syntheticgerbil

I can probably handle the beer, but I don't know about the monitor part. I don't know anything about this, I'm about to research what happened to you, but it sounds awful! EDIT: So do you have epilepsy?

I actually have never seen it in 3D, even when I saw it in the theatre. I have it in home video form and it came with the glasses, but it makes everything blue and red and it just looks awful on a home LCD TV. I heard it was different 3D type than what was used for the movie screens, but I feel like I'm not missing much either way by watching the flat version.

Sounds good, I love The Simpsons before Season 8 or 9! I'll see if I can rent it or something, And Fantastic Mr. Fox is great too! It even has that Jarvis Cocker cameo. I was hoping both Mr. Fox and Coraline would start a new trend in stop motion films, so maybe something will come of that in a few years.

I actually feel like their glory days sort of ended after Monsters Inc. I liked pretty much everything up until then. Since then, while I like The Iron Giant and Brad Bird to an extent, there's been way too much for me to dislike about the movies in terms of story and where they were going with it. Also it's annoying to see them retread the same animation techniques and principles each movie. I know there's the CalArts/Disney set everyone follows, but I would love to see them get mixed up. Ratatouille had an amazing look though, I don't think their humans have ever looked as good as in that movie. Wall-E was major progress, I agree. When the humans started coming in and the tired hackneyed jokes and jerky shift in tone of the second half of the movie happened, I feel like they lost what they were building up to, like they were too unsure of the initial concept presented. I guess it would have been nuts to do a full near silent film with robots, but hardly any critic ever gives Pixar bad reviews, so why not, I think? Such great atmosphere and story was built up and they could have done all of the fate of the human stuff without knocking me over the head with it in the end. I guess I'm hoping they would take that sort of experimentation further, but I get the feeling they already had a hard time getting behind Wall-E, hence the promos first giving their creds so that maybe you wouldn't walk away? Add that to Lassarter promoting the 3D Tinkerbell movies with the ol' smug grin plus the Disney buyout and Toy Story 3, my hunch is the spark is gone. I just think it's someone else's turn to try stuff with 3D in feature length form, Disney already has unbound ubiquity anyway. I want more stuff like this in long form: http://vimeo.com/2251254/ http://vimeo.com/12184342/ http://vimeo.com/9882509/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cphlttuT2g/ I really need to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I really like the look of a lot of what I've seen actually. The characters are simple and neat, and weirdly remind me of the people in Coraline. I don't have any affinity with the book it's based on, so I probably wouldn't be upset about that. I guess what's keeping me from seeing it is just I figure the story and characters are just going to suck. Either way, that's not really an excuse, so maybe I should get on it...

I had a penis sprain and I couldn't play Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball for a month! In all seriousness, I haven't ever had a problem besides the ocassional blister on my thumb or the the time I broke my left arm long ago.

Augh no! I get really queasy thinking about this stuff for whatever reason, but I'm glad you're alright, monkeyarmada. I can only imagine the amount of panic that must have started.

Well, I guess bloated was the wrong term, I really wasn't trying to say anyone is getting paid too much, because that seems hardly the case from many of the horror stories I've heard. I meant taking a more modest pay cut from what you usually get paid to do something you really believe in. I don't want to say my salary, but I make way more than a lot of my friends drawing and animating, and while I'm not asking for some pay cut, I feel sort of like I get paid incongruously for work that is not really special and I don't necessarily like making half the time. I would gladly get paid almost half of what I make just to work full time on something I really care about with individuals I respect. Maybe like Don Bluth and his friends spending their time after work on Disney making a short that ultimately formed the studio? I'm not really a Don Bluth fan at all though, and they didn't have an investor outside of themselves. I just hope for more startups like that in the near future.

Happy day-late party tidings, Dan!

The way I figure is that the salaries for the animators/artists doesn't have to be so bloated. So let's say a team of "not-so-well-paid" guys who are good. Students of multiple schools around the world have been doing amazing things recently for thesis and final shorts before graduating, as well other animators posting junk they did on Vimeo that looks super professional on their own time, alone or with a group. Also, every year multiple feature length ugly vanity CG films get made by small companies with some delusional leader with stars in his eyes and money in his pocket to burn (Delgo being the major "break-out" of these types). I figure it's only a matter of time before one of these delusional presidents gets his act together and hires the right sort of people and invests his money wisely so that the movie doesn't end up as this utter CG mess that sells for $4 on DVD-R in the bin at the nearest giant grocery chain. Somewhere the latter must meet with the former for a harmonious collaboration in the middle, I imagine. I mean, after seeing the fifth documentary with the dudes in Hawaiian shirts driving around on scooters and jumping on trampolines in their studio workspace claiming how amazing their job is, I'm more than ready for someone else to step up in this country and do something more interesting. Also since I spent some time bashing the awful Up earlier in the thread and upset a few, I should say I did really enjoy the first half of Wall-E. I want more like that. The movie got increasingly generic and did fall apart near the end, but the idea and atmosphere was so much better than those stupid promos led me to believe (the Brazil rip off that two other CG films were doing at the time and the "we need a robot" one). I'm glad Pixar at least hasn't started subsequent trailers reminding you of every movie they made and what geniuses ahead of their time they were/are before introducing the movie. Yech. Also for the record, I used to be a Toy Story fan boy in my younger years, owning a shitload of toys and even buying at least three copies of that stupid comic book that just uses screens from the film with dialogue overlapped. I still like the first Toy Story a lot and I bet I could beat that video game without using one continue possibly.

Although I'm really not a fan of Pixar and I find them growing more stale and boring with every passing year, I'll agree with this. I can't think of any CG film US or International that is anywhere as solid as your average Pixar film. Too bad while they once were good at pushing the envelope, they've halted and even have gone backwards. But I don't expect them to do much in the way of experimentation or push new styles or creators anymore after the Disney buyout. I think the time is ripe for a new up and coming company to wow the pants off everyone. Certainly the technology is cheap enough now that a small team that knows what they are doing can look better than the average farting animal 3D movie.

BOSTON LOW! YOU'RE WINNER!

Happy birthday to Thrik! I hope you have a mother thrikking good birthday!

I think the Dig got less and less interesting as a story as the game went on. I remember the ending being really shoddy and sappy, as if it were written by Spielberg himself. I was much more interested in the barren wasteland and mystery, as well as your threatening crewmate, until everything was revealed.

Ah you're right, I completely forgot. I've only beat it twice and I think it's been almost a decade since then. I always liked the music and backgrounds though. Not so sure about the story or puzzle designs.

But Sam was always huge in comics. That should always be the foremost reference. Regular dog proportions?! Blasphemy!

Wait, what? There was no digging at all from what I remember! Didn't the original cover have shovels that were later taken out before release? EDIT: I realize I might be ruining a possible Dig joke.

The only thing I still find weird about this news is if Nicolas Choukroun right, then Ancel might not be working on Beyond Good and Evil 2 anymore if it is still in production like Ubisoft says.

What are these digital levels? Are they only available on certain versions? I ask because I think I may finally get around to buying this game.

Ah, that's good to know Murdoc, because the video wasn't really shaping up to appear as if were even in the same universe, so it puts to rest some of our concerns earlier in the thread, which now seems really silly that you mention it's a target render that may have even been done by another company. Looking back, SignorSuperDouche appears to have hit the nail on the head though. I'm not sure if there was any bit of news that said what company may have leaked it or who it may have came from, but I suppose it's not important anymore. Thanks for the help on this stuff, by the way, Murdoc. I hold the Ancel design games kind of close since I feel very in tune with the feel and art direction of of most of them. The first two Rayman games were very responsible for me taking the time to branch out of boring old adventure games, perhaps Beyond Good and Evil has also done so to an extent as well. Beyond Good and Evil is one of the few games where I really care what happens next, knowing it was set up more to be a series of games. I definitely would like to explore more places in that universe.

I don't know for sure. That rumor came from the Surfer Girl blog years ago. It sort of makes sense because a lot of the early screens show a different Rayman game was supposed to have come about. There also a lot of business hinted at Rayman needing to save his girlfriend (?) from the Rabbids. In the end,Ancel is only credited on character design for the first Rabbids game, for the Rabbids, and has not worked on any Rayman game since then. Almost all of the early screens are here: http://rayman4.wantedrayman.com/screenshots.html It was widely reported it was changed with the Wii Dev kit, but I guess no one really spoke about Ancel disappearing as director. Another testament to the game drastically changing directions from a platformer to a party game is the released Game Boy Advance version of RRR. It's a game that comes feeling strangely half done but seems to have a lot of the early elements that were shown in the original Rabbids screens in tact. My guess is that the team working on the Gameboy port got an early start since they were the same people who created the awesome Rayman 3 Gameboy port and maybe had a lot of things already ready to go. I'm not sure if any direction change with the major console had anything to do with the portable version's shoddy release, but there's a lot of parts in the in game map that never open up or are used. I hope so, but I really hope Michel Ancel is involved as well. I don't know if any of this news or what you are saying means the project is in other hands now or in hold, but again it's not sounding good. On the up side, a more adventure type Rayman might be in store. The whole gameplay leak was really bizarre as well, and I'm still not sure what the point of that was. It seemed like a gamplay test, but I also think Ubisoft denied both the responsibility for the leak and that it was Beyond Good and Evil related at all at the same time, right? I've forgotten, it's been too long.

I remember Shivers and Lighthouse being both boring and ugly Myst clones and that Zool was a really hard to win tie-in to Chupa Chips candy. Out of those three, none caught my interest.

Everyone's already completely named everything I really love, so I guess all I can add at this point is the music for the Kyrandia series. The tracks for the second and third games are somewhat iffy sometimes, but the first one is uniformly great. Two favorites: (skip to like 3 minutes for the credits theme) I can't think of anything else at the moment.

Here's a few updates for anyone who is interested: http://scrawlfx.com/2010/05/rumor-beyond-good-sequel-possibly-cancelled So that's pretty unhelpful, but it would seem he's not gone because of Murdoc's statements and this other bit of information that was posted on Facebook as a response to the rumor on the Ancel fanpage by Nicolas Choukroun: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Michel-Ancel/45707703446?ref=ts So Nicolas Choukroun goes way back with Michel Ancel, both teaming up to create some of their very early games. I would guess he's a source of information. It's just strange that now it is being claimed that he is working on a new proper Rayman sequel instead of continuing work on Beyond Good and Evil 2... perhaps he is mistaken? I find it odd with the leaked footage so far as well as the teaser trailer that Ancel would switch gears back to Rayman, especially after the rumor that Ubisoft heavy handedly changed the direction on Rayman 4 (now Raving Rabbids) and made him furious. Nicolas' reply to the "WAT?!" questions afterwards were that he simply has no further comments.

Maybe this isn't true, but I figure without Pick n Pile, Rayman 1 and 2, and Tonic Trouble in the 90s, Ubisoft would be no where today. They all are sort of distinctly his stylings and are the games I knew Ubisoft for growing up. I don't know if it was the same for everyone else. I remember in 2004 everyone was worried about EA aggressively taking Ubisoft over, as if they were the little guys that needed saving. I'm probably wrong because I don't have any inside information or real knowledge of the company, but it seems they decided to become a different company at the turn of the century either way. Anyway, is the rumor of him quitting pretty much false then, Murdoc? If you can confirm or not?

You should have dinner with Michel Ancel and then PM me all the secrets! I won't tell!