MAX 2005 Day Three

A week later and some time to digest all of the info from the conference, time to address day three and the show as a whole.

Day three had no general session but was still filled with tons of great sessions. Part of my main agenda for the day was mobile content and design in Flash as well as character animation. The mobile classes showed insight into the current state of Flash Lite 1.1 for mobile and the potential that is right around the corner with the announcement of Flash Lite 2.0. This new build is based on the Flash Player 7 and actionscript 2.0, which is a huge step over FL 1.1 (based on player 6 and Flash 4 scripting) Though most of the devices that use Flash Lite are just now reaching the States, they have already been tested and proved in the Asian and now European markets. The leading mobile provider in Asia, Docomo, made a BILLION dollars in revenue with just Flash content on their iChannel phone network! That is a major market that will be knocking on our doors very soon, so now is the time to start getting ready.

The character animation session was one of my favorites from the entire conference. Our presenter, Steve Piscopo of Nectarine Studios, was well prepared and had a fun class. Though most of the content in the class I already knew, I still really enjoyed the session.

Overall the show had a hand full of surprises, plenty of great information and promoted a wonderful sense of community. My only complaint is that most sessions should have been a half hour longer. Many of my sessions were rushed to squeeze into the time schedule and could have been better served with a little extra time. The site, Anaheim, CA, was an excellent choice and helped to make it that much more special. I can't wait for next year to see what Macromedia/Adobe has in store for us developers. Major kudos to the entire staff of Macromedia for putting such a great show to match their awesome products.

MAX 2005 Day Two

Well I'm knee deep in MAX today. Yesterday was a very exciting day. At the keynote we got a glimpse of the future of Macromedia's next-generation products and features. Many of these were very exciting and look to be extremely useful. A major focus for the company is on Mobile devices as many of these items are now starting to surface in US (the Japanese market is already using this technology.) They announced Flash Lite 2.0 for mobile and other non-pc/phone devices. Things like UI created and implemented in Flash for digital cameras! Another surprise was the announcement of Actionscript 3.0 and Flash Player 8.5. Not that we did not see this coming but considering Studio 8/Flash 8 just came out a month ago still supporting Actionscript 2.0 & FP 8, it does seem a little odd at first. Though Flash Lite 2.0 will be shipping soon, Actionscript 3.0 and Flash Player 8.5 will not be ready until next spring.

A lot of talk at the conference has been what will happen to certain Macromedia programs with Adobe buying them. They have several programs that overlap and it would not make a whole lot of sense to carry competeing programs under the same company banner. That has also been debated, will the overall company name change? AdobeMedia or MacroAdobe? Who knows. Since the deal has to still be cleared in several European regions, both companies have not been able to say much. But they have given us several hints and the deal is supposed to be cleared before the end of the year if not as soon as the end of the month.

Time to go absorb more informtion and hope my brain does not explode from overload.

MAX 2005

Thought I would post a note from here in Anaheim at Macromedia MAX 2005. This is Macromedia's big developer conference that gets bigger every year. So far I have been very impressed with the show. Tons of things to learn, plenty of new people to meet and enough cool stuff to become overwhelmed. I had 5 classes and one general session on Monday and that was a lot. Today's agenda is just as full. Good thing today, I get hang with a couple of my buddies that work for another company but made the trip as well. Nice to see familar faces amongst the over 3,000 attendees.

Macromedia has not showcased anything earth shaking so far but today's general session looks to be were they are planning to drop a few nuggets for the faithful. Gotta go get my print outs for todays sessions. Later- mojo

Harry Potter 6

Okay, so I'm a little behind in my reading and I just finished the latest Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". This is the 6th book in the beloved series by J.K. Rowling which has sold millions. The number of books sold in this series is staggering, no other series of books even comes close. With the next movie based on the books hitting theaters in November, I thought I would go ahead and post up my thoughts and book number 6.

First off my introduction to the Harry Potter universe was when book 3 was just coming out and Warner Bros. was knee deep in producing the first movie. I was working for a toy company and we were developing toys for a movie tie in. I was given the chance to animate sequences for product and had to become familiar with the story, hence my boss gave me the first book to review. After I left it home one day, my wife read the book (she was at home sick) and asked me if I had access to the next book. With that I read the first story and was hooked. We promptly went out and bought the whole series that had been released up to that point and have been following it ever since. Now onto 'the Half-blood Prince'.

I'll try and not spoil anything for anyone so I won't reveal any specific details here. I liked the book. It had the familiar flow with the characters that we have grown accustomed to. Harry is a little older, a little tougher after the loss of his God-father and a little more on edge emotionally. This is a logical progression as Harry has really grown with the series and we see him here a teenager in turmoil. This book has more mystery to it and has us guessing what will come next. Relationships are a keep item this time around as we see Harry, Ron and Hermonie maturing quite a bit. Ron gets more time in this book as his part in the story grows a little more and we see Ron has more to him as well.

My one beef with the book comes in the 'surprise' that was thrown in for the ending. I had read a review that had mentioned it with out details so I kinda expected it to happen. My problem is it feels less like a logical part to the story but rather another jaw dropper simply for the effect (similar to Return of The Jedi's revelation about Luke and Leia being siblings, after we found out that Vader was Luke's dad in the previous movie. Whether Lucas wants to fess up or not, he did not have that as the original story and simply added it in for another 'shocker'. I mean come on Luke was fooling around with Leia in the first two movies. Now back to our book review.)

After digesting the book I can now see some sense to the way she ended the story. I believe she is purposely misleading us with some of the events to have a 'killer' wrap-up to the series. For those who don't know, there are supposed to be two more books in the series. So with that I'm not as jaded by the ending, but more hopeful that the clever J.K. is giving us a bait and switch to hide some of the juicy details that will come to surface over the next two books.

My wife and I have long debated that the series could have a whole second act after Harry, Ron and Hermonie 'graduate' from Hogwarts. Of course that would have to depend on them surviving that long. Following Harry as he goes on to college/young adulthood would be just as much a blast. Of course J.K. has said that this will be it and with all the money she has earned from the franchise, she is richer than the Queen of England, literally! Well, here is hoping.

Gromit and Grip Shift

Fun day. Took the whole family to see the new Wallace and Gromit film, 'Curse of the Wererabbit'. As usual, Ardman Animation totally rocked. The animation style they have perfected. The sly tongue-in-cheek British humor was a fresh change to the typical slop that corporate Hollywood churns out now a days. They added enough jokes for the adults without going way over the heads of the kids. Very well done indeed. My wife and daughter loved it too. We'll proabably be going back to see it again. This looks to be one of the front runners for this years Oscar race for Animated feature. Along with 'Corpse Bride' and 'Howl's Moving Castle', these three films show great diversity with excellent stories, beautiful animation and great ACTING. Yes the animators and voice performers are acting, even though most people can't get their heads past it being a 'cartoon'. Sure 'Robots' this spring had incredible visual style and some nice humor, but overall it was not quite as good as 'Ice Age'. Like wise 'Madagascar' looked great but the monkeys and penguins stole the show. Dreamworks seems to be falling into a bad habit (after 'Shark Tale') of throwing money and big name stars to the voice acting and by passing quality stories. Unfortunately 'Over the Hedge' looks like it could fall in this category as well, too many big names, not enough story. But I'll still be there hoping.

Also picked up a new game for my PSP today, "Grip Shift'. It's a called a puzzle-platform-driving-action game. Quite a big claim for a little game. So far after an hour of playing, I really like it. Definitely not the typical racing game. I'll have to dig deeper into it before I post up a review. But so far so good.

PSP Random 1.0

Just thought I would post a note from my Sony PSP. Rocking my 2 month old daughter to sleep, she is a little under the weather tonight. Interesting viewing my blog with the brower on my PSP. Typing is a little slow, but that's ok, I am not the fastest typist anyway.

The Mad! Return

One of my favorite comic books artist is coming back to comics. Joe Madureira, the huge fan favorite artist that rose to fame in the mid-90's on Xmen and a host of other Marvel titles not to mention his own title, Battle Chasers. Recently Marvel Comics top dawg, Joe Quesada announced the return of Joe Mad! to comics. Joe will be working with Jeff Loeb on Ultimates 3, due out next year.

For the last 4 years Joe Mad! has been working in the video game industry, doing game concepts and characters designs for a couple different companies. He still is going to continue working for the game company so it does not look like this is a step back into full-time comics, but for us fans it's a start.

I got hooked on Joe back when he did a 4 issue Deadpool mini-series. Joe ranks as one of top five favorite comic book artist. It's great to have him back in comics even if only for a little while. Welcome back Joe!

Starting off

After cruising around the web and coming across plenty of cool blog's, all hosted by blogger, I decided it was time to jump into the fray. I'm working on my porfolio site when I can, so hopefully I'll have it up and running before the end of October. In the mean time I'll be posting up note, random thoughts and whatever comes to mind here at mojoannimation. Drop me a note if you like as I get started in the world of blog-ing?!