Maybe I should be somewhat glad that a friend of mine didn't end up there. He was at a small development house that was on the verge of going under when an EA recruiter tried to silently lure him and two other artists away from the place. At the time, they declined. When the company did go under and their jobs ended, they tried to get in touch with the recruiter, but none of their phone calls were taken. My friend now thinks that this attitude on the part of the recruiter was rather unprofessional for a big company like EA, and now he's currently looking for work elsewhere.
I don't see how it's not an option. I work on television animation, which has (in the US) been outsourced to various countries since the '50s. Outsourcing only became the well-oiled machine it is now starting in the early-to-mid '80s.
If the preproduction planning is tight enough, any creative work can be outsourced with little inconvenience. You're right that the quality isn't nearly as good (and the Blizzard comparison works in regard to many US feature animation houses), but do you think that's going to stop big name publishers, especially when they're releasing mostly repetitive franchises like Madden?
An overstock seems unlikely. Hmm... I'd recommend you check it out.
And that album was one of the last ones released on DigiCube; it should have the DigiCube logo and the price in yen (2,500) on the packaging, along with other little telltale signs. If it's from SM, Ever Anime, or another label, it's definately a bootleg.
If you're interested in purchasing the disc, I would highly suggest using Froogle [google.com]. You can get it for quite a bit cheaper than the $20 people have been linking to.
That's if you're buying a bootleg, I'm assuming? The first Black Mages album-- the real deal Japanese import, mind you-- set me back around $25 (and that was only a slight markup from the exchange rate at the time, too).
I wouldn't suggest going the Froogle route and check out Play-Asia.com, GameMusic.com, and other reputable sites instead. That way, you can be sure you're getting official, sanctioned Square-Enix music.
What are you talking about? The first two Super Monkey Ball games originally came out for the GameCube not the Dreamcast. If the latter was the case, then I would've picked up those games a long time ago:P
Well, you can always go the adapter route-- I got a USB-to-PlayStation adapter not too long ago so I could use a DualShock with my PC, and it works great. Just search around on eBay...
I always look forward to Pixar's new movies, but The Incredibles is something extra special to me-- it's directed by Brad Bird, probably the best commercial animation director working in N. America right now. He really knows the medium of animation, and the level of acting (animation acting, not necessarily the voice kind) in the works he's involved in is superb.
Check out The Iron Giant, Family Dog (if you can find it!), or even the early seasons of The Simpsons (on which he was a consultant) to see just how good this guy's work is.
Shouldn't matter, especially since the source material is usually better than the movie version anyway. And there's plenty of films which one can thoroughly enjoy without having read the source material (book, comic, manga, etc.) at all-- Akira and the recent X-Men movies being prime examples. Movies are separate media altogether, and they should be judged as self-contained works first, before comparing them to the originals.
At any rate, Oshii is infamous for infusing others' manga works with his own sensibilities (see Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer for a non-GitS example). Unfortunately, Oshii's recent work-- despite the marvelous animation-- tends to be boring as all hell. This is why I couldn't make it all the way through the first GitS movie, and why I have no plans on seeing this sequel.
Maybe the story was, but I belive the parent may have been referring to the incredibly well thought-out battle/leveling up system (not to mention the card game, the first such minigame in a Final Fantasy, AFAIK). I'm currently replaying FF8 for that reason alone.
It's often highly accurate. The more hours you need to fill, the lower the ratio of quality ideas to filler. In general, theatrical films are better than TV miniseries, which are better than weekly TV programs, which are better than daily soap operas.
This can apply to anime as well (movies are better than OVAs which are better than TV series...). Even Evangelion had a filler episode.
One great advantage of Japanese TV programs (including but not limited to anime), in comparison to American TV, is that from the beginning, the producer is planning for the end. There is a conclusion planned for the 13th, 26th, or 52nd episode, and everything progresses along towards there**. Whereas American television is based on the idea of dragging it out until the ratings sink away.
I will agree with you on this point. There have been experiments with similar types of series planning in American TV (like Invasion: America and 24), but because of the way the business works around here, not too many want to attempt that sort of thing. Doesn't mean single-episode stories are a bad thing-- some animators (I'm thinking mainly of Bruce Timm, Genndy Tartakovsky, and Brad Bird) have used the restrictive format to great effect.
Disney used to do it quite a bit on a daily basis, starting with five-parter DuckTales miniseries. They ended up taking this to the logical extreme (stretching a complex story throughout an entire series) with Gargoyles. More recently, there was Dreamworks' first prime-time animated show, Invasion: America...
Seriously though, I don't see why length should be a factor when it comes to animated series (whatever the origin). There are some amazing, thought-provoking films out there that are only a few minutes long (check out the indie animation scene, which is full of them), and then you have long-winded series that are 13 to 26 episodes long and end up boring the socks off of you (Gundam Wing and Mahoromatic being two in my particular case).
Using length as a yardstick for quality doesn't quite measure up. At any rate, I'm guessing that the reason more American studios aren't going this route is because it's cheaper to import these types of series from Japan:P
IAA2DA (I Am A 2D Animator)-- and you're absolutely right, on all counts. One of the big reasons anime is popular right now is because it's INEXPENSIVE-- both to produce and to aquire the rights to. Even the two top-paying houses in Japan (Ghibli and Production I.G.) don't have budgets as high as Disney did in its mid-90s heyday. I could go on about Disney and their current (notoriously bad) management, but that's another discussion...
I recently read an interesting quote by animation historian Michael Barrier, in his recent interview with John K. (Ren and Stimpy): "It's one of animation's curses that so many people insist that there is only one way to make a cartoon-- the Disney-feature way, the Clampett way, the UPA way, or whatever-- when in fact the medium's resources are so large." Of course, he wasn't talking about anime when he said this, but he might as well have been.
I like good anime and manga a helluva lot, sure, but I also like good American and European animation. Just as I like both 2D and 3D work, as long as it's done well. All have their merits-- unfortunatly, a lot of anime's boosters can't get that simple fact through their thick skulls -_-;
The color scheme kind of fits in with the original game world, though-- which was largely polluted (esp. in Midgar, which is where a huge chunk of AC seems to take place).
I can see why a lot of girl gamers wouldn't be playing games online (especially console games, considering what's available), but that doesn't mean they're not there;)
I don't recall Cool World using rotoscoping-- I always thought that Bakshi's "rotoscope period" was from the mid 70s up through the early 80s. Come to think of it, maybe Holli was rotoscoped, but the rest of the cartoon cast was too, well, cartoony.
There are effective uses of rotoscoping (the humans in An American Tale, for instance), but the technique has to be used sparingly.
Parappa 2 was a good choice, as it's a really good showcase for Rodney Greenblat's character designs... but the runner-up was kind of lame. Instead of Um Jammer Lammy, I would've gone with Sam & Max Hit the Road, which features a great illustration by Sam & Max's creator, Steve Purcell.
There's a number of excellent strategy RPGs that do the same thing, as far as combining 2D sprites with 3D environments-- including Final Fantasy Tactics, La Pucelle, and Disgaea. Because the characters are typically small and superdeformed, perhaps something would be lost by making them 3D...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I should be somewhat glad that a friend of mine didn't end up there. He was at a small development house that was on the verge of going under when an EA recruiter tried to silently lure him and two other artists away from the place. At the time, they declined. When the company did go under and their jobs ended, they tried to get in touch with the recruiter, but none of their phone calls were taken. My friend now thinks that this attitude on the part of the recruiter was rather unprofessional for a big company like EA, and now he's currently looking for work elsewhere.
If the preproduction planning is tight enough, any creative work can be outsourced with little inconvenience. You're right that the quality isn't nearly as good (and the Blizzard comparison works in regard to many US feature animation houses), but do you think that's going to stop big name publishers, especially when they're releasing mostly repetitive franchises like Madden?
And that album was one of the last ones released on DigiCube; it should have the DigiCube logo and the price in yen (2,500) on the packaging, along with other little telltale signs. If it's from SM, Ever Anime, or another label, it's definately a bootleg.
I still prefer subs to voices myself, especially when the voice acting is sub-par.
That's if you're buying a bootleg, I'm assuming? The first Black Mages album-- the real deal Japanese import, mind you-- set me back around $25 (and that was only a slight markup from the exchange rate at the time, too).
I wouldn't suggest going the Froogle route and check out Play-Asia.com, GameMusic.com, and other reputable sites instead. That way, you can be sure you're getting official, sanctioned Square-Enix music.
Yeah, you're right-- he's written the main theme for FFXII. He's done a new piece for FFVII: Advent Children as well.
Yeah, but the parent was referring to the Dreamcast...
What are you talking about? The first two Super Monkey Ball games originally came out for the GameCube not the Dreamcast. If the latter was the case, then I would've picked up those games a long time ago :P
Well, you can always go the adapter route-- I got a USB-to-PlayStation adapter not too long ago so I could use a DualShock with my PC, and it works great. Just search around on eBay...
Check out The Iron Giant, Family Dog (if you can find it!), or even the early seasons of The Simpsons (on which he was a consultant) to see just how good this guy's work is.
At any rate, Oshii is infamous for infusing others' manga works with his own sensibilities (see Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer for a non-GitS example). Unfortunately, Oshii's recent work-- despite the marvelous animation-- tends to be boring as all hell. This is why I couldn't make it all the way through the first GitS movie, and why I have no plans on seeing this sequel.
Maybe the story was, but I belive the parent may have been referring to the incredibly well thought-out battle/leveling up system (not to mention the card game, the first such minigame in a Final Fantasy, AFAIK). I'm currently replaying FF8 for that reason alone.
This can apply to anime as well (movies are better than OVAs which are better than TV series...). Even Evangelion had a filler episode.
One great advantage of Japanese TV programs (including but not limited to anime), in comparison to American TV, is that from the beginning, the producer is planning for the end. There is a conclusion planned for the 13th, 26th, or 52nd episode, and everything progresses along towards there**. Whereas American television is based on the idea of dragging it out until the ratings sink away.
I will agree with you on this point. There have been experiments with similar types of series planning in American TV (like Invasion: America and 24), but because of the way the business works around here, not too many want to attempt that sort of thing. Doesn't mean single-episode stories are a bad thing-- some animators (I'm thinking mainly of Bruce Timm, Genndy Tartakovsky, and Brad Bird) have used the restrictive format to great effect.
Seriously though, I don't see why length should be a factor when it comes to animated series (whatever the origin). There are some amazing, thought-provoking films out there that are only a few minutes long (check out the indie animation scene, which is full of them), and then you have long-winded series that are 13 to 26 episodes long and end up boring the socks off of you (Gundam Wing and Mahoromatic being two in my particular case).
Using length as a yardstick for quality doesn't quite measure up. At any rate, I'm guessing that the reason more American studios aren't going this route is because it's cheaper to import these types of series from Japan :P
I recently read an interesting quote by animation historian Michael Barrier, in his recent interview with John K. (Ren and Stimpy): "It's one of animation's curses that so many people insist that there is only one way to make a cartoon-- the Disney-feature way, the Clampett way, the UPA way, or whatever-- when in fact the medium's resources are so large." Of course, he wasn't talking about anime when he said this, but he might as well have been.
I like good anime and manga a helluva lot, sure, but I also like good American and European animation. Just as I like both 2D and 3D work, as long as it's done well. All have their merits-- unfortunatly, a lot of anime's boosters can't get that simple fact through their thick skulls -_-;
The color scheme kind of fits in with the original game world, though-- which was largely polluted (esp. in Midgar, which is where a huge chunk of AC seems to take place).
I can see why a lot of girl gamers wouldn't be playing games online (especially console games, considering what's available), but that doesn't mean they're not there ;)
Hmm... what about the SNES port of Sonic the Hedgehog? I'm not entirely sure of its origins... but I've been seeing it on emulation sites for years.
There are effective uses of rotoscoping (the humans in An American Tale, for instance), but the technique has to be used sparingly.
Parappa 2 was a good choice, as it's a really good showcase for Rodney Greenblat's character designs... but the runner-up was kind of lame. Instead of Um Jammer Lammy, I would've gone with Sam & Max Hit the Road, which features a great illustration by Sam & Max's creator, Steve Purcell.
I've done that before as well :)
There's a number of excellent strategy RPGs that do the same thing, as far as combining 2D sprites with 3D environments-- including Final Fantasy Tactics, La Pucelle, and Disgaea. Because the characters are typically small and superdeformed, perhaps something would be lost by making them 3D...
Final Fantasy VII/International Differences
Additional info, for the curious:
-Lansing's Original Rumour
-Lansing's Confession
I said no signifigant alteration. Hidden bosses are one thing, Aeris being revived is a whole 'nother can of worms.