This is an animated short up for an Oscar this year that’s done almost entirely with Corporate logos, with a bit of a weird Pulp Fiction-type flair.

Check it out.

Watch this.

It’s from the animated film Allegro Non Troppo by Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto.

One could call Allegro a parody of Disney’s Fantasia at first glance, but I see it more as another attempt at doing what Fantasia attempted to do; create beautiful animated works to go along with classical pieces of music.

This section from Allegro is based off the piece Valse Triste (Sad Waltz) from the play Kuolema.

(Just like Fantasia, there are live-action interludes, but I’d argue that Allegro’s interludes are more comedic on purpose, as it seeks to poke fun at Fantasia).

So I was browsing one of my favorite sites, ffffound, when I came across this logo. Imagine my surprise at seeing this when I designed a logo almost identical to this in late 2008 for Big Spaceship.

Federal Bureau of Illustration’s Logo…

more like...Federal Bureau of Imitation...am I right? I mean am I right?

And…the logo I created for our internal team while @ bigspaceship :

Literally, Badass.

At first I thought to myself, “Boy, my logo must not have been very original.” Then I remembered that Big Spaceship was featured in a Harvard Review Case Study in Early 2009, which is why I had to make the logo in the first place (aka, this image was actually published). I do realize that it’s not very likely that he saw my logo in that huge, multi-page Harvard Case Study…but come on…its HARVARD we’re talking about. I would imagine that shit GOT AROUND.

AT THIS POINT,  I’m a little bit annoyed…so I do some minor investigation.

FIRSTLY,  I realized that this guy has a copyright on his website for 2009….

THEN I realized that I uploaded this jpg to my personal server in 2008…and it can still be seen to this day, in a couple different stages of design, might I add.

THEN….naturally, I realized that I win.

(of course, I’m able to accept the fact that my idea isn’t that original and it could all be a coincidence. And of course, I am also able to accept the fact that my version is much more badass either way.)

The fact of the matter is, he may have designed a logo with a completely different style and tone, but when it comes down to it, he has used almost every single element of my logo in the exact same way. Come on now. I am all for appropriating ideas and being inspired by things you see on the internet…but…this is a little too similar to me.

Let it be known that I am aware that I might be tooting my own horn here….and that the odds of him seeing my design are pretty minor, but it still strikes me as being a bit interesting. I also realize that when you type in ‘US eagle’ in google, one of the first images that shows up is the US mint logo which appears on the quarter (which is where I got my idea in the first place).

Is this a result of the collective unconscious, or the sweet, sweet, nipple of the internet being sucked on by every man, woman and child in existence?

Oh internet…

It fits!

So, several years back I substituted my Character Modeling and Animation course at RIT with an independent study in character modeling and animation. My task was to create and animate the characters Josie True and iCat from a collaborative educational project.

Well, it took a while, but for the last 6 months or so I’ve finally taken the time to finish this project up so I can officially be a graduate of the Game Design and Development program at RIT.

Here is a video of my final work. The characters are being rendered in real time in an interactive environment in Luster.

I am not a character modeler nor animator. I have worked in Maya before and done some shotty rigs and animations in the past, but this was a huge learning experience for me. Not everything came out the way I wanted, but I am thrilled to have created what you see here. I am no Kyle, just a noob, but I am a proud noob.

Oh, and also, a little on the two characters:

iCat was rigged and animated in a fully forward kinematic system, which gave me a lot of control but made a lot of animating very tedious and difficult to get appropriate results (for example, making sure the feet stay on the ground)

Josie was animated in a fully IK system, which gave me a lot of nice tools for keeping feet on the ground, bones in place and extra realistic motion from her movements. It was also, however, very complicated to operate with pinning and pull and all that stuff, so making a wrong move would lead to a lot of frustration and other terrible things. Obviously very powerful, but something that I am sure takes practice and experience to master.

I am seriously puzzled by this video. The amount of work that went into this is astounding. Whoever created this basically pulled off every visual effect trick that has created Avatar to be such a stunning success. For example, painstakingly real facial animation that had to be mo-capped in some way as well as a pretty damn good job of composting to polish it off. Who made this!? Juice it.

OFFICIAL TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB! SEASON CINCO PROMO! “CINCO” from Tim and Eric on Vimeo.

AT&T has obviously been wounded by Verizon’s “Map” commercials.  They’ve been firing back with some speed claims that I’m sure most people didn’t take seriously.

But now there’s some evidence to back up the claim.  PCWorld has released it’s second round of speed test data taken between December 2009 and January 2010 in 13 cities, and the title of the story sums it up: “AT&T Roars Back in PCWorld’s Second 3G Wireless Performance Test.”

They also tested network/smartphone pairs, and AT&T/iPhone was the best performer.  PCWorld had this to say about the Verizon/Droid pair:

Our smartphone-based tests revealed some significant performance limitations of the Verizon network when we connected to it with a Motorola Droid. [...]

Overall, the Droid delivered an average upload speed of just 116 kbps, the lowest average of any carrier/phone combo in our smartphone tests. And in numerous tests using the Droid, we recorded upload speeds of less than 75 kbps–painfully slow if you’re trying to send data of any size up through the network.

We also had trouble establishing a reliable connection between the Verizon network and the Droid during our tests. Verizon delivered an uninterrupted signal at reasonable speed in only 76 percent of our tests–far below the success rates of the 90+ percent that the other three carriers achieved.

Download speeds to the Droid, on the other hand, were quite good, at an average of 1075 kbps; that’s not far from the upper end of the speed range that Verizon promised its customers, and ranks as the second-highest average download speed in our smartphone-based tests–behind only AT&T.

Now I may be an Apple fanboy, but I am definitely not an AT&T fanboy.  Their regular phone service has always been lackluster for me (just try calling me in my kitchen; I dare you), but this bit of news is kind of refreshing to see.

…every…single….day.

Take it away, Morrissey.

In a previous rant after the Massachusetts special election, I ranted about Scott Brown and how any vote for a Republican at this point is a vote for partisanship and evil etc. etc. To be vein and quote myself:

He is a senator, and is going to disappear to Washington and represent his constituents by voting with his party on every issue.

I have been anxiously awaiting his term so that I could flaunt how right I was. Well, I am here to say that, at least so far in this one instance, Scott Brown has acted in a respectable way by voting with what he feels is right and not just with his party. Nate Silver covers this well in his post, where he defends Brown as an “authentically moderate Republican.”

I still will likely not support Brown on several issues of policy. I am very happy, however, to see someone vote not with their party but with what they feel is right for their state and, hopefully, the country. With the majority of Republicans clearly “Not Embarrassed”, as the Rachel Maddow title says, it is refreshing to see a senator do their job, even if they are not in my party.

A truly amazing individual. A man in pursuit of two dreams: to graduate from Oxford to eventually be a neurosurgeon and be a first round draft pick in the NFL draft. Watch this video from Outside the Lines on ESPN.

For more on Rolle, check out the full article, found here.

You guys have to check this out. If you are curious why that little guy looks the way he does, its because he is a progeria survivor.