Miscellaneous? No. Just a set of things not categorized into other categories.
Our illustrious studio manager sent out a link to an article on videogame aesthetics and the idustry's push for "photo realism." I found it interesting, especially as it gives a shout out to some favorites from my former life in the comic book industry: Jim Woodring, Chris Ware, Paul Pope, Peter Kuper, Mary Fleener, Kyle Baker, Scott McCloud, and Frank Miller. I've worked with at least four from that list (well... I did production work on their books anyway...).
If you haven't read Scott McCloud's seminal work on comics Understanding Comics yet and you're involved in any media industry, you're missing out.
Big news in the 3D industry. As mentioned over in Steve Lacey's blog, Autodesk is up to some movements (shennanigans?.)
Yesterday they announced "Autodesk will no longer offer Gmax® software as a stand-alone product." Considering how many add-ons for Flight Simulator 2002 and 2004 are made using gMax, I expect that the add-on community will be err... alarmed at a minimum.
Today several ACES studios members including (but not limited to) Mike Gilbert, Steve Lacey, Adrian Woods (our Technical Art Lead), and myself met with a representative from Autodesk to talk about gMax and the recent acquisition of Alias. I can't talk too much about the specifics of the meeting, but we (ACES) certainly conveyed the depth of usage gMax has in the FS community alone, and that Autodesk needs to make sure they don't leave their thousands of gMax users in a virtual backwater.
We don't have a concrete (or official) statement or plan of action at this point, but the ACES team is very committed to making sure that there's a solution for current users of gMax in the FS add-on community and a great solution moving forward.
As you may (or may'nt) have noticed above, today we welcome Adrian Woods to the growing number of ACES studios bloggers. Welcome aboard Adrian! Adrian's take on the whole Autodesk/gMax thing can be found here.
Hal Bryan, has a very nice post on his blog about the Flight Simulator "mod" community and how it gets no respect. Hal wants more readers.
Speaking of Hal...
We have a lot of space nuts here in ACES studio (Hal being one of 'em), lot's of us tracked the Ansari X-Prize and were ecstatic when SpaceshipOne made history. So as a New Mexican and space cadet, can I say how jazzed I am about the idea of the X Prize cup?
