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look: Michiko to Hatchin

There are few studios and people that get me excited to hear about something new, and Manglobe is definitely one of them.

Michiko to Hatchin is a great new TV series brought to you by the people that were responsible for Samurai Champloo and Ergo Proxy, as well as many other bits of animation.  Directed by first time director (long time animator and storyboarder) Sayo Yamamoto. She is working alongside the talent of many animators, character designers, and even the director and creator of a little series called Cowboy Bebop. Shinichiro Watanabe is the music producer of the series, proving further that anything he has a hand in turns to gold. The music plays an important role in this series just as it did in Bebop and Champloo. Meaning it is an absolute perfect fit for every sequence in the series, I think Watanabe is the only person that could give Wes Anderson and Sophia Coppola a run for their money.

Check out the title sequence:

I have seen up to episode 15 (Edit: 17) and I can’t wait to see more.  It is 1 part Cowboy Bebop, 1 part Samurai Champloo, baked with a little bit of City of God.  It has such a since of playfulness that any animator can appreciate.  They aren’t afraid to leave the standard style behind for a minute and have some fun with the look and feel of a scene.  One of the best parts about this series is a strong since of influence from films like City of God, and the more recent City of Men.  Fernando Meirelles seems to definitely have some influence here in some form or another.  The range of characters is also phenomenal.  From the 2 very different title characters (Michiko is kind of like a much crazier female and Brazilian version of Spike Spiegel, with Hatchin or “Hana” a very quiet younger girl with high sense of morality) to the huge range of characters they run into along their little journey, I was rarely dissappointed.

I don’t have time to really do a proper review, but definitely check out this one by Tim Maughan, Michiko to Hatchin 1-5 (2008-2009) Review.

I am so glad to see that there are smaller studios in Japan that couldn’t care less about the vomit inducing mainstream animation scene in Japan. Like the great films and series before it, it is a shame that Michiko & Hatchin doesn’t get more recognition.

[Michiko to Hatchin]
[Manglobe]

labs: Maya Recover

maya happy sad

Maya is great, it can handle all of them CG’s that are so popular now a’days. What isn’t so great is that due to it’s fancy pants nature, it can crash at very inopportune times leaving you with your hopes crushed and tears streaming down your face. . .

Luckily, Maya does store recovery .ma files on every operating system that it is available for, on the Mac they are stored in a hidden folder (/private/var/folders/), and in those hidden folders are folders that a normal human doesn’t really understand.

However, it is very easy to set up a search that will indeed search these hidden folders for .MA files, allowing you to easily find your latest recovery data.

I quickly made a saved search (smart folder) that anyone can use to quickly access this default recovery location:
maya recover

Maya Recover Smart Search

(1kb .zip file)
[Mac OS X 10.5+ if you are using 10.4 you are kidding yourself)

Just unzip the file, and place it in a easy to find directory (I recommend the default Maya directory in your User/Documents/maya folder, so it is always easy to find). I don’t care how cool you are, if you have used a 3D app, it has crashed on you before, and you have shed a tear. If you try this out leave me a comment.

UPDATE: This will-not always work 100%, sometimes it can miss some temp files, because it doesn’t always search the entire nested directories, so if you aren’t seeing it, another method is to go to a Finder window press Cmd+Shift+G, and type /private/var/folders/ and press return. In that “folders” folder is a bunch of arbitrarily named folders, in one of those there should be a -Tmp- folder that will likely have some .ma recent recovery files.

[andoru.labs]

sketchbook: figure drawing feb 17th


Top? Bottom? eh? eh?

labs: storyboard templates pack. . .

I have done a little bit of re-configuring and provided BLANK title and name .PDF’s for people that might not have Illustrator.



click images for previews of what is included

All zipped up in a single pack

Download:
UPDATE: Download 2010 version…
andoru_2009_storyboard_pack.zip
[1.19mb .zip file] (includes Illustrator and .PDF files)

For those using the Illustrator (.ai) files please make sure to change the Title at the top and the Name at the bottom to avoid looking foolish. It takes 2 clicks and 5 seconds.

click image for preview

Enjoy! Leave me donations! Feel good about yourself!

sketchbook: figure drawing feb 5th. . .

New model, new drawings, I love huge chunks of vine charcoal.


I like the bottom two.

sketchbook: figure drawing. . .

Today’s Haul:


figure drawing 08
figure drawing 07



click images for full-size (cellphone pics)

andrew hake | reel | twitter-andrewhake
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