between "visual effects" and "animation". If the studio does submit the film for consideration, however, then the Academy might want to be a little more specific in their definition of animation.

http://www.brainstream.com/custom-playing-cards.php

This is an article for Custom Playing Cards, a service that allows you to print your own photographs on playing cards. For the most part, I think this is a very interesting service. Playing cards have changed a lot since their conception thousands upon thousands of years ago, far more than some people may realize. They have become a staple in the artistic consciousness, used for a wide variety of games, magic tricks, and more, and now they can be personalized. This marks a growing trend in design becoming a more personal thing. In the past, there was always somewhat of a disconnect between designs and their audiences. Now, people can see more of themselves in design, and that's going change the way we look at it for a long time to come.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/994/994234p1.html

This is GameSpy's list of the six "most pointless game controllers" ever made, which offers up a somewhat humorous analysis of just that.

What I noticed about nearly all the controllers in question is their unnecessary complexity. They tend to feel gimmicky and pointless.

The moral of the story, in essence, is that sometimes, simple is better. With simplicity, you can build from the ground up. If you have a simple baseline to work with, you can build off of that and come up with something special and original. And that's one of the best qualities any designer can have: the ability to create something new and exciting out of something simple.

Some people seem to think that just because a particular work is bad, that it's inherently not worth watching. Well, I have to disagree with this sentiment and would like to point out that a lot of works in all media considered "bad" can be enjoyable not despite their badness, but because of it. Enter the classic phrase "so bad it's good".

One of the most interesting things about works that qualify for "so bad it's good" status is that sometimes, works deliberately go out of their way to achieve such a distinction.

This is where I'm a little on the fence. Should works focus solely on entertaining audiences, even if it does do by being "so bad it's good", or should integrity come into play as well?

This is a tough call for me, but if I had to decide, I would say that entertainment is the primary purpose, and if a work has to resort to "so bad it's good" tactics to accomplish that, that's just fine.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GeorgeLucasThrowback

Now for another entry on the TV Tropes Wiki, this time describing the "George Lucas Throwback", which refers to works that reach back to simpler times while updating for modern production values. Named for George Lucas, best-known for such throwbacks as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, if particularly successful, a "GLT" can fool audiences into believing that it is an entirely original work as opposed to a throwback.

The concept of a throwback is interesting because it toys with the idea of acknowledging past works while simultaneously "keeping with the times". The most successful throwbacks manage to accomplish both. In fact, in a way, designers everywhere do throwbacks all the time. Since it's virtually impossible to come up with something 100% original, the true mark of a good designer's ability is their ability to combine old with new. To reach back to simpler times while having enough "new and improved" qualities to remain relevant for modern audiences.

Soccer is by far the most popular sport in the world. But why is this? There are so many other sports out there, some of which are admittedly more popular than others, but soccer seems have found itself near the top for many, many years. There are bound to be many possible theories as to why this is, but I'll take a stab and provide my own.

Soccer has a wonderful balance between simplicity and depth that you rarely find in sports. It has a simple premise of kicking a ball into a goal, but there are all kinds of strategies players can use to achieve this goal, but the setup is simple.

This is, in essence, what any game should be; simple enough to be accessible to a wide audience, yet complex enough to allow for depth and creativity.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both among the best and most popular parody news TV shows out there. Being a spinoff of the former, the latter has gone out of its way to distinguish itself from its predecessor in many ways, and it has succeeded tremendously. The Colbert Report's shtick is that unlike The Daily Show, which basically amounts to Jon Stewart and friends taking digs at politics and news media, the Report actually appears to take place in a semi-fictional universe. Colbert himself, after all, is a very different person in "real life" from the persona he has established on the show.

Colbert finds great success with this approach. Unlike most other forms of parody news, including The Daily Show, the Report has established a world of its own that's every bit as entertaining as the obligatory news media potshots expected of the genre. It's a kind of warped reality where Colbert's character is ostensibly God, bears are Satan, and other things are made up on-the-fly. Some of the show's humor actually stems from the confusion over where "reality" ends and where the show's universe begins.

Overall, The Colbert Report is both enjoyable as a parody news program and as a fictional comedy series in its own right.

"We're all taught never to judge a book by its cover. Most of us ignore this advice." says this entry on the TV Tropes wiki, which describes the "Contemptible Cover", or the extensive use of book covers as marketing gimmicks. One bit on the page that really got my attention was the supposed addition of Harry Potter copies with more "adult" covers so that adult fans wouldn't have to feel embarrassed about reading a "kiddy book". This entry got me thinking: Can the cover of the book actually change one's perception of the actual content of the book? Covers can indeed make a first impression. When I heard from this entry that someone had bound and published several articles of Wikipedia on hard copy, I didn't believe it until I saw the cover of the book, which, as I mentioned in my dissertation on this book, had a professional look and feel that clashed with the informal atmosphere the "real" Wikipedia is (in)famous for.

But when it comes to whether a cover can change one's outlook on a book, I say, in most cases, no. There's a very good reason why we're told never to judge a book by its cover, and it's because it's the text inside that is really telling the story, not the cover. Having said that, however, a book with an attractive cover never hurts.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Doorstopper

This entry from the TV Tropes wiki describes doorstoppers, books so heavy and thick that they could be used as, well, doorstoppers. The page points out that this is often used as a derogatory term for a novel with lots of padding and/or poor pacing.

I found this entry interesting because it discusses one of the concepts we've talked about a lot in lecture: time. How do you describe the time of something? When creating something, how can you use time to your advantage, and, along those same lines, how can time work against you? In this particular instance, "time" describes the amount of time it takes to read a book. "Doorstoppers" are described as such because they obviously take longer to read than shorter books.

Ultimately, I say that when it comes to utilizing time when creating something, it's never about how long someone is going to read/watch/look at something. Rather, it's about how long that creation is going to remain in the audience's memory. To me, that's the real "time" of a design.

These are two promotional images for the popular TV series Batman: The Animated Series. There are differences in these two images, mainly in the animation style. The former's features detailed coloring and backgrounds, while the latter is noticeably more simple and streamlined. The second image promotes a retool the show went through following its second season. This move caused some fan controversy, with quite a few hardcore B:TAS fans criticizing the "new look" series. I, on the other hand, find myself in the minority and prefer the animation in the revamp.

One thing that always bothered me about the style of the original series was that it simply tried too hard. The animators tried to achieve a cinematic feel to the presentation, and some attempts at doing so succeeded more than others. While there was some great cinematography in many episodes, the action suffered pretty heavily, as they were often too over-the-top for such realistic character designs. Dialogue-driven scenes suffered on occasion as well, as characters would often make unnecessarily complex gestures that would distract from the actual dialogue and plot. The main reason why things didn't always work out is because some things in live action simply don't work in animation. In the retool series, the animators seemed to have learned this lesson, as they stripped the animation down to its most basic elements. Characters and backgrounds alike were simplified to look more abstract and cartoonish. As silly as such a retool may sound, it actually works. The action scenes were much more fluid and engaging, and the dialogue-heavy scenes came across as more poignant, as emphasis was placed on dialogue and characters' subtle facial expressions, not on over-the-top gestures that made them look like cartoon characters.

Although most Batman: TAS fans would disagree, I believe that the revamp series was an improvement in animation quality, as the simple, streamlined designs allowed for more fluidity and an overall more atmospheric feel.

http://weeklydrop.com/2009/06/wikipedia-book/

This article discusses a decidedly out-of-the-ordinary event; Wikipedia has been published in book form. Described by the article as, "a must-have for students without the Internet". Registering at 5,000 entries and 2,500 entries, the book is already outdated, with the actual online Wikipedia now having a thousand times more articles. Personally, I'm more curious as to why it wasn't published in multiple volumes like any other encyclopedia (as one reader comment insightfully points out).

The thing that really got my attention was the appearance of the book. I was strangely both impressed and amused by the design of the book, with a certain professionalism that's at odds with Wikipedia's rampant (and somewhat undeserved, I would argue) reputation as an unreliable source of information owing to the fact that anyone can edit it. Could it be that this publication might help Wikipedia be seen as a credible source of information? Only time will tell, but meanwhile, I think we all take a look at the size of this book and give thanks to the Internet for its ability to store large amounts of information in infinitely more efficient ways.

This is a promotional image for Justice League, an animated TV series set in the long-running DC Animated Universe (often abbreviated DCAU).

The conception of the DCAU is often attributed to Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett, and Paul Dini, among others. Timm is generally credited with conceiving the animation style of the franchise, which is known for its minimalist, angular style. Another interesting thing I found out about Timm is that he is completely self-taught and had no formal training in drawing or animation.

The good news is that if I didn't know that last bit, I never would have guessed it because the visuals on hand are excellent. Timm expresses his love for art deco with simple yet pleasing animation complemented by complex writing. Backgrounds are rendered nicely, and characters maintain a somewhat cartoony warmth to them while still being taken seriously.

If the art style of the DCAU has any particular failings, it's that some episodes have better coloring than others. Sometimes, the colors can come across as pale, and nothing really "pops", making the otherwise excellent animation appear bland and unsatisfying. Thankfully, these instances are few and far between. For the most part, the colors complement the animation well.

Overall, the DCAU has some very pleasing animation to offer. It presents detailed backgrounds, simple yet endearing character designs, and solid (if occasionally mediocre) coloring.

This is a character sheet for The Spectacular Spider-Man, a currently airing animated TV series about the titular web-slinger. Although the show's writing is almost universally regarded as excellent by superhero fans, myself included, one aspect of the show where Spidey fans don't quite see eye-to-eye is the unorthodox animation style. Spectacular sports very simple, streamlined character designs. Lead character designer Sean Galloway did this "to ensure Spider-Man would move as he should and replicate the fluidity from Sam Raimi's movie incarnation."

Although some may object to this and deride the animation as "too kiddy", I personally think the animation is terrific. The cartoonish, big-eyed characters give the show its own look and feel that helps to distinguish it from other superhero cartoons. The simplicity of the style strips the characters down to their most basic physical attributes, making them distinguishable from each other, and then some thanks to the show's excellent characterization.

Overall, even if some Internet fanboys may disagree, I would strongly argue that The Spectacular Spider-Man is a great-looking show. The unique style gives the series a "shtick" to set it apart, and the characters' streamlined designs allow them to stand out from one another.

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/7184-batmanvsdk

In this video, Internet comedian The Nostalgia Critic introduces his "Old vs. New" series, in which he compares 2008's mega-blockbuster The Dark Knight with Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film. After judging the two films in a number of categories, the Critic, in a move that is quite contrary to what seems to be the general consensus, concludes that he regards Batman as a superior film.

Although the Critic sheds kind words on both films and provides a lot of reasons for why he prefers the Burton film, one recurring argument that got my attention was that he asserts that, unlike Batman, which lets its imagery speak for itself, The Dark Knight feels more like a "character study" in which the characters in the film make several heavy-handed speeches about the film's themes. Although I personally would argue in favor of The Dark Knight being a better movie, the Critic nonetheless makes a valid point. For all its strengths, The Dark Knight suffers quite a bit from being too dialogue-heavy and not letting its visuals speak for themselves, one of the great assets of any visual medium. That's not to say that the dialogue isn't interesting, but does get fairly heavy-handed in explaining the film's themes instead of letting the audience decipher said themes for themselves.

Ultimately, I have to agree with the Nostalgia Critic's assertion. A film should express its story and ideas through its visuals, not just through dialogue. After all, that's what separates films from non-visual media such as books and radio. And although I think The Dark Knight is a wonderful and brilliant motion picture, it seems to have forgotten this.