Urban Exile

Hover Ads

October 7, 2015

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I have become increasingly frustrated with the latest advertising trend on the Internet: hover ads. These are similar to pop-up ads, except that they are fully rendered within the website you are viewing and prevent you from reading or using the website until you dismiss the ad.

At first, a lot of webpages started using this functionality to solicit requests for feedback, usually through third-party survey companies. Then, sites created similar pop-ups to ask you to sign up for their newsletters or beg for donations through PayPal or Kickstarter. Sites then added logic to wait until you have scrolled down to a later point in the article before popping up the request, to ensure that you are fully engaged in the reading material (and therefore even more annoyed at the interruption). And now third-party advertising has joined the game, preventing you from reading content on a page until you scan the advertisement enough to figure out where the “close” button is hidden.

This type of tactic is straight from Advertising 101: the more eyeballs you get on the ad (or the more times you directly ask for money/email/survey), the more successful conversions you will get. And content publishers that use these tactics will argue that advertising revenue keeps content on the Internet free. If the content publisher was unable to make money from advertising, then the content would either disappear or move behind a paywall (or so the argument goes). Continue reading “Hover Ads”

New Justice League Series?

September 4, 2015

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There are some new rumors floating around Reddit about a new Justice League animated series from Warner Bros. The thread on Reddit shows a picture, allegedly taken inside the Warner Bros Burbank studios, that shows a series of framed posters. All of the posters are of current or announced shows except for the last one, which simply has “JLA” and a series of superhero silhouettes.

Not all of the other shows in the poster are from Cartoon Network, so it is possible that any new Justice League series could be on Boomerang or another Warner-owned station. Since Cartoon Network is still keeping quiet about this revelation, everything about the new series is all speculation (including the name and even existence of it). I hope we get to hear more information about a new Justice League series sometime soon!

In a related topic, Bruce Timm has been working with DC Animation to create a new Justice League film, titled Justice League: Gods and Monsters. Unfortunately, the film is set in an alternate reality where Superman is the son of Zod instead of Jor-El, Wonder Woman is married to one of Darkseid’s sons, and Batman is not Bruce Wayne, but Kirk Langstrom (aka “Man-Bat” in the comics). There is one more bizarre surprise about Batman in this reality — he is a vampire.

DC is releasing a three-episode prequel to the movie, named Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles. You can view the first episode online and see for yourself how dark this alternate DC reality is and the tone of the upcoming movie.

Leap Motion Controller

August 20, 2015

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There is a new human-computer interface device on the market that lets you manipulate the cursor or even 3D objects by just waving your hands in the air. That device is called the Leap Motion Controller, and it is surprisingly inexpensive. Using infrared cameras, it can track exactly what you are doing with your hands and use that to control your mouse cursor or run specialized code written into compatible applications (similar to how pressure-sensitive tablets have even more options in Photoshop than just the operating system you are running).

Autodesk has integrated the Leap Motion into Maya, so it is already possible to use it with at least one popular 3D software suite. Leap Motion has a promotional video on their website showing it in use with Maya, although the technical details and examples are very sparse: Continue reading “Leap Motion Controller”

Fastest Ship In The Universe

July 28, 2015

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FatWallet.com has put together an infographic of the fastest ships in the universe. They calculated the speeds of spaceships and other vehicles from a collection of sci-fi classics and ranked them by their top speeds.

I’m sure that the list is far from exhaustive, but I had fun reading the list of ships they chose. I was surprised, for instance, that the USS Enterprise NCC-1701D (from Star Trek: The Next Generation) did not even break the top 20. But I did enjoy the fact that the Swordfish II made it on the list.

And I am definitely a fan of the third-fastest ship in the universe.

Click on the image for the full article at FatWallet.com and their infographic.

***Updated June 12, 2019 – FatWallet.com no longer exists, but the Fastest Ships in Sci-Fi study still exists at http://fastestships.com. The image link has been updated.

Samurai Jack Fan Tribute

June 30, 2015

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A fan made an amazing short animation as a tribute to Samurai Jack, the classic Cartoon Network animation created by Genndy Tartakovsky. Take a look:

The animation was made in Blender, which is a freely available 3D animation software package. I am impressed with how well the creator was able to use a 3D animation tool to match the look and feel of the old 2D cartoon.

On a related note, I also just found out that Samurai Jack has a been turned into a comic book, continuing his story after the abrupt end of the television series. That set of comics started about a year and a half ago and recently finished. In addition, another set of comics was released that covers events before and during the television series, named “Samurai Jack Classics”.

But Samurai Jack is still lacking an ending. Maybe one day Genndy will return to his creation and let him return to his own time after defeating Aku.

“Mr. Show” Reunion

June 5, 2015

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This information is not new, but somehow I just discovered that the cast of Mr. Show with Bob and David will be starring in a new sketch comedy show on Netflix, named With Bob and David. The series will only have four half-hour episodes and an hour-long making-of special, but most of the original cast will be part of the series. It is expected to come out either later this year or early 2016.

In related (and much older) news: I stumbled on the above amazing information after noticing that the credits of one of the Mr. Show episodes lists Dino Stamatopoulos as a writer. I have mentioned Dino before (he is from Chicago, created multiple animated shows, written on various shows including Late Night with Conan O’Brien and MadTV, and plays the character “Starburns” on Community). But somehow I never learned that he has also written on some of the Mr. Show episodes, which I’ve been a fan of since the original run on HBO. For those that know the Mr. Show episodes — he is also one of the dancers in the “Jeepers Creepers” musical sketch.

As if he hasn’t already done enough cool projects, Dino will also be part of the new With Bob and David show.

Rick and Morty Season 2

May 20, 2015

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The official premier date of the second season of Rick and Morty has been announced: July 26! And, as a bonus, they animated the couch gag on the season finale of The Simpsons last week, which you can watch on Adult Swim’s YouTube channel. Enjoy!

The Jim Gaffigan Show

May 15, 2015

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In case you haven’t already heard, Jim Gaffigan has a new show coming to TV Land in a couple months. Today, he made the first episode available for streaming from his website, jimgaffigan.com/, for free.

The series also stars Michael Ian Black and Adam Goldberg, and the first episode has a lot of quick guest stars. For those that know his stand-up, the first episode makes passing references to a few of his bits, but fortunately do not dwell on them too much.

Butter Robot from Rick and Morty

April 20, 2015

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I finally got around to putting the finishing touches on an image inspired from the fantastic Adult Swim animated comedy Rick and Morty. I mentioned the show last year while the first season was initially airing, and my appreciation for the show has grown tremendously since then. I even bought the Season One Blu-ray when it was released, which was a pleasure to watch. In fact, I enjoyed the series so much that I even listened to the bonus commentary, something I rarely do.

The image below shows one of Rick’s creations from the ninth episode of the season, “Something Ricked This Way Comes”. The robot was created by Rick for one singular purpose: to get the butter for Rick’s breakfast. The robot is mainly only in the episode during the opening scene (plus a minor callback gag later) but I thought the scene was hilarious, especially the more I thought about it. Who’s actions were more pointless at the breakfast table: Jerry playing a mindless game with no score or Rick creating a robot to get the butter from 2 feet away?

Anyway, I built a model of the robot in LightWave 3D 2015 and created the set around him to look similar to the breakfast table in the show. The final image is large enough to use as a desktop wallpaper, if you want.

Let me know what you think!

Click for 1920x1200 wallpaper-sized image. — Click for 1920×1200 wallpaper-sized image.

P.S. – According to the official Rick and Morty Facebook page, season two will be airing in the summer!

Creating a Star Field With LightWave Instancing

April 6, 2015

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In LightWave 9.6 and earlier, I knew how to make a simple star field in LightWave using one-point polygons. But I was always bothered by a limitation of that technique: each star has a maximum size of one pixel when rendered. A star field would look much more realistic if some of the stars were bigger than others. Also, I recently discovered that one-point polygons do not work well with transparent objects in front of them. For instance, in my 3D Earth tutorial, the atmospheric glow around the earth would completely obscure any stars, even at the outer edge of the atmosphere where the transparency is nearly 100%.

After playing around with instancing the other day, I realized that LightWave instancing could provide a much better alternative to surfaced one-point polygons. After much testing, I found an elegant solution that only uses two objects. Using a single luminous sphere and creating many instances of it far from the camera, I can simulate a simple star field.

I created two simple objects for my scene: a low-polygon small sphere (1m radius, 12 sides, 8 segments) and a medium-polygon large sphere (10km radius, 24 sides, 12 segments). I inverted the polygons of the large sphere, so the polygons face inwards, and set the surface to black. I surfaced the small sphere to a bright white with 0% diffuse and luminosity turned to 100%. Continue reading “Creating a Star Field With LightWave Instancing”