It’s kind of what you might expect from a show called Exposure – they just keep giving us reasons to blog about them.
We’ve just gotten wind that Scott and the Squirrels and Pants of Exceeding Consequence, directed by Film grads Corey Jenkins and Aaron Beckum, respectively, will appear on this week’s episode! The lesson learned from this pairing: Silly sells.
The show airs in Canada on the CBC, and you can catch both Squirrels and Pants this Sunday, September 2nd, at 11pm.
As you may recall, teams set out to, well, reboot the pioneering CG television series by pitching story ideas and concept art to a community of fans at Zeros 2 Heroes. After a rigorous period of fan interaction, studio notes, and thousands of votes, Jeff’s concept, Arrival, came out on top. Arrival pits series protagonist Bob against a powerful, malevolent program called GNOSIS. In many ways, the concept was closest to the original series, making it an instant favourite with fans. Now the team gets to put together a webcomic based on their vision for the series, which will hopefully be a springboard into a revival of ReBoot at Rainmaker Animation! Update: Illustrating just how popular ReBoot still is, Jeff and his team are getting name-dropped all over the place: AWN, iF Magazine, Hollywood Reporter.
Credit where credit’s due: Melanie’s Milky Entertainment cohorts are Dennis Chin and Michael Chung. The ep airs several times today, for your viewing convenience. And congrats, Melanie, on being hired at EA Mobile! Update: You can now watch the segment here!
This new short features an intense ground-level firefight between a squad of Marines and some Brutes. It’s just as cool as the first one released around E3, but it feels a lot grittier and more personal. And again we join thousands of fans as they cry – greenlight the Neill-helmed feature already!
Want to have your mind blown? You’ll know the dynamic duo of Marcos “Boca” Ceravolo and Ryan Uhrich from their hit Typographics, which has been seen by over 500,000 on Yahoo! Video and talked up on design blogs the world over. But that was just the teaser. Now Boca and Ryan have made available their sumptuous, enormously ambitious final project, Duelity. Here’s how it goes – imagine the story of Creation shown through the cold lens of science, and Evolution told as a biblical tale. It’s a head-spinningly complex splitscreen experience and demands repeat viewing. We saw all of the final motion projects from Boca and Ryan’s class at their graduation earlier this month, and believe us when we tell you that every last one was incredible. Fantastic work, all of you!
Vancouver’s proximity to Seattle means there’s a lot of give-and-take between the two cities’ game industries – in fact, local developer Hothead is hard at work on the upcoming Penny Arcade game – so naturally, an event like PAX attracts VFSers. Wired, which did an in-depth profile of the duo behind PA in this month’s issue, has posted some snapshots of PAX – including this one, of Game Design student Charles Simmons meeting a Microsoft rep after pitching his concept at a panel. “What motivated me to pitch a game concept was just to receive practice and feedback on pitches in general,” says Charles. “I was also able to talk to fellow gamers to see what they were looking forward to, and took that information into consideration now that we are starting to build our final projects. Overall the whole experience helped me grow as a game designer.”
We’d heard the rumours. We knew Writing grad Seth Lochhead had had some serious success. Phrases like “bidding war” and “against six figures” were tossed around. We were dying to know what had really happened with Hanna, the feature script he wrote during his year at VFS. Well, Seth’s been kind enough to tell us the whole story — thanks, Seth! What follows is a little long, but if you’re a screenwriter, you’re going to want to read it in full. And maybe take some notes. The Year of Living Famously So I’m steaming soymilk for David Goyer‘s extra hot chai latte and I’m thinking to myself, “Do it, man. Do it. Tell him you’re the same. Tell him you’re a writer too. Tell him the best part of Blade 3 had nothing to do with vampires and everything to do with boobs. Tell him. Tell him now.” Instead, I poured his drink, avoided eye contact, and whispered quietly to my coworkers, “That’s the guy that wrote Batman Begins.” I went home that night not regretful, but definitely feeling that I missed an opportunity. or maybe not. Maybe I would’ve told him of my fabulous idea for a movie (with a fully realized script sitting in a drawer at home) and it would’ve evaporated from his mind as quickly as the steam off his extra hot chai latte. I convinced myself I wanted to make it on my own. I wanted to be the coffee shop phenom that launched into Hollywood’s upper stratus from oblivion. I didn’t want to ride in as the student of some “greater” screenwriter. I wanted to walk into Hollywood as master.
We told you that 3D‘s Percy Kiyabu‘s grad project After Oz had been selected for the ’07 Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. Well, After Oz is airing tomorrow, Saturday, August 25th at 10pm Eastern. If you get the channel, be sure to tune in. Here’s hoping Percy’s adorable film makes the “Best Of” episode on the 31st!
The Classical Animation grad had her cute Flash short featured on Channel Frederator, the animation podcast, and was later interviewed about her process and background. Well, last week, for its 93rd episode, Frederator featured another one of her VFS student works. In the Beginning is a film about the history of the world if the history of the world involved ravenous predatory bunnies. And, in an amazing gesture of doing our work for us, the folks over at Frederator then interviewed her again! It’s well worth the read, so check it out.
War follows an FBI agent hunting down the rogue assassin who killed his partner. (But you probably knew that already.) When you hear the soft sound of Jet Li‘s footsteps coming around the corner, and the click of Jason Statham‘s gun being cocked… think of George. We know we will.
Writing Grad ReBoots
Writing grad Jeff Campbell, with a team of artists and producers, has won the ReBoot Reborn prize!In the Lab Today
Game Design grad Melanie Genereux and instructor Jacob Tran reunite once again on today’s Lab with Leo.
The writeup of today’s episode (#69): “Jacob Tran and Melanie Genereux create Flash games for your cell phone, Tod Maffin shows how you can pimp your online videos, Sean Carruthers takes a look at the new Bluetooth stereo audio profile, and Ryan Yewell plays an awesome artillery game based on the classic DOS game Scorched Earth.”Halo 3 Shorts: The Sequel
It’s that time! After an unfinished version leaked a few days early, the second Halo 3 live-action promotional short is out! This is the big collaboration between Bungie, Weta, Origami Digital, and HT Limited, directed by 3D grad Neill Blomkamp.Duelity in Motion
PAX Arcadia
This past weekend saw the largest gaming conference in the United States. What, didn’t notice? It’s called the Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX – ostensibly a fan convention for the webcomic Penny Arcade, but now a full-blown uber-convention in Seattle hosted by two of the biggest taste-makers in video games today.The Year of Living Famously
By Seth Lochhead“After Oz” Hits the Airwaves
We know what you might be watching on Sunday, but now you’ve got Saturday plans too.Choom Lam on Fred… Again
You might remember Choom Lam from such blog posts as Bobble & Sqweek Meet Fred and Bobble & Sqweek Redux.
George Knows Who Wins
We thought blog readers would like to know that Sound Design grad George Pereyra was Foley Editor on action flick War, in theatres today.