“Although 2006 is beginning to wind down, we here at IGN Comics are just getting started. With the end of the year approaching, it’s always nice to reflect on what has come in the past 12 months. With the December solicits hitting earlier in the week, we thought it would be appropriate to pick out some fantastic art. We separated Marvel and DC to avoid fanboy tendencies, and tried to pick out the 50 best pieces of cover art that we could. Trust us, it was no easy task.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2006 in Star Trek
A new Star Trek online fan film stars Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig reprising their roles as “Uhura” and “Chekov” and takes place on “Enterprise B”. The movie’s Web site is startrekofgodsandmen.com, and looks quite impressive when you keep in mind that it’s done as a labor of love and with no budget.
“In a move that could provide a crucial boost to our robotic friends struggling up the near side of the Uncanny Valley, major cosmetics manufacturer Kao Corporation and a Keio University research team led by robotics professor Takashi Maeno have developed an artificial skin that feels just like human skin.
Skin, the largest organ of the human body, consists of a soft layer of tissue (dermis) covered by a tougher protective layer (epidermis). The artificial skin developed by Kao and Keio mimics the feel of human skin with a 1-cm thick “dermis” of elastic silicone covered by a 0.2-mm thick “epidermis” of firm urethane. Countless tiny hexagonal indentations etched into the urethane epidermis provide it with a very realistic texture.”
…what cool to me about this isn’t so much the idea of robots that look like people, but that this invention might be put to good use on artificial limb technology.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 23, 2006 in Videogames
This is the sad (or silly) tale of a reporter going “undercover” to do an expose on the virtual sex trade business, so I guess that would make this “virtual journalism”:
“Should I wear the black heels with the red stockings or the white heels with the pink lingerie? This is the type of question that plagued me in my “Second Life” as a working girl. A few weeks ago, I created a female avatar to research the booming sex industry inside this virtual world. I called her Darlene Sin. Why leave anything to the imagination, right?”
…so if the reporter (Derrick) was playing a girl online does that also make him a virtual cross dresser?
“Kurt Cobain turned down a small part in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, according to the late rocker’s wife Courtney Love. The Nirvana frontman was lined up to appear alongside Love in the 1994 movie. Cobain would have starred as a drug dealer, while Love would have played his heavily pierced girlfriend. The roles were eventually taken by Eric Stoltz and Rosanna Arquette. Love says, “If Kurt had survived we’d be taking private jets by now. He’d have loved that”.”
…it is sad to me to think that Cobain has been dead now for over 12 years. It would have been nice to see what ever creative projects he would have gotten into.
“The Cassini spacecraft has identified a faint, previously unknown ring circling the giant planet Saturn. It appears to be composed of material blasted off the surface of two saturnian moons by meteoroid impacts. The moons Janus and Epimetheus may be too small to hold on to dust kicked out by these impacts, so it escapes into space, spreading out into a ring. The tenuous, wispy ring coincides with the orbits of these two moons, mission scientists noted.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 21, 2006 in Comic Books
The new trailer is out for the movie 300 based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel which is harkens back to the ancient Greek Spartans. The plot is centered on the famous battle of Thermopylae, where the king of Sparta led his army against the advancing Persians.
“Perhaps not entirely grasping the concept of escapism, Bandai, creator of the hugely successful Tamagotchi, is set to release Ant’s Life Studio in November – a virtual ant farm that requires its ‘owner’ to build nests, feed the queen and avoid getting eaten by hungry spiders.”
“MangaNEXT is a fan-run manga convention that will take place on October 6-8, 2006 at the Crowne Plaza Meadowlands in Secaucus, NJ. Anime conventions have been existence for many years, and manga has had a large presence at these events, but there has yet to be a convention dedicated to manga. MangaNEXT aims to correct that. With the manga market growing in leaps and bounds and exceeding the pace of the anime market, it’s manga’s time to shine.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 20, 2006 in Dr. Who
The new producers of the show are shying away from episodes that take place on alien planets due to budget concerns. They just don’t get the true spirit of the show! What makes Dr, Who special is that the special effects are suppose to look low budget, and the quality of the acting and writing is what makes it all work:
“Budget constraints mean the new series of Doctor Who is largely earthbound, says writer Russell T Davies. In the most recent series of Doctor Who, only two programmes were set on other worlds. “People will say, ‘Why doesn’t he visit alien planets more often?'” he said. “But that’s because they are expensive. They’re hugely expensive.” Davies also told Doctor Who magazine that these episodes gained the lowest viewing figures of the series.”
“POWER, precision — and don’t forget speed,” says the young martial arts whiz Chen Zhen, played by Jet Li, to a bunch of eager students in “Fist of Legend” (1994), and you know this very serious-looking guy isn’t just talking the talk. As Mr. Li demonstrates in the movie (and had, at that point, been proving to Asian film audiences for more than a decade), he can walk the walk, and kick the kick too. And since power, precision and the kind of speed that doesn’t sacrifice either of the first two qualities are not currently in long supply on the world’s screens — even in action movies, where you’d think they were pretty much required — it’s fairly alarming news that Mr. Li is calling his new picture, “Fearless” (set to open Friday), the “conclusion to my life as a martial arts star.”
No it’s not the “real” Star Wars, but that’s what makes it so much fun. And looking at the the trailer on the promotional website, the production values don’t look half bad!
“The original Turkish Star Wars is absolutely legendary in cult film circles and I’m still a little shocked that they’ve gone and made a sequel to it after all these years, but lo! There’s a new trailer and this one includes actual footage. Alas, it isn’t Turkish Empire Strikes Back – the title actually translates to The Son of the Man who Saved the World – but it certainly looks camp enough for a troop or two of Boy Scouts …”
“Hundreds of would-be hobbits have flocked to London’s West End theatre district to audition for parts in the musical stage version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”. Candidates had to be less than five feet seven inches tall, and were each required to be able to sing two songs suitable for the stage production of the three-volume tale, which became a worldwide movie blockbuster.”
“The other day I got an e-mail from Carson Van Osten, a famous Disney artist who did many Disney Comic Books and created the famous “Comic Strip Artist’s Kit”. It was created to help beginning comic artists deal with perspective problems and other drawing difficulties. I scanned my old xeroxes a while ago. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever seen about practical staging and drawing for storyboards or comic books.”
Archibald is a giant squid made out of lycra and stuffed with polyester filling. He stands 15 feet tall, has black eyes, a hidden pocket, and is red in color:
Captain N: The Game Master is an American animated television series that aired from 1989 to 1993. In the U.S., the show aired as part of the Saturday morning cartoon lineup on NBC. The show incorporated elements from many of the most popular Nintendo games of the time. The show was cancelled along with several other cartoons once NBC started changing its format to make more time for news programs. Criticism from government and watchdog groups that NBC’s Saturday morning lineup consisted mostly of thinly veiled commercials aimed at children also may have played a role.
“A Russian-built rocket carrying the world’s first female space tourist lifted off Monday in Kazakhstan on a flight to the international space station. Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, was accompanied by a U.S.-Russian crew on the Soyuz TMA-9 capsule. Ansari is aiming to realize a life-long dream. As the fourth space tourist, the Iranian-born American also becomes the first woman to pay her way into space, and the first person of Iranian descent to get there.”
