Thoughts On Iron Man, Spiderman, And ILM

I saw the trailer for Iron Man recently, and I have to say it reminds me of the recent Spiderman movies. By that I mean I'm seeing the same stilted motions in the CGI characters. ILM did the work on all the films, from what I gather, but they also did the work in the Star Wars prequils. The stormtroopers were completely convincing, even with so many of them on screen at once. If I hadn't heard otherwise I would have thought at least some were live actors. But both Spiderman and now Iron Man look like they're computer generated. There is never a moment's doubt watching them. Why is this?

I can think of three possible explanations...

A: ILM is perfectly capable of producing convincing animation of human characters, but only does so for Lucas.

B: ILM is perfectly capable of producing convincing animation of human characters, but will only give their clients what they're willing to pay for, and Sony and Marvel were only willing to pay so much.

C: ILM is perfectly capable of producing convincing animation of human characters, but only if basing them on the movements of a living model. They had live actor stormtroopers from the original Star Wars trilogy to work from, but for the Marvel superheroes only had still images from comic books. And let's face it: those comic book drawings evoke some very dramatic motion, but they are not realistic poses by any stretch of the imagination.

So what do you think? Is it A, B, C, or something else?

One of the pumpkins at my sister-in-law's house.

A Gratifying Sale

I always liked this one, and its related t-shirt designs, but figured it was too niche to sell. It took a while, but I finally sold one - a bumper sticker.

Smut Picture Racketeer

Inspired by the Ed Wood movie The Sinister Urge.

Last Weekend - Finally

I just realized I said I'd blog about what we did last weekend, but never did. I'm a bit restless in anticipation of tomorrow (see previous entry) so I guess I'll work a bit of that off by writing this entry.

It started off with an invitation to a birthday party for a cousin of my wife's who she hasn't seen for years. Turns out it was sent at the instigation of another cousin we saw at my wife's grandmother's recent funeral. It was to be in relatively unfamiliar territory for us, a couple hours' drive away in Williamsburg, and with mostly strangers attending, so at the last minute, in the hotel suite we shared with my in-laws, we decided to blow it off.

Instead of going to the party, we drove down the street to a K-Mart and bought swim suits, then hit the indoor pool at the hotel. It was nice, about 80 degrees, but a bit salty. I think maybe it was desalinated sea water, but maybe it was some weird chemical they were using. Who knows? We had fun, swimming back and forth (for the first time in a couple years) and playing around. Afterward we went out to eat, ending up at Chili's. On the way out there was a fife & drum playing next door.

Apparently, Jamestown was having its 400th anniversary, and Bush was there exploring his future career options. There were lots of people in town, taking shuttle buses to Jamestown for the celebrations.

While driving around deciding where to eat, we spotted some horses in a field surrounded by a split rail fence. We parked and walked across the street, hoping to put them a bit, but the wandered off to graze. One apparently had an itchy belly. He tried to scratch with his foot but couldn't reach, so he lowered himself to the ground and wriggled around. It was weird.

The next day we were trying to figure out what to do with our Sunday. We hadn't really found anything compelling in the brochures in the lobby. My sisters in law and their kids planned to go to Busch Gardens. My in-laws mentioned that they have a deal for residents where we can get a season pass for the price of a one-day ticket, so we figured what the heck, there's nothing to lose. We went and had fun.

We pretty much followed the same path through the park we followed last July, entering through the England area, then heading over to Italy. My wife insisted on riding the Escape From Pompei ride, getting herself splashed while I took her picture from a covered observation area. Then she rode some other rides. I didn't ride much since my back was twinging me a bit and I wanted to wait until it warmed up some. Did I mention it was sixty degrees when we arrived?

We rode the teacups, or Turkish Delight as it's called there, and hopped the train to the Canada area (or New France as they call it.) We could smell the smoked meat as we got off. Then we could smell the smoke from the designated smoking area and all the designated smokers who were there. We had arrived at the park around 11 AM, so we headed over to the German area and the Octoberfest food pavilion. We got in the cafeteria-style line and got fries, cake, drinks, and some institutional-grade pizzas. Yum! The carrot cake was pretty good. Lots of raisins, though I think it would have been better with a few less. There were German-style dancers and a band there entertaining the crowd and getting everyone to yell out "oi! oi! oi!" Her family showed up there and we talked and ate as families do, and the five-year-old refused to eat as five-year-olds do.

We headed out and took a spin on the bumper cars. I bumped my wife pretty good a few times, and she gave as good as she got. It was fun. The back of my head was hurting from smiling the whole time. After that we rode the Katapult (or Scrambler as the painted-over plate on the center structure read.) Man, that thing really whips you around. It felt like we were about to be flung across the park every time we went around. It was great. If it wasn't such a line I would have liked to go on it again. The bumper cars too.

After that we had about an hour or so before the time we wanted to head out so we'd get home right around sunset. We thought about taking a round trip on the skycars, but we asked and found out we would have to get out and get back in line at each of the other two stations. We skipped that, vowing to ride them next time, and headed toward the park entrance. When we got there it was near time for the Pirates 4-D show to begin, so we headed in.

The seats were wet, so we knew we were in for a little splashing. We picked a pair of dry seats and waited. I marveled at with the 3-D glasses on my hand looked like it was coming right at me. My wife didn't find it quite so marvelous, so I stopped. The show started. It starred Leslie Nielson and Eric Idle (who wrote it) and was obviously made with the kids in mind. The 3-D was decent, and the additional effects - spraying water, blowing air, buzzing seats, added a lot of fun to it. It was actually enjoyable having Leslie Nielson spit water on us.

After the show it was time to go, and we headed out right on schedule. There was a bit of traffic on the way home, but ultimately it only took a half hour extra.

I'm not sure when we're going to go again, but I am looking forward to it. My wife is going to be really stressed in the coming month, and more if we have to try the IVF more than once, so a little fun escape at the right time will be just the ticket.

The picture above is the Griffin, Busch Garden's latest roller coaster, as seen from the train. It was open for a one-day sneak preview opening on Mother's Day. Top center you can see the sigle car, three rows of ten seats each, I believe, poised at the top of the big drop 250 feet up. We watched it a few times from various vantage points. The car stops, hanging over the edge for a few seconds, building the suspense for the riders. The it drops plunging straight down for a portion of the drop, as you can see by the track. We did not go on that ride, though I believe one of my sisters in law did. She's a friggin nut.

Been Busy Designing

I've been busy producing new designs since cafepress.com added maternity tees. So far, in addition to the Mad Gestating Skillz design I've had in the Yahoo blog's blast, I've come up with homages to Rosemary's Baby and The Mummy, and adapted an earlier homage to Shakespeare's MacBeth.

I've got ideas for a couple series of designs for these shirts too, but I think they would work best with one of cafepress' premium shops. I've been making enough to cover the cost of that and then some, but I'm thinking I'd like to stick a toe in the water with them first, and maybe build up a bigger collection of maternity designs.

If you know anyone who's "preggers" and who would appreciate my taste (or lack thereof) tell them to take a look-see. Thanks, and enjoy!

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

A Favorite Movie

I watched this (not for the first time) on IFC this weekend. I'm not a gospel type of guy, to be sure, but good music is good music. It's based on The Odyssey, in case you hadn't heard.



This is one of those songs that make me wish I could play guitar and sing.

Hard Target

Really, is there anything more majestic than Wilfred Brimley on horseback with a bow & arrow? Is there? There is? Oh, ok.

Well anyway, I just watched, or glanced at actually, bits and pieces of Jean Claude Van Damme's movie Hard Target. It was set in and around New Orleans, from what I saw, and they really seemed to play fast and loose with the geography. The opening scene was of a man being hunted by a mish-mash group of incongruously calm and sophisticated-looking sickos and dark-helmeted motorcyclists ("bikers" would be a misnomer) in the French Quarter. Cut to the same man running from same sickos and motorcyclists across the river on the west bank, making his way over the levee, supposedly to reach the safety of his small boat on the river. He is shot down with a crossbow. (IIRC, crossbows were big in the early 90s.) In the next scene, a woman is driving from the west bank (the side where the guy was killed) to the east (the side where the French Quarter is) and the gondola towers left over from the '84 world's fair can clearly be seen. Perhaps the guy eluded his pursuers by crossing over on the cables. It would be quite a feat as there were no gondola cars in sight.

At this point I was absorbed in installing Visual C++ 2005 Express (a free download from MS along with other programming languages) and the Windows Platform SDK so I missed most of the movie. I guess.

When I next looked over my shoulder, there was Wilfred Brimley, not yet on horseback, taking aim with his bow and arrow. He shoots, narrowly missing the lead antagonist, but hitting his intended target: a can of whoop-ass in the form of bottles & jars of highly volatile & flammable liquids that ignite on the impact of the arrow. BOOM! Bad guys aflame. Lead antagonist shows he's a nice guy in an evil sort of way by mercy killing a flambe'd bad guy. The the dynamite goes off and Brimley takes off on horseback after taunting the baddies and attracting a hail of pitifully aimed automatic gunfire and one grenade or rocket or something that hits a convenient shed. The picture above is the best I could find. It does not do justice to the scene, which includes a slow-motion shot of Brimley bouncing on his galloping horse towards the camera as the Convenient Exploding Shed explodes behind him.

Then I returned to my task of configuring VC++ to use the platform SDK. Maybe if I actually get around to learning to program in C I'll blog a bit about that.