The Capitol

The hype and tension has started building as March 23, 2012 draws closer which marks the premiere of The Hunger Games Movie. Guess what I found:

I have an Identification Pass from TheCapitol.pn.  As much as I want to be from another district, this is what I was given. You can also get one using either your Facebook account or Twitter. After being assigned to a District you will be directed to an Facebook community page where you can find other fellow district citizens.

Despite being assigned to District 1, I have to admit the site as well as the ID is pretty awesome. Don't forget to try it out and tell us which district you're from in the comments section.

Anyway, here's how long we still have to wait for the movie:

Let The Hunger Games Begin

Here's the trailer of one of the most awaited movie adaptations since Harry Potter, The Hunger Games:


The Hunger Games is based on the novel written by Suzane Collins. It actually is the first book of a trilogy. Collins placed the series in a post apocalyptic world and isn't the usual love themed young adult book which seems to be the trend of today. Collins was able to tap into emotions and themes such as politics, freedom and even death.

I found the book engaging and a definite must read. Now, let's hope the movie would be a must watch.

Watch Gundam AGE Online!

So guys, it looks like Sunrise decided to upload Mobile Suit Gundam AGE to YouTube. Six episodes so far have been uploaded to Gundam.info's YouTube Channel. Enjoy!




Here's the rest of it:Main PageEpisode 1Episode 2Episode 3Episode 4Episode 5Episode 6
Brought to you by Gundam.Info

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

  For the longest time, I had a prejudice bias that this movie sucked. People that watched it said it wasn't worth it, it cost $137 million to produce but only made $85 million worldwide in box office sales, and it featured neither Cloud nor Squall. No single black mage or Chocobo.

  Soooo, if the movie was so bad, how come I watched it again after 10 years? I just happened to be working on a series of posts on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Doing further research for material, I 

read the article on the Lifestream and saw it linked to the movie and mentions the Gaia Theory. Interested, I read on and eventually re-watched the movie.

Production:

  As mentioned above, the movie had a huge budget. This is very evident in the technology used in the animation. For a movie made in 2001, the photorealistic graphics of the movie still owns made after it to this day, ten years later. 

  Each frame of the movie is 10 megabytes and has twice the resolution of your HDTV. To give you an idea, standard videos play at 24 frames per second. At 10mb x 24fps, four seconds of the movie is one gigabyte. Yeah, I know.

  Designs for characters, environments, technology, vehicles and creatures are top notch. From armor scratches, dust on the ground, hair movement, and even freckles and skin pores. You gotta hand it to them. Keep in mind that this was 10 years ago. 

Plot (avoiding major spoilers, of course):

  The story centers around Dr. Aki Ross and her struggle to save the planet from the mysterious alien terror called Phantoms. Some thirty years prior to the events of the movie, a huge rock known as the Leonid Meteor hit the planet, and with it, came the Phantoms. 

Dr. Aki Ross

  For the past several months, Aki has been having the same dream over and over. And each time the dream repeats, it goes further than the last time and reveals more images. She records these dreams as she believes that these are messages and that something is trying to tell her something. The recordings get longer, but the message behind it remains unknown.

  Aki Ross and her colleague Dr. Sid attempt to understand the nature of the Phantoms in relation to Gaia, the spirit of the Earth in search of a way to eliminate the threat without the use of military might as armed combat may injure Gaia. As irony would have it, the military had built the Zeus Cannon-- an orbiting satellite that houses a powerful weapon with the sole intent of destroying the Leonid Meteor and the Phantoms with it.

Phantoms Attacking

Zeus Cannon

  As the story progresses, Aki finally finishes the dream. The alien race that was the Phantoms' former selves tells her the events that conspired prior to the meteor crash. Their planet was one torn apart by war. This caused their planet to be ripped apart by its own Gaia. As the planet collapsed, a chunk of it eventually became the Leonid, taking with it the alien Gaia and the ghosts of the dead aliens; violent, bio-etheric manifestations that can pass through solid objects and kill living organisms on contact.

  The military eventually succeeds at firing the cannon at the meteor only to agitate the alien Gaia to appear. Further shots only agitated it and caused to expand and grow more violent. Some spoiler moments later, Aki manages to stop it by awakening Earth's Gaia to protect itself. Just like the Lifestream did in FFVII.

Gaia being all Lifestream-y

The Verdict:

  Watch the movie with an open mind and don't expect Cloud or Squall to appear. The story is very well composed, but very poorly told. Aki remains interesting and engaging throughout the movie, but the other characters suffered. Photorealistic 3d and visual effects are way ahead of its time. Nobuo Uematsu's work was nowhere to be heard and thus the movie lacks awesome music. If you're a Sci-Fi fan and a Final Fantasy fan, watch it. If you're a Final Fantasy VII-only fan, you may not be able to appreciate it as much. Better wait for my Advent Children Complete review which should be out soon.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits within is property of Square Pictures and Columbia Pictures.

All images are screencaps from the movie.

Exploring Lagendia: Dragon Nest SEA Review

Over the long weekend, Arckham and I decided to try out Dragon Nest aka DN. It's an MMORPG game, developed by EYEDENTITY and published by Shanda Games. We are both officially hooked and we wanted to give you guys a preview of our DN experience so far.



Arckham having more time to play is already level 22 and I happy to announce that I've reached level 15 as of this weekend [Yes, work and everything else in between.] I think we're still pretty much on a pretty fast pace seeing that this game's current level cap is only at 32. We currently are on one of the Southeast Asia Servers, namely Springwood. The three others are:  Westwood, Holywood, and Greenwood .

Xylith's Character

This games gives you four classes: Warrior, Cleric, Archer and Sorceress. Each class has two paths or job changes which you achieve once you complete the job quest at Level 15. Something we like is once you've chosen you next job you're given a chance to try out the different skills to kind of have a feel of how you'll build up your character. Then you are given a ticket to reset your Skill Points and finalize you skill tree. One thing I wasn't too happy about was that the classes are gender locked. What that means is that all Warriors and Clerics are male while all Archers and Sorceresses are female. Since I am are used to playing my own gender as my main character, I feel a bit boxed in.

Xylith Showing Off Some Moves

The Skill Points are earned as you move up. What we like about the DN skill tree is that if you right click the particular skill, a tiny window pops out and runs a short clip on what the skill would look like which helps with the decision making process. Stat Growth is not character specific like in Ragnarok. Character Stat Growth is directly proportional to your level, you can only augment you stats with in game gear and the titles or achievements you get to complete.



The controls is something that I needed to get used to since it heavily relies on WASD for movement and the mouse for direction. What I appreciate about this game is that the interface is not hard to understand, you have everything you need to see on screen and at the same time there's not a lot of clicking since everything is keyboard dependent. Despite it being a keyboard dependent game, it's actually very keyboard friendly. For example, if you need to run around for a long time you don't have to constantly hit W, you can hit E and it's on auto run. Another is that if you need to go to a particular place on the map, all you have to do is to pull the map up and right click where you want to go and the character makes its way there similar to Pet Forest. Since, I play on my laptop these functions help prevent me from wearing down my keyboard.

 

Arckham's Character

Gameplay is dungeon based and very similar to Grand Chase. The story line is intricate and you really learn a lot about Lagendia's (the fictional world of this game)  history. I appreciate the dungeon based game play since it helps lessen the lag for the different players which has always been a given in MMORPGs. It also caters to those that want to play solo and those that constantly want to party.

Arckham Showing Off Some Moves

Graphics is something I am very picky about but I am glad to say that DN does deliver. It may not be the best out there in terms of graphics but it isn't a sore eye either. The skill sprites are smooth and the movement runs smoothly as well. The character designs despite being Chibi don't give you the feel of controlling a child on screen. They were able to put in a bit of maturity into the characters that would also not alienate children.


What we like about this game is that it seemed to learn and take the best functions from all the other MMOPRGs out there and blended in to a nice smooth system. Whether you're a casual gamer or a hard core one, this game caters to both with the different dungeon difficulties and in game achievements. Safe to say that we both are enjoying this game very much and we hope to see you guys around Lagendia.

Video Copilot's Lightsaber preset

 Lightsaber video! XD

 So upon picking up yet another geeky hobby of visual effects and video editing, lightsabers are definitely something I wanted to do. The first one I did was just MovieMaker and Photoshop. Eventually I picked up AfterEffects and started with presets. Surprisingly, it's a lot simpler to do than you would think.

 Check out Video Copilot to learn how to do the lightsaber effect. 'Later.

Budjette's Trese

Arckham and I have been following Trese. This comic-slash-graphic novel features a female underworld detective, Alexandra Trese, as she solves various mysteries involving the different mythical creatures of Philippine Lore expertly told by Budjette Tan.

Above are the covers of Trese 1, 2 and 3 whose art is by Kajo Baldisimo. The technique in which he conveys the characters are quite engaging. Moreover the style that he incorporates is both modern with a hint of the traditional which I think is needed when you're dealing with legends and lore.

I am very picky when it comes to story telling and art when I choose graphic novel to read and Trese scores high on both. Characters are very well rounded and the stories are definitely uniquely told. Budjette does a great job of mixing in the modern world with that of tradition. His description of how the mythical creatures have adapted to the real world would leave you wondering just a bit as you pas sby the different places he describes in the City of Manila.

You can read more about Trese and developments at tresekomix.blogspot.com.


The great news is that after quite a long wait Trese 4: Last Seen After Midnight is coming out this October 8 at the Robinson's Galleria NBS Bestsellers. So you know, where we'll be on the 8th, we hope to see you guys then.

For those that need a little refresher or insight on Philippine Lore. Here's a funny tutorial that should get you started:

Top 25 Nineties Anime

A recent post in Sankaku Complex (NSFW  warning) tallied user votes on the top twenty-five anime series of good ol' 1990's. Not surprisingly, NGE topped it. Here's the rest of the list.

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion

2. Card Captor Sakura

3. Sailor Moon

4. Cowboy Bebop

5. Yu-Gi-Oh

6. Rurouni Kenshin

7. Gundam Wing

8. Slam Dunk

9. Revolutionary Girl Utena

10. DoReMi

Arck's Finger Gun

I was randomly browsing YouTube this morning as I was up all night having trouble sleeping (which explains the wasak look on my face). I saw this tutorial on how to add muzzle flashes to video clips and decided to make one myself. Laziness and lack of sleep prevented me from going up three floors to get my pellet gun so I did it with my finger! I did this in about 15 minutes.

Special thanks to 22CaliburArmadillo of YouTube.


*EDIT*

Here's another! Light saber finger!

This one took about an hour and a half to do. Daaaaymn XD
Many, many thanks to Freddie Wong of YouTube.

Bankee Nationals Gundam Model Kit Contest 2011 @SM Megamall

Bankee, the Philippines' official distributor for Bandai/Gundam products, is holding one of the most anticipated Gunpla events of the year, the Gundam Model Kit Contest 2011.

Some of the entries on display.

In celebration of Gundam 00 and SD Gundam Brave Battle Warriors (both currently showing on Cartoon Network), this year's theme is based on the two said titles. Gunpla fans of all ages swarmed SM Megamall from July 15-17 to sumbit, view and photograph the entries.

Here is MechaPinoy's coverage of the event: GALLERY

Also, a week prior, MP hosted a support event for the competition, setting up the display cases and putting up members' works too fill them prior to submission of entries.

MP veteran Jake de Guzman talking about Gunpla.

More pictures HERE.

Judging of the entries will be on July 30 in Megamall and awarding will be on the 31st. See you there!

Grand Chase Nendoroid Amy

Here's my entry for Grand Chase PH's "Back to School" fan art contest.

Amy, the dancer - modified from a Hatsune Miku Nendoroid.

Here's the WIP.

Moar pics! Enjoy!












Comments always welcome~

On Stranger Tides

The pirates are back with another sequel: The Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides. Arckham and I had the pleasure of catching it the day it was released in the Philippines.

So let's look at this movie in three parts: Characters, Setting and Plot.

Characters: I do presume Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) would no longer need any introduction. Our dear captain is back as Savvy as ever. Together with him in this movie is Penelope Cruz who plays Angelica, one of the people he had "stirrings" [apparently, according to Jack it means feelings] for. Angelica is the new female focal of the movie. Sad to say though that she fades into the background almost immediately and you rarely feel her presence throughout the movie. Yes, she made me miss Keira Knightly. The Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) and Sparrow moments are still there which is a comfort to know. Baddy of the movie would be Blackbeard played by Ian McShane who does a pretty decent job at that.

Setting: As usual with this series, the setting is amazing. The islands, the props and the costume are still top of the line. The English wigs and the Spanish Armada costumes were superb. The mermaid CG was definitely commendable. The tails and transformations were seamless. Good job on this one.

Plot: Over all, it was predictable, nearly not as funny as the previous movies in this series and the Angelica-Blackbeard relationship was really weak.

The verdict is watch it but at the comfort of your own home when you have the time. There is no need to rush or save up for this one.

Thor (2011)

Thor. Alongside Captain America, X-Men First Class and Green Lantern, this is the comic book movie I most waited for to watch this year. Good thing it came out first. 

I will not spoil the plot for those who have not seen it yet. I'll just share my thoughts on the film.

Just to give Thor fans an idea about the movie (as well as the other Marvel Studios movies), Marvel decided to create a new Universe for the movie line. Like the Transformers movies, the Marvel "Movie Universe" is mostly a clash of other existing Marvel Universes. Mainly Earth-616 and Ultimate. Such indications are that Thor does not turn into Dr. Donald Blake, Nick Fury is Sam Jackson and Captain America uses a gun.

In the case of Thor, as mentioned above, Donald Blake is not Thor's alter ego. He's just perpetually Thor, but stripped of his powers (and his hammer) so that he could learn humility as decreed by his father Odin. An indication of Ultimate, but is obviously not Ultimate Thor. So this is an in-between.

Overall visual appeal of the movie is awesome. Special effects, costumes, fight scenes and sets. Not enough lightning shooting if you ask me, but it was still awesome. The plot was pretty much predictable if you've read

Thor: Ages of Thunder and what happened between Siege and Civil War. Scriptwriting is great. A couple of jokes here and there, combat speeches, and an alarming amount of Facebook references. Lastly, casting. Casting is nearly perfect. Get someone fatter for Volstagg and you have the perfect cast.

My verdict: watch it. Even people not familiar with the comic book story would love it.

Live with The Script

After the Arkham and I went to Komikon, I headed out to meet my friends to see The Script: Live in Manila.

We got seats at the Upper Box B. [Rather far indeed.] Despite our distance from the stage. I loved every minute of it. The energy from the crowd and the stage was amazing. Here are some shots I took:

Safe to say that next year I'm aiming for a Patron seat!

For those of you that are wondering, The Script is an Irish pop rock band. They have 2 albums out: The Script (2008) and Science & Faith (2010). I mainly like this band for the narrative lyrics. Despite, at times, the depressing message of the song, the beat makes it light and still keeps you on the positive note. Their music mainly focuses on love on a down to earth level, which is rarely achieved by band these days. [IMHO]

Here's Science & Faith:

Summer Komikon 2011

Summer Komikon! Yay!





Last Friday, 16th of January, me and Xy went to Komikon's summer event. Aside from the blazing weather outside, it was awesome. We arrived just as the Hero sausage eating contest started. Free lunch! I was standing right next to Danny Acuna (creator of Majarlica) who just happened to be my tito.

Getting off of the stage after having some nice Hungarian sausages, the Easter eggs are displayed.

Xy's primary mission objective: Hunt down Budjette Tan XD