Yair Mor's Blog!

As you very well know, I take a drawing course at Nekudat Magoz, in Tel Aviv. And in this course I study anatomy illustration. Here are some of my works (click to enlarge on DeviantArt):

I completed this in about 4 hours this night. This is a new rig I’m testing.

Another AM gathering took place at a sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv and it was very fun. Thanks Gabi for making all the arrangements and Liron for taking pictures!

Photo taken from this post.

1. Alma
   A very nice horror short, directed by Rodrigo Blaas and produced independently. This is Blaas’s first attempt at directing a short. It looks really good, and I’m waiting to see some more awesome animation from him and his crew.
   For more information check out Alma website: almashortfilm.com.
   
2. Adele Blanc-Sec
   This upcoming Luc Besson film is based on French comics artist Jacques Tardi. Described by /Film as combination of Indiana Jones, Tin Tin and Hellboy, this film should be a treat for people who love an adventure story taking place in Paris at the turn of the century peppered with some fantasy elements.
   You should check out the website. It has a cool Flash interface.
   [youtube HqiHR3bDpCc ]
3. Mass Effect 2 trailer
   Totally awesome! I really enjoyed the first one, and ME2 looks even better. Can’t wait till it’s out!
   

This is just in: A rare photograph of the inside of my lair has just been found! See for yourselves this unbelievable footage of my desk at home, and an enhanced zoom of my rat, Bertie, sitting, quite scared, on my monitor.

BTW, that thing you see on screen is a test rig I’m trying. Very simple, actually, but I hope to get some kick ass animation on it pretty soon, so stay tuned for some more!

(Click to enlarge)

Now it’s available in this address: http://blog.yair-mor.com

I think it’s more suitable than the former address.

Update your links and stuff, please. Sorry for any inconvenience.

1. Zerebrale Dichotomie
   A nice little video showing in a funny way how we make decisions in the neurological level, using funny characters on an everyday situation. Produced by students of the University of Applied Science Upper Austria. They also have a website.
   
2. Google stop motion for Chrome
   Google once again surprises us with innovative ideas. This time they created this fantastic film showing in a relaxed “for dummies” way why Google Chome (which is my favorite browser, by the way) is the best in the field.
   
3. Oleg Denisenko
   Found it on Gothic Tea Society blog. Oleg is an etching artist from Ukraine. He creates fantastic etches with an immense amount of detail. He’s inspired by his native Eastern Europe artistic style, and it’s clear there’s lots of Chinese influence in there too. The backgrounds in his works are detailed with abstracts that remind me of astrological charts and signs. For some reason he depicts most of his horses as dead and bony and having wheels instead of their hind legs.
   
4. Voodoo
   I love French animation. Not only do they have 300 kinds of cheese, these French make some of the best animations I’ve ever seen. Sometimes they even surpass the Japanese. This one is pretty awesome. It reminds me a bit of Fumico’s Confession, which I’ve shown here a few weeks ago, because of the style of chase and narrow perspective they use. You’ve gotta check it out!
   
5. Mag+
   This beautiful video was created by BERG, a technology design consultancy from London. This is how they envision the future of the next generation of E-readers.
   

I finished reading this week Umberto Eco‘s Foucault’s Pendulum. A clever, vastly detailed story about 3 friends inventing a fictitious conspiracy plan for world domination as an innocent game and how it affects their lives.

Much has been said about this book, and a very good summary can be found on Wikipedia, so let me cap it briefly: Casaubon, the narrator and hero of the story is an Italian student interested in Occult theories, and especially everything that has to do with the Knights Templar. He meets up with Belbo and Diotallevi, both editors at a local publishing house.
The three of them go through too many manuscripts written by occult authors (they nickname them “diabolicals”). These writings are mostly about pseudoscientific ideas and conspiracy theories about special hidden powers and the ability to rule the universe using them. Eventually, the three editors decide to start their own conspiracy theory for fun and they call it the Plan.
Being more rational and intelligent than their diabolical counterparts, they create a far more sophisticated theory, reinterpreting the knowledge they gather from different manuscripts and events they attend. They interweave almost every famous person and event in the history of the world into their plan, handing them all a part in it’s great making. They try to approach this task at first without being biased or fanatic, but soon they find out they are succumbed by their theory, and everything in their life somehow becomes connected with it. They start losing grip of reality and any common sense and slowly become consumed by their game.

What fascinates me is how the heroes’ perception of their surroundings is altered based on the psychological changes they go through. You have to understand: dealing with the occult is not a rewarding process at all. Since you are bound by no rules of reason, everything’s possible. I know, some of you might say that being unbound by rules is liberating and everything, but consider this: a research created without a framework, having no rules at all, can be easily disputed since there are also no rules to back it up.

I emphasize this obvious point because Foucault’s Pendulum‘s heroes have had this type of research. And since they could make any claim they wanted and back it up in any way they wanted, inventing the Plan was simply putting random pieces of a giant puzzle together. It was interesting to see how their beliefs in the Plan caused them to be skeptical of their true environment. How every ordinary event or fact triggered a metaphysical debate about their conspiratorial consequences. For example, at one point they discuss the true function of the Eiffel Tower – was it built just to be a giant entrance for the 1889 World’s Fair, or was it really just a cover story for it’s true function as some sort of an antenna meant to do something with the Telluric Currents?
It goes on and on like this. At the beginning, they receive a coded manuscript they discover is actually a description of several secret meetings.  Casaubon, later on, rejects a rational explanation his girlfriend, Lia, has for that manuscript. He is claiming that an explanation as simple as that is unreasonable (Lia said that it wasn’t a code at all, but a grocery list some merchant made a few hundred years ago).

Things in the story become disturbing when the three heroes’ surrounding begins responding to their Plan. The levels of uncertainty and doubt is reaching new limits. The heroes start believing their Plan is actually real. Some people around them develop interest in their ideas. Police officers are blackmailed to keep quiet and one of them even becomes terminally ill, allegedly because of the Plan itself. It’s unclear at this point if they have uncovered something sinister or maybe their theories provoked the wrong people? Even the narrator becomes unreliable and at the end he becomes so paranoid you can’t really trust what you read. This part was really exciting (other than the fact that it brought back some action into the story).

I admit some parts of the book, where they deliver the historical turn of events,  had me lost more than once, but ultimately, this was a rewarding book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a novel packed with lots of occult rituals, conspiracy theories and descriptions of beautiful cities like Paris and Milan.

1. Sugimoto Kousuke’s The TV Show
   Amazing little animation. Complicated transitions between shots that are inside of other shots.
   
2. 2033 trailer
   This is the trailer for Francisco Laresgoiti upcoming dystopian sci-fi movie. The story, as summarized in this post on Quiet Earth, is about a futuristic Mexico City under a militaristic regime that controls the population by an addictive drink called Pactia. Two heroes set on an adventure to free the city and restore peace and freedom to the city. I don’t know about you, but this trailer makes this movie look like a combination of Equilibrium and Children of Men, both of them I really love. It looks well produced and I hope I’ll get the chance to watch it once it’s out. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer:
   
3. Photo gallery of Dubai
   Taken from the blog of Nathan Lipson, an economy journalist and strategic manager in TheMarker. In his post he talks about his trip to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and shows amazing photos of the expensive Burj al-Arab hotel and restaurant, the infamous tower Burj Dubai (818 meters tall!), plenty of luxury cars and the artificial islands. He also mentioned the new rapid metro system, which I hold a special memory of since I took part in a production of a presentation for it’s inauguration ceremony a few months ago.
4. Ville Varumo
   This Finnish photographer showcases a great gallery of photos that have an amazing crisp and bright quality. Each one of them is slick, sharp and rich with detail. Here is but a taste:
   
5. The Duplicator Series: new titles for Cartoon Network!
   Meindbender created these funky clips for Cartoon Network. They’re really awesome and have great animation. Check them out in this forum post:
   http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=71936
6. Illustrator Kitty Valentine
   This British artist takes old postcards (but also makes original drawings) and modifies them in a special Victorian way which I like very much.
   

Warning: contains spoilers.

The debut for director Bill Paxton, who also stars in the film along with Matthew McConaughey, Frailty is an awesome psychological thriller that holds a tight plot and a great twist at the end.

It starts with McConaughey entering an FBI office in Texas, introduces himself as Fenton Meiks and wishes to speak to have an urgent talk with the head of investigation of a serial killer nicknamed “God’s Hand”. I must note here Powers Boothe’s (The FBI agent Doyle) great appearnce. Actually he wasn’t doing much in the film, but he was captivating. I remember first seeing him playing the loathsome character of Vice President Noah Daniels on 24, and he was great there and even better on Frailty.

Anyway, back to the movie. Fenton claims his brother, Adam, is the infamous serial killer. Adam commited suicide before Fenton came to the office. Fenton buried his brother in Thurman Rose Garden, because he made him a promise. He tells Doyle his life story: growing up with just their dad, Fenton is leading a happy life with his small family, until daddy is having revelations from Gods and angels that tell him he should start slaying the demons that walk among men. He comes up with a list of supposed demons. This is the point where the viewer starts asking themselves if God really spoke to Fenton’s dad or has he really went crazy. Judging by how the story unfolds, apparently God is interfering with humanity this time.

The Meiks bury their victims in a garden in their neighborhood, and God sees that no one asks questions. But Fenton is skeptical about his dad’s visions and he thinks his daddy is killing innocent people, so his dad locks him up in the cellar in the shed for several weeks. Fenton sees God, at last, and gains his dad’s trust. But, while being entrusted with the murdering ax in order to kill their next victim, Fenton slays his father instead. Adam, then, slays the victim.

Fenton takes Doyle to the Rose Garden to show him proof of his story, and keeps telling him along the way. He says that after the death of their father the boys both got separated, but before that Fenton had made Adam promise that he must bury his brother in the Thurman Rose Garden. Hearing this part of the story, agent Doyle gets suspicious. Wasn’t it the other way around? Adam was the believer and Fenton the skeptic. Unless… and this is where the plot twists. The man claims to be Fenton was really Adam. And Doyle was lured into the Thurman Rose Garden because he was next on Adam’s list of demons. It is revealed that Doyle’s late mother was actually murdered by him and the plot basically ends when Adam carries God’s will by killing agent Doyle.

This film doesn’t really hold much of a moral message or anything, since the plot states clearly that god is responsible for killing the demons, since he makes sure no one interferes, and, like a professional criminal, leaves no trace behind. And since god is beyond moral reason, anything he does always stay within the boundaries of morality. I know I shouldn’t look for reason here, but the theistic questions you can ask about the film hold still in our reality as well.

Anyway, I lack sleep, so I’ll end this post now.