Halo Legends Short Films Coming

Go deeper into the Halo universe than ever before with Halo Legends, an all-new, CG and traditional anime PG-13 experience that presents enthralling new stories from one of the world’s most popular video game franchises.Produced by 343 Industries, a part of Microsoft Game Studios, the exciting tales-beyond-the-gameswill be distributed February 9, 2010 by Warner Home Video as a Special Edition 2-disc version on DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as single disc DVD.Due date for all versions is January 5, 2010. The chapters will also be available On Demand and Digital Download.

Halo Legends is a seven-story anthology – told across eight spectacular episodes – that explores the origin and historical events of the Halo universe and its intriguing characters. Halo Legends has been created in the same breakthrough format as The Animatrix and Batman Gotham Knight with each individual episode imagined by a cutting-edge, renowned Japanese anime director/animator, including Shinji Aramaki, Mamoru Oshii, Hideki Futamura, Tomoki Kyoda and Yasushi Muraki. The stories are inspired and produced by the creative minds of 343 Industries, including Halo franchise development director Frank O’Connor and managing editor Kevin Grace.

The individual episodes fall within Halo’s 26th Century mythology as the battle between humanity and aliens rages on in an attempt to protect Earth and mankind’s expansive number of space colonies. The dramatic, action-packed stories feature characters and locales familiar to Halo fans, and episodes range in length between 10 and 17 minutes – resulting in nearly two hours of animated adventures.

The episodes are animated by some of the world’s most respected studios and directors in anime today. The studios range from Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell, Batman Gotham Knight), Bones (Cowboy Bebop, Fell Metal Alchemist) and Toei Animation (Dragonball Z, Digimon) to Studio 4oC (The Animatrix, Batman Gotham Knight) and Casio Entertainment. The stellar roster of animation talent on Halo Legends is highlighted by creative supervisors Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) and Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell); directors Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed), Hideki Futamura (The Animatrix), Daisuke Nishio (Dragonball Z), Hiroshi Yamazaki (Karas), Toshiyuki Kanno (Black Lagoon), Koichi Mashimo (Blade of the Immortal) and Koji Sawai (Patlabor); directors/action designers Tomoki Kyoda (Eureka Seven, Evangelion 1.0) and Yasushi Muraki (Macross Plus, Vampire Hunter D); and writer Dai Sato (Cowboy Bebop).

Halo is a centerpiece in the world of video games, selling more than 27 million units to a devoted legion of fans – including the latest hit Halo 3:ODST. The Halo franchise has driven more than $1 billion in revenue from its award winning Xbox games, New York Times best-selling novels and comics and a wide variety of other merchandise.

Halo Legends – 2 Disc Special Edition version will have several hours of incredible bonus features, including:

* The Making of Halo Legends – An introduction to Halo Legends followed by a making-of segment for each episode.

* Halo: Gaming Evolved – Explaining the Halo phenomenon from its inception as an Xbox video game to a present day entertainment franchise.

* Audio Commentary with directors Frank O’Connor and Joseph Chou

                                                                                                                                                   Source Warner Home Video

Hello folks,welcome to my info world.Starting my new blog today.I am an Animator and I would love to start my blog with some info about animation.So here we go.

Animation:

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement.

It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways.

The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although several other forms of presenting animation also exist.

There are two forms of animation 2d(2 dimensional)animation,3d(3 dimensional)animation.

2D animation:

2D animation figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics.

This includes automated computerized versions of traditional animation techniques such as of tweening, morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.

2d animation consists of 2 axis,the X axis and Y axis.

Examples:

Analog computer animation

Flash animation

PowerPoint animation

3D animation:

3D animation digital models manipulated by an animator. In order to manipulate a mesh, it is given a digital skeletal structure that can be used to control the mesh.

This process is called rigging. Various other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions (ex. gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, effects

such as fire and water and the use of Motion capture to name but a few, these techniques fall under the category of 3d dynamics. Many 3D animations are very believable

and are commonly used as Visual effects for recent movies.3d animation consists of the regular X axis and Y axis along with a most important one the Z axis or the depth.Which

makes the image more believable.Some of the 3d animated movies are Toy Story, Shrek,Ice age,Ratatouile.

2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation while 3D techniques usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact.3D animation can create images that seem real to the viewer.