Arts-and-Entertainment

First of all, I can not emphasize adequately the benefit of becoming proficient in how to draw cartoon characters step by step under the guidance of a pro. Investing in your schooling need not be costly and unattainable. Nonetheless, to promptly stand out from the crowd requires learning from the best.

It's so vital in the early stages of learning, to concentrate on exact technique rather than gradually developing a bogus work habit. Therefore, learn how to draw cartoon characters step by step from a credible source and fast-track your leaning in curve in order to make the most from your investment sooner.

Don't get me wrong... you can spend many a happy hour drawing for the enjoyment of it. However, it can become somewhat old if you're only making a gradual improvement or little at all! Just about anybody can draw cartoon characters and caricatures, but only those that have invested the time and right training will rise beyond the masses and indeed impress.

So anyway, let's get started with the following steps:

Step 1: Observation
Careful investigation of your topic is a crucial discipline. Your early sketches ought to be lose - cartoon characters can be developed with primitive shapes, where the progression of a caricature needs to be representative of your subject. The best caricature is one that is fully representational of your subject and indeed the most difficult to perfect. As you can imagine, you'll need to have a thorough understanding of your subjects every feature. Common features are clearly a necessary study such as eyes, ears, noses, mouths and what have you. Do they have big hair or any at all? What shape is their head... round, pair shaped, pointy etc. Search out certain features and qualities that will create interest in the rendering of your theme.

Step 2: Exaggeration (yet simplicity)
Amplify the noticeable with boldness, which is most notably the case when drawing caricature. A caricature is characteristically funny and most memorable when depicted in an exaggerated form. The variation with cartoon characters is only in their simplicity. South Park characters are the ideal example of large as life, while being extremely basic in composition.

Step 3: Stroke Heaviness
Stroke mass is absolutely more focused toward illustrating caricatures, whereas still appropriate to cartoon characters in the sense that you will use a heavier weighted line to magnify certain points and features. Shading using an assortment of approaches such as cross-hatch and similar techniques, will give your illustration a sense of depth and will in the end 'make or break' your labors.

Final Step: Celebrate your successes and continue in your learning
Take my advice and get pleasure from all your development - no matter how small. Most of all, your creativity will wither when you stop enjoying what you are doing. If this turns into your experience, then stop what you are doing and get some fresh air, exercise or what ever you do to revive yourself.

As much fun as it is learning how to draw cartoon characters - it's also a serious art form that is highly regarded and profitable. In fact, for the small cost of a few drawing pens, pencils and pads, you can learn how to become a pro, stun your friends and family and make a good living to boot. For more information check out my blog: http://www.learntodrawthings.com.

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If you are into cinematic-enhanced movies, you might be wondering if you will need a 3D DVD player to enjoy a 3D movie. Since most of the movies now are turning 3D, movie-goers are encouraged to watch them in the theaters! But, you might not need a DVD player just to watch 3D movies. How is this possible? You just needed the right gadgets to help you enjoy the movie at home.

How does 3D work?

Traditionally it works by emitting light from the screen. This is best appreciated using red and blue glasses to maximize the effects. Conventional 3D movies work by using SD or Standard Definition methods.

Fast forward to the present, 3D movies now uses stereoscopic filming. Movies like Avatar and My Bloody Valentine use Digital 3D that is more detailed than conventional three dimensional movies.

You will appreciate a Digital 3D movie through High Definition TV due to its clarity.

Is it required to watch 3D movies using a 3D DVD player?

The answer is no. You can still watch 3D movies using your standard TV at home. Just get a pair of red and blue glasses and you are all set!

If you own a HDTV or a 3D DVD player, you get to enjoy a movie in 3D better. Instead of wearing colored glasses, 3D movies in HDTV is best watched using clear glasses to make the scenes 'pop-out'. It gives better results and the satisfaction might be closer to that in a cinema!

Here are some tricks to maximize your viewing pleasure:

* Heighten the brightness in your TV. If you are using standard television to watch a 3D animation, wearing those colored glasses might make the images dim. To avoid this, increase the brightness to compensate the dark shades from your glasses. This might improve the quality a bit.

* Switch off the lights: You get to experience the full cinematic effects by dimming the room. This enhances the images and projects other bright-colored scenery from the screen. It also lessens the double-vision, halo effects and improves the brightness of the effects.

* Sit closer to the television: You will get a better view and focus if you sit in front -- not on the sides. If you must, you can sit a little closer to appreciate the visuals.

So grab a good pair of red and blue glasses, pop-corn, some soda and company and enjoy a three dimensional movie today!

Find out more about 3D DVD and what 3D DVD movies are available on the market.

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The high-definition format war pitting the Blu-ray Disc against the HD DVD standard ended in February of 2008 when Toshiba announced that it would stop promoting HD DVD players and produce Blu-ray players instead. Blu-ray was obviously the gold standard.

Blu-ray was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association-a consortium of consumer electronics makers, computer hardware manufacturers, and motion picture studios which included Sony, among others firms. Some studios like Paramount Pictures hedged their bets and supported both Blu-ray and HD DVD during the height of the format war. But now all bets are off as Toshiba and its supporters conceded defeat in 2008.

The good news is Blu-ray players are able to read standard DVDs. And by June of 2009, some 2,500 movie titles were available for sale in the U.S. as Blu-ray discs.

All the while, Blu-ray titles still gather dust on store shelves, leaving studios wondering whether the time has come for multi-platform interoperability-allowing consumers to watch their favorite movies on up to as many as five electronic devices or more. Perhaps an overview of the standard will help clarify why consumers should purchase Blu-ray discs when they shop for movies they wish to own.

Blu-ray discs are used for storing high definition video, Sony Playstation 3 video games, and other data. While the Blu-ray disc shares the same physical dimensions of standard DVDs and CDs, you can store up to 25 GB per single layered disc, and 50 GB per dual layered disc. Meanwhile, 200 GB discs are available, and 100 GB discs are readable without extra equipment or modified hardware. The Blu-ray disc is read using a blue-violet laser (hence the name Blu-ray) that permits users to store more than ten times more data than can be stored on a standard DVD. You should know that Sony and Panasonic plan to increase the storage capacity on their Blu-Ray discs from 25GB to 35.4GB through a technology called i-MLSE, which stands for Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation. The higher-capacity discs will be readable on current Blu-ray disc players with minimal upgrade.

To be sure, the technology now exists to give consumers streaming video of their favorite films, but does cloud-computing-access constitute true ownership? Can you really pop in your favorite film whenever and wherever you want without compromising graphics resolution?

For more information about Blu-ray, please see my firm's weblink at:
http://www.chromavision.net/dvd_authoring.html

Yossi Rosenberg, Digital Media Specialist, Chromavision: (212) 686-7366

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Avatar was a movie which has virtually changed the face of the movie world. The film used cutting edge animation technology which gave the characters a more lifelike feel and most of all used a very advanced form of 3d animation. This animation is different from the days of 3D animation back in the eighties that everyone is probably familiar with.

During this era of 3D people were given a pair of paper glasses with a red and green lens in each eye. As you looked through it the 3d was flat and unimpressive. To further the problems 3d animators were obsessed with trying to show off what they technology could do and they would frequently animate objects flying at the audience for the shock appeal. The problem with this is that it distracted from the rest of the movie. Rather than people coming away thinking about how incredible the movie was they would simply speak about how cool the objects being thrown at them were.

This is where avatar innovated the movie industry. The film did not try and capture the audience's attention by showing off the power of the three dimensional capability but rather worked the element into the move subtly to enhance things like flying fight scenes. This made it so that the audience essentially forgot about the 3d dimension and was simply better immersed into the film.

This type of technology has been so popular that most of the major television manufacturers are scrambling to make televisions which can support the new media format.

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With the launching of digitally organized 3D films, like the "Avatar", we cannot help but want for more. 3D films take us to the next level of viewing experience that is really exciting. But we can also watch these 3D films at home, with the use of a 3D DVD player, a 3D applicable television and 3D movie glasses.

3D movie glasses are not only being handed out in theaters for your movie viewing; they are also available in many stores that sell 3D-capable television sets and 3D DVD players. Some are even included in television sets when you buy three dimensional DVD players or TV converters. Some of the 3D movie glasses included in these sets operates via infrared.

But how do these movie glasses work? Actually, they are not something new. They have been around for a century since 3D filming started. Several decades ago when 3D films were first released, 3D glasses were already being used. The 3D films then are not as popular as today as the technology was not as good.

Twenty years ago, we were able to view 3D pictures of Disney characters through the View Master™. The View Master™ makes use of a depth illusion to trick us into seeing 3D images. There are actually two pictures of the same image, each of them angled slightly. Even though there are two images, we will not be confused since each eye is seeing a different image, which will then be correlated in the brain - creating a 3D image.

Although 3D movies are not shown in two screens or two pictures, it employs the same concept. They make use of anaglyphic images made up of two separate images superimposed on each other. Each of the images is angled slightly for the benefit of one of our eyes. We cannot see the difference in if we look at them with bare eyes; hence 3D movie glasses are important. These glasses allow filtration of images, making only one image enter one side of the pair of glasses.

There are two types of 3D movie glasses available today - the polarized 3D glasses and the red and blue lens filter. Each lens of the polarized 3D movie glasses is polarized in a different way than the other, and accepts only one image out of the two that comes from the 3D polarized video being shown. The red and blue lens filter works in a similar way, except that it makes use of red and blue lens and an anaglyphic video.

Indeed, 3D movie glasses will definitely boost our movie viewing pleasure.

Find out more about 3d DVD and what 3d DVD movies are available on the market.

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Are 3D DVD movies better than other DVD movies? Of course, they are. That is if you make use of a 3D compatible television and DVD player. If not, it would be as if you are playing a typical DVD movie in your player.

What is the difference between a two dimensional movie and a three dimensional one? With a 2D movie, it would seem as if you are only watching through a glass, viewing a world through a transparent window.

However, with 3D, you would feel as if something is pulling you towards the scene, making you a part of it and not just a viewer. These movies make use of our depth perception to give us the maximum viewing pleasure. Depending on the depth, we may view something as flat and planar, or it can also look full and with volume.

3D DVD movies allow a person to be more engrossed in the movie because of the details the person sees in his peripheral vision. This enters into the subconscious. This we cannot interpret but it is something that enhances our experience, much as ordinary things that passes us by in our everyday lives. This makes the experience more real to us than other ordinary films.

If you are the type of person who collects home movies as a hobby and for pleasure, 3D DVD movies are great additions to your collection. Although we can still count with our fingers the number of movies released in 3D DVD format, we are sure that more will come in the near future. If you want to maximize your 3D watching experience, you ought to purchase other equipment that will enhance your 3D viewing. This includes a 3D DVD player, a 3D compatible television and 3D glasses as well.

New programs and equipment that support 3D viewing are being released in the market. If you have a 2D movie that you want to watch in 3D, you no longer have to wait too long for some movie outfit to release it in 3D. Instead, you can use a 3D TV converter, a software that translates the conventional two dimensional movie into a three dimensional one.

When purchasing 3D DVD movies and players, it is important that you read the specifications. Some come with 3D viewing glasses while some are not. Some brands require that you sit squarely in front of the television to clearly see the three dimensional effect. A slight leaning on one side may result a viewing experience similar to that of a two dimensional film.

Learn more about 3d DVD and what 3d movies on DVD you can buy today!

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