I wish a "Best Picture" Oscar for Toy Story 3...

Again, in a week or so, the Oscars are upon us, the 'Academy Awards',
this year, the Academy decided that Toy Story 3 can and WILL be
nominated not only for the 'Best Animated Feature' Award but for the
'Best Picture' Award as well, making the Pixar phenomenal competing
head to head against Darren Aronovsky's Black Swan, The King's Speech
and others.


First, Congratz to Pixar, Toy Story 3 is so Moving and Touching
Emotionally that even the Academy couldn't ignore their Achievement,
as far as I know, Animated Features usually just get the 'Best Animated
Feature' Award and that's it, the only Animated Feature that I remember
being nominated for the 'Best Picture' Award was Disney's Lion King, but
that was over 15 years ago and didn't end well for the animation world,
but still, it was also a very touching and emotional film.


I think the academy has a problem with judging animation, for some reason,
the academy thinks a person is a genius if he can act well but if he can just
draw a scene with a character acting really well, than he's less of a genius,
again, for some reason.


I've seen Toy Story 3 AND Black Swan AND The King's Speech and I
can say for certain that Toy Story 3 was the only one that left me almost
in tears, the other ones weren't even close.


I have no faith in the academy and I'm still mad at them for not letting
the Oscar to The Lion King but I was a good year and Forrest Gump
(one of my favorite movies) got that Oscar, Than they REFUSED to even
give a nominee to Andy Serkis for portraying Gollum in The Two Towers
(the Lord of the Rings Series by Peter Jackson) in 2002 because they
said he wasn't acting, he was ANIMATED... as if that's NOT acting !


Bottom line is that I don't think the academy is close to get animation but
if anyone can make them get it is Pixar, so I hope it's again one of those
times that we'll all say, I can't be done, but Pixar did it.


btw,
if it wasn't for Toy Story 3, I would say the best film this year was The King's Speech,
I enjoyed it greatly...

Powerful Image...

It's sad that they can get Western Television

in places where they can't even get Food...

anyway, I thought it's a very powerful image

Done by Nadia Plesner (http://www.nadiaplesner.com)

in order to get more people involved in Africa,

The Image I wanted to show:

Comic Strip as a cure for Spare Time...

Before I send my strip into the virtual world
let me start by saying I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I don't have the time anymore
for this Blog as I used to, but it's been
crazy getting back to school (Animation Studies)
I thought my Final Year is gonna be different,
more Relaxed, but no, so I have very little
time lately.

After I said THAT, I do have a little spare time
between my classes and usually I have nothing
to do in that "Spare Time" so I thought I'd practice
my art by making a short Comic Strip,
I hope you'll enjoy it:

I have a New Web Site !

hey, I'm sorry I didn't post here for a while now,
I've just entered my new apartment and I needed
to buy myself a new Computer and a descent Chair
to sit on for hours... Oh, and learn how to ride a bicycle !

well, anyway, I spent the meantime to build my own web site,
hopefully I'll have more stuff to put in it soon, enjoy:
http://www.adirsl.com

and please note what happens when you resize your
browser window, it happens in both flash and non-flash versions...

a Word about Web Design...

Lately, I see too many websites that has
two many flaws to my taste, today I thought
I'll talk about one of them, It's the site
for the Hidden Heroes: http://www.hidden-heroes.net/

This site looks like a nice project for a stand-alone
computer, but in the web it doesn't deliver for a few reasons:

1) it Loads too slow, I shouldn't wait for a couple of minutes
for a website that doesn't contain at least 5 minutes of
streaming HD Video ! it takes about 5 minutes to load.
the loading is not interesting and the site won't save a cookie
or something to make itself load faster the next time, every
time you'll visit the site, it will make you wait !

2) it Loads too slow, I know I said it already, but they
made me wait twice so I'll bitch about it twice as well.

3) I shouldn't guess what I should do in the site, on the
web, every little thing that is not 100% clear might
scare off the costumers (surfers), and this site isn't clear
enough, they could play a "demo" version of what
I should do on the site or just tell me in popups but
I needed the direction, anyway they have a kind of
a "demo" of what to do after I already picked the
items and after the long Loadings which made me go
to another site in the meantime and I missed the demo,
with no way to replay it.

4) I don't get what's so heavy in this site that I had
to wait, the interface ? it's just cubes, I could program
the animation in flash so it would be no more than
40kb, may be 60kb with the pictures.

5) if I would do it myself, I wouldn't publish it before all
the little bugs are fixed, and even though it's an impressive
looking web-site, the little 'jump' whenever you reach your
product is really annoying me (at the end of the cube
rotation animation, the text jumps a bit, annoying, huh ?)

6) the interface is too linear for the design of the cubes,
it makes everything look too stiff, I think they should
have found a way to make it lighter, like make me drag
the cubes at anytime, even if it didn't load properly yet,
if I drag towards the next item, it doesn't switch
to it automatically.
They should prevent me the feeling that this all interface
is just one big video and I'm just browsing between the clips.

I loved the design, the interface still needs improvements.

a Blog I wanted to show...

This Blog belongs to a dear friend of mine:
http://zinnfandel.wordpress.com/

it's about her work, we learn Animation
together, I'm into Traditional Animation
and she's really into Stop-Motion
and Computer Games and naturally,
the combination of them both.

She takes what she does really seriously
so she just got back from Germany.
She went on a business tour to Gamecon
the Computer Game Conference,
she played Diablo III before us all !

I should adopt her seriousness about
what I do, I wish I would go to some
Film Festival but I'll save that for when
I'll compete in one, hopefully...
Anyway, check out her Blog, it's worth it !

Be Less Racist !

Here's a Short Film by UPA from 1946 basically
telling us to BE LESS RACIST !
The thing that bothered me is that they're saying
that in the future the world will be a global
village so you shouldn't be racist, and it came true,
we're now IN THE FUTURE and the world IS a
global village but yet, some places are still very
racist, and I don't mean only in Israel when
the Jewish and the Arabs can't get along,
there ARE some places in the US that you can't
go if you're black, I won't name states
but I'll say this,
RACISTS - SHAME ON YOU !