Halo

Hello it is me again, the bringer of many unrelated and not very well written blogs. Well I have some great news for you today lucky reader. I have another one for you. This one about one of my favorite video games “Halo”.

               The game series “Halo” has been one of my favorite past times for more than a few years now and I have plenty of fond memories of me and my friends shooting holes through each other and engulfing each other in flaming explosions. But this blog is going to be focused on the story of the halo universe. The story of how humanity has been at war with an alien force called the covenant for a very long time and are losing very very badly. Humanity has lost nearly all of its colonies and has been pushed back to its last stronghold, Earth.

Their last hope lies with the man John 117, also known as Master Chief. He is one of the last surviving members of the Spartan II super soldier project. He is one the few humans who have engaged the covenant and gained victory. Most of the games fallows him as he battles for the survival of humanity and his crusade across war torn space.

 

Vikings

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog cramming. Today’s special is from your family friendly and undeniably accurate media source the History Channel. It’s the historical fiction series “Vikings”.

               To start off, I am a huge fan of historical fiction to begin with. Throw in some big mother trucking Vikings running around beating the crap out of England and France while taking everything that isn’t nailed down… and you have yourself a satisfied costumer. The show fallows the man Ragnar Lothbrok and his family as he rises from farmer - warrior - chieftain-King and finally into a Legend.

 

               The beginning of the show starts displaying the struggling economy of Ragnar’s village and the conflict he is having with his chieftain about where they show go raiding. After Ragnar discovers England and brings back a literal boat load of treasure that jump starts his village’s economy, the relationship between him and his chief are worsened until it finally turns violent and eventually leads to a dual between him and Ragnar that eventually puts Ragnar in position as the new chieftain.  

               The rest of the seasons fallow him as his name and power grows until he is the high king of his people and leads massive invasions of the European powers. This show is full of interesting character development and political squabbling that turn into some of the coolest battles I have ever seen on TV.

Good Mythical Morning

As we continue this race to finish before 12 tonight, I would like take moment, and a blog, to thank our unofficial sponsor and motivation for this typing session “Good Mythical Morning.” This show is run by the YouTubers Rhett and Link. Although they run other channels that put out plenty of other content, I will mostly be focusing on their morning talk show “Good Mythical Morning”. They have had more than one talk-show type shows in the past, however they have been running Good Mythical Morning now for more than for years.

One example is the morning talk show, "Good Morning Chia Lincoln" in their studio with an Abraham Lincoln Chia Pet as a centerpiece, where they picked a topic, usually a personal experience or news story, and state their opinions on it. The series ended as a result of half of the Chia Pet dying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r2iZ2mQEgo

 In their most resent show the they try and come up with different topics for each day, usually involving games and challenges for them to try and accomplish. They are very much focused in the realm of being humorous and the show is great because of this.

RvB

The continued attempt to crank out as many blogs as possible is now bringing you a short talk about the YouTube show, “Red vs Blue”. This show is the longest running show on YouTube. It has been releasing season for over 10 years. This show is an amazing example to watch and see how technology and filming techniques have drastically changed over the years.

               The show started as a group 20-40-year-old potty-mouthed men adding snarky and sarcastic commentary to clips that they had recorded using the game Halo. Over the past years, the show has grown massive by catapulting them into the company “Rooster Teeth”, that creates its own high quality animation for what is now a very deep and enveloping story of the Red and Blue soldiers.

               The first 13 seasons of “Red vs Blue” tells the convoluted story of a group of soldiers stationed in Blood Gulch outposts 1 and 2.  This story changes wildly and takes so many twists and turns that it is always a wildly different story than the one that came before it. In the 13^th season of the show all the major events lead into a final battle that leaves us in a strange sense of completion without the story being over.

               One major setback for the show has been the loss of its lead animator Monty Oum, but the show has been successful in not losing its fun good humored touch that it had before Monty joined the crew. This is an investment of time to watch 10 years’ worth of content, but I have found much enjoyment in re-watching it several times. 

Storks

Today my continued attempt to not fail Intro to DMA is going to be about the recent film “Storks”.  I was not expecting to like this movie very much, I mostly went out of boredom and was sitting through all the adds at the beginning being rater upset with myself for spending the money on the tickets. Thankfully I was proven wrong very quickly by the unexpected plot and humor of the film.

For a film that spends the entire plot dancing around the question of “where do babies come from?”, it did rather well. The plot of the movie is that storks no longer deliver babies, seeing as how it was too difficult and dangerous for the storks to continue doing it. After an incident where a stork does not want to give up a baby he is charged with delivering. The tracking beacon that is programmed for the baby is broken and the storks are no longer able to deliver the baby.

 

The film picks up about 18 year after the incident.  The baby has now grow into a woman named “Orphan Tulip” who tries to help out around what is now the “Corner Store Stork Delivery” warehouse. The storks now deliver products for Corner Store like, smartphones and other small packages. The storks are busy living in there new found business success when an order for a baby is placed accidently and now they are faced with the problem of delivering the baby.

The movie was fun and exciting to watch, I would highly recommend watching it if you have the chance. 

Fantastic Beasts

I recently had the oppertunity of watching the movie, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”. I tried to go into watching this film with an open mind, seeing as how I had never seen any of the Harry Potter movies or read the books.  I figured that I would be left out of some of the plot and not understand much of what was happening or its significant since I have not been exposed to lore that is associated with it.

As a matter of fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was not dragged along for a plot that I didn’t understand. The film was very considerate of movie goers who had not been exposed to the world of Harry Potter, and made little to no mention of anything related to the books or movies. I was very aware of what was unfolding before me and it did a good job of explaining and making sure the viewer was not left behind.

Say what you will about lack of practical affects in the name of CGI, the effects of the movie were pretty top notch. They may not have been the best available, but would don’t need everything to look supper realistic in a world of magical fantasy.  I was thoroughly entertained during the entire movie, and walk away rather satisfied with paying to see it. Would I pay to see it again? No, but I would watch it again if given the opportunity.

This movie as also peeked my interest in seeing the over films. I will probably put off reading the books for a while for the sake of time, but I am interested in seeing how the other films compare to this one. It’s not the best movie I have ever seen, but I is certainly not the worst by far. I was rather pleased with it for not being a Harry Potter fan. I would strongly encourage others to go see this movie if you are given the opportunity.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

I recently re-watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas” with a friend, and was pleasantly surprised at how well the movie had aged. It seemed like a good choice of movie on the night of Halloween, so we sat down and hit play.

The music is what caught my attention at first. Although it had been many MANY years sense I had seen this movie, I was taken back immediately by the first, “This is Halloween, this is Halloween…”. It was a beautifully creepy opening when coupled with the stop motion imagery of the residents of Halloween town singing along to the song.

The iconic shot of the tall and lanky Jack Skellington, Halloween town’s beloved pumpkin king standing in the misty fountain at the end of the song was amazing to see again after so long. I was very impressed with how the movie’s visuals held up after so long, given how much technology has progressed since the movies relies in 1993. You can tell where some of the animation is lacking in some of the film, but for the most part it is still very nice and clean.

This is definingly a good choice for a Halloween or Christmas move, although I was stuck singing “This is Halloween” in my head for the rest of the night.

RWBY Characters

The name of the show RWBY (pronounced “ruby”), is an acronym using the first letter of each of the four main characters.

R= Ruby Rose

W= Weiss Schnee

B= Blake Belladonna

Y = Yang Xiao Long

According to series creator Monty Oum, every character's name is tied to a specific color, and these colors give you a an idea of that character's personality. There will be other teams with their name combining to form acronyms that are also tied to a color. The team RWBY is composed of four female students from Beacon Academy. Each member is associated with a color and is named after a character or item in the fairy tale world.

Ruby is inspired by Red Riding Hood, Weiss by Snow White, Blake is by beauty and the Beast, Yang is a reference to Goldie Locks, etc. 

The title character, Ruby, is a 15-year-old girl who typically dresses in a red cloak and a black dress. She carries a scythe that can transform into a high caliber sniper rifle. She learned her fighting skills from her uncle Qrow Branwen at Signal.

Weiss is at 17 years of age and the second member of Team RWBY. She has long white hair and has a noticeable scar over her left eye, which she received from a fight with a white knight in the "White" trailer. Her weapon is a Dust powered rapier. The sheath can create more than one elemental change, using a dial like silver encasement just above the bottom of her sword. The Dust crystals encrusted in the encasement allow Weiss to change the power of her sword in battle.

Blake, the third member of Team RWBY, is a black-haired girl who uses a shinobigatana with a sharpened sheath that has a pistol in the hilt. Blake has a quiet nature and a love for books. She is a Faunus, a persecuted humanoid race with animal-like features, and was a member of a social rights advocacy group turned extremist paramilitary organization.

Yang is the fourth member of Team RWBY and Ruby's older half-sister. She has yellow-hair and wields twin shotgun gauntlets. Yang is the "big sister" of the group, caring deeply for her teammates. She is also very optimistic, never giving up in battle and hard times. However, she is very "hotheaded", and has anger management problems while in battle. 

RWBY (part 2)

I have already talked about RWBY ones already, but seeing as how most of it was about just the Grimm. I decided to continue talking about the Hunters/Huntresses of the fictional world called Remnant.

To start off, I need to expand on what I talked about in an earlier post about mankind’s fight against Grimm and the Hunters/Huntresses. Prior to the events of the series, mankind waged a battle of survival against the Grimm before discovering the power of a mysterious element called Dust, which allowed them to fight back against the monsters. In the present day, Dust is used to power abilities and weapons. Those who use these abilities to battle the Grimm are known as Huntsmen or Huntresses.

The weapons used in RWBY are mostly firearms of some sort that can transform into melee weapons such as swords or axes. There are normal weapons in the world that act just like they would in real life, but this are mostly overshadowed by the complex and powerful dust powered weapons carried by most Hunters/Huntresses. The students that attend these academies are usually top students at lower level battle training schools and then request to join the academy of there kingdom.

RWBY's Grimm

Some of you may have already watch the this, but I am going to talk about the anime inspired show RWBY. To start off, RWBY is a unique show that has a lot of elements that I haven’t seen in very many other shows.

 

The story of RWBY, is that of a sort of post-apocalyptic themed world. The show is set in the fictional world of Remnant, where young people train to become Huntsmen and Huntresses to protect their world from monsters called Grimm. The story of what the Grimm isn’t very clear at the moment, other than they somewhat resemble animals but are more monstrous in apparent and are basically manifestations of negative emotions such as fear, strife, conflict, etc. And are in tern attracted to those emotions. 

The show tells us how the Grimm pushed humanity to the point of extinction before the academes were established to train hunters/huntresses to push back against the onslaught of Grimm. The world is still mostly run over with Grimm and is too dangerous to be settled by humans. However, there has been several kingdoms established that are relatively safe to live, thanks to the academes within them. These Hunters/Huntresses are trained to be elite monster killers that protect the world of men from the monsters that infests their world. 

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is what I would call an “interesting” film. I am by no means degrading the film, it was however much different than I expected from the promotional posters.

I’m sure that if I had looked into the film before going to watch it, I would have been less surprised, but now I’m glade at how the story was nothing like I expected. The premise was entertaining and much better than the (what some would call) a K-Mart version of X Men. I was first intrigued by how much of the film takes place during WWII. The story was very original and one I liked. The villains of the story, Hallows, were an unexpected edition to the story.   One thing I found to be a good trait about the film is how the Hallows weren’t your generic monsters. They had a very Slinderman look to them, yet they still very animalistic and savage in nature.

One of their most prominent features that make them such a threat in the film, is that they are completely invisible to everyone except for our main character and his grandfather. Although the true reward for making the movie fun to watch goes to Samuel Jackson. His villain was a strange but entertaining one, much like the movie itself. The movie goes from being somewhat serious to very dark, and then back up into the realm of funny toward the end. I would strongly suggest giving it a watch if you have the time.

Prince of Egypt

Every time I re-watch Prince of Egypt, I am reminded of how amazing this film is. A group of us decided to watch it in the lounge not to long ago and almost every time someone came in, they stayed to watch a little some of it or comment on how good of a movie it is.

Although I enjoyed this movie as a child, I couldn’t fully appreciate how beautiful this film is. Between the imagery and the music, I am taken away and fully entertained by the story. Even before the plagues take place in the film, the visuals are great and the music is inviting you into the word of ancient Egypt.

It was fantastic to see the interaction between Moses and Ramses as young men, and to hear about the trouble they got each other in and out of. As well as seeing them mature into men in opposing situations. The song being sung while Moses is living in the desert up tile he marries Zipporah is one of my all-time favorite songs in a movie. As the plagues show up and Moses and Ramses are forced to bud heads is when the movie steps up its game. How the artist depicted the plagues is absolutely amazing and is enough of a reason to see the movie in itself.

Kubo

I was actually very excited to see Kubo when I saw the trailers for it. This was before a realized that it was stop motion. After I Found that out I was even more excited to see it.  I have always been fascinated by how modern stop motion films are made. The story wasn’t exactly my favorite but the imagery is was absolutely stunning.

 

The story wasn’t bad, I just found that it was lacking in originality and was easy to anticipate the future events in the story. However, even though wasn’t very emotionally attached to the story or how it played out, I was still invested in watching the film for what (in my opinion) was the beautiful part of the film. The Animation was some of the best work that I have seen in a long time. I even later looked into how that accomplished some of the visuals portrayed in the film.

Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the story, it did have some interesting parts to it and I would defiantly recommend watching it. I will probably end up watching it again before the month is out.

Luke Cage

One interesting show I have been introduced to this week was the Netflix original show, Luke Cage. I have been trying to avoid Netflix super hero shows because I thought they would ruin the stories they are trying to tell. However, I have been pleasantly surprised by the shows I have seen parts of.  Shows like, Luke Cage, Gotham, and more, have changed my mind on the subject.

I am already a huge fan of Gotham and watch it religiously, and now I may have to start doing it for Luke Cage.  The choreography is laughable some points, but that is more than made up for by the characters in the show. They do a very good job of having you get attached to characters in a very short time. The story itself is also very rich and doesn’t slow down for very long, which help keep your interest as a viewer.

 (There is a spoiler here!!!!!) One character in particular named Pops, is a very loveable character who you grow to like over his short time on the show. I had grown to love his character and was sad when he was no longer there. After the fact I was surprised to find out that he was only in the show for two episodes. 

Gotham

This morning I find myself questioning my views on reimagining’s and reboots of characters and their stories. I previously believed that after a character’s story is told and accepted by a majority of people, events that have already happened should not be available to be changed or modified.

At this moment I am talking about the super hero universes of DC and Marvel. However, as I have started to look more into why certain changes are made and how they are implemented, and I don’t have the same burning hatred for it as I did before.  One reimagining that has caused me to rethink my views is the Netflix original series Gotham.

I was not happy when this show started gaining popularity however, after finally watching some of it, I was hooked. The script is very well written and it doesn’t really change as much of the story as I had previously expected. I would be tempted to say that the show does more enhancing of the story, than drastic changes. Now, there are changes made to the story, but they not so big as to dissuade me from enjoying the story they are trying to tell. Probably my favorite part of Gotham, is that it is the story of Gotham, not Batman, but the city itself that would become the breeding ground some of the most iconic characters in comic and movie history.   

Beauty

The most interesting part of “Master” Leeper’s lecture for me at least, was the animation done with sand on a light table. I get so tired of the idea that people should focuses more on adapting themselves to fit certain criteria and change how they do things so that they can match everyone else’s standards. It can cause a person to doubted themselves and their abilities. I myself often criticize my own work much more than those I choose to show it too. What I found so interesting was the story behind why the artist used sand to make the animation in the first place. They believed that they were not very good at drawing, but, rather than be discouraged and try something else because she didn’t meet her own expectations, she chose to create something new and amazing.

It was so refreshing to see someone find a way to overcome their own doubts and accomplish something in their own unique way. She thought her art wasn’t good enough, but now her own style of animation has allowed her and others to show a real gift as well as their creativity. Not only is this a great accomplishment, in my option, for  “succeeding where others thought you would fail” aspect of the story, her art is also very beautiful. 

Intro to Hunter Rose

Shalom! My name is Hunter Rose and I am a freshman in the animation department here at Huntington University, and no I am not Jewish but I do find that greeting entertaining.  I was a student at New Castle High School before graduating and moving here. I am a very big fan of movies, some of my favo
rites being; Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, a lot of Super Hero movies, and most other fantasy themed shows and movies.

Jack Sparrow is my role model, I just thought I would put that out there.

 I am also a fan of Sci-Fi, but not as much.  I love table top games and board games. My two examples are DnD and RISK. I have a collection of different risk games, and I have played most of them at least ones. I am a MASSIVE fan of video games ranging across the spectrum from Xbox to PlayStation and even Computer. Some of my favorites are Halo, Assassin’s Creed, Destiny, and call of Duty.

I feel that I have a broad set of interests and hobbies. In high school I was a six-year choir member, gospel choir member, show choir member, I ran track for three years, and cross country for four.  I was in chess club as well as the Newcastle thespians. I have played many parts in both plays and musicals.

I could go on but, I’m running out of things to talk about and I have reached my 200-word count J. So you’ll just have to talk to me in person for more detailed info. Good day.  

HunterRose