Partly Cloudy hits iTunes

The short film Partly Cloudy that has accompanied UP in theaters is now available through iTunes USA for $1.99 but you will need a US account to download it! Well worth it! A brief synopsis!

Everyone knows that the stork delivers babies, but where do the storks get the babies from? The answer lies up in the stratosphere, where cloud people sculpt babies from clouds and bring them to life. Gus, a lonely and insecure grey cloud, is a master at creating "Dangerous" Babies, Crocodiles, Porcupines, Rams and more – Gus’s beloved creation is a work of art, but more than a handful for his loyal delivery Stork partner, Peck. As Gus’s creations become more and more rambunctious, Peck’s job gets harder and harder. How will Peck manage to handle both his hazardous cargo and his friend’s fiery treatment?

Pixar Reviews The Art of Up

We’re late, we’re late! Here’s our review for The Art of Up by Tim Hauser from Chronicle Books:

First off, I’d like to apologize about the tardiness in my review. Hopefully some of you are still pondering if you should get this book and I hope I can shed some light on your questions.

This has got to be, dare I say, the best book in Pixar’s Art of series! Yup, I said it. The Art of Up could possibly be the best, and that’s saying a lot! Author Tim Hauser handles it masterfully, it’s his second book with Chronicle/Pixar after all! I think his experience doing The Art of WALL•E really made Up’s counterpart the great "read" that it is. It’s safe to say that if you liked TAo WALL•E, you’ll love The Art of Up. Not in terms of the quality of the pieces contained in this 160 page coffee table book (which is amazing nonetheless), but because it blends rich text with over 250 gorgeous paintings, sketches, sculptures and more!

That’s one of the highlights of both books, they don’t flood you with text, but they give you enough so that you have insight on what’s on the page instead of just pictures of Carl, Russell, Dug and Kevin. Speaking of the main characters, the latest installment in the series gives you a good idea on how these personalities evolved and in what order/why they were created. Ricky Nierva calls the design ideology "simplexity", caricaturing the cast into simple shapes but retaining details like fur and texture. "Simplexity" works great in this world because, even though the events in Up are farfetched, the emotional "lift off" renders it believable.

Hauser goes in depth into Up’s production, featuring quotes from the Up team including director Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson. Some cool facts you might not have known before picking up this book are that Muntz, in a previous incarnation of Up, was obsessed with fountain of youth like "snipe" eggs that would keep him young or that the original concept of what evolved into Up was a Muppet like story about two people living in a floating city! The best part is, there’s much, much more in there to enjoy and marvel at, for hours!

I would highly recommend this book if you haven’t already bought it. If you’ve just ordered it, you made a great investment! You can purchase the The Art of UP ($40.00 MSRP) from Chronicle Books or Amazon, among other retailers.

(Thanks goes out to Chronicle Books for allowing us to review yet another one of their magnificent coffee tale books. A big thanks also goes to Tim Hauser and Pixar for populating it with gorgeous details.)

P.S. I love the little touch they added when you remove the slip cover, it could be considered Pixar’s "My Adventure Book" for the last few years!

Free Chapter by Marcelo Eder Cunha from Digital Art Masters: V3 Book!

Download and read how Marcelo Eder Cunha created his image 'Homage to Sidonio Porto' in our latest Digital Art Masters: v3 Free Book Chapter Promotion:

E3 :: Event coverage

Hey there!

Check your buzzers! The Biggest Game show on the planet has started. Join in and give us some feedback on the coverage of the E3 show in Los Angeles. Click on the link here and muck in.

Truebones motions launches brand new website!

Truebones.com is proud to present a brand new website!

Key features of the new Truebones website:

A HUGE Variety of high quality Motions in BVH format
Free Motions in BVH and FREE animation software.
Informative monthly newsletter
Animation Video channel gallery.
Fast motion search and ordering system.
Online Store with instant downloads of products.
Full discussion and customer support forum.
Full previewing of for sale motions, Try before you buy!
(via FREE Animeeple Software)

Join today and you will receive Over 50 Free BVH Motions, In addition you will get a 50% discount coupon code for the New MonsterBones MegaMotions 2400 Pak just by signing up.(for a limited time)

Please feel free to Join Truebones today by registering at our brand new website today http://www.truebones.com/

At Truebones.com, High Quality, Wide Variety and Low Price = Great Value.

Thanks again and Cheers folks.

_[]_
OjO
(m)r.bones
http://www.truebones.com/

NYC SIGGRAPH Presents SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Review/2009 Preview

On Thursday, June 11th, 2009, NYC ACM SIGGRAPH and the New York
Institute of Technology (NYIT) are proud to present "SIGGRAPH Asia
2008 Review / 2009 Preview". The event will run from 7:00PM
to 9:00PM at NYIT's Manhattan campus; specifically, the 11th Floor
Auditorium at 16 W. 61st Street (just aboveColumbus Circle).

The inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia Conference was held in December, 2008 in
Singapore. This was the first ACM SIGGRAPH Conference in Asia and it
was a great success! SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 will be held in Yokohama,
Japan from December 16 - December 19, 2009. For more details about
SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, please visit their web site at
www.siggraph.org/asia2009

We are very fortunate to have the chance to screen a special edition
of the SA2008 Electronic Theater at this event. We are also very happy
that the SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Art Gallery Chair, Yuko Oda of NYIT, will
be with us to share a bit about what is planned for SA2009.

If you didn't make it to Singapore or are thinking about contributing
to / attending SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, you won't want to miss this event!

Admission for this event is free to our members and the general
public. However, this event does have limited seating and therefore
requires that you RSVP to reserve a seat. This can be done by sending
an e-mail to Pui Choi Lam at plam@nyit.edu. Please put "SIGGRAPH Asia
2008 Review / 2009 Preview RSVP" in the subject bar. You MUST include
your name and an e-mail address which you check regularly. If you do
not include these items in your e-mail, your reservation CANNOT be
guaranteed.

Each person must send an RSVP for themselves; one person = one RSVP
e-mail. E-mails that request more than one seat or list a class will
NOT be acknowledged. We will be maintaining a waiting list to fill
unclaimed seats the night of the event.

This event is being organized by Scott Lang of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH and
Yuko Oda of SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 and NYIT. We would like to thank NYIT
for their generous support of this event.

For more information about this event and all of our other activities,
please visit our web site at nyc.siggraph.org.

Thank you for your continued support of NYC ACM SIGGRAPH. We look
forward to seeing you at our events.

Special Pixar issue of 3D World on sale in the UK

In issue 118: Three exclusive Pixar covers to collect to celebrate our feature on the making of Pixar's UP - plus software and resources worth $458 on the CD


Click the thumbnail to order your copy online

IN THE MAGAZINE



The making of UP
We go behind the scenes to find out what new challenges Pixar‘s latest film posed for the studio



Create a killer showreel
Craft the perfect demo reel, armed with advice from the industry experts. We ask leading recruiters in film, games and arch-viz to find what employers want and what they don‘t

Unions in the 3D industry
Are you feeling exploited and overworked or creatively young, happy and free? We take a look at why there is little union representation for 3D artists

Your technical questions answered
Applications covered this issue include: Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Softimage, After Effects, Cinema 4D, Fusion, Lightwave 3D, Photoshop, SketchUp

Expanded Projects section
More pages of brilliant commercial work to inspire you

Portfolio
The best new artwork from around the world

On test this issue
Houdini 10, Unity 2.5, Quidam 3, Craft Director Tools 8.1, Workstation specialists WSM114

ON THE CD
Software, models, textures and video training worth $458

Hexagon 2.2 (Windows)
Full 3D polygon-modelling software
As sold for $149

3d02.com models
A family car (3ds, C4D), a racing car (MAX 9.0), a contemporary sideboard (3DS, FBX, LWO, MAX, MB, OBJ, XSI) and a hydraulic excavator (C4D) – combined value $274

De Espona elephant model
MAX format
As sold for $35

12 Environmental Textures seamless textures
JPEG format

Character texture tracking
34 minutes of expert tuition from The Gnomon Workshop DVD Character Texturing for Productions: Material and Texturing Techniques with Ian Joyner
The Gnomon Workshop video training
The art of matchmoving. 18 minutes of expert tuition

More Up Products + An iPhone Commercial

The Wall Street naysayers thought Up wouldn’t sell but (as usual) they were wrong and now we have a $68 million sure-to-be blockbuster on our hands, the 10th in a row from Pixar!

So naturally merchandise is coming in slowly and in small amounts, but I think stores are picking Up. It’s sad because Up is not only an amazing movie, but great property!

The fantastic Disney blog Stitch Kingdom was in New York City recently and took pictures of some awesome Up-themed merch. you’ll find there. Fine toy retailer FAO Schwarz is carrying exclusive Up plushes of Dug and Kevin, FAO toys tend to be expensive. For an easier to find and cheaper alternative, you could always try the Disney Store which already has talking Dug and the Pack plushes and will have Kevin in stock very soon. Speaking of new products, I’ve never seen these Carl caps before. Anyhow, the Up display at New York’s The World of Disney Store and FAO Schwarz looks great too!

Since this was also on Stitch Kingdom, and relates to products, I’d like to point you to this interesting iPhone commercial featuring Up!

Check out more products here, happy shopping! Images by Stitch Kingdom.

In-Jokes in Up + Opening Weekend Surprise

SlashFilm took the time to collect a list of inside jokes cleverly hidden in Up by Pixar. Of course, clicking on the links leads to possible spoilers such as key locations and events!

If you’ve been checking the boards and/or saw the movie, I’d expect you found the main in-jokes, but here they are anyhow. Did you find A113, How about the Pizza Planet Truck? Spoiler warning: A113 is next to the courtroom door and the Pizza Planet truck can be seen twice, first during Carl’s flight through the city and later at the very end of the movie wile Carl and Russell eat ice cream.

There’s a ton more to find but here are some of my favorites: Lotso from Toy Story 3, the Luxo ball from Luxo Jr. and the Burger cake. You can see the rest in this fantastic post by Peter Sciretta of Slash Film.
——-
Speaking of hidden in-jokes, Jonas Rivera is back at Disney.com/Surprise to reveal the main in-jokes in Up. The site says you have the chance to win the entire Pixar library (on DVD?) if you text BALLOON to 347639. Good luck!

ProUV for ZBrush - "Open Beta" has started

We're proud to announce that ProUV professional UV unwrapping plugin for ZBrush has been released in "Open Beta" phase. All artists are welcome to download and check out the plugin, which will be fully functional until 14.06.2009. User feedback can be left on our support forums.

ProUV features sculpting optimized automatic UV map creation, which significantly improves upon existing GUV and AUV built-in ZBrush unwrapping solutions. Improvements can be experienced in all texture related workflows, and to demonstrate it we have provided a few examples on the plug-in web page.

Features/benefits:

* overall much higher texture fidelity
* texture distortions minimized
* uniform (area-based) detail distribution
* fully automatic unwrapping
* real-time engine usage ready
* simple to use (one button click - job done, for the majority of objects)
* textures much easier to retouch / edit in photoshop

Availability:

The plug-in is currently available as an "Open Beta" version for Zbrush 3.1 (currently only Windows OS is supported), and the trial version can be freely downloaded from our web home-page at http: //speedy.rs/prouv. The trial is fully functional until 14.06.2009.

About the authors:

speedy.rs is a new 3D and 2D computer graphics technology based startup, which will be focusing on advanced texturing and animation plug-in development. Our team members have more then 15 years of experience in different graphics and related mathematics fields of expertise and are keen to use their knowledge to produce advanced technology based plug-ins.