Review: Wings of Honneamise

wore my contacts for the second day in a row, and for some reason, my right contact was still bothering me. not sure if i put them in inside out or what, but i took it out twice. the second time, it ended up being alrite. but for the rest of the day, my vision just kept going in and out a bit. it wasn't like i was blind, but things would get kinda blurry/out of focus every once in awhile. apparently, this is normal?


Wings of Honneamise

finally got to see gainax's "Wings of Honneamise". honneamise was gainax's first production and first forey into animation. it won many awards for their attention to detail as well as characters and realism.

the story follows this young man, "shiro" (i think), through this organization known as the "royal space force". it's similar to nasa, but less well funded (back during the space race days) and not taken as seriously. shiro had aspirations of being a pilot, but because of his poor grades, he wasn't able to join the "navy" where the only option of flying existed.

the story chronicles a growing relationship w/ shiro and this religious girl. in the midst of this space program is this approach of a possible military conflict between the local nation: honneamise, and its neighbor. the whole time, trying to surmount the many hurdles involved with space travel itself, the applications, and the political infighting surrounding such a proposition.

overall, the film was good. the animation was a bit dated, considering it is almost 20 years old. but the attention in detail in the animation is still top notch. it doesn't stand as tall as akira which was produced the following year. this is not to say the animation is poor. towards the end, when they show some aerial combat, the animation really gives you the sense that you are banking and turning, trying to follow another plane.

the story unfolded in much the same manor as other gainax's work w/ a very strong emphasis on character development. at times, it can get slow, but in this case, it addes to the diliberatness of the piece. giving the viewer the sense that it is actually taking a long time for this space program to get off the ground, so to speak.

i would give Wings of Honneamise a 3/5. if you've seen gainax's other work, you may like this. it's not ground breaking, but its also not a terrible film.


10

after waking up, i decided against watching tv as i normally do. instead, i started working on my WeY'st'd Productions Flash intro. added some color to it. changed the center line to read and changed the color of the trash can contents to red as well. too bad it looks like theres either a bunch of tampons or maxi pads in it. oh well, maybe no one will notice.

i also started getting sounds for 10. mostly ambient and animal sounds. now all i need to do is take pictures of all the principals and locations and i can start animating this. i also need to record them saying their lines.

the more and more i work on 10, the larger and larger the task feels to me. i feel as if i can't do it. and considering the time frame that i have, i might not be able to. but we won't really know until i actually try to start animating this thing.


Sponsor Meeting

so far, i'd have to say that rene's has been the best sponsor meeting. not because of the time spent fellowshiping or whatever, but because of the food. let me start from the beginning.

so ptim and mindy are off on their honey moon, so we meet at jamie's house. she's working on this peach or apple cobbler for christmas, so she wants to use us as guinea pigs.

so she brings out this "peach cobbler" w/ ice cream to us. dave and i take a bite, and we look at each other, and then we look at jamie, and we're like "it tastes ... kinda gritty". we look at our "peach cobbler" and attempt to eat more of it. at least the ice cream was good. apparently, jamie got the recipe off of one of carolyn's childrens books: flopsy mopsy and cottentail . so dave and i just look at each other and we're like "so we don't have to eat it right?" and we put our bowls down. we later found out that the flour that jamie had used was actually rancid. yay.

the next week, jamie attempts another recipe, this time, from about.com but this time, she decides to use pears. here is what the recipe asked for:

Ingredients:
Cake Mix
Butter
Large can of Peaches

Directions:
Spread can of peaches out on a baking pan
Drizzle butter on top
Pour cake mix on top

now, does the recipe call the user to mix the cake mix first? or what? so i knew there HAD to be something wrong because as it was baking, it wasn't turning brown, so jamie just left it in there. when she served it to us, some of us had good comments to say, other people had slightly more mixed reactions. apparently, there were portions of the cobbler that lacked butter, so the cake mix just sat there giving a very "powdery" taste to it. unfortunately for dave, he got mostly cake mix.

the third week, rene gave jamie a recipe, and although jamie didn't follow the recipe EXACTLY (an issue, from what i've discovered, runs in the hsieh blood line) it still came out very good. this time she used apples.

so today, we're at ptim's place. mindy tempts us with key lime pie. mmmm... i think to myself. it even had fresh whipped whipped cream on top! so we get the pies and as i take a bite, at first, it was good, then all of a sudden, it was like a huge army of fat sweaty men kicked me in the mouth all at once with their combat boots. it wasn't sour, but it was extremely bitter. we found out later that when mindy was zesting the limes, she dug too deep and actually got to the white stuph of it. the rest of the pie was good, the crust and the whipped cream that is.

so so far, rene is the winner with her brownie mix.


Paintball

it looks like its gunna be raining all weekend, yay, another rained out paintball trip. i was looking forward to this too because now i have my contacts and i have my gear, i'm ready to bunker some unsuspecting back players! alas, it is not to be. fortunaetly, dave and i may go anyways. just spend about half a day at rexplex. its a bit expensive, but i'm just itching to play. what will this mean for Spy'Dir? i don't know. most likely, i'll just leave it cancelled.


VBalls

vballs are finally out! i remember seeing pictures of these things at world cup and was very excited/entrigued by them. ahhh, the dream of practicing w/o paint. alas, i have no money and cannout get me a few hundred rounds. maybe some nice people will buy me 200 rounds?