Walking dead comic online

Just two more days to the biggest sports television event of the year in the US: The 46th NFL Super Bowl will be played this Sunday, the Championship game of the American National Football League. While most are anxiously awaiting this years already classic rematch between Tom Bradys New England Patriots and Eli Mannings New York giants at the Indiana Colts Lucas Oil Stadium, the final match of the season is also known to have the most expensive, and brilliantly created ad campaigns.

Okay, so normally I would agree that most commercials out there are just scrambling your brain, but there are certainly a few gems that can make your jaw drop and the Super Bowl has made a tradition of it to show some pretty impressing stuff. The huge amount of viewers (100.000.000 world wide) and the extremely high costs of air time during the match, makes the Super Bowl the perfect showcase for exclusive and expensive commercials. The average cost for a 30-second spot this year was $3.5 million to $4 million Dollars. Remember last year, Coca Cola had the brilliantly CG animated Siege, directed by FX&Mat and created by the multi Oscar nominated and winning studio Framestore.











Above and below: 3D models for the dragon from Siege. Framestore won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and the BAFTA in 2008 for their work on The Golden Compass and was nominated in 2007 for Superman Returns, in 2009 for The Dark Knight and in 2010 for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

Above: covers of Le Petit Vingtième issues 7 and 18 from February 13 and May 1st respectively, carrying Hergés first Tintin comic adventure Tintin in the land of the Soviets.

Before Georges Remi aka Hergé became famous as the artist and creator of Tintin, he worked for the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, creating illustrations to go with some of their articles. This was in 1925. Three years later, like so many other newspapers, Le Vingtième started a seperate comics supplement called Le Petit Vingtième and Georges became Editor-in-Chief.

Le Petit Vingitième was a small, eight page supplement and started publishing Hergés first ever Tintin story Tintin in the land of the Soviets (Tintin au pays des Soviets) in their 11th issue, on January 10, 1929. A year later the magazine would expand to 16 pages and Hergés introduced his gag strip Quick & Flupke.

The first nine stories of Tintin were published in Le Petit Vingtième until publication of the magazine was halted after May 9th 1940,  when the Nazis invaded and occupied Belgium. Publication of the last story, Land of the Black Gold (Tintin au pays de loir noir) was never finished.

After the war Tintin got his own comics magazine, which would publish the many other stories Hergé and his studio would create. Studio Hergé was founded in 1950 and it is no secret that much of Tintins later adventures was drawn by his assistants, Belgian comic masters such as Edgar P. Jacobs and later also by Jacques Martin and Bob de Moor.



Above: After finishing the publication of Tintins first adventure, the magazine left their fans guessing where Tintin would go next, but a week later showed Tintin amidst the African Jungle. Covers of issues 21 and 22 advertising the start of Herges second comic story Tintin in the Congo, which started in issue 23 of June 5, 1930. In comicbook form, this story would later be renamed Tintin in Africa.

Flup, Nenesse, Poussette et Cochonnet.

While Hergé published his first Tintin adventure, he also created a twenty page short story titled Flup, Nenesse, Poussette et Cochonnet. The comic was written by the sports editor of Le Vingtième and was published in the premier issue of the comics supplement, on November 1, 1928 until March 7, 1929.

I had never seen it before and recently stumbled upon this story, at a great French website containing many archived works of Hergé. Unfortunately the owner, Daniel Bellier just recently passed away. If you want to check out or read the original editions of Hergés comic newspaper publications check out his site http://www.bellier.org (hit the entrée button once youre there).

With gratitude to Belliers site, check out one of Hergés first comics below. Its twenty pages (in French), although pages 15/16 are omitted and have not resurfaced yet. Make sure to click the images for a much larger view:

Founded by rocket scientist John Carmack, pioneer of 3D game engine technology and father of the First person shooters, id softwares new game Rage will finally hit the stores today in the US, after four years of hard work! The official European release date for both PS3 and X360 is October 7th, so I guess Ill have to wait till Friday to get my first headshot!

Rage: facts, fiction and mythology.

In 2004 astronomers discovered 99942 Apophis, a giant asteroid bound to hit earth in April 2029. Although scientists have since calculated it will pass our planet at a near distance, they found out that Apophis would near the Earth again in 2036. The original calculations by NASA in 2004 estimated Apophis impact to be the equivalent of 1440 megatons of TNT.











In Rage, Apophis (named after the Egyptian god of chaos and darkness) does strike Earth, erasing more than eighty percent of human civilization. Though scientists found a way for humanity to survive, the experiment known as Project Eden, fails. Thousands of Arks, carrying people that were put in cryogenic sleep using a high-tech drug known as Nanotrites, were destroyed. Most survivors mutated due to the untested drug, turning them into monstrous beings. The player aka US Marine Lieutenant Nicholas Raine, awakens around 2114, only to find ruined cities in a wasteland full of mutants and a superior military class known as the Authority, the new rulers of Earth, who secretly had their own Super Ark to start a new utopian society.




Texas-based Id Software was founded in 1991 by programmers John Carmack and John Romero with game designer Tom Hall and artist Adrian Carmack. They rocked the video game industry when they created a whole new genre with the release of the first 1st person shooter Wolfenstein 3D in May 1992. Heavily censured everywhere for its use of swastikas and bloody violence, the original game had you searching for the leader of the third reich in the nazi stronghold castle Wolfenstein.

Armadillo Aerospace.

Today, the VFX team of ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) uploaded a new video showing more of their work on their recent movie Battleship and the creation of a completely new fluid simulation system, which had to be re-engineered completely from the ground up for this film. It includes interviews with Grady Cofer, Pablo Helman, Willi Geiger and Nick Rasmussen of ILM. As always, make sure to check it out in full HD below.

In 2007, Nick Rasmussen, Ron Fedkiw and Frank Losasso Petterson already received a Sci-Tech Award from the Academy for the development of the original ILM fluid simulation system. Simultaneously, Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam, Julia Pakalns and Martin Werner were awarded that year with a Sci-Tech award for the design and implementation of the Maya Fluid Effects system.

For this years Sci-Tech Awards, seven achievements have been selected from various companies for award consideration. Among them, Lucasfilm for Zviz, a previsualisation system, WETA Digital for Tissue, a Physically-Based Character Simulation Framework and PDI Dreamworks for their new Lighting tool. The 2012 Scientific and Technical Awards will be presented at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills on February 9, 2013. The event will be hosted by actress Zoe Saldana and actor Chris Pine (from the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness).