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Live-Action Anime: Casshern
Silverhammer writes "Apple Japan is hosting the trailer (Quicktime required, of course) for an upcoming movie called simply CASSHERN. There have been many attempts at so-called 'live-action anime', but this is possibly the most impressive attempt I've ever seen. Part 'Final Fantasy', part 'Brazil', with CG and green screen work that puts even 'LoTR' to shame. (Hat tip: Penny Arcade)."
More impressive than the original matrix?
The Wachowski brothers were very much anime-motivated in that movie...
The Sailor Moon Live-Action anime is one of the more humorous attempts
r vl et/showid-22841/
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainSe
Or go to animesuki.com for torrents of the series.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
this is possibly the most impressive attempt I've ever seen.
What I find impressive is a sustained stream from japan to the US during a full-on slashdotting.
But yeah, the movie looks cool too.
Anyone else think slashdot should always include a BitTorrent seed when pointing to a huge file?
-Colin
FYI DVD-box for the original anime version from 1973
Original anime version characters
One of original anime character designers is AMANO Yoshitaka, who is famous for original character designer of Final Fantasy.
I don't think this will be better than LOTR, and I certainly don't think it will beat it in terms of effects. There were a lot of great discoveries as a result of research and development at Weta, and although 'CASSHERN' looks aesthetically beautiful, it doesn't seem like it even comes close to the capacity of work done at Weta. It's not to say that it indefinitely isn't, but so far it doesn't seem to be as impressive. It does look beautiful though. I've really never seen this sort of aesthetic in a live action film. Again, the Japanese are a whole different culture than most of us Americans. If 'CASSHERN' had a completely CG animated character from scratch like Gollum with details like sub-surface scattering and HDRI (High-Dynamic Range Imaging) scenarios, then maybe, but from the looks of it, it seems like a lower production value.
The large version is Here! I haven't got it yet.. so go easy :p
I don't follow anime that closely nor Japanese cinema at all, but I watched the trailer and the eye candy looked pretty good. I have a bunch of questions:
1) Will there be a release in English?
2) If so, will it have subtitles or overdubbing?
3) Where was the movie shot?
4) The actors and target audience are clearly Japanese. Was the rest of the production (directing, crew, special effects) all done by Japanese?
5) Most of the writing in the trailer was Japanese (no surprise), but the title (CASSHERN) was in English. Is there any significance to this? Is this a common practice? Does the movie have both a Japanese and an English title? (I couldn't tell on the Japanese side.)
6) The production values and trailer looked pretty darn good (and I didn't even understand what was going on...) Is there any particular reason why Japanese movies don't get released in the US the way US movies get released in Japan? Don't most US movies get released in Japanese when shown in Japan?
--LP
The director of this movie is Toshiaki Kiriya, a husband of J-pop singer Utada Hikaru.
He has directed many of her music videos including "Hikari", the Kingdom Hearts opening.
Call me a heretic, but I didn't think the work at Weta was that awesome in terms of the net effect. Gollum still looked a little strange to me, and Treebeard and the ents were still pretty fakey. It was a heck of a lot of work I'm sure and kudos to them for all of it, but there's plenty of room for improvement imho. Maybe it's just me, but after watching the Two Towers extended edition DVD showing how they did all the various effects, I came away impressed by some of the artistry, impressed by the amount of work, but unimpressed by the technology employed. It was all an extension of stuff that's been around for 5-10 years.
(I don't have really any perspective on LOTR vs CASSHERN one way or the other.)
I don't care what anyone says. No other anime is better than Big O. Simply for the fact of the intro. *alarm noises* ANDROID BUTLER NEGOTIATOR
He just is. And what is there to say about Charlie Murphy? A half-hour show just isn't enough.
This looked uberc00l :)
The visuals sort of reminded me of avalon albeit a lot
more colorful (avalon is a japanese movie with fantastic
and unique visuals, from the director of ghost in the
shell).
The fish is our friend. Or maybe not; see if you find this useful. I got it off the story section of the Casshern site.
Um, yeah.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Looks kinda cool, tho rather matrix-like.
But on the friggin website, the section headers are in English, yet the text is in Japanese!
WTF?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
What hope does this have for a U.S. release? Or, put another way, do I need to get into Anime to enjoy a movie like this?
Anyone else reminded of a Shiina Ringo music video watching the trailer?
This is *MUCH* better than the Power Rangers! ;-)
- "They misunderestimated me."
Guys, that's gonna be great. The original anime was shown on italian tv about 10/15 years ago. It was called Kyashan which is phonetically pretty much the same. So, the story is that androids go mad and try to conquer the world (and pretty much succeed) the son of a brilling scientist which collaborated constructing the androids becomes a cyborg to save the world... There are a girl and a dog-cyborg that go around fighting with him... It sounds cheesy but the anime was *great* to say the least. Brilliant. And the trailer makes me hope for the best!!! Man what a news!!! I can't wait!!
This definitely looks like a "Must See". I hope it will be available on DVD in Europe so I will not have to resort to... hrhhrmm.. 'alternative sources'.
All interpreted languages are abstractions over Lisp
hmm, minmei. the original poster must be a big old fan of anime, then may be moderated to Funny?
That looks amazing, to say the least. But I really hope they do a north america realease. I don't watch a lot of anime, but the ones I've seen i've liked ... except pokemon. God damn.
(yes i realize all your purists will call it not anime. But hey)
If it's live action anime you want - that one is a musty watch as well. There is some pretty slick CG work in there. If you watch the specials you'll see some of the really hard (and painful) work the actors had to go though!
IMDB Link
Jon - TheSpork
the title is in English but there are no subtitles? Bah... Somebody make me a subtitle file for use with mplayer and I'll watch it again.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Dude... that movie looks awesome. Anyone have the details on the US release?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Where are the big round eyes?
But does it look as bad? Do the actors have giant barbie-doll eyes? Do they move in horrid jerking motion to correspond to the "3 frames per 5 seconds" non-animation style of Anime?
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such live-action anime films as "Akira IV: Electric Boogaloo" and the NC-17 nude version of "Yu Gi Oh Calcutta!"
It's like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", done Nippon-style.
I must see this.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Anybody have the pronunciation for this? Is it "cass-hern" or "cas-shern"? I caught the Japanese narration saying "ca-sher-no" but I was wondering if anybody had it in English.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
It is plonounced "Casheln".
And remember: "Kirloy was Hele"
I don't know if anyone knows this, but there is a movie called Casshan: Robot Hunter (anime) that is basically the story of the series, only much shorter (kinda like the Vision of Escaflowne was for Escaflowne). It was a pretty cool movie. Was the movie that got me into anime in the first place, actually.
They finally got it on to DVD a few months ago. Very cool indeed.
Hail Black King!
Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
Jeezus christ you are full of it.
the creatures will always look fake for the mere fact that at some level we know the coloring's off from the real world.
If the creatures look fake, it will have nothing to do with not having some ridiculous color depth.
You were probably born after 1987.... Ever see a black-and-white TV? Not many colors there. However, even on a black and white TV, creatures like Ricky Ricardo look real and creatures like Gollum look fake. It is not the colors that does it, it is the way they move.
So not really a notch on Weta's belt.
The computing power being present to render realistic crowd scene at a reasonable price and Peter Jackson (and his buckets of cash) was what really produced Massive IMO. The rest was just "simple" engineering.
Oooh. This was made into a 4-episode OVA in 1993 (which got shown as a movie on the Sci-Fi channel, back when they had Saturday Anime ... which I remember seeing, and it kicked all sorts of ass when I was 13 ^_^; ), and was originally a 35-episode TV series which started in 1973.
The general plot is the usual mysterious-fighter-saves-world-from-robot-army, with twists.
it will be interesting to see this done, if only just to see how well they pull it off.
You just saw a 4 minute, 1 inch by 3 inch movie of a trailer that may possibly contain the most impressive parts of just another infantile try at the live action anime crown and you're ready to declare it victor?
:)
Lets wait for a little more information before we rush out to stand in line for tickets
I'd watch it, subed or dubed :). Anyone see the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children trailer?( http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac/) ;). Bebop has a great into though, but terribly overplayed (the series).
The Wachowski brothers were very much anime-motivated in that movie...
Yep, but no one in the mass media seem to coment on this. I'm so sick of hearing "Matrix inspired" or "Matrix like", I know the Matrix pulled out some great effects but a good portion of them were seen on Anime before it!
No other anime is better than Big O. Simply for the fact of the intro.
I'm not that much of a fan of the intro, kind of chessy IMO
Do you have any fucking clue how much 2^128 really is? Even if we could resolve individual photons over the entire dynamic range of our perception we wouldnt be able to perceive differences with so much precision.
... and that aint going to happen at 128 bit per component, not even 32. More like 8-10, so by your reasoning EVERYTHING should look fake.
The dynamic range of intermediate calculations is entirely seperate from the coding bit depth. Most movies are telecined at some point for part digital processing
For the record, double precision floating point calculations are used extensively in CGI. So it aint just 32 bit.
Can't read the Jap, but from other comments I gather it's a post fallout world with androids who want to conquer the world, and a cyborg who helped create the androids wanting to save it.
./ pretty well, i'll post a BitTorrent link if it goes (or anyone can on the site in my sig, post it under the Releases)
Just watch the trailer, the eery graphics is SUPERB. The interweaving of live action into anime is intriguing, and from just the trailer I can already get a sense of the style and mood of the movie, with a strong feel of Dune (future tech + medieval setting).
I will certainly want to see this in theater, if it's not Japan only. I'm in Canada.
PS. The trailer seems to be surviving
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
yeah, the fans even more so
The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled from the limitations of physics in creating special effects. Imaginations are going to run unchecked, and thousands of great stories that have been trapped in the realm of books and cartoon will be unleashed.
LOTR, SpiderMan, and Xmen (as well as numerous other great CGI movies) were just the appetizer for the feast of fantasy we'll be dining on during the next 20 years. It's going to be fantastic.
There is another remake anime version in 1993, that is 4-volume OVA (image). Its character designer is the designer of Kite, UMETSU Yasuomi.
I think the Matrix proved that producers are no longer limited to traditional physics.
This is completely untrue. The human eye can distinguish just about 1000 colors (with big differences between subjects) when there is contrasts between the colored Fields (as in, you see two seperate colored test cards). The ability to detect contrasts is far higher though, so that when there's blending of colors, more colors are needed to come to satisfactory results. As anyone owning a Computer can see, 3x5 bits of color is a little few (but usually acceptable) and 3x8 is plenty.
This is still too many bits though, since the eye doesn't percieve in R G and B channels. The L*A*B color space represents actual perception far better. Thinking of Color the RGB way and not the continuous spectrum way again is an obvious mistake that noone has a practical solution for yet.
As another poster pointed out, a great deal of realism comes from motion which looks artificial except when motion-captured. Obviously, work is to be done here.
Also, the methods used in rendering currently should not be expected to give realistic results since they oversimplify what happens. Real skin is, for example, partially transparent and should be rendered volumetrically.
Just wait a few decades and you'll see realistic skin out of your computer. And this won't have to do with new overkill 128 Bit graphic boards.
What they've gone for here that gives a good Anime 'feel' is a 'Parallax' effect of filming; something the Matrix did not employ.
The basis of this idea is that in the animated animes, the forground would be moved frame by frame in relation to the backround moving in the opposite direction. - This is effectively an easy way for animators to quickly produce the effect of the camera moving within a scene.
The effect in this film appears to be replicated by actually moving a camera with a telephoto lense across the scene.
All in all, from the trailer, the effect appears good and in combination with other anime-esque effects although I could see how it would become annoying in live-action if over-used.
The motion effects in anime nearly all stem from the animators tricks to avoid having to constantly redraw cells when they can just move them around.
Its quite an amusing transposition of techniques to watch.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
No, but they are lacking in big files... This being a geeksite and all, with a significant part of the userbase using linux/BSD, I'm surprised that there isn't an outrage against this article for only providing streaming quicktime. Even though there are means to view it, it is still quite a problem for many.
The homepage has windows media and real player "files" as well, but it doesn't seem to provide the whole trailer.
Stinks
Some CG does look fake. Sometimes the materials reflect light unrealistically. Sometimes hand-animated CG objects look fake because they don't follow the laws of physics precisely enough. Sometimes CG characters not animated with motion capture move in an unrealistic way. Sometimes the lighting of the CG elements of a scene is inconsistent with the other elements. Sometimes the things depicted by CG are so fantastic that you just know they must be CG. These are all cues that the brain uses to distinguish CG from real. As CG gets better and better, people must rely more and more on the last cue instead of the others. Today with high-powered renderers using techniques like photon mapping, advanced motion capture, and physical simulation, it is possible to produce CG that is indistinguishable from real footage in almost all cases, excepting close-ups of humans, especially animated faces.
Hence the chance that on the street in Tokyo you might see a 12 year old girl wearing a t-shirt with "Free Vagina" on it. Of course, she's the spiritual cousin of all the white North Americans who have Asian-language tattoos, which could translate as "Stupid Honky" for all they know...
Freedom: "I won't!"
What is this...object oriented movie making?
-L
Don't Panic.
I think you're trying to make a joke, but stil...
are you sure this is a movie based on anime? i didn't see a single person with blue hair...
... and for some reason, i got blue hair. ya gotta have blue hair!
Strong Bad:
I agree, though I believe it goes far beyond special effects.
A lot of people would point to the "Old Hollywood" as the golden age of movie making, but I believe we are on the threshold of what will be seen as the real golden age.
Movie making, special effects or not, is becoming much, much cheaper. What we're going to see in the coming years is an explosion of non-Hollywood movies (U.S. and non-U.S.) that are first-rate in terms of polish. So-called "independent" films are going to look as good as any other and have far more impact than they do now. Hollywood will no longer enjoy the position it has enjoyed since its inception.
There is a wealth of talent out there -- actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, makeup and set designers, computer graphics artists -- that exist on the fringes (especially the actors, writers and directors), ignored by the money-chasing, unimagintative, group-think of the Hollywood studios. The talents of these professionals will finally be able to find a vehicle for their expression that will have a world-wide impact.
Even more amazing than filmakers being unshackled from the laws of physics will be the results of filmakers being unshackled from the "laws" of MGM, Newline, UA and so forth.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
And someday I'll enter my golden age of spelling, and not misspell "filmmakers" twice, after having it spelled correctly in the parent post!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled from the limitations of physics in creating special effects
This reminds me of an MPAA propaganda/commercial that was shown last time I went to the movies: We see a stuntman describing how he does an exciting but dangerous job. And then he says something like 'see, so don't download MP3 because it puts guys like me out of work and insults all our hard work'.
I had two immediate thoughts on it: first, "what has mp3 have to do with movie stunts?". But more importantly, my second thought was: "too bad CGI will have your job way before that, sponsored by the same organization you now support".
Ironic, isn't it? This was probably not the way the ad creators intended the message to come through. Oops.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Here's my brief translation of the section mentioned in the parent, as well as some background from other parts of the official site. These are from the website as it was 3 weeks ago, though I doubt the plot will have changed. (This was a quick overview I did at a friend's request.)
Alternate future where a world war (WWII?) continued for over 50 years. The world ultimately divides into two sides: Asia and Europe, with Asia winning and forming the huge political entity of Eurasia. Still, the question lingers: with all the chemical, nuclear, and biological warfare (and ensuing damage) was victory really worth it? Does mankind just sit and wait for the end?
Is there no road to recovery?
There was one man who proposed a solution: Doctor (Professor?) Higashi (Azuma?). He believes he has discovered a way to create "neo-structure cells" which can regenerate any lost body parts... and has given lectures and presentations of his theory. He wants to test his theory so that he can cure his wife's terminal illness. However, the Ministry of Welfare will not authorize Higashi's research unless he gives them all rights to it. He declines. Soon afterward, they begin their own research for their own selfish, war-mongering desires.
Inevitably, a new lifeform, the neo-human is created... as man begins to play God.
However, the creation of neo-humans... which was supposed to rescue mankind instead begins to lead them into destruction...
Check out the movie ZERAM. It's very live-action anime, and fantastic to boot!
Wicked City (the live-action version, obviously) was the original live-action anime. As in, adapted from anime, shot with the anime pacing, editing and visual style.
3 05 268142/qid=1079793610/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-254565 8-6329451?v=glance&s=dvd
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6
Anyone know of one earlier than 1992?
Apart from his fame from being the visual concept designer for the Final Fantasy series (including the logo for each of the games), Amano is a well-respected artist in the anime/sci-fi/fantasy world genres as well (Vampire Hunter D springs to mind...)
His website can be found at www.amanosworld.com .
I have several of his art books, some calendars, and a few prints... I feel they are all well worth the money spent on them.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/26/130211 &mode=thread&tid=168&tid=186&tid=188&tid=9 7
that article was posted. I checked out the appleseed trailer and afterwards poked around on the apple.co.jp trailer site looking at the other stuff. Man is it impressive. Didn't know it was originaly anime but still impressive.
man looks pretty sweet. too bad i don't understand japanese.
Here are some plot overviews from joblo.com:
... a theory that would create a new powerful human structure and a new life body. (Casshern?)
:
:
This movie looks kick-ass. I hop it's going to have worldwide distribution, or at least worldwide DVD distribution.
Plot #1 : (Loosely Translated from the Official Site)
The great 50 year war continues, as for the world is divided into two camps: Asian federal republic and European combination.
On an end of a long fight, Asian federal republic wins control over the East Asian Eurasian continent. But the victory caused a great devastation of human nature. The actions of chemical weapons and germ weapons resulted in major chemical injuries and a large "radioactivity" virus.
Doctor Higashi, whose wife is suffering from the "radioactivity" illness, creates a "new structure cell" theory
Though dismissed by the hygienic ministry, Higashi continues his research with the help from a troop of authorized personnel (who is utilizing the theory because of their own selfish desire).
Plot #2
Made for 5 billion yen, "Casshern" tries to address the idealistic question proposed in Shakespear's "Hamlet" (Why do people fight with each other?) It is also a continuation of the Japanese animation, "Shinzou Ningen Casshern" which was broadcasted back in 1973. A riot occurs within the robots that were made to clean up environmental pollution. As a result, a professor of robotic engineering revised his "son" Casshern to calm the riot.
Plot #3
The world has taken a different path as we know it today. The great war has gone on for 50 years and the world is divided into two groups, the Republic of Asia and the European Union. After the long battle, the Republic of Asia came out as the victor and it has come to take over the Eurasian Continent. However, the only thing that came out of this was the demise of the human spirit, chemical weapons, germ warfare, viruses derived from nuclear bombs, the prognostic symptoms of radioactivity, and the razed land. Will mankind just sit there and look at the fall of its kind?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
"Live Action Anime" ?! Yeah right, according to the trailer there is not even ONE weirdly colored hairdo.
does anyone find image #12 from the Download/Gallery familar?
I thought they took a picture of Mont St-Michel (France) and paint over it....
Ridley Scott is a good example of a director who does this, many French works (City of Lost Children had some recognition in the states), all the way back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Tossed in among all the HK fantasy/SF cinema, this looks like just another film. A high budget one, one that looks like it could be really good, but not some sort of exceptional breakthrough that people have been making it out to be of late.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The original series
:)
The OVA
The live action movie
Hehe, ANN rocks
Slow down, tiger!
It may have some great CG, but I think "putting LoTR to shame" is overstating the case a bit.
How can you even tell in quicktime?
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Shinobi's Back!
Try The Day of the Jackal (the 1973 version, not the crappy Bruce Willis remake), for one.
Sheez... I think you could pick a better example for comparison than that. I mean, watermelons exploding is a pretty well established meme. I'm sure that there've been dozens of films with such scenes.
|>
Here be Dragons
If I recall correctly from biology class :
Each human eye contains an array of exactly 5760 x 4608 receptors, each of which act as a 16bit CCD.
Data is sampled from this array at a rate of exactly 148Hz, transferred to a framebuffer, and then pushed up along the optic pipeline, where it undergoes various transforms, such as flipping about the X axis so it does not appear to be upside down.
You will note that the resolution of 5760x4608 pixels is an exact multiple of PAL standard resolution 720x576 (8 times, to be exact)
So, if you are having trouble with Gollum appearing a little 'fake', then its probably because you are watching LOTR on a silly NTSC resolution of 720 x 480. This can create banding and other visual artifacts caused by incorrect interpolation along the optic pipeline.
Watch LOTR in PAL format, and you should notice that Gollum is anything but fake.
On a side related issue, it should also be noted that the biological processes which combine the left and right optic framebuffers to produce 3D perception rely on the gathering of meta-data from the environment to aid as hints in the calculations.
The format of this meta-data conforms closely with OpenGL 1.4 standard. For this reason, you will find that a lot of OpenGL based games appear a lot more realistic than their DirectX brethren, since the emitted meta-data is compatible with human internal data processing.
This may change soon, since Microsoft is pushing the DirectX format, and it is widely known that certain processed foods contain genetic mutagens which when combined with exposure to DirectX meta-data cause a 're-programming' of the optic pipeline to use 3D algorithms which are closer to DirectX's meta data than OpenGL's.
So, if you have been playing a lot of XBox games, and merrily munching down McDonalds, then your visual perception may well have been morphing slowly towards a new format.
Worth considering.
Save as... here (21.0mb) ..instead of hunting through all the pages. I was surprised it wasn't one of those crappy streaming gateways!
thehomeland(.org)
You can find his anime version artwork (probably drawn later) at http://www.amanosworld.com/html/work/animation/kas haan/kashaan.html
Ya got to have blue hair!
.. for the trailer. Translated and everything! (except for the one line I can't really decide on) 00:00:02 I'd like to present, to this body, one of our accomplishments. 00:00:13 It's name is "neo-biology." [more like "newly created bio"] 00:00:17 You've made all these already? 00:00:19 I've heard your wife is ill... 00:00:25 What are you going to do about Luna? 00:00:28 I can't stay alone in a place like this when my friends are fighting. 00:00:30 Cause unknown! 00:00:31 "Neo-biology"is still incomplete?! 00:00:38 What are you saying? 00:00:40 That the military is moving. [its forces, etc, whatever] 00:00:44 I wonder why people fight... 00:00:46 What have you done? 00:00:49 [The line I can't make heads or tails of] 00:00:53 I'm going... 00:00:57 ...to annihilate the human race.
00:01:03 Code 2-0-6!
00:01:04 Hurry! DO IT!
00:01:13 I will save you.
00:01:17 Who the hell are you?
00:01:22 I'm not human anymore!!
00:01:35 One life, cast aside
00:01:39 and reborn with an invulnerable body
00:01:41 will strike and destroy the iron demons.
00:01:45 If Casshern doesn't do it,
00:01:47 who will?
Just....wow.
00:00:02 I'd like to present, to this body, one of our accomplishments.
00:00:13 It's name is "neo-biology." [more like "newly created bio"]
00:00:17 You've made all these already?
00:00:19 I've heard your wife is ill...
00:00:25 What are you going to do about Luna?
00:00:28 I can't stay alone in a place like this when my friends are fighting.
00:00:30 Cause unknown!
00:00:31 "Neo-biology"is still incomplete?!
00:00:38 What are you saying?
00:00:40 That the military is moving. [its forces, etc, whatever]
00:00:44 I wonder why people fight...
00:00:46 What have you done?
00:00:49 [Beats me]
00:00:53 I'm going...
00:00:57
00:01:03 Code 2-0-6!
00:01:04 Hurry! DO IT!
00:01:13 I will save you.
00:01:17 Who the hell are you?
00:01:22 I'm not human anymore!!
00:01:35 One life, cast aside
00:01:39 and reborn with an invulnerable body
00:01:41 will strike and destroy the iron demons.
00:01:45 If Casshern doesn't do it,
00:01:47 who will?
Take some time. And really look at your skin. That is why you need a 3d texture. The first couple of layers are semi-transparent. The way the scattered light is reflected by structures underneath, off the contours and not just of the surface. Not to mention the regular yet random appearence of imperfections, pours and hair folicals. That's just the static image, then there is getting to stretch and compress as joints move. And correctly lighting it. So that it appears, not just like skin and unlike plastic, but like cold wet skin, attached to creature underneath. Gollum is a LONG way from bump mapping. Our standards for motion and skin have been honed well over the trials of our species. The fact that Gollum even approches fooling them in a few frames, is the new gold standard for animation.
There's a difference between something being possible, and something having been done. Leonardo DiVinci sketched a lot of flying machines, but the Wright brothers built one.
seems like useful info to me - a bump might be convenient
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
interview with director KAZ KIRIYA
I'd like to tell people about this, but I don't want to sound too clueless. How do you pronounce CASSHERN? Is it Cass-Hern? Or Cash-Hern? Do they say it in the trailer? Does Japanese even use the SH sound?
Full dynamic range of the eye (across all light levels) is 10^9 which is just a bit less than 2^30.
The scene-relative dynamic range of the eye (single light level) is 3 * 10 ^ 4, which is less than 2 ^ 15.
The eye can discern at most 200 distinct luminence levels, with the smallest delta L'/L = 1.01.
Considering that if we choose 2^32 as the channel bit depth, if choose a dumb linear encoding scheme with a 24/8 fixed float format, and 256 as the absolute darkest perceived color, we get a minumum delta of 257/256, which is less than 1.01. The dynamic range of 2^23 rests comfortably inbetween the scene-balanced and global illumination limits of the human eye. For film work, scene-balanced is all that matters (unless you've got a REALLY powerful projector or wanted to preserve actual lighting conditions)... so I think that's more than sufficient.
And if you choose a non-linear floating point scheme, well the IEEE format (21 bit mantissa, 11 bit exponent) is WAY more than necessary to surpass the human eye's dynamic range.
So no matter how you look at it, 2^32 is way more than enough bits to encode lightness values in an umabigous, lifelike way.
128-bits is MORE than enough bitspace to encode a 3-channel color scheme (whether RGB, CIEL*a*b, what-have-you).
So clearly, the problem in the false look is in the software and model deficiencies, not something as simple as a data format. Believe me, pixel formats and how they relate to the eye have been analyzed to death, and they are overspecified to eliminate this possibility.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Color me cynical but I think greater precision in terms of bits of color (beyond the 8-12 bits per channel level) these days is a marketing game designed to sell product. It's like getting 300 fps at Quake. Particularly once you start saying 32-bits per channel is not enough, you need 64-bits per channel. It's there because the tech is there, not because the demand for that result is there.
The real problem is that our output devices are markedly inferior to reality (in terms of brightness, not to mention the color gamut issues which you alude to), and our lighting algorithms still leave a lot to be desired. It's much easier economically to ride Moore's Law to achieve some minimal degree of color precision improvement than to fix those.
--LP
24 bit (3x8bits) is not sufficient. It is true humans cannot discern between too many colors, *but* it can discern far more than 256 shades, and this is the point. RGB isn't a good model actually for photography (or movies), and this is why at least 16 bits per channel, or 128 bit is recommended, whenever you enhance contrast, or brightness in general, you need much higher precision than just 8 bits, with 2-3 applied operation you will see the quantization quickly otherwise.
Just use GIMP and play with Contrast & Brightness, after 2-3 operations you will see the problem.
According to info on the Apple site, Hikki is doing some of the music to this flick. Killer news for J-pop fans!
00:00:49 The neo-human [think 'artificial'] that will rule the earth.
00:01:06 Luna...!
WETA Digital are currently working on the CG for a live action movie of Neon Genesis Evangelion (IMDB).
Although now I see the other response to my post and see that they have now released a R1 version.
I belong to the ______ generation.
...everybody looks Japanese!
As long as we're talking about anime to live action, Japan also occasionally does it the other way around. Iria is based on a live action movie, Zeiram (and it's sequel). If you ever want a good laugh, pick it up sometime, it's production values are fully on par with Power Rangers.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Casshan (sp?) Robot Fighter perhaps?
My Japanese is hideously inadequete. Perhaps someone fluent in the language can tell me if this is based on that groovy anime series?
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
00:00:49 "Shinzou Ningen set up us the bomb on icecapped mountaintop!"
It's interesting, but it's hardly new. It seems to be a big-budget form of the "tokusatsu" Japanese special-effects film genre--the same genre that brought us Power Rangers.
If you're interested in checking out what the original version of some of the Power Rangers shows look like, or in looking into the more mature Kamen Rider series, there are quite a few digital fansubbers out there who have started putting the series out--for instance, TV Nihon, which has a lot of stuff up on BitTorrent. Also, there are badly-subtitled pirate DVD sets selling on eBay...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Kill Bill was as anime as a movie can get for being a live action movie.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Here is a rough translation of the trailer by my girlfriend. Note, dialogue is in italics. Translator comments in "[]". No real attempt has been made to clean up the Japanese English into English English ... expect some "all your base are belong to us" type phrasing. ..."
..."
-------
OPENING (dark blue, guy in center):
** "Here
Redish scene:
** "Let me present one result [alternatively: effect]"
Graphic Shochiku
Street Parade scene
Cell picture
Man Speaking
** "Its name is Shinzocybo [New type of manufactured cell]
Vats of red liquid
** "[What is] this? Well [as in 'good'], till here made [You have accomplished much]
Two men, one in suit, one scruffy
** "I heard your wife was sick"
A few different scenes through to Motorcycle:
** "What is Luna going to do" [double meaning, could also be "what are you going to do with Luna"]
I just can't get this all to post, read the rest here.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
An non-official English translation of the trailer can be found here.
Apple uses Akamai to do the heavy lifting for their website. The big selling point of Akamai's content delivery service is that it uses various DNS tricks and the like to serve up pages from servers close to the client. So your download probably isn't actually coming from Japan, and the slashdotting doesn't have much of an effect either because Akamai has lots of bandwidth to handle just this kind of situation.
Perhaps I'm just being a curmudgeon, but the term "live-action anime" seems like an oxymoron. "Anime" is a french word meaning "animate", which has been adopted by the Japanese to mean "animation", and by the rest of the world to mean "Japanese animation". It does not have to do with any sort of stylistic sensibility, its just the term for animation from Japan. Not all anime is full of over-the top action sequences, there are just as many that are romantic comedies, or dramas. Should every movie that contains elements similar to an anime like Love Hina or be called "live-action anime" too? I think not. Additionally, I don't see people calling something clearly inspired by Japanese animation like Grenndy Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack "American anime" despite stylistic similarities. Therefore I don't see why a movie should be called "live-action anime" for that same style. Furthermore, it's self-contradictory. Essentially you're saying "live action cartoon", which are pretty much mutually exclusive. I'm all for neologism, but this just seems to make the meaning of the word less precise rather than moreso. Oh well, just my two cents.
How will those of us living in N.A. be able to experience this movie.. with subtitles of course. :)
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Casshan seems to be a classic anime fan litmus-test. Congrats on being the first one to post the relevant info.... Oh for moderator points.
Apple Japan is hosting the trailer (Quicktime required, of course) for an upcoming movie called simply CASSHERN.
You say that like I know what the hell CASSHERN means.
It has been confirmed for a while that Kazuaki Kiriya, a famous music video director, is working on the Casshan project.
He and Hikaru Utada met when he directed some of her videos and they eventually got married.
Somehow, Kiriya was very fond of Casshan when he was growing up. Now he is working on his first film project.
Also, it seems that people have somehow neglected to mention Mamoru Oshii's beautiful 2001 film "Avalon". It looks as much like anime as this does. It's more "arty" than the movies that slashdot goes crazy for (Matrices, LotR), but, IMRO* they have nothing on "Avalon".
*The "R" stands for "righteous"
I was disappointed to find out she married him. One, because he's like 12 years older than her, and two, because she's given up going to Columbia U for it. How disappointing.