Oh my, how much can a boy take?

News:
I’ve taken the Zbrush plunge, and here’s a little something I did to test it out:

Zbrush is quite amazing for doing detailed organic modeling. It’s by no means perfect, but for time being, it has no real competition out there–something I hope will change very soon, as competition is healthy for innovation and improvement.

Weblog:
Somebody pinch me–Waldorf is back in action! I have long been a big fan of Waldorf synths–those delicious one-of-a-kind filters, and I find their ultra cool “We don’t need our synths to look like slick spaceships–they are industrial strength machines made for music” design sensibility admirable. Dig that sexy techno industrial orange and yellow. *drool* At one point I even corresponded with the then-defunct Waldorf about hooking them up with either a buyer or source of funding in China. I’m so glad the correspondences didn’t lead to fruition, because no Chinese company could ever do Waldorf’s vision justice. I have held off buying any Waldorf products because I knew support would be a problem with the company gone, but now that they’re back on the horse, I could hear my wallet weeping in fear already. I should hold off and see if they’ve got some new and innovative products on the horizon though. I really hope they dive deeper into the VST ocean and continue where they left off, as I’m not too fond of the idea of getting more hardware synths.

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For those of you who played and loved The Longest Journey years ago, you probably have been keeping up with the development of the sequel, Dreamfall. The game is now out and Gamespot just did a review of it. If you don’t know a thing about any of this, then I’ll just say that The Longest Journey is one of my favorite game of all time–a fantastic and immersive sci-fi/fantasy adventure with a lovable heroine named April Ryan. It’s got one of the best written stories in the medium of video games, contains great voice acting, and the visual design of the world feels cohesive and very immersive. According to the Gamespot review, Dreamfall is just as amazing, except that it’s deemed too short. In fact if you watch the video review, it’s obvious that they feel if the game had just been a few hours longer, it would’ve been a stunning masterpiece. I’m all giddy like a little school boy now. I got to get my paws on it and play, but I’m completely swamped with a bunch of far more urgent things right now. I might not get to play it until months later, after we’ve settled down at a new place and me with a new job.

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I’m fairly underwhelmed by the whole Origami hype right now. The concept feels flawed to me–it’s too big to have the portability appeal of a PDA, and it’s too underpowered to have the workhorse appeal of a laptop. Even if I received one as a gift, I would probably just turn around and sell it on ebay or something. I wouldn’t know what to do with it, as all the things I’d be interested in doing on a portable computing device are beyond its capabilities.

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While trying to do a RGB to CMYK conversion for the piece I’ll be sending to Spectrum 13 for printing, I asked the guys at cgtalk for their input, which spawned a heated debate about how Photoshop handles colors in PC and Macs. You can read the thread here.

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Here’s another wacky news from China that Elena relayed to me during her daily newspaper reading:

A teacher forced students to remain in their seats during the mandatory afternoon nap, and when some students who needed to go to the bathroom couldn’t hold it in anymore, they urinated in empty water bottles. When the teacher found out about it he was furious. The teacher then made the students mix all the urine from everyone together, divide it up into equal portions, and then had the students drink the whole thing. Some of the students couldn’t handle the revolting experience and threw up right there in the classroom. When the students told their parents about what happened, the teacher was immediately fired by the school. Parents of the students are now suing.