We knew that four years ago Orci and Kurtzman credited a fan image of the Enterprise in a naval dry dock for inspiring scenes of the rebooted ship built on the ground in Iowa instead of in orbit as always assumed. It took me a few months of watching the trailers for Into Darkness to realize they may have gotten the idea for a falling and crashing star ship from another fan work: mine.
It’s not too big a stretch since Anthony Pascal of trekmovie.com told me he knew the Star Trek producers as well as others at Paramount had seen my short and commented that it wasn’t done by them. I think it’s possible and I guess I would be honored if it was true. Note also the connie in mid-fall in the background on the top left of both images.
Just a reminder while you’re here: Make sure to drop by my new Trek based webcomic here. Like it on Facebook or follow the RSS feed to get instant updates.
I don’t understand how a man with no teeth could become one of science fictions most prominent characters.
Anyone who knows me personally has seen me devolve into a photo nut as of late. In the past year I’ve purchased sixteen different cameras – all but three film – and eight lenses. I can’t seem to stop. Film cameras are just gorgeous objects. They display well, they’re wife approved, and, now a days, they’re cheap. People are practically throwing them away. I’ve been shooting all kinds of film, from medium format to 35mm to half frame to stereoscopic. One of my favorites is instant which I use mostly for family portraits because it has a warm, antique feel to it. When I shoot instant film I shoot it on a Polaroid SX-70, and the only people who make film for that kind of camera anymore is a Dutch company called “The Impossible Project. 
So begins a series I hope to complete on Disney’s large catalog of feature length animated films. I’ll be reviewing each one of them in no particular order on a number of levels using my experience as an animator, writer, and father. I’ll be examining the films on their artistic and historical merits as well as looking at how they fit into a post feminist culture and the messages they send to the children they are being marketed at so fiercely. 
Once a year I do a pretty thorough guide on certain types of plastic surgery, its gender or ethnic ramifications, and its affects on the world of illustration and animation. How are artists influenced by popular body modifications to create what many of them refer to as “ideals”? 
I’ve got a new 
I wanted, nay, needed to export a movie I was working on in 720p resolution. I thought I had everything ready to go. My project’s stage was not 1280×720, but it was a 16:9 ratio (711×400). My logic was, keep the stage small to save on memory and processor power while working and export to the larger size. All my content is vectors, so it should have scaled up smoothly just fine. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way. 
This is something I noticed a long time ago, but had a hard time getting the footage together to make my point. In comes Youtube and After Effects and any idiot with an inane pop-culture observation can post something hacked together in minutes. So here’s this idiot’s observation. Aparently Darren Aronofsky’s uber violent and relentlessly bleak Requiem for a Dream has a lot of imagery in common with, you’re going to love this, a Dexter’s Laboratory episode called “Topped Off”. I shit you not. Both are about drug abuse (sort of), use split screens, quick montages, and silly sound effects. And, get this, the Dexter episode was released two whole years earlier. 
Adobe Illustrator CS4 got a new tool that was 
Let’s face it, Flash CS4’s performance sucks whether you’re dealing with a misinterpreted CS3 file or you just have too much stuff on screen at once. I noted in my CS4 review that several seconds could be spent staring at a spinning beachball by just moving from one spot on the timeline to another. Scrubbing complex scenes could prove completely impossible even if it performed well in CS3. Well, how’d you like to know that most if not all of your CS4 performance issues completely disappear with Adobe’s 10.02 update – 
There is a growing consensus that the “art world” – that bastion of so-called serious expression – is failing. According to a 
