This is pretty cool because what BATMAN produces is a lot like what Batman uses in the comics.
Check out Dayton Daily Noose, BATMAN labs makes gear that helps warfighters
Showing posts with label Batman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Batman. Show all posts
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Wright Patterson Air Force Base, outside historic Dayton, OH, will show off it's new Cray "Raptor" system Friday. Cray Computer is probably best known for supplying Batman with his Batcave computer system.
The liquid cooled Raptor with petascale technologies checks in with virtually 89,805 gigabytes of memory and can scale to over 1,000,000 cores using AMD multi-core processors. The lucky bastards intend to use this Linux box for weapon systems design, modeling and simulation studies.
For more info on this beast click here.
Noose Son story here.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Batman by The Jam
Trumpeter and composer Neal Heft died at the age of 85. Hefti wrote numerous film scores and played with Woody Herman and worked with Count Basie but boomers probably know him best for his theme to the TV show, Batman.
It was, Hefti later said, the hardest piece of music he ever wrote.
LA Times story here.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Comic Book movies piss me off.
This article in a local blog got me going on this. First of all, Elbowroom's assessment of the Cinti comic book scene seems pretty good. There were the sleazy old stores here 20 - 30 years ago with gross clerks and the ancient porno in the back room, but they are all gone now (I think).
I have not been reading comics much for almost 10 years now, since my eyesight started to tank, and a lot can happen in the comic book industry in 10 years.....
In my prime, I was reading about 10 - 15 titles a week and (mostly) keeping track of the plotlines in all of them. Very few were one book stories, most were monthly, and that is what comic books are about.
Comic Books Are A Serialized Story Format.
So the big blockbuster movies are just wrong. While a title like The Watchmen might lend itself to a movie format because it is a closed ended story, the greatness of the characters like Batman, Spiderman and The X-Men is that they are living, open ended characters. they grow and change over time and relationships and situations blossom, mature and end over time.
The X-Men movies are particularly jarring to a person who has been reading the story for 30 some years when all the characters are there but they are all the wrong ages. The relationships and dynamics of the story are thrown out the window so Hollywood can grab a few moments, rearrange them and glob out a movie they can make a quick buck on. Granted, Stan Lee has a vested interest in making his money quick.
Of course, the only reason the movies are worth a pooh, nowadays, is because the tech finally exists to pull 'em off. It takes a major studio budget to pay for all the effects and that is why we are not seeing the stories being told where they should be, on television. Still, the original Babylon V did quite well with a low budget and FX are better and cheaper now than they were then.
Television, of course has a reputation for being cheap and not being as serious or mature as the movies but, hey, comics have the same bad rap, so, what the hell ?
Ultimately, comics also lend themselves to animation much more than "real" "live" mediums and other cultures (Asian, particularly) are cool with this but Americans are too jaded and require "realism" that puts impossible characters like the Batman in stupid body armour instead of the silky thin costume he is supposed to wear.
I always thought the style of Peter Chung (Aeon Flux, Phantom 2040) would translate well to 3D super hero animation. Japanese Anime has embraced creative, non-realistic animation for a long time. Mainframe's War Planet series is a good example of what can be done and on the low budget and tight schedule that television requires.
This article in a local blog got me going on this. First of all, Elbowroom's assessment of the Cinti comic book scene seems pretty good. There were the sleazy old stores here 20 - 30 years ago with gross clerks and the ancient porno in the back room, but they are all gone now (I think).
I have not been reading comics much for almost 10 years now, since my eyesight started to tank, and a lot can happen in the comic book industry in 10 years.....
In my prime, I was reading about 10 - 15 titles a week and (mostly) keeping track of the plotlines in all of them. Very few were one book stories, most were monthly, and that is what comic books are about.
Comic Books Are A Serialized Story Format.
So the big blockbuster movies are just wrong. While a title like The Watchmen might lend itself to a movie format because it is a closed ended story, the greatness of the characters like Batman, Spiderman and The X-Men is that they are living, open ended characters. they grow and change over time and relationships and situations blossom, mature and end over time.
The X-Men movies are particularly jarring to a person who has been reading the story for 30 some years when all the characters are there but they are all the wrong ages. The relationships and dynamics of the story are thrown out the window so Hollywood can grab a few moments, rearrange them and glob out a movie they can make a quick buck on. Granted, Stan Lee has a vested interest in making his money quick.
Of course, the only reason the movies are worth a pooh, nowadays, is because the tech finally exists to pull 'em off. It takes a major studio budget to pay for all the effects and that is why we are not seeing the stories being told where they should be, on television. Still, the original Babylon V did quite well with a low budget and FX are better and cheaper now than they were then.
Television, of course has a reputation for being cheap and not being as serious or mature as the movies but, hey, comics have the same bad rap, so, what the hell ?
Ultimately, comics also lend themselves to animation much more than "real" "live" mediums and other cultures (Asian, particularly) are cool with this but Americans are too jaded and require "realism" that puts impossible characters like the Batman in stupid body armour instead of the silky thin costume he is supposed to wear.
I always thought the style of Peter Chung (Aeon Flux, Phantom 2040) would translate well to 3D super hero animation. Japanese Anime has embraced creative, non-realistic animation for a long time. Mainframe's War Planet series is a good example of what can be done and on the low budget and tight schedule that television requires.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Been animating it out last week or so. Watched 2 3D movies, Appleseed Ex Machina ans Barbie in The Princess and The Pauper and a mangafied Batman called Batman Gotham Knights.
Gotham Knights is the Batman Franchise attempt at the Matrix franchise's Animatrix. It comes up lacking. 2 of the six stories were ok. The art resembled the Spawn cartoons from some years ago. It was nothing too impressive. Probably had a crap budget.
I always liked the Barbie movies made by Mainframe. They are fairly low budget. The Barbie character lends itself to crappy 3D because she is a crappy doll. This particular movie, unlike the others, was a musical.
Appleseed Ex Machina had a fairly dumb storyline and the typical manga angst-ridden characters and all, but, man, there was some really purdy rendering in that sucker.
I would recommend any of 'em for anyone who is interested in that kind of crap.
How's that for going out on a limb ?
YouTube trailers:
Barbie in The Princess and the Pauper
Appleseed Ex Machina
Gotham Knight
Gotham Knights is the Batman Franchise attempt at the Matrix franchise's Animatrix. It comes up lacking. 2 of the six stories were ok. The art resembled the Spawn cartoons from some years ago. It was nothing too impressive. Probably had a crap budget.
I always liked the Barbie movies made by Mainframe. They are fairly low budget. The Barbie character lends itself to crappy 3D because she is a crappy doll. This particular movie, unlike the others, was a musical.
Appleseed Ex Machina had a fairly dumb storyline and the typical manga angst-ridden characters and all, but, man, there was some really purdy rendering in that sucker.
I would recommend any of 'em for anyone who is interested in that kind of crap.
How's that for going out on a limb ?
YouTube trailers:
Barbie in The Princess and the Pauper
Appleseed Ex Machina
Gotham Knight
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