Elephant's Dreams and Uncanny Valley's

Wazzup, wazzup, wazzup.

Well, machinima.com put out a press release about their new Halo Channel. My mentioning it is not so much about the message as it is about the medium.

Also, I enjoyed the article over at Joystiq "Heavy Rain in the "Uncanny Valley". Heavy Rain is the follow up to Indigo Prophecy. I'm actually playing Indigo right now as it is a very unique game. Its more of a playable 'Law and Order' episode, sortof. But the uncanny valley is something to be very aware of when animating your actors.

Also, even though you'd never afford to buy it personally (unless you have $20K sitting around, in which case, CALL ME!), there is a public beta of Houdini 8.1. Something to check out if your looking to spread your traditional 3D skills across different applications.

Finally, check out Elephant's Dream. An internet release of the first 3D ‘Open Movie’.

(Blender Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - The 3D animated short ‘Elephants Dream’ will today be released as a free and public download. This is the final stage of a successfully completed Open Movie project which has been community-financed, using only Open Source tools, and opening up the movie itself as well as the entire studio database for everyone to re-use and learn from. The movie and production files are licensed as “Creative Commons Attribution 2.5″, which only requires a proper crediting for public screening, re-using and distribution.

So if anything, its worth checking out the short to see if there are any assets you may want to reuse for your production under the Creative Commons. ;)