Anime Icon of Moving DOOM

In what turned out to be a group effort, the silly anime icon has evolved. Thanks to violet_amy, beckishadow, and h3salthea for helping to make what you now see. It twitches!

Violet_amy pointed out that, well, it's a gif and it should move. Beckishadow and h3salthea both supplied me with pics to work from. Both examples had the same problem, though; the little kodama smiled and waved! I can see how someone might find this neat, but I was most charmed by the enigmatic nature of Miyazaki's kodama. The smiley, wavey had to go.

I've been in self imposed Windows exile since the release of Vista. Linux does pretty much anything I need, but graphics, well, there's only one real choice; The Gimp. All graphics programs seem to involve a trial by fire, they're always the least intuitive programs you'll want to use. That is, until you get used to them and then you never want to leave, often because the initial learning curve was so painful. Come to think of it, Linux in general can be like this.

After some cursing and searching, I got the Gimp to do the tricks I knew it had in it. The final result moves after a full five seconds and doesn't start over for another eight. I find animated icons can make my eyeballs bleed; I wanted a long time out for my spirit critters.

Movies to come

Two movies are on the way from well loved books. I became aware of them both via surfing serendipity and thought I'd give people a heads up.

After watching Casino Royale (didn't suck, btw), it did the usual, "what else have I seen them in" IMDB walk. Well, the leading man and lady of the last Bond flick both have roles in the now in post production: His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass! Nicole Kidman is Marisa Coulter, not even close to my mental picture, but I'm confident she'll do a good job of it. The screenwriter also did About a Boy, which I thought was well done. I have hope.

The other movie. While recently stealing his images for an icon, I read some of the wikipedia entry for Hayao Miyazaki. I thought this was kind of cool: "Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea has been a great influence on all his works, and that he has kept her books on his bedside."

Turns out Miyazaki's son, Gorō, recently finished his first film. Released last year in Japan, with no apparent plans to show it here; Tales from Earthsea! The DVD will be in the UK in August this year, if you can't stand fan subs.