Here are two of the more unusual Ramones covers not to appear on the “We’re a Happy Family” compilation.

This first one Tommy brought to my attention:

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…3-D glasses not available in all areas.

From “3-D television expected to come to homes in 2010“:

Sony and Panasonic say they will release home 3-D television systems in 2010; Mitsubishi and JVC are reported to be working on similar products.

“TV finally becomes real” in three dimensions, said Robert Perry, an executive vice president at Panasonic. “You’re in it. It’s the next frontier.”

Perry compared the 3-D transition to the switch from black-and-white to color television and the shift from standard- to high-definition images. See what 3-D TV demos look like »

ESPN is test-recording some sporting events in 3-D, using cameras with two sets of lenses, which would make football players appear to jump out of home television screens during live 3-D broadcasts.

And, although television makers haven’t released specifics, the price of 3-D TV — which requires a new television, broadcasting content and 3-D glasses — is not expected to be substantially higher than some high-definition televisions on the market now.

Still, there are skeptics who say that 3-D is not ready for prime-time home viewing.

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Here’s the original short:

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The next “Meet the…” Team Fortress 2 video was leaked.

Check out my other TF2 blog post for the other videos.

Apparently, the video was accidentally leaked by Valve. They attribute it to “…[failing] to understand what ‘Private’ means on YouTube.” Hah. Nice.

Here’s a link to the HD version.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably already seen a clip or two of Don Hertzfeldt’s works (his most famous being “Rejected”).  He’s an animator who’s won and been nominated for a bunch of awards. He has also released a compilation of his works in a DVD (with extras) entitled “Bitter Films“.

Hertzfeldt has also taken part in “The Animation Show” which is essentially a festival about animation. Co-created with Mike Judge (”Beavis and Butthead”, “Office Space”, and “King of the Hill”), the festival strives to spread short animation films in theatres around North America. From their webpage:

“As animation continues to be plagued as the single most misunderstood film medium, the animated short film is sadly undervalued and underexposed in American cinema, despite widespread appreciation throughout the rest of the world. With luck, popular animated shorts may see limited theatrical play, but most are relegated to the dungeons of the internet, or with luck, DVD.”

After each festival, the shorts are compiled into a DVD; there are three volumes on DVD at the moment, with a fourth one on the way.

I am a big fan of different kinds of animation; my favorite being rotoscoping (”Waking Life“, “Scanner Darkly“). I agree with the mission statement of “The Animation Show” - animation in North America has been horribly misrepresented. I believe it is unfortunately marketed towards kids. Same deal with comics and anime. Perhaps the rise of dark comics (”Sin City“, 300“, “The Spirit“) along with DVD sales will help push animation towards more darker and adult themes. Please, no more of this shit.

Anyways, if you haven’t seen some of Don Hertzfeldt’s works, here’s a list of stuff I found on YouTube. I also found some clips from “The Animation Show“, which are on the bottom. Hertzfeldt cartoons have been posted in chronological order, with the first one made at the top:

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No, seriously this stop-motion animation will get you nauseous from all the dizzy movements so you might want to look away once you hit play. If you do feel nauseated, no worries I got you covered. I now have pills on hand in case the stomach bug wants to bite me one last time before this year is out.
So NineCents is showing off some stop motion animation, eh? Continue reading this post…

Re: A Lego Short

While we’re on the topic of stop-motion animation, I thought I’d share this little bit I made circa 1998 with a crappy webcam.  This is one of the “better” of eight claymation videos I made.  I guess they are kind of inspired by Kenny from South Park and maybe Gumby too.  Bob is a clay secret agent operating in South America who was cursed with eternal bad luck by a Voodoo witch doctor, so he is constantly dying and being cloned in a CIA laboratory so he can complete his missions.  I even had a whole script written out for a full episode, but it never came to fruition.  In this clip, Bob is killed by a mysterious Silly Putty villain:

This project was conceived by Eric and Shannon. They gave me the photos to edit into a movie clip. So here it is. Enjoy!

Music is from “Come on Follow” by Funeral Dress.

Team Fortress 2 is a first-person shooter (FPS) modification based off the Half-Life 2 engine. There are a lot of things that make this game awesome, but for this post I will focus on Valve’s advertisement campaign - their videos.

The first video introduced the Heavy Weapons Guy (or “Heavy” for short). It was originally just a tech demo to show some new technology that was developed for the game: facial animations and speech. Pay attention to his face in the video:

It was released to the public and was highly praised. Valve eventually followed-up with a second video, this time based on another class: the Soldier. As with the style of the game, the video was done with a lighter, humorous tone.

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