TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

The Croods is a fairly fast paced action adventure story that is essentially the caveman version of a road trip movie. It tells the story of a displaced family, the Croods, forced to leave the safety of their cave in order to survive a cataclysmic event upon the world they've come to know. Their journey is guided by a young stranger who shows them that there's much more to life than staying safe. If you like slap stick, cartoon humor and can suspend disbelief far beyond anything you may have seen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull then this may be just your thing. It's a film filled with interesting ideas at specific moments as well as quite a number of fantastical prehistoric animals and plants I don't recall seeing in a science journal anywhere, ever (though this may be due to the over the top design to make them more colorful and stylised). Nicolas Cage does a great job voicing the Dad, Grug. Emma Stone is convincing as troublesome te...

Paper Plane that I designed several years ago. Yes it flies! Two of my favorite things that have persisted from my childhood is building Lego models with Lego Technic and trying to design realistic looking paper planes that fly. Lego bricks are something that my parents introduced me to early on. As I got older I gravitated towards Lego Technic where I spent many years trying to create my own, fully working version of a car chassis.  Even though I was lucky enough to own Lego's version two car chassis ( set 8860 ) - which I think was loosely based on a Volks Wagon, with the motor in the rear. Even today I own a modest collection of Lego Technic sets which I potter around with, mostly trying to build car chassis' with but occasionally other things, like robots too (though I've never gotten far with robots because I don't have any motors or any of the Lego Mindstorm kits). Designing realistic paper planes (ones that look more like real planes) that fly was so...

After a couple of weeks break from painting (read: busy with client animation work) I set aside some time to continue my painting,  Dog Star Football , having finished the other painting, Fringe Benefit, in my last studio session . If you want to see previous parts in this series click the links for Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 . When I left Dog Star Football I'd pretty much finished the background and all the base colors. All that was left was to add the darker details and apply shading, as well as adding little details like the collar tag. This last session only took around an hour and a half to two hours to bring the painting to completion. If you've ever wondered why I paint cats and dogs more than people then the comparison between painting Dog Star and Fringe Benefit , in terms of time and detail, should give you some clue. No curse words or broken brushes during this session! Dog Star Puppy - Acrylic on Canvas.

Could these two have bumped into each other? The Batman, DC, comic-movie-verse was has been a buzz for the past day or so with a pretty strong rumor from Latino Review that Christopher Nolan, David Goyer, Zack Snyder, Henry Cavill and Christian Bale could all be on board for a Justice League movie . Latino Review have a reputation for being right on their exclusives so it's hard to pass this off as some journalist taking a shot in the dark. The team over at Modern Myth Media recorded an extensive podcast discussing the implications on Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy , the soon to be released Man of Steel and the possible future for DC Universe on film if this all comes to pass. Essentially Christopher Nolan is said to be going beyond his role of overseeing Man of Steel to overseeing the entire DC Universe on film. David Goyer will continue writing (he co-wrote The Dark Knight Trilogy and wrote Man of Steel ). Whilst Henry Cavill is the next actor to play Superman in w...