ghost in the shell stand alone complex new series a possibility
During the question and answer session, one fan asked about the possibility of a third season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Terashima-Furuta answered that she expects the project to happen, but that the director is currently tied up in other projects.
Expects to happen would mean four to seven years on the Western hemisphere, two to three on the Eastern. (anime news network on the production i.g. press conference via drifter)
neotokyo: japanese cyberpunk mod for Half-Life 2
Neo Tokyo, ネオ東京, short-cropped hair, burgundy lipstick, matching fingernails, automatic handgun, clichés of the futuristic Japanese urban environment. This time, it's an FPS MOD released by NT° for the Half-Life 2 Source engine. By the trailer, a might fine job, clearly inspired by Akira and the Ghost in the Shell universe, as the creators actually state it. Instead of Capture the Flag, NT° opted for Capture the Ghost and it's very thoroughly detailed for us noobs (discard this if you're hardcore) on this page with all the treats from thermoptic camouflage to tachikomas. (neotokyohq.com)
NEOTOKYO takes place about 30-40 years from now in a Japan that has drifted into social/political strife due to the inevitable stresses that come from changing times. The Japanese government is grappling with intensified external (Asia geopolitics) and internal (economic/social) problems, and there is mounting pressure from within Japan to return to the days when it exerted influence through military power and strength. A failed legislative push to alter the Japanese Constitution (allowing the Japanese military to engage in offensive actions outside of the country) leads to an attempted military coup by members of Japan's armed forces (GSDF). The coup fails, but was very close to succeeding. In an effort to suppress further coup attempts, Japan's Prime Minister forms a branch inside the Interior Ministry's National Security Forces (NSF) called GROUP SIX. They answer directly to the Prime Minister and are sworn to protect the Japanese Constitution at all costs. They immediately begin to hear rumours of a rogue element of the GSDF Special Forces (JINRAI) maneuvering for a second coup attempt. These JINRAI are Special Operations Group 43 (SOG43), fierce nationalist loyal to their love of country, and a desire to put Japan back into a position of strength and power.
This begins the war in the shadows between the NSF and JINRAI.
2033, sleep dealer, hocico: mexikói életképek
Tíz hónapon belül két nehézpáncélos mexikói versenyző is betalált a neonringbe, a nyolcvanas évek amerikai Sprawljában kövérre hízlalt hi tech low life pedig sehol sem igaz annyira, mint Mexikóban, ahol ha jó napod van, a sertésinfluenza nulláz le, ha rossz, a tizenötezer voltos sokkoló. Dekadencia, nyomor és az érthetetlenül dühös spanyol nyelv köszön vissza az új mexikói cyberpunkból: megérkezett a 2033, a Sleep Dealer, mindehhez pedig a Hocico-Amduscia tengely ipari csűrdöngölője dukál. Ami a mexikói sci-fi triviákat illeti: a Predator, a Tank Girl és a Total Recall egyes részleteit is itt öntötték celluloidba, az első mexikói sci-fit pedig vélhetően Manuel Antonio de Rivas ferences barát írta 1775-ös csillagászati atlaszának előszavaként, yo chekku de.
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robo-geisha: noboru iguchi is back with metal and flesh
The net is sizzling with the trailer of Noboru Iguchi's new movie entitled Robo-Geisha scheduled to be released in 2010. If you remember the robotic geishas of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (or the insane geisha slut puppets in Dir en Grey's video Obscure), that's just much more - more exploitation and more blood tsunami action (and a narrative voice right beyond madness). Given time, check back on his Iguchi's previous works, The Hajirai Machine Girl and Kataude mashin gaaru. (via twitch)
realtime airtraffic in wraparound lufthansa visu porn
Developed by WHITEvoid, here a 14 meters broad screen equipped with a projection of 180° which makes it possible to the visitors to move in the airspace. An entirely navigable visualization 3D, in real-time, represents the 16.000 flights of the company of Lufthansa plane. ()
The project itself is named networkSim and won two iF awards for Structure and Interface - you can find more info at WHITEvoid's site.
skorbut: nine lives later
Half kAlte fArben, half Dorsetshire, German electro-industrial (or something you'd call club electro nowadays) act SKORBUT is entirely convincing in its sound and miserable in its looks. Their download-only EP "9 Lives Later" is a decent peace of work and if you remember how well-produced kAfA was back in the days - Daniel Galda's time spent with Das Ich just helped it to become more focused and actually much more German in its sound. If you were into Forma Tadre or kAlte fArben, you gonna love Skorbut (check their latest album Firewall) and Combichrist fans are in for some treat as well - Phantom Pain live just sounds like Andy on a day bored and algorhythmic.
samparkour and the "exploit yourself" runner
Problems offer opportunities. There is nothing more true about the l'art du déplacement, better known as parkour, the art of passing where other people merely see peril. If you've been following up on PD, you will know about the respect I pay for traceurs - and trust me, when you see Yamakasi and Banlieue 13, it is merely the Paris eyecandy - so it's a great joy seeing not one but two short parkour movies coming out during the past week.
Samparkour shows how Zico Corrêa traces the danger edge in São Paulo. Video was shot in HD with a 35mm lens adapter by Wiland Pinsdorf (co-directed by Arthur GW Guttilla, produced by Canvas 24p Films) and if you've ever seen some elaborate traceur moves done elegantly with style (and some decent camerawork as well), that's just it. (via renegade futurist)
Exploit Yourself is more like a NIKE ad, not really a short movie in its entirety of 50 seconds. What's so great about it is that it's been done by Big Lazy Robot VFX without any motion capture work at all, that it's accompanied by The Prodigy's The Big Gun Down which fits quite nicely to the oooomph-ahh tempo and it's all been directed by Carl Erik Rinsch who's actually directing a prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Exploit Yourself talks about pushing your limits just for the sake of it. Neatly said. (Thanks heaps to all of you who sent this in in the rush hours!)
planetdamage webstat 2009 q1 & q2: from hello kitty gas masks to dental porn
It is a day of Hecq, Scanner and Murcof and the statistics of the past six months leaves me musing and mortified. Those of you that didn't go for love doll, gas mask fetish, Russian blowjob, mother daughter threesome, bukkake day or Hello Kitty gas mask ended up with hazmat fetish, fl0w source code or dental porn. Or non-Euclidean sweaters. Or, for that matter, post apocalyptic movies with furry characters. And a Hungarian guy who wanted flashing equalizer tees and if you've ever seen desperate, this man goes straight to dictionary illustration fame, never seen that many variations for anything, Hokusai's 36 is just rookie scrabble. Seriously.
Francesca Dani, she is. You were all looking for her like a sailor that caught a whiff of snatch.
(A magyar kulcsszavak listáját messziről uralja a 2 faszu ember, továbbá várom azon olvasóm levelét, aki szerint nem merem de akarom, illetve nem vállalom. Ugyanitt lelki tanácsadást vállalok. Elismerő pillantást érdemelt még ki a gép fegyveres játékok, a remekbeszabott a pina belseje, valamint a kurvák öltöztetése is. A bukkake party szervezés és az ázsiai leányok még hagyján, de hogy a keresztény filmek, illetve az üléshuzat göd is mágnest jelentett ide, az már kicsit sok.)
As for site traffic, 2009 brought 22328 unique visitors (a solid upward slope from 17317 as stated in the last webstat) - readers haven't changed much, though. 53.6% English, 20.1% Hungarian, 4.8% German, 3.7% Spanish and 2.3% French is telling me that I'm losing a bit of a native readership (which is okay, as long as they read the Hungarian excerpts I'm uploading from my book in progress).
Top content on PlanetDamage (2009.01.01-06.30)
14sec - too short to live, too long to suffer:: if you were curious about what I've done after LD50, that's one part of it, writing a script for a cyberpunk short film. The film was shot on HD, so currently it's on Vimeo (the YouTube upload options are just not enticing enough), it features music by BAAL and First Aid 4 Souls and we're actually planning a sort of a sequel in the same vein, different setting.
Japanese love doll hotel, a new business for the upcoming years:: you love weird stuff, don't you. A weird mixture of love doll fuckpuppies and the sorry, abandoned rent-a-rooms, this is the new shame magnet for sararimen and all the new scum we came to love and live with.
Weirding Wednesday: the Lego BDSM scene:: not much to comment on that. Fantastic how much you are enthralled by kink. I really should move on to posting almost-NSFW material and then get hired by Fleshbot.
Cyberpunk bodypaint girls with guns (G.E.N.):: Motoko Kusanagi really had it coming. Funny that the post I was working on for like three hours didn't make it into the top 10, that was some scrutiny into how the more kawaii girls tend to cosplay Motoko. Oh wait. I wrote almost that word by word the last time!
40-minutes long trent reznor interview by kevin rose of digg
(sent in by Tomi Mesmer, director of 14sec)
árnyvilág, spook country, árnyvilág
Árnyvilág. Spook Country. Árnyilág. Összehúzott szemekkel nézni a könyveket egymás mellett, visszaemlékezni az esti beszélgetésekre Ajkay Armitage Örkénnyel, aki végtelen mennyiségű tippet dobott fel, mielőtt maradt volna ennél a címnél, én meg annál a meggyőződésnél, hogy vagy angolból vagyok túl jó, vagy magyarból vagyok túl gyenge, de az egyik legalább. A lényeg, magyarul is kapható az új Gibson, amit elolvasok, mert Örkény jól fordít, bármennyire is mondja a posztmodernben fuldokló Bán Zsófia, hogy pontatlan és amatőr (két percet túlélést tippelek neki egy középkategóriás Sprawlban, aztán már vagy jó tizenöt csecse szervtankban folytatná az utat Mianmar és Bukarest felé), a Galaktika szerkesztőség tagjai közül pedig aki amellett kardoskodik, hogy a cyberpunkot kiberpunknak kell fordítani (lásd 2008 február, Bruce "A cyberpunk Milli Vanillije vagyok" Bethke Cyberpunk című novellája sem úszta meg), azt rozsdás faszlánc szögezze pontonhídra.
Amúgy Gibson köszöni, jól van, az új könyve Zero History munkacím alatt fut, az Árnyvilágot pedig a Galaktikaboltból, ha már. (Van Árnyvilág blog is, tizenöt éve nem láttam olyan őszinte underconstructiont, mint ott, majd töröljük ki ezt a bejegyzést.)
Hollis Henry, az egykori Curfew rockbanda újságíróvá avanzsált ex-énekesnője munkalehetőséget kap egy indulás előtt álló, trendinek ígérkező életmódmagazintól. Első feladata Los Angelesbe szólítja, ahol a virtuális valóságot és a műholdas helymeghatározó technikát ötvöző, újfajta képzőművészetről kell anyagot gyűjtenie. Hollis azonban hamarosan egy sokkal veszedelmesebb történet kellős közepén találja magát.
Eközben az Államok másik felén, Manhattan mélyén Tito, egy patinás kínai–kubai bűnözőklán csempészetben, városi akadályfutásban és a misztikus afro-karibi santeríakultuszban egyaránt jártas, fiatal tagja családi utasításra iPodokat kézbesít egy titokzatos öregembernek. A furcsa megbízás azonban nem csak benne kelt megválaszolatlan kérdéseket. Tevékenysége és főként kapcsolatai nyomát egy ködös szervezet jól kiképzett ügynöke követi, az igazi célpont azonban valószínűleg nem Tito, hanem valaki más…
A világ szállítmányozási útvonalain ezalatt hol felbukkan, hol eltűnik egy teherkonténer, sehol nem állapodva meg elegendő ideig ahhoz, hogy valaki rátehesse a kezét..
aquatica: jenova chen's fl0w on iPhone
Aquatica. It immerses you into a beautiful, minimalist and serene underwater world, where you play as one of three different creatures, interact with and eat other creates around you, and evolve and grow your creature in the process. As you complete more and more levels, your creature becomes more and more complex and beautiful. It grows and evolves randomly, so that every time you play the game your creature will look different.
Please note: Aquatica is an iPhone from-the-ground-up re-make of the famous flOw game created by Jenova Chen of the ThatGameCompany fame.
Please also note that we deeply apologize for this. We simply (naively) did not think it necessary, since we did indeed write absolute *ALL* the code ourselves. We can easily prove it by releasing any part of the code anyone requests.
We have corrected this by posting proper credits everyone (they will show up in iTunes in several hours, as all changes do).
We have also contacted Jenova Chen to apologize.
Please note: Large portions of our source code are now available at http://ketara.ca/aqua.html near the bottom of the page, so anyone who believes that we've copied the code can look at it for themselves to see that it's original.
skye sweetnam goes post-apocalyptic tank girl (no, not really)
it's in the air you breathe, it's hidden up their sleeves
they're even marketing what i say right now, watch out
Canadian pop diva Skye Sweetnam did this. Apart from the apparent bubblegum factor, this will remind you of Tank Girl (Mad Max designed by Vivianne Westwood!) VERY MUCH. As for the comic style animation sequence at the very end, it's been done by Cameron Stewart, whose work appears in the Transmetropolitan trade paperback Tales Of Human Waste.
polynomial: fractal beauty in 3d
I have weirdness in my brain and when it doesn't spit out raw comic (or porn) scripts, hundred thousand dollar project ideas or drum'n'bass tracks, it vomits game ideas and they smell like grass after rainfall. I had one idea like this for like, five years? Without telling all the details, it was 3D, it looked like it came out of a beautiful trip and it looked like rainbow and fractals and it was all action. And then I checked out Indiegames and it turns out someone has partially did what I had in mind. It's called Polynomial and it is BEAUTIFUL.
This is the game I'm currently working on. It is a 3D space shooter with mathematically generated fractal scenery and models. It is easy to get started - you fly around, shoot some stuff, collect some other stuff, and dodge enemy bullets, all while admiring the trippy scenery and self-repairing by flying close to stars. However, to get really high score, you must be good at the shooting and dodging and collecting parts.
final fantasy xiii: this time with lesbian motorcycle twin sisters
Let me rephrase this, this time with lesbian twin sisters who are motorcycles. According to the newsflash,
When triggered, her gestalt transformation involves Shiva and another Shiva (her "friend"? "college roommate"?) dancing around each other, before gently holding hands, continuing their dance, then...spreading their legs and bolting together at the hips, Voltron-style, to form a supernatural motorcycle. (via kotaku)
memory, a short film by Junichi Yamamoto
Mix post-nuclear debris landscape a la Fallout with armor design similar to the pure genius snarly-gnarly-tongue-in-cheek web comics Gone with the Blastwave, add two pinches of human memories to be devoured and voilá, you have Memory, a 7-minutes long animation by Junichi Yamamoto, as reported by Bouncing Red Ball. While you're at it, also check Yamamoto's other anime entitled Melody (字幕版), trippy and dreamlike, completely different from Memory, very much in the vein of Russian animation in the seventies.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear war, it tells the story of a damaged robot found by futuristic soldiers investigating a devastated area.
The humanoid appeared to be household robot, reminiscent of Asimo, and when the soldiers booted it up, they were able to see what was left of videos recorded inside its memory as seen by the robot throughout the years. (via bouncing red ball)
steph rajalingam interviews zoog of angelspit
Ever noticed why Zoog of Angelspit is such a great interviewee? (Questions: What is art? What is music? How did you get into industrial music?) Hint: No, it's not the jacket.
HINA: szervómotoros robotlány kétcopfantennával
雛, ヒナ, HINA, instafordításban kiscsirke, szervómotoros, copfként duálantennázott, három hónap alatt sufniban összeszerelhető robotlány. A Popular Science éppen HINA kávéfőző képességeit ecsetelné háromsorban, arra még rá kell jönnünk fordítás közben, hogy képes-e bármi másra. Ami a japán eredeti leírás fordítását illeti: 36 centi, 1.1 kiló, 21 szabadságfok adja az alapot, aki pedig le akarja gyártani, fusson neki, rengeteg gyanta, műanyag, elektronika meg műszer kell hozzá, a képekből meg a blog fordításából rá lehet jönni a lényegre. (És ha még azt is elolvasod, hogy Sega Saturn Twin Stickkel irányítható, még jobb. Kell egy ilyen a lassú, sanyarú reggelekre.) (mujaki's clockwork blog)
did you click miss x today?
Ladies and boiz (and then some more ladies), time to visit Amelia Arsenic again! She's right in the middle of launching Miss X Aesthetic Laboratories - which promises to be a collection of makeup tutorials and a webstore for her product line and you can read much more about that on destroyx.com. For more about the makeups above, check Miss X vs Freyagushi and Madame Bones.
erwin olaf, le dernier cri
Erwin Olaf's video 'Le Dernier Cri' makes use of a kind of hyperrealism that is characteristic of much of his work. Here the slick realism of Hollywood films is being driven to its limits, giving the whole work an absurd character. The camera moves in one long, continuous movement through a house; it almost seems to be floating. 'Paris, printemps 2019', reads a subtitle. The atmosphere in the house is suffocating - despite the spatiality and the fragile early-spring sounds that can momentarily be heard at the start. Everything is reminiscent of the 'homely' variation of modernism that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. (catalogue.nimk.nl)
Erwin Olaf, as you will see, is someone Paco would approach one day, commissioning him to create a doll comprising magnificient tools, the tainted lust of a housewife, the uncertainty of encountering a new civilization, grafted fuck muscles and a skinjob not entirely unknown to subterranean cults who still remember why curves were formed as curves in the first place. (via grinding.be, pic below comes from photography-now)
violent coffee commercials, guillotines and full-on headshots
From 1957 to 1961, Henson made 179 commercials for Wilkins Coffee and other Wilkins products, including Community Coffee and Wilkins Tea. The ads were so successful and well-liked that they sparked a series of remakes for companies in other local markets throughout the 1960s.
(via superpunch via boingboing)
14sec: too short to live, too long to suffer
A Marble Arch pakisztáni negyedében egy currytől bűzlő ágyon, késelő londoni lánybandákról szóló tévéműsort nézve, a kínai negyed egyik vietnami éttermében béka felé hajolva, aztán pár héttel és egy fél kontinenssel arrébb a Sunny Corner kékkel és sötétrózsaszínnel erezett ablakai között születik meg a 14sec. A cyberpunkot úgyis szereted, dolgozd át a forgatókönyvet úgy, hogy üljön, mondja Mesmer Tomi rendező, kell bele természetfeletti elem is. Én mindenestül kihoudiniznék bármit, ami nem szilikon, vagy államadósságnyi méretű robbanás, aztán mégis máshogy alakul a történet: 2009 februárjában két napig egy csepeli gyárban, Budapest szélén forgatjuk le a valamikoratávolijövőben rövidfilmet klasszikus elemekből: elhagyatott gyártelepre menekül egy katonai vírust lopott dezertőr, az utána küldött katona pedig nem azzal szembesül, mint amire számított. A film soundtrackjét a magyar First Aid 4 Souls és a japán, cyberpunk körökben jól ismert ipari csapat, a BAAL követte el, a film konceptmunkáit a H.R. Gigerhez gyakran hasonlított Joachim Luetkének köszönhetjük, a továbbiakban Twitter-beszámolók és helyszíni fotók mellett jön a film is, teljesen tizenhatpercestül.
14sec was born in the Pakistani district of Marble Arch on a bed reeking of curry with a hacked up telly showing what looked like a documentary of stab-happy London girlie gangs, in a Viet restaurant somewhere in Chinatown with some real decent frog dish to devour and some weeks (and half a continent) later, in our face place Sunny Corner, windows tainted with blue and dark pink. I know you love cyberpunk, rework the script and make it really happen, says director Tomi Mesmer, but we'll need some supernatural to add there as well. I would honestly Houdini everything out except for silicone or explosions eating up yearly GDPs, then it all goes in a slightly different way. In February 2009 we're stranded for two days on the outskirts of Budapest, shielded by a factory rented for two days, working on classic clichés: soldier steals military virus, runs for an abandoned factory, zaibatsu sends a gun for hire after him and then things don't exactly go according to plan. Soundtrack was done by up-and-coming Hungarian electro project First Aid 4 Souls and Japanese cyberpunk massif BAAL, concept art is by none other than Joachim Luetke - and you're just about to see the movier with some past tweets, behind-the-scenes photos and the sixteen-minutes long movie itself.
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updates on the upcoming alien prequel
on the complications concerning the Alien prequel:
Entertainment Weekly, however, reports that 20th Century Fox isn't interested in the project unless Ridley, who directed the original Alien 30 years ago, helms the new one as well. Complicating matters is the notion that Rinsch is (according to EW) dating Ridley's daughter, Jordan.