“This is my rifle.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.” (Did that monkey just talk?)

The rumor about the Taliban training monkeys to kill anyone “wearing U.S. military uniforms” is a hoax started by the official paper of the Communist Party of China.  It didn’t take long for NMA to make an “action news” animation for Apple Daily, the website of Taiwan’s most widely read paper.  They’ve made similar animations for the Tiger Woods and Al Gore scandals.  Just don’t tell them this story is fake, because these animations are too much fun.

Military rumor investigator Jeff Schogol got in touch with a named NATO spokesman, who said that “We have absolutely nothing that leads us to believe that this tale could be even remotely based in reality.” A primatologist pointed out to him that the picture appears to depict an African baboon and not one of the rhesus monkeys which actually live in central Asia, that you probably couldn’t train a monkey to steadily hold a weapon, and that the sound of the gunfire would “certainly scare most animals and make them stop.” Oh, also: It turns out the gun in the photo is a toy. [Geekosystem]

The video is below, and it’s everything I dreamed it could be.

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If you’re waiting for leaks of Ryan Reynold’s Green Lantern suit to hit the internet from the set, prepare to wait a bit longer. According to Slashfilm, that because he’s just wearing a grey motion-capture suit with white LED’s since his Green Lantern uniform will be a CGI construct added in later.

Now, to be honest, this makes complete sense to me – I mean, he summons his outfit from his ring anyway, so why wouldn’t it be CGI to look like the rest of the rings construct. And the design’s probably not too bad as Geoff Johns has reportedly signed off on it and it’ll be designed by Ngila Dickson, who did the costuming on the Lord of the Rings trilogy…so she’s dressed thousands of CGI characters.

I just feel bad for Reynolds. After all, what’s the fun of playing Green Lantern if you can’t run around in the green and black duds making flying sounds with your mouth?

[Slashfilm]

Alex Roman made this video, The Third & The Seventh, using 3dsmax, Vray, AfterEffects and Premiere.
Every element of this short film is CGI.  My mind is blown.  Why couldn’t they have this f*cking artist animate Wolverine’s claws in X-Men Origins: Wolverine? 

Roman describes it as “A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.”  I don’t know what all that jibba jabba means, but I like shiney things.  It also helps that he used Michael Nyman’s “The Departure” from Gattaca as one of the songs.  You could put that song on a slow-motion video of me getting beaten mercilessly with a wet pool noodle and I’d still tear up and say, “It’s so beautiful.”  And not just because I’m into that.

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