Hasta La Motion!

India’s first kids’ animation summit titled KAM (Kids Animation and More) saw an insightful array of sessions ranging from fireside chats to exclusive presentations and elaborate panel discussions orchestrated around key themes of the Kids’ animation ecosystem followed by ANN awards, India’s first and largest premium and full-scale award function to celebrate the excellence in the animation sphere of the M & E space across Indie studios, major Indian animated shows, prestigious brands, students, animation Studios, institutes, and aspirants.

Bringing the industry stalwarts under one roof, the event took place at Mumbai’s The Lalit Hotel on 30 August 2019. Kicking off with the customary lamp lighting session, KAM summit set the tone for the summit with a welcome note. The starry day marked the growth trajectory of India’s animation ecosystem, creating memorable moments and engaging Industry veterans in the most constructive ways. The proceedings of the day began with a fireside chat between Sony Yay! business head Leena Lele Dutta and Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari who discussed on the challenges faced by Sony Yay being a new entrant in the segment.

Denying that being a latecomer is a shortcoming for them, Dutta said that she rather sees this as an opportunity. She noted, “I don’t see us as latecomers but rather see this as an opportunity. The only challenge is that children already have so many characters entrenched in their minds, so we have to do something disruptive enough to disperse them from their minds and make a memorable IP. We see a lot of unconventional brands also coming to our channel.”

It was followed by a fantastic presentation by Discovery Kids conducted by Vednarayan Pandey where he spoke about the upcoming IP Fukrey Boys, displayed an exclusively comic portion of the animation show. Next was an insightful panel discussion named “Building on 200 million eyeballs”, that tried to answer the important and difficult question of how advertisers can capture the attention of kids audience.

The panel moderated by Publicis Worldwide managing director Srija Chatterjee included big names from the brand side–Hamleys India head of marketing Sivaraman Balakrishnan, Baskin Robbins India head of marketing Samyukta Ganesh Iyer, Pidilite Industries category head – consumer products division Kartik Subramanian, KidZania India marketing director Tarandeep Singh Sekhon, Parle Products sr. category head marketing Krishnarao S. Buddha, and Mattel Toys head – consumer products Permendra Singh.

The panel called out the need for broadcasters to create more relatable and successful Indian animated characters that they can license to create advertisements that can connect better to the audience. They also discussed how kids today have become smarter and are guiding their parents to buy certain products and hence it becomes necessary to communicate with them in their own language. The next item on agenda was a presentation by Mondelez International licensing head – India & MEA Suparna Madan who gave a perceptive presentation on reaching out to the kids’ audience with an analysis of parenting patterns over the years.

The day was taken forward by a free-wheeling chat between Anil Wanvari and Sphereorigins Multivision founder Sunjoy Waddhwa, and HopMotion Animation business head Anish Patel.

The trio turned the cart in the direction of the way the panelists materialised their visions into a success story. Speaking about the success of creating Choti Anandi, Sphereorigins Multivision founder Sanjay Waddhwa said, “The show was already a Hit on Colors so the fact that it had a built-in audience also helped. It fact it did better on Rishtey in terms of viewership”

They also threw light on their partnership and the studio pipeline, HopMotion Animation business head Anish Patel shared, “We specialise in 2D but we also have a 3D facility. It’s a harmony-based studio. We also cater to service studios”

Following that, BARC India head – product leadership and excellence Elbert D’Silva took on the dais to elaborate on how Indian kids consume TV and how advertisers can utilise the opportunity to connect with them.

D’Silva also spoke on the impact that NTO had on the viewership of kids’ channels, saying, “Kids genre saw a drop post NTO but redesigned with the increasing trend leading to summer vacation.”

The second half of the day began with a panel discussion on Animation 2020, between Green Gold Animation founder and CEO Rajiv Chilaka, Sony Yay! programming head Ronojoy Chakraborty, DQ Entertainment COO Manoj Mishra, Nickelodeon programming head Anu Sikka, Reliance Animation COO Tejonidhi Bhandare, and Cosmos Maya AVP revenue and corporate strategy Devdatta Potnis , moderated by FICCI chairman animation and gaming Ashish Kulkarni.

Discussing the way forward for the animation industry in the coming years, they elaborated more on the opportunities and challenges that the industry currently faces. The panel insisted that there is a big need there to have more successful animation studios in 2020.

Discussing his visions about the future of the animation ecosystem, Rajiv Chilaka shared, “I wish to see more successful Indian studios. I realise the pain of running an animation studio. It’s something you have to keep on upgrading the hardware and software. You need to understand the pain of the employees. On top of all this, there is GST also now. But I’m happy that Chota Bheem paved the way for domestic animation. Motu Patlu is a roaring success. We need more passion and more young blood coming with us. We need to reach out to the Indian diaspora. Chota Being number one is something we never dreamt of. We need to reach the benchmark of 100 crore and then 100 million.”

The next item on agenda was a fireside chat between Lodestar UM CEO Nandini Dias and Anil Wanvari. The duo discussed how kids’ animation sector has evolved over years for the marketers and what opportunities it presents to the advertisers.

Dias mentioned, “Five years back, we would start with TV as the mainstay, but today often our conversation starts with e-commerce, digital, and factors like methods of discovery. Then comes television.”

She further noted that apart from e-commerce, another thing that has boomed in the past few years in the gaming industry. The chat was followed by another panel discussion titled “The Boutique Studios: Tomorrow’s Giants”. Discussing the power of studios in today’s creative world were Paperboat Animation Studios creative director Aashish Mall, Dentsy Story Lab EVP Kumar Deb Sinha, Vaibhav More Films founder Vaibhav More, PhilmCGI managing director Anand Bhanushali, and Bioscopewala president Nishith Takia. The session was moderated by industry veteran Krishna Desai.

The speakers discussed the ways in which Indian Animation Scenario can be improved. The panel noted that there is a need to work on design forms and build on them to attract more audience.

The proceedings were taken forward by Cosmos Maya AVP revenue and corporate strategy Devdatta Potnis who gave a presentation on Cosmos Maya’s journey and IPs. He also announced the launch of the upcoming IP “The Fukrey Boyz” based on a popular Bollywood franchise Fukrey.

The next panel to take on the dais comprised of Videogyaan chief strategy operations Rangarao TM, Shemaroo SVP – animation, kids digital, and L&M Smita Maroo, Sun NXT senior manager Vidhyalakshmi T.A., and Lattu Kids co-founder and CEO Vivek Bhutyani, moderated by Kinsane Entertainment CMO Pranab Kunj. The panelists shared their views on the evolution of kids’ content on the digital platform.

Next, there was a thorough discussion on the topic of “Making odd-screen animated hits” between Dream Theatre founder and CEO Jiggy George and Green Gold Animation chief strategy officer Srinivas Chilakalapudi. The trio discussed licensing and merchandising in a light-hearted yet informative manner.

Upon being asked about the challenges in licensing of the IPS due to the absence of L&M culture in Dream Theatre, Jiggy George shared, “There wasn’t really a culture of L&M and India is a very diverse market. You can make a t-shirt for 99 rupees and high-quality ones for 499 rupees. However, the biggest challenges remain to be piracy and counterfeiting.”

Speaking about his success with L&M, Shrinivas Chilakalapudi shared, “We have had success with licensing so you we have done Mighty Raju, Super Bheem, Mighty Little Bheem in Toddler’s Space”

George added, “To the animation companies, my wish is that we need authentic characters. it’s authentic when you do your own characters. Do what the Japanese do. Check which characters can be seamlessly integrated into the script. When it’s seamlessly done, it easier for us. Otherwise, we don’t like to slap it onto the t-shirt.”

The final panel of the day discusses the topic of “Creating an Impact for Kids Audience”. Sitting on the panel were Grey India national planning director Arun Raman, Wavemaker managing partner Monaz Todywala, and Omnicom Media AVP, PHD Media Asmita Pawar Reelkar. The panel was moderated by Sony Yay! VP marketing and OAP Sujory Roy Bardhan.

Arun Raman noted that segmentation within kids genre creates a big problem for the marketers. He insisted that the kids’ content should be made more inclusive and relevant to audience across categories including adults.

The knowledge-packed day culminated into the gala ANN Awards where top performers in the animation sector within the country were felicitated for their work.

The post KAM summit and ANN awards unite the Animation ecosystem under one roof appeared first on AnimationXpress.

India’s Media & Entertainment sector has been experiencing a rise in animation content consumption, due to new viewing platforms and viewing services, both in India and abroad, is resulting in increased demand for quality animation.

Opportunities abound for the Indian Animation and VFX industry, across film, television and digital outsourced projects, representing 85% of total animation services turnover in India, and for original content with universal appeal for the global market. (Ernst&Young India, March 2019)

Ernst & Young noted that Indian animation and VFX services continued to gain traction among international production houses. They provide a cost efficiency of up to 50 percent compared with other countries. With improvement in animation quality over the last few years and the cost advantage, international studios and animation houses are increasingly utilizing services from India. 

During the last few years, Indian animation studios have worked with major international players such as Disney, Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Sony, Viacom/Nick, BBC, Cartoon Network, Fox, Ubisoft and Zynga, among others. Technicolor India has worked on animation movies such as Penguins of Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, Mickey and the Roadster Racers, Alvin and the Chipmunks, All Hail Kind Julian, Wallykazam, Fanboy and Chumchum and Puss in Boots, among others. 

Growth of digital content consumption in India created a significant opportunity for broadcasters and OTT platform providers. Correspondingly, they increased investments in original IP creation. Smartphone penetration, coupled with more OTT platforms, enabled tier-II and tier-III cities to access content online, both on YouTube and large OTT platforms of broadcasters. Due to this, average content consumption of a common Indian has gone up from 450 hours a year. Animation-based content had a major share in this growth of online content consumption. 

In April 2018, Cosmos Maya collaborated with Yupp TV to launch its digital channel Wowkidz on the OTT platform. Under its brand Wowkidz, the company owns content portfolio of over 1,000 half-hour shows. 

In the same period, Discovery Kids announced plans to launch its own OTT app to ensure strong presence of the channel in the digital space. As part of the plan, it has also collaborated with Netflix for digital distribution of its series. 

There are now five Indian companies in the top 100 animation companies on YouTube from companies such as USP Studios, Chu Chu TV, Green Gold, Hoopla Kids, CVS 3D Rhymes, etc. 

The next phase of growth for the segment is expected to be driven by the global digital push. Netflix is expected to spend US$1.1 billion on animated content worldwide in 2018 and Amazon is projected to spend US$300 million. This translates into roughly 10% of total content budget for these companies. This number is expected to go up to about 15% of their total content budget in 2021. 

In addition to OTT platforms, traditional broadcasters are getting into the animated content space. Most national broadcasters like Viacom, Sony, Disney and Discovery have increased their focus on animated content in India, with other national and some local broadcasters also gearing up to launch original animated content. 

Spilling Over with Animation – But is it All Good? A word of caution to the wise. When iNSiGHTS magazine recently caught up with Vivek Bhutyani, Founder & CEO of Lattu Kids, the ex-Star India vice-president and head of content syndication, to understand the issues he is facing as a buyer today, it was noted that the chasm between quality and quantity is still an issue. It was what started the idea of Lattu Kids, and it is what continues to drive its growth. 

Here, the very recent uproar from overwhelming fury of MyPinguTV’s “Dina and The Prince Story” on the YouTube kids’ channel comes to mind. YouTube has since pulled down the content across several languages, but not without first being heavily criticized. 

MyPingu TV has around 720,000 subscribers on YouTube and “Dina and the Prince Story” has been watched nearly 400,000 times.

 

“I think there are two different ways of seeing this, “Lattu Kids founder & CEO Vivek Bhutyani noted, referring to volume of content versus the quality. Thus, the many studios active on YouTube producing kids’ animation content does not directly equate to successful engagements.

“Kids today have a huge variety to choose from. On the one hand, this is a good thing; however, the question we must ask is, ‘how much of this content is really engaging and fun for kids and are these ideas original? Does the content impact children in positive way or even leading to some talking points between children and parents?, ” added he. 

He further stated, “Mindless and copycat content for kids is on the rise on many platforms; I see this as an opportunity for quality content creators, platforms and studios to stand out and create meaningful content for kids.”

For Vivek, what matters to kids is that one great show or a few high-engaging IPs that kids watch repeatedly and connect with. 

“What is difficult to find sometimes are kids’ shows that are produced with high production standards; when I say ‘production’, it doesn’t need to be high-end 3D. There are times when we come across really great kids’ shows in 2D, but well-executed with the right scripts and good direction. The edutainment genre is a tough one to crack, as there’s a chance of the show becoming too boring and preachy. We prefer shows that have a good balance of fun and learning and these are not very easy to find,” noted Bhutyani. 

“At Lattu kids, kids engagement is our first priority, We are looking at building our library with more edutainment, musicals and STEM content that helps kids learn while they are having fun. We are generally open to all entertaining content as long as it’s made with decent production quality and neutral English accents. Overall, we plan to acquire 100+ hours of content this year,” he expounded.

In the recent one to three years, Lattu Kids’ top performing content that has experienced great success include Maya the Bee , Talking Tom & Friends, Leo & Coco, Wondergrove – that have seen high engagement on its app from kids – and recently-acquired Fireman Sam & Messy goes to Okido from DHX Media . 

“Our latest acquisition has been for Little Brown Bear and Charlie Goes to School from France TV distribution, as well as the Gruffalo series by Magic Light pictures.” 

Lattu Kids, a fully integrated kid’s entertainment firm based out of Singapore and India, aims to produce and showcase the best International content in India and Southeast Asia. 

There are different TG within India for kids’ content, seeing the size of the market. It is a complex country with kids watching multiple languages apart from English. There are some home grown IPs that are doing well in India on TV and again, Vivek notes that these are very few, as it takes time and effort to build a new IP in India. 

“Lattu Kids is focused on aspirational kids who come from multilingual backgrounds, so they are comfortable watching their own languages and at the same time, they study in English medium schools.”

“We are open to all content from across the globe as long as the accents are not very heavy and easy for Indian kids to understand. We do invest in dubbing and localizing these IPs to suit the Indian kids. We have had great success with localizing Talking Tom & Friends for the first time in India, and the same version was then bought back and run on Netflix India, as our partner, Outfit7, loved our quality.” 

“We believe in long term partnerships with our studio partners and help them build strong IP in India that kids relate to,” said Bhutyani.

Content flow therefore looks promising both ways and India looks set to dominate, surpassing China in the years to come. The percentage of the population that is young (under 15yo) is projected to be higher in India than in China throughout the 2000—2035 period (JSTOR, 2011).

Nowadays, with the Strategy of Jio’s free phone promotion, the game has changes and the tabled turned on who has become the global market of the century.

 

“On an ecosystem level we have seen a massive surge in video consumption post Jio in India. This country has the world’s highest data usage per smartphone at an average of 9.8 GB per month and likely to double to 18GB by 2024, fueled by rich video content. 

“There are first time smartphone users who are immediately experiencing 4G, and these new users are going to fuel the way forward. We have been talking to Jio for some time now, and you will soon hear something exciting on this front for Indian kids,” Bhutyani promised.

---

By Lulu M

Article is contributed by ATF iNSiGHTS 

The post ATF Insights: taking dominance in kids’ content further by Lulu M appeared first on AnimationXpress.

The new features in C4D R21 that the team has been excited to play with, upcoming meetups and events, and Disney takes over streaming.

In this podcast episode, the team talks about exciting new Cinema 4D R21 features, upcoming events the team will be attending in the US and Canada, cord-cutting, and all the big Disney Plus announcements.

For more about the 3D Design + Motion Tour, and to get 25% off or you tickets, check out this post or visit 3dmotiontour.com and enter code GSG3DMT

Subscribe to the Podcast | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Overcast | RSS

Show Notes:

Greyscalegorilla Plus

3D Design + Motion Tour – 25% off with code: GSG3DMT

Half Rez 8

Blendfest

DFWC4D Meetup – Mograph.com and EyeDesyn

THX Deep Note – Genesis (2019)

THX Deep Note – Behind the Scenes

Video Copilot Orb

Disney Plus

MLB Advanced Media

BAMTech

YouTube TV

Veronica Mars

The Boys

Chernobyl

Cinema 4D R21 Features

Custom C4D Workflow Icons – Coming Soon

The Happy Toolbox Vol 2.

Greyscalegorilla Podcast page

Podcast Episodes Transcript:

Nick Campbell: Hello there. Render friends. It’s nick here with the Greyscalegorilla podcast and right before we get started today, I wanted to remind you that we are launching Greyscalegorilla Plus any minute now. In fact, as soon as R21 drops, we’re going to have some brand new training to get you up and going with all the new stuff in R21 if a lot to announce a lot coming up, make sure you head on over to greyscalegorilla.com/plus to learn more. You can even reserve a seat over there for the launch. Without further ado, let’s hop in to today’s podcast.

Nick Campbell: All right, we are back for it sounds like we’re back from a commercial break. We kind of are folks, welcome to the Greyscalegorilla podcast with me today is Michael Maher. How are you sir?

Michael Maher: I’m doing super.

Nick Campbell: I liked that, that felt real good, energetic and uh, of course, Chad. Ashley, how are You sir?

Chad Ashley: Not too bad. How about you?

Nick Campbell: Oh Man, I’m, I feel I’m feeling it today. Got My second coffee. Uh, that’s usually when I should stop. But, uh, you know, I think, I think we’ll go a little bit overboard. It’s a Monday. Uh, what, what’s been going on in the news these days? What’s, uh, any 3D craziness happening? Um, I know it’s summer and things get a little bit slow sometimes, but, uh, what’s been, what’s been going around around here?

Michael Maher: Oh man, just about everybody’s getting their shows ready. We’ve got like, um, a big road show from Maxon. We’ve got Half Rez coming up. There’s a bunch of other festivals like blend. Um, there’s the big Disney festival right now, so we got all that Disney movie news, Star Wars and marvel and way more Disney stuff than you’d expect to hear about.

Chad Ashley: So who, who’s signing up for Disney plus?

Michael Maher: I don’t have a choice, man. I’ve got, I’ve got boys at home and if I never have to buy another superhero movie, like it’s already worth it.

Nick Campbell: What? You may need to sell me on Disney plus cause we’re, we’re like, all right, I’m sure we’ll get there. But I’ve been watching some more, some more, uh, superhero movies, stuff like that. So I may need a little pitch later today. Uh, but, um, yeah, I mean events. Maybe we should start there with a, some Greyscalegorilla, uh, uh, events that will, will, that will be at essentially, I guess we’re not really running any of these, but we’re going to be, um, of course at Half Rez this year. Uh, actually, Mike, can you fill us in and can you give us a full calendar? There’s so much happening this, uh, this season. I can’t, I can’t even remember all of it.

Michael Maher: So a pretty much everything kicks off in September. Um, the first thing that some of you might have heard already is, uh, Maxon is doing a 26 city road tour called the 3d design and motion tour that kicks off September 4th in Austin. We’re sponsoring that event. We’ll actually be attending in a few different cities. Um, we’ve been got a discount for, uh, for you guys. We’ll make sure you guys can get a discount on your tickets. Uh, right after that, uh, the road show actually has a, a date in Chicago that is the week of Half Rez. Uh, I think Half Rez is September 18th. Um, and then right after that, that next weekend is blend. I know you’re going to that right Nick. That’s the, the 20th or the 21st.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, I’m a uh, hopping on a plane as soon as half rises over and heading to blend up in Vancouver and I, I think it will also be at the road show, uh, event in Vancouver as well. So if you’re listening come say hi there. And um, I think I’m, I’m looking at my other dates. I’ll look, a couple of these are tentative, but I, I might be in Denver, I might be in Toronto and definitely in Vancouver and Chad, are you going to the Chicago roadshow event?

Chad Ashley: Yeah, I’ll be at the Chicago Maxon roadshow event, most likely Montreal as well. And then possibly sticking around in Montreal for the Montreal in Motion Festival as well. And of course we’ll all be at, uh, at the, uh, the old Half Rez.

Nick Campbell: I’m so excited. Um, now, Mike, are you, are you heading to any one of these?

Michael Maher: Uh, I will likely head down for the Austin show. That’s the closest road show to me. And then I hear that, um, EJ will be in Dallas I think the night after, uh, for like a mograph meetup here. So I’ll probably head down to the Dallas mograph meetup as well.

Nick Campbell: Dude, it’s a, it’s huge. Go check that out. Um, they, they’re hitting some, uh, a ton of cities. They also have an upcoming, um, I don’t know if it’s Europe or UK. What did they, what do they call that? Not that other tour they’re doing after this?

Michael Maher: Yeah, well it’s actually all at the same time. So between September, I want to say September 4th and December 6th. Um, they’re hitting cities in the US, Canada, and Europe. She’s, if you, you can head over to 3dmotiontour.com. That’s the number 3 3dmotiontour.com . They’ve got a list of all the, uh, cities they’ll be going to, uh, tickets are available there.

Chad Ashley: Don’t Google Maxon roadshow like I did cause it takes you to a site. This isn’t until October. I’m like, what’s going on? Jeez. Anyway, so yeah, make sure you follow that, that correct URL people.

Michael Maher: Yeah. You looking for the 3d design and motion tour.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. And, and hey, if they come near your, your, your, uh, your place of business. Try to try to make it out to these, um, it, I know it’s a broken record. I, I feel like I say it every other podcast, but going to these events, meeting the people that make the software that, that you use, meeting the people that use all this stuff and are interested enough to like go out to event. It’s always worth it. Uh, if you’re doing this as a career, go meet the people that are working near you, uh, and, and say hi and uh, just try to make some time for it. It’s always a good time. Uh, and we’re excited this year we’re out. We’re also sponsoring the, the US portion of it. So go there, you can win some stuff. Um, and we also do, we have that code actually here. You can get a ticket.

Michael Maher: Yeah. So tickets are regularly $95. Um, but we have a 25% off code. So if you use, uh, GSG3DMT and we’ll have that down in the show notes cause it’s a little confusing. And I’m sure you’ve mixed up some of those letters. Is that an m or an n? M as in motion tour. Um, but what’s cool is that not only will you save on your ticket, uh, anybody who attends in person, you’re going to get, it’s almost like $1,000 in software. You’re going to get like a Cinema 4D subscription for like 90 days. You’re gonna get a creative cloud subscription, redshift, Sketchfab, there’s like a kitbash coupon and there’s like a ton of stuff included for, for anybody who buys a ticket.

Nick Campbell: That’s awesome. Well we hope to see you there. And if you’re a, obviously if you come in a Half Rez, come say hi and blend as well. I’ll be there in a beautiful Vancouver. Love that town. Trying to try and get an excuse. If I’m going to go try to try to mountain bike up in the up in the mountains there. I don’t know. Am I going to hurt myself?

Chad Ashley: Yes,

Michael Maher: Probably make for a good podcast episode.

Nick Campbell: It’d be good. It’d be good. Um, that’s originally where I got my mountain bike bug was up in Vancouver and so I kind of feel like I need to go back, but, uh, but man, that’s a, that’s an extra few days. Uh, and I got some other, uh, tourist cities to road show. Like I get back home, get my butt back on a plane, hopefully see it in your town, but, um, definitely check it out. And, uh, and it is, it’s, it’s event, it’s event time, it’s event date.

Michael Maher: Stay tuned to like our blog or, um, our social channels and we’ll make sure we keep you up to date on which upcoming events, uh, either Chad or Nick will be at and, uh, you’ll know, you’ll know more about it.

Nick Campbell: Awesome. Excited. Well, um, what else, what else is going in the, in the 3d world these days?

Chad Ashley: It’s up to three dimensions now.

Michael Maher: Yeah. Not much has changed there. Uh, there are one’s the, uh, the new THX intro that was announced. I don’t know if you guys saw that. Uh, I think it was earlier this week or late last week.

Nick Campbell: Oh, that was beautiful. Andrew Kramer worked on that, right?

Michael Maher: Yeah. Andrew Kramer and a, it was like a great design team that pretty much like looked through the history of the THX logo. And if you’re unfamiliar with that, it’s like whenever you went to see a movie at the movie theater and it was just, what was that noise? I think Chad could do the best noise.

Chad Ashley: I don’t remember it to be honest.

New Speaker: [Noise]

Michael Maher: That’s pretty close.

Chad Ashley: For those of you who didn’t tune out. Thank you.

Nick Campbell: Uh, yeah. Well then you gotta play the THX. How else are you gonna know if you’re a surround sound speakers work.

Michael Maher: So they did like this behind the scenes video and they show you how they build the audio spatially in 3d and like move like the logo throughout the rooms and stuff. It’s pretty neat.

Nick Campbell: Uh, it’s a killer. It’s a killer, a piece of work. Definitely go check it out. And yeah, they Kinda, they even show the cute little robots that that’s, that’s what was big back in the 90s when I was like, I was trying to build a VH s home theater system in my own house. Um, and uh, and I’ve always got the THX, I always got the wide, first of all, I always got the widescreen for some, you know, I had to be the purest but widescreen on a VHS by the way. Oh God. Not a lot of resolution to deal with. Um, and, but they did surround sound pretty good and they always had the THX thing. I always got excited and they had the cute little robots that would like pick up the letters and kind of solder them together. I don’t know what they were doing. Welding. Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, this new ones way better than the ones in the 90s. Go check it out. It is really fun. Um, now, Hey, speaking of, uh, surround sound, did you guys, I don’t even know if this is still around, but one of the things I remember playing with in Cinema 4D right when I, right when I got excited about it, was there sound capabilities? So you mentioned, uh, Mike that they, they built the behind the scenes with uh, like all the surround sound and all this stuff. Did they use the Cinema 4D tools to do that? Do you know?

Michael Maher: No, I don’t think so. I think this is kind of like whatever that custom state of the art THX stuff that we’re working on. But I do know, I know some cinema was involved. I would guarantee you if it’s not in the final thing, that element 3d and after effects was used to like mock up stuff. And I’m sure there’s some elements in there. Um, and I, I, I’m not sure how they rendered it, but we can, we can hunt down some more details on that.

Nick Campbell: Okay. I’m, I’m looking up in, um, so a little sneak peek. Um, I’m looking up inside of R21 right now for the old schools sound tools that were a part of Cinema 4D. I, I don’t even know if they’re still here, but w what you could do is set up essentially microphones inside of your 3d world and then attach sounds to your three d objects and then you would animate your 3d objects around and then you would place microphones around and you’re seeing to pick up the sound and then if you had a, a microphone behind your camera, essentially it could, you can make it fly in circles and then it would output the surround sound data for Home Theater and movie theaters. Does that make sense? Am I, am I explaining that properly?

Chad Ashley: Yeah.

Nick Campbell: They had that built in. I’m going to just type in microphone. Oh. Oh my gosh. I think it’s still here. I want to go play with it. Oh Man. I can’t believe. All right. Sorry. A little, a little side note, but I had to see if that was still there. I literally played with it for a month straight, made all these cool surround sound things, played it on the home theater and then never, never used it again.

Chad Ashley: That’s a great testament to that tool set.

Nick Campbell: I’m sure it’s still great. I’m sure the a THX tools are a little bit, little bit better I’m guessing. But uh, had to go see a totally forgot those were in there until I thought about it. Um.

Chad Ashley: I had no idea those were in there either. I think there was something used to be something like that for 3ds Max too, but I don’t, I don’t think I’ve ever used it.

Nick Campbell: Well it’s cool, it is. To me it was like such a novel way to do surround sound where you could just do it in 3d like you didn’t have to have all the microphones set up in, in real, you know, real life anywhere you just set up fake microphones, animate a car driving by wonder if it does like the doppler effect and all that. So I dunno, I got to go play with it now.

Chad Ashley: Could you like, just throw a tag on your character to make it talk?

Nick Campbell: Ooh, I’m kidding.

Nick Campbell: All right. Oh yeah. Uh, look, look on Instagram in the next month, see if I, see if I end up playing with the surround sound tools. Instagram support surround sound yet what’s going on? We’re all going back to the stereo.

Chad Ashley: It’s not THX certified, I don’t think.

Nick Campbell: Oh it’s bad.

Michael Maher: To anybody listening, if you just want to pull out our custom made THX logo that we made just a minute ago, we would love to see what you put together there.

Nick Campbell: Oh, the sound effect you mean?

Michael Maher: Oh yeah.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, yeah.

Chad Ashley: Get a free tee shirt.

Nick Campbell: Um, all right what’s, what else going on in the bis?

Michael Maher: Man.

Nick Campbell: Apparently not much.

Michael Maher: A lot, a lot of movie news. I don’t know if you guys are, are big Disney, Disney nerds like I am, but I’ve been kind of following along with all the D23 announcements.

Nick Campbell: Let’s go.

Chad Ashley: So, so D23 explain that to me cause I kind of tangentially know what that is. Just you know, from consuming news, but give me the lowdown.

Speaker 2: So D23 is kind of like, um, the big Disney event. It’s kind of like a Comic Con if you’re really into Disney stuff. Um, it’s almost like going to this massive show. It’s in Anaheim and they have, you know, different panels where you can see like, uh, stuff that they’re working on in the Star Wars world, stuff they’re doing with Marvel movies, stuff they’re doing with Walt Disney animation, Disney Studios, um, pretty much anything that the company is touching in any way you can learn a lot. But this year was, was a really big year because it’s, uh, they’re, they’re finally releasing all the details about Disney Plus, which drops here in like a, a couple of months.

Nick Campbell: So.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. That’s cool. I can’t wait for that.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. First of all, what, what isn’t Disney touching these days? Sounds like, it seems like they’re on top of everything and, and B. Yeah. What, so w so Disney Plus, uh, it’s obviously their membership thing, but what are they removing from everywhere else and what’s gonna be, what’s going to be in this thing? Do I need Disney Plus? That’s really the question.

Michael Maher: Probably. You’re not, there’s no, there’s no escaping that. There’s no escaping. Like I think a once, once Netflix licenses expire with any Disney related content, all of that is going to be on Disney Plus. But what’s cool is if anybody is familiar with like the Disney vault, like their archive where you know, in DVDs and Blu-rays came out, they’d bring them old animated film back and only for a limited time and all that stuff. And like if you want to go buy Bambi right now, you’d probably have to buy like an $800 Blu-ray disc that’s impossible to find. So they’re doing a way, they’re doing a way with the vault. So all the classic Disney movies are coming in. Um, anything from the Disney Animation Studio, everything from Pixar, um, almost all of the Star Wars movies. I know there’s some weird licensing with like the original trilogy, but I’m sure they’re working that out and they’ll have all Star Wars content.

Michael Maher: Um

Chad Ashley: Simpsons.

Michael Maher: All the Marvel stuff. Uh, Simpsons will be separate. So God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I know all of this stuff guys. I’m just, so much worthless information. So anything that they, uh, bought from Fox. So Disney acquired Fox, um, earlier this year I think. Um, anything that’s rated R or most of the Fox content is gonna live on Hulu. And so Disney is actually launching three streaming services at once, uh, Hulu’s already out and they’re gonna migrate all of their, like excetera shows there and weird movies and R rated content will probably live on Hulu. Disney Plus will be all of your family friendly content, all the big blockbusters, your Lion Kings, your Iron Man movies, all that stuff. And then they’re also launching ESPN Plus, which is their new streaming sports package. Um, that’ll do all of their live events as well as like, you know, regular football games, UFC, all that kind of stuff.

Nick Campbell: God, they’re huge. This company. It’s amazing. First of all, ah, Pixar, where, how, how much Pixar stuff is going to be on the, on the Plus. Do we have, do we have word?

Michael Maher: I think it’s going to be all of it.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. It’s going to be all of it.

Nick Campbell: Oh, all right. I’m in.

Chad Ashley: Plus dude, I got, all I have to do is pitch this one show to you and I, and I, if you’re as big a fan of this guys, I as I hope you are, you’re you’re game. They have a show called the world according to Jeff Goldbloom.

Nick Campbell: Oh yeah. What else do I need?

Chad Ashley: And he, it’s amazing. That guy is the best and that show looks amazing.

Nick Campbell: Uh, all right. Oh, I’m in, look, if I can watch, um, if I could just watch Bug Life, Bug’s Life on loop. I’m good. That’s all I really need. It’s uh, I’m ready. Uh, I’m in, I already got the Hulu. In fact, we just finished. Big news, breaking news. We just finished uh, all the Veronica Mars stuff. So we’re, I’m really needing the next thing to, to kinda to start to start picking up, so.

Michael Maher: Well, I think there’s going to be some more Veronica Mars stuff here pretty soon. So there is at least that.

Speaker 1: Oh Man, I can’t get enough. Let me tell ya. That’s so great. That’s the, uh, we, my wife and I watched through all, all of the originals and then we had, and then we had a tangent with the movie, I guess. She spelled it out at the timeline that the Veronica Mars timeline, but we’re, we’re caught up. Um, so yeah, let’s go Disney Plus bring it on the Bug’s Life I’m ready.

Chad Ashley: I’m really looking forward to The Mandalorian. That looks really, really good. Which is I think, um, I don’t remember the timeline. I think it’s this, the, uh, this is sort of like the origin story of Boba Fett. Is that what this is?

Michael Maher: I believe so. Yeah.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. The trailer looks killer.

Michael Maher: They’re, uh, they, they haven’t announced too many details about the film or the series itself. Um, the stuff we do know is, uh, so Disney Plus is going to avoid the binge model. And so they’re gonna do weekly releases. So I think The Mandalorian like episode one will be available at launch and then like a week after they’ll drop the next episode and so on. So they’re going kind of traditional with the release, but that show looks incredible. They’re also launching with, um, a Lady and the Tramp film that they’ve announced and dropped a trailer for. They’re bringing also a bunch of the Disney television series are gonna live in Disney Plus too. So, um, I know Lizzie McGuire is coming back with like

Nick Campbell: Thank. Thank goodness.

Chad Ashley: Wow. I’m sold.

New Speaker: Lizzie Maguire in her thirties. Guys. I’m, I’m ready. I don’t know about you guys.

Nick Campbell: All of the, all the Disney shows I think we’re just past my age. Where I, like Nickelodeon turned into and Disney turned into an entirely different thing as soon as I like grew, like, what was the last thing? Maybe Spongebob was like on the, on the cusp, you know, or like, like, I dunno Rocko’s Modern Life, I dunno, I date myself. But then all this Disney stuff came through and I, I didn’t get to, I didn’t get to enjoy all those shows. I was uh

New Speaker: Aw man. I watched them all with my kids. I think we watched iCarly, actually I don’t think iCarly was Disney. I don’t know. We watched a lot of that stuff. High School Musical, all that stuff.

Michael Maher: There’s a new High School Musical series on Disney Plus.

Nick Campbell: Oh.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. Just when my kids completely grow out of all of that stuff, they come out with this. Yeah. My kids don’t even watch TV anymore. I don’t know what it is. Like it’s just kids don’t watch TV. They’re on their phones or they’re on Netflix, but they’re not like consuming cable or TV. The way that we did, it’s pretty crazy.

Michael Maher: Disney knows this. Mouse is in the house.

Nick Campbell: You’re going through this, right? Chad, are you doing the, the cable? The, what do they call it? The cord cutting. The cable cutting.

Chad Ashley: I think we are, we haven’t officially cancelled, uh, Xfinity yet, but we’re testing out some stuff right now. I mean, what it came down to is I just noticed that every time that my wife and I sat down to watch TV, we were going to either Netflix, Hulu or like HBO go. And we rarely ever tuned into actual live TV cable only to watch like the news and football in the football season so I started looking at that and how much money I’m paying every month to these people. And it’s just, it’s just doesn’t add up. There’s no reason to do it anymore. So I did a lot of research and exploration and we have a smart TV that you can download apps and stuff on. It’s a Roku TV. So I downloaded YouTube TV on the, on the TV and that gives you, I think 90 channels, including all your local channels, including, um, FX, FXM, all those sort of channels. And it allows you to watch football, sports, whatever, unlimited DVR. And I was like, yeah, that’s only 45 bucks a month, I think, or 49 bucks a month. And it just, it made so much more sense. So we’re giving it a shot, see how it goes.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. That there’s so many more options now. I think you’re right. That’s like the sports thing is really the, the hardest one to figure out it seems. We don’t, we don’t watch a ton of live sports, but it’s my, well, let’s just say this. My brothers-in-law are always bummed when they come to my house, they’re like, you’re that guy. Where’s, where’s the game dude? I’m like, and then I gotta jump through like eight hoops to put like the baseball game on. They’re like, well, how do you live like this? Like I don’t sorry guys. Like what is wrong with this dude?

Michael Maher: Um, you wanna you want to really weird uh rabbit whole story. Uh, baseball. MLB specifically is the reason like Disney Plus exists right now.

Nick Campbell: Hm.

Michael Maher: So there’s a, uh, back in the early 2000s, uh major league baseball pooled all of their teams together. And like, I think every team had to put in like $1 million a year for like four or five years. And they built what was called MLB Advanced Media and it was essentially the first like streaming sports site. And they were going to sell tickets online and they were going to start streaming games and essentially they built like one of the most successful streaming companies ever.

Michael Maher: Um, it’s kind of sense split off. It’s called uh BAMTech now. And uh, what BAMTech does is they are running, um, the MLB stuff, they’re doing streaming for the NHO, PGA, uh, world wrestling. They do like a riot games, which is like all the League of Legends or League of, I can’t remember what video game streams, e-sports. Um, but Disney bought the majority share in BAMTech about a year or two ago and now BAMTech is building Disney Plus, uh, ESPN Plus. And so they’re, they’re like the secret people behind a majority of these streaming services.

Nick Campbell: Well that’s nuts so.

Michael Maher: Yup.

Nick Campbell: All right.

Michael Maher: Wild.

Nick Campbell: Do they, well, maybe that’s the next thing I gotta go solve is this live sports thing. Chad. Let me know how the YouTube thing works out for that, huh?

Chad Ashley: Oh, I watched, I already watched one Bears game. And what’s great is that you could actually record all games on unlimited DVR and all that stuff. But what’s awesome is that you can watch it on your phone so you can start watching the game in the living room. And then if you want to go out and sit on the patio or go for a walk or whatever, you can just start, you can keep watching the game on your phone, but it is tied to location. So you know, there’s all sorts of uh, NFL rules that you can’t watch. I don’t know what they are exactly, but basically it means that I can’t watch a Bears game if I’m not in the Bears area.

Nick Campbell: Oh right.

Chad Ashley: So it looks at your, uh, uh, phone location. So yeah, you’re not gonna be able to like cheat the system and like watch if you’re in, I don’t know, on the west coast and you want to watch the Lions play, like you’re, you’re not going to be able to do that. But, um, yeah, so far it’s pretty impressive. I’ve got to say, it’s like really good quality too. Like the, the quality of the stream is great. Uh, the interface is pretty much the same as YouTube, so you already kind of know it, which is nice cause I tried to use, tried using Hulu for a while and we still watch a few shows on Hulu. But I gotta say Hulu has probably the worst interface of all of them that I’ve tried. It’s just not a good interface.

Michael Maher: A lot of excessive scrolling.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. And is like really thin lines under stuff. I can’t, can’t tell what’s selected or where I am.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. The Hulu interface with the Apple TV remote is like a carnival game. It’s so hard. It’s so hard to figure it out and it’s, you always want one. You get to, scroll down to, you get one and then if they show you the wrong episode, you’ve got to like do a hard press in and then yeah, it’s bad.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. So that’s why I was kind of like, people were telling me to go to Hulu and I was like, dude, I don’t know if I can, I dunno if I can deal with that frustration every time I want to change the channel or something. I’d, I just want to make it simple, make it easy.

Nick Campbell: If you do what they think you want to do, then you’re fine. Like if, if, if you just binge watch all Veronica Mars in a row, then you’re fine. You’re living in a world where they want you to just go back to the app and click next show. But as soon as you’re like, you know, jumping around to find something. Eh, it gets, it gets bad. The only thing that saves the, the app, the Apple TV side of it. So, so my setup is Apple TV with Hulu Go, uh, HBO Go and, and YouTube and Netflix and then we’re, and. Oh, this is what I wanted to remind you too Chad it, you’re close enough to potentially two major cities where an antenna might be something you want to look into if you don’t already have one. Because we get

Chad Ashley: I thought about that.

Nick Campbell: Live it’s so beautiful. Just for image quality, Chad.

Chad Ashley: Yeah, yeah for sure.

Nick Campbell: Like, it is so much nicer than cable for sure. But I think even the YoTube streams, it is like the bit rate is bonkers when you’re watching the antennas feed, you lose all the DVR stuff and all that. But that saved my butt on baseball games for sure.

Chad Ashley: Oh yeah.

Michael Maher: I used to have one.

Nick Campbell: But it also saved my butt on some things like the Grammy’s or the Emmy’s or whatever. We just like watch it right there.

Chad Ashley: I’m such a slave to the DVR though. Like I can’t give up the DVR controls, you know. Gotta have my pause, gotta have my pause.

Nick Campbell: That’s right. Don’t want to miss it. We, we definitely have had the moment on watching antenna TV where we’re like, oh my gosh, commercials are the worst.

Chad Ashley: Yes dude. That, forget about it. They’re like that. No Way.

Nick Campbell: And then same thing to where we’ll be watching something and then we kind of have a, I don’t know if everybody has this, but you know, my, my significant other, and I have a little like visual code that means pause it so that we can talk about what happened or whatever. So instead of trying to say it out loud like, Hey, can you pause it? There’s like a hand gesture, right? Well you know one of us will be watching some live thing and one of us will be like, Ooh, that’s the actor from whatever and like gesture to like go pause it so we could find out who that actor is like put, keep the thing on the screen so we can read it and every time, every time I reached for the Apple remote I hit the pause button and then I’m like freaking Apple remote doesn’t work. And then I’m like, okay, I’m watching live TV every time and

Chad Ashley: Like a barbarian.

Nick Campbell: Like a barbarian with commercials and every time I’m like, I’m so glad I don’t live in that world anymore. You can just dial it up, pause it.

Chad Ashley: I know.

Michael Maher: You guys use Amazon Prime at all?

Chad Ashley: Yeah.

Nick Campbell: Yeah.

Chad Ashley: Actually.

Michael Maher: I think they’re a little like pause or hover feature is so underrated and so incredibly impressive that like when you’re watching something you can just pop up the menu that tells you what actor is in that scene, what song is playing like. It’s really nuts.

Chad Ashley: Yeah, I’ve seen that somewhere else too. I want to say the Google Movies app does that where if you pause it, it draws a little circle around the actor’s face and like has a little headshot of theirs and tells you who’s on the screen and stuff.

Michael Maher: That’s crazy.

Chad Ashley: I love that stuff cause that that’s the kind of thing where you’re like, oh, you know who is that? And then hit pause and then you’re not like searching IMD for half an hour.

Nick Campbell: Wasn’t Shazam trying to figure that tech out too? I don’t know if they finally did it, but they were, their goal was to do for the Shazam audio, but do it for movies and TV where at any moment you could just pull out Shazam, hit the button and then it’ll listen to your audio, where you are and then know what you’re listening to as fast as it does it. It’s alien technology that Shazam.

Michael Maher: And I think the

Nick Campbell: And then, they would show you like, what, like what people were wearing and what, who was on the screen. Is that still a thing, did they give up on that?

Michael Maher: I don’t think it worked because they tried a thing where they were doing commercials and the Shazam thing would pop up and you could play the song and it would like tie it, would know the audio and pull you up to like the client’s uh website for like whatever, cleaning supplies. But the problem is when those commercials are on, you only have 30 seconds. So by the time you turn your phone on, unlock it, open Shazamm you’ve already missed the commercial.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, exactly. Um, well look, look, audience. Uh, if you’ve been looking at cutting the cord, you found the right episode, my friends.

Chad Ashley: I think I’m late to the game dude. I tweeted it and everybody’s like, oh, I haven’t had that in years.

Michael Maher: I haven’t had it. It’s been probably oh, man. Like 12 years for me.

Chad Ashley: Wow. Dude. Really?

Nick Campbell: I think it was ’07 was the

Michael Maher: I was very poor in college, man. There was no point in trying to get cable.

Nick Campbell: Yeah.

Chad Ashley: Crazy.

Nick Campbell: I think it was the year after, what year did the Bears win um, uh, the Superbowl? Or,

Chad Ashley: ’05.

Nick Campbell: Or the, they made it to the finals, sorry. It was like, ’07, ’08 something like that.

Chad Ashley: I think it was either, I think it was ’06.

Nick Campbell: Anyway, whatever year that was. I watched every Bears game on Comcast cable and then the next year I moved and I cut, cut the cord and it was, it’s been great ever since. I think essentially, uh, I, one of the things about getting older is all your antidotes seem like you’re ancient now. Like I had Netflix when they shipped DVDs to your house.

Michael Maher: Yep.

Nick Campbell: And as soon as they switched to like Netflix streaming and I could do both, I was like, I don’t need anything ever again. I just canceled cable around then, so I think that was, oh ’08, ’09. It’s been great. Chad, let us know your results.

Chad Ashley: I’ll keep you posted. I think, uh, I think it’s gonna work out. My biggest test was, you know, is my wife gonna get frustrated with the UI and whatnot, but she seems to be taken to it. And I think what helped is, I showed her how much money we were going to save a year. She was like, every time she’s like frustrated about something, she, I could almost like see it here, think about that. And she’s like, mah, I can live with this.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, it’s still worth it.

Michael Maher: Do you, do you and your wives watch stuff together or are one of you streaming the TV while the other one’s on their phone watching something else?

Michael Maher: Uh, almost always together.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see. We watch, we watch stuff at night together on the actual TV couch. But then, uh, my wife watches on her laptop even at night. Like even if I’m off doing something else, she won’t sit down in front of the TV. She’ll watch everything on her laptop and like, uh, carry that around with her. Like it’s pretty, uh, I, I, that’s not how my brain works, but she definitely does it that way. What’s uh, what’s your, what do you got Mike?

Speaker 2: Most of the time we, if the boys, if all the boys are asleep, we can watch a show together. But anything that has like language or stuff like that, it’s pretty much rules out. So we watch a lot of kids shows and kids movies and, but finally when they go to bed, we’ll watch things like, we just finished, uh, The Boys on Amazon Prime. Highly recommend that. Really, really good show. Um, and we did Chernobyl and you know, when you’re getting into these R rated stuff, it’s really hard to watch that together when you have little children that could pop into the living room at any time.

Chad Ashley: Yeah. That doesn’t really change. So we’ll be watching stuff and yeah, the girl, you know, my girls are much older, but they, uh, you still don’t want, you still don’t want your kids walking into an inappropriate scene no matter how old they are. It’s super uncomfortable to like have your parents watching something with nudity and you walk in. So yeah, we’re constantly like, do you have the remote? Where’s the remote? I think the kids are coming down, get on the remote. And so we’re just like our fingers always on the remote to like turn it off or change the channel. Yeah. So that doesn’t really ever go away.

Michael Maher: Did you guys always do that? That classic thing when you were a kid that when you knew a nudity scene was coming up that you’re like, oh, I gotta go to the bathroom. I know when this girl in Lethal Weapon falls out of this window that you’re going to see some breasts and I don’t want to be in the room with my parents.

Chad Ashley: Oh yeah. That’s always the worst feeling in the world. And then you just sit there silently waiting for the moment to pass, like praying that it just goes by without anybody. Please don’t say anything. Please don’t, like please dad, don’t make a joke. Please.

Nick Campbell: Can you hear me? Am I breathing too heavy? What’s happening? Uh, no, not good. Not Good. Well, look, um, here’s, here’s what I’m, I’m, I’m glad that, uh, that all of these people decided to name their thing Plus it made it a lot easier when we decided to name something.

Chad Ashley: We consulted with them actually.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. We’re like, look, Disney, here’s what we’re, here’s what we’re planning here at Greyscalegorilla. We’re gonna call it Plus, and you know, it’s going to be a, a membership and it’ll, it’ll just be easier if we all, hey, Apple, hey Timmy Cook come here, we’re gonna all plan this together, and then, um, everyone will understand when, uh, when it comes out. And so, yeah, so I’m glad, I’m glad we all kind of came to a consensus on that. And, uh, you know, it’s all, it’s all um, it’s all there. Um, well, goodness. Well, goodness, I, uh, what else was on our, uh, our topic list for today? I want to make sure we, we have time for everything. Um, I guess, uh, if, uh, speaking of Plus, uh, we still can’t announce it yet. It’s so we will have some big news on Plus, um, uh, when R21 is launched and released so we can say that, is that correct Mike?

Michael Maher: Correct.

Nick Campbell: Okay. That week is going to be back week is going to be a crazy week. Um, other than that we have, yeah, everything else is just big stuff planned that I can’t mention yet. I’m so bummed, but it’s not, it’s what a teaser. You’re welcome folks out there. You know, what a teaser. Uh, but um, as soon as R21 is launched, so actually, uh, Chad have you played with R21 yet?

Chad Ashley: I have not played with it. I got kicked off the Beta for being rowdy. No, I’m not. I was kicked off the Beta cause I didn’t, I didn’t participate. Uh, I’m in a lot of Betas and sometimes I just don’t have time to like be the best Beta testers. So I totally understand that I got booted. But yeah, I have been watching what’s been going on and I’ve been watching some of the R21 stuff that, that uh, that we’ve been producing and it’s got some stuff in there that I think, I don’t think a lot of people are really talking a lot about, a few of the features that I’m excited about and I think they will, once they start playing with it, I think this release has a bunch of great quality of life features that may don’t, they may not look super sexy on uh, the like there’s no, uh, fields, you know, there’s no like, big flagship feature, but there’s so many cool little things that I think are going to help people and make their lives easier.

Chad Ashley: That it’s definitely worth being excited about, especially if you’ve butted your head up against a couple different things like seeing organization stuff, a text or logo, beveling. I think not enough people are talking about that feature, which is really, really good. Um, what else did I see in there that was getting me excited? Uh, oh, the uh, the custom icons I think are really, really cool. I can’t wait to play with those. Can’t wait to make my own custom icons for scene organizations.

Chad Ashley: Oh, okay. So how do, how do you do a custom icon? Yeah, so they’ve got, they’ve got this new ability to, I think with like a lot of the different objects in the object manager you can dive into I forget what tab it is, but you can actually create uh, you can actually change out the icon for your, let’s say a null and they have some preset icons in there and you can even change the color. But what’s really cool is you can make your own icons and save them as a preset.

Nick Campbell: Oh, okay. Game Changer.

Chad Ashley: Yeah, Dude. So if you’re looking to like, you know how it is when you have a tons of objects in your scene, you start using nulls as organizational devices, not necessarily as like a null to like, you know, manipulate or do any sort of hierarchal animation, but using the null to like organize your stuff is something that everybody does. So imagine being able to put like a folder icon on the null and then maybe change the color to a color that you associate with folders and then save that as a preset. So now every time that you want to organize your scene, you’re not using the janky null icon. You’re actually, it actually makes visual sense.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, that’s right. Okay. Andy did show me that. Um, so, so Andy Needham, he’s working with us for the, R21 training. He’s been, uh, knocking it out of the park. He’s been sending over videos and we’ve been talking online a bit and he showed me that it was all organization and there’s like a ton of different icons too, right? Not just like three or four.

Chad Ashley: Yeah, there’s a bunch of icons. And to be completely honest, uh, they’re kinda weird and not like ones that I would have made. Like there’s a horse and like a, uh pair of underwear. Um, but hey man, to each his own. So I plan on, uh, creating some for us and, uh, having some fun with that, uh, and making some really nice looking ones.

Nick Campbell: Ooh, that’s a great idea. Um, oh my gosh. Yeah, we need a, we need a whole library of these things.

Chad Ashley: Yep.

Nick Campbell: Um, so I, so I’ve been talking with, with Andy, learning a lot more about the, the new stuff as well and playing with it. Um, making some videos for R21 and I think I’m feeling the same way. Like getting more excited about R21. The more I play with it and the more I find these little details, little the way that they made the presets a little bit easier and the way they organize things a little bit nicer. Have you, it’s, it’s like this. Do you ever like rented a car and you got in and you, the interface was just un, um, uh, like unorganized in a way where you had the car for like two or three days and you still didn’t quite understand how to turn on the air conditioner after all three days. Like just if you ever had a car so poorly organized or like, or even just a subtle thing like you go in and you get the big, the big bottle of water.

Nick Campbell: Cause it’s a road trip. You don’t want to stop again. And then you go to try to put that in the, in the cup holder and you’re like, okay this was not, this was designed for like a can of soda who nobody, which no, no gas station sells anymore. It’s all giant 20 ounces and then you finally get in a car that’s like, well thought out, everything’s in the right place and you, you, there’s like a little place for your phone, which no car has like a little little holder there. And that’s kinda how I feel now in R21 like there’s a place for everything. It’s, it’s thought out the, the, the high beams are where they should be and the air conditioners easy to find. And now I go back to the old car and I’m like, okay, this is, this is a little bit more scrambled up than I remembered. It kinda, it Kinda took a nice interface and a nice layout to remind me kind of how clumsy some of the things are. So that’s kind of those, like you had a better way to say it, Chad. Like, uh, these, these day to day workflow.

Chad Ashley: Quality of life.

Nick Campbell: Yeah. Quality. Exactly. It’s those, it’s those like intangible quality of life things that you don’t notice until you go back to it and then you’re like, it’s like commercials. It’s like commercials on your TV. Like how did I ever live like this?

Chad Ashley: Yep.

Nick Campbell: And then once you’re in the new interface, um, it’s, it’s a lot more logical, a lot more easy to, to find things. Once you know where they are, it takes a little while to get used to it. But, uh, I’ve been, I’ve been really enjoying those kind of kind, kinda things and playing around a ton with uh field forces, of course, that’s the, that’s the big fun thing. But really what I’ve been doing is just kind of rediscovering fields as well. Just a good excuse to kind of dive deeper into the power of fields now that there’s more fields to play with kind of re, re-looking at R20 and all the power that that brought, which I’m, which I know a lot of us haven’t even had time to really dive deeper into that. So, um, I’m excited. I’m excited to get this training into uh Greyscalegorilla Plus. Excited to play more with R21 and get some of these, uh, tutorials to you guys too. So, um.

Michael Maher: I will add to that that, uh, once uh, R21 is available, you will be able to still see some stuff from us on YouTube. Um, we’ll have a new tutorial up there. Um, but yeah, we’re doing some pretty, pretty fun deep dive, uh, over in Greyscalegorilla Plus that we’re excited about.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, I’m excited for both. Um, I’m looking, I’m looking at a scene right now. This is not helpful in a podcast situation, but what I’m looking at here in R21, looking pretty good. All right. I’m gonna go look, I’m gonna go play with these uh these icons. I’m going to go figure it out. What’s fun is we can, I can go watch the training from Andy. Cause I know, I know

Michael Maher: What a teaser.

Nick Campbell: I know. I’m going to go watch it. Nananana na, I get to go watch it before you guys do. And I’m going to go, um going to go figure this out. Uh, but yeah, those, those, those types of things are, are super useful. Um, I’m going to dive deeper into that right now. Well, cool. Um, well other than teasers, we can’t tease in the future. We do have our events coming up. We have, uh, the Plus launch, which by the way, if you want to be, um, notified about the Plus launch, when that, uh, happens early September, make sure you go to, uh, greyscalegorilla.com/plus. Put your name in there, reserve your seat. And, um, it’s, it’s going to be quite the week. We’ve got a ton of stuff all about R21. I know, Mike, you’ve been working really hard getting all this stuff together. We have, uh, an interview with Andy which I’m excited about and a, a bunch of other awesome stuff coming out here in the next, gosh, the next month’s going to be crazy, um.

Michael Maher: Be a pretty wild couple of weeks here. Um, like as you’re listening to this podcast, we just released Happy Toolbox Volume 2. So there’s a hundred and new mods, 180 new models in the store right now. Um, and then, yeah. Plus is, is so big. Um, it’s, it’s a big, it’s a big project for us. We’re really, really excited to get this out, so can’t wait to share so much more about it.

Nick Campbell: Yeah, I’m a, I’m excited as well. Um, and uh, I think unless there’s any other news we should get to, we could wrap this one up and uh, uh, and, uh, get, get back to work on Plus. Getting all these products, get all these products launched, getting uh Happy Toolbox out, which that’s what I’ve been playing with in R, uh R21 a ton. Um, you may have seen some stuff on Instagram that I’ve been playing with the Happy Toolbox models. They’re really, uh, unique models. Go check them out. Um, and uh, we’ll have more news about that as early as next week. So, um, uh, let’s, uh, let’s wrap this one up, if, unless there’s anything else and, um, I think

Michael Maher: Oh I do, I do, I have, I have one last thing I forgot to tell you guys about.

Nick Campbell: Hit me.

Michael Maher: If you go to greyscalegorilla.com/podcasts we have revamped the entire podcast user interface. So now you can easily find us on all your favorite streaming sites, uh, go through the archive of past episodes. Um, and yeah, it’s, it’s a lot easier to find these.

Chad Ashley: Nice.

Nick Campbell: Oh, that’s great. Um, I got a little sneak peek of that this morning, at our meeting. It’s looking good and um, yeah, I’m, I’m excited we got the podcast back and uh, you know, let us know your thoughts. If you’re listening this late, you’re all ultimate fan. And, uh, so we want to hear from you, you know, if you’re watching on YouTube here, leave a comment, let us know, um, maybe a topic or something that we can discuss in future podcasts. And, uh, you know what, Hey, if you’re listening this late, uh, let us really know you’re, you’re listening and let us know your, um, streaming setup right now. What’s, what’s your go to? What are we missing? What do we not subscribe to? Um, is Showtime worth it? You know what I’m saying? Like helping us out.

Chad Ashley: Crunchy roll.

Nick Campbell: And, uh, so, um, yeah. And, and what always helps is, um, uh, head over to iTunes and, and giving us a rating or a comment or something over there. It helps people discover the podcast, uh, when they’re looking for it. So, um, uh, with that, let’s end this one. Thank you as always, for listening to the Greyscalegorilla show, the Greyscalegorilla podcast. Thank you guys for being here. Appreciate it. And, uh, we’ll see you in the next one. Bye everybody. Should we do the THX noise? That would be the big ending.

All: [Noise]

The post Cinema 4D R21 Features, Disney Plus, and Upcoming Events appeared first on Greyscalegorilla.

In this Motionographer Q&A, we take a closer look at Tiny Inventions’ new film, Negative Space.

Mobile Gaming Corps (MGC) introduces the Valor Gaming Case with Gaming Glass screen protector, a revolutionary accessory designed to significantly enhance the experience of gaming on a smart phone.
The MGC Valor Gaming Case is designed to provide a more immersive and dynamic mobile gaming experience in a slim and stylish case that provides the protection expected from a daily driver.

Featuring patent-pending technology, the MGC Valor Gaming Case delivers a new level of control and accuracy in massive mobile games like PUBG, Fortnite, Call of Duty and many more. Mappable buttons positioned at a natural position for the player’s trigger fingers deliver an extra two points of control, transforming mobile gaming into a more console-like experience. No longer limited to 2 thumbs, compatible games are amplified through MGC’s innovative integration with their customizable controls.

For years mobile gamers have been restricted to the use of their 2 thumbs, forced to sacrifice precious reaction time, or contort their hands into uncomfortable positions such as the “claw grip.” The only alternative is to use a bulky mobile controller, which is a cumbersome hassle for play on-the-go, or snap-on triggers, which create lag, block portions of the screen and often slide out of position during play. Both require gamers to carry around extra gear, and both must be removed before the phone can be used for everyday tasks.

Now with the MGC Valor Gaming Case, mobile gamers get what they’ve always wanted – a stylish accessory that protects and complements the phone while offering a reliable and undeniable advantage in gameplay. The revolutionary technology delivers its impact while gaming then disappears like magic when the phone is being used for other everyday functions.

The post MGC introduces the mobile phone accessories for gaming appeared first on AnimationXpress.