The Electric Playground has released a great little interview with Jordu:

You can watch this and other fun stuff over at the Electric Playground website.

…or
Not even the full moon can transform this movie into something decent

Last night I saw a screening of “The Wolfman” movie which is due to be released today, February 12th. If this review serves as anything to you, dear reader, let it be a warning: Director Joe Johnston and company have shit the bed quite horribly with this latest attempt at reviving an old Universal horror franchise, with a film awash in poor acting, plot anemic storytelling and wretchedly awful special effects. I find it rather pointless to go into the specifics of why this movie is so completely terrible, but it must be noted that there were chuckles during various ‘intense’ or ‘moving’ moments, scoffing during obviously poor computer-driven special effects (‘special’ in the way that those Olympics for challenged children are special), and more than it’s share of audience watch-checking. Trust me, folks–this thing is b-a-d. Even Anthony Hopkins, usually at very least decent, is clearly phoning his performance in, evidently from somewhere deep within the Bermuda Triangle. Benicio Del Toro is monstrously miscast (pun intended), and poor Emily Blunt spends the movie looking slightly constipated. The sets are pretty nice, and there are a few visuals that are almost kind of sort of nice, but the overall effect of the film on myself and those with me for this particular screening was, “You guys want to go get a pizza or something? Too late to eat? Yeah, I guess. See you guys next week maybe. Oh, did you remember to call Kim? Yeah, I told her about that Hollywood Bowl event and she….yeah, yeah. Did she really? Weird. Well, we can catch up later in the week. Drive safe…”

In other words, it had absolutely no effect on anyone.

So, if you are up for a film that:

a. uses very, very loud noises to ‘scare’ you (inevitably resulting in the source of the sound being some innocuous something-or-other)….

b. utilizes the lamest motion-blurring, camera-shaking, fuzzy-ghost computer graphics….

c. allows it’s performers to sleepwalk through a horrendously un-dramatic script (amongst pretty sets)….

d. has a guy with a lot of hair and the cutest little black doggie nose….

….then ‘wolfman’ is for you! Otherwise, steer the hell clear of this wolf-poop-pile of a movie.

I have dealt with a massive storm of controversy lately regarding who did what on the Na’Vi designs for the film ‘Avatar’. This open letter is being posted to clarify, once and for all, exactly what my involvement was in the creation of these characters.
In the Spring of 2005, I was contacted by Lightstorm Entertainment to be involved in the very first design steps towards creating the world of Pandora, the planet that ‘Avatar’ takes place on. There were only four of us in that initial phase (five if you count Martin Laing, the production designer at the time.)

These four were:
Wayne Barlowe, who was to take the initial creature and character design lead on the film.
Yuri Bartoli, a very talented illustrator and designer who I had worked with previously at Tippett Studios in Berkeley, California.
Neville Paige, an imaginative creature and industrial designer who was also a very fine draftsman.
And, me.

We started out working directly at Jim’s house in Malibu, and from the very start, I was frustrated because Jim wanted everything to be designed either on the computer or on paper. Sculpture being my forte, I felt a bit out of place; I design almost exclusively in clay. I can draw, but compared to Wayne, Yuri and Neville, my drawings just weren’t at their level. I tried to impress this upon Jim, but he was adamant: No clay!

After several weeks of trying to make this work, it was clear that I wasn’t cut out for this job, at least the way that Jim wanted it done, and I left the project for about four months. (I was delighted that, after leaving, Jim called me personally and told me that if the need came up for my skills, he would like to call on me in the future.)

Around November of ’05, Jim came back to me, this time frustrated at the inability of the computer to capture the life he wanted in his creatures and characters.

I came back, where designs for the creatures were all well underway under the lead of Neville Paige. The Na’Vi, however, had not been explored very thoroughly, at least not to Jim’s satisfaction. I started by doing a quick bust of the main female character, Neytiri. Jim immediately said upon seeing it, “This is really helpful…yes, this is a good approach.”

Next, Jim gave me a massive stack of photos of various actresses that he felt looked Neytiri-like. These were reference for me, as well as a drawing he had done of her face on toned paper. I did one bust that was an almost exacting portraiture of the drawing, and Jim had me make molds of it so there could be multiples. Next, he wanted a full-body rendition of her. This maquette was based on some very rough computer renderings, all of which Jim was dissatisfied with. His main objective in bringing me on was to get the sense of naturalness he felt existed in the sculptures he’d seen of mine. (Somewhere in all this, I also did a number of sculptures of the creatures as well, based on designs done by Yuri and Neville.)

The full body sculpture of Neytiri was a major success. Jim said, “That’s her.” He told me that I was “incapable of sculpting anything without character”, a very high compliment.

After this, Jim decided that he wanted me to concentrate specifically on the anatomy designs of the characters, and that he wanted Stan Winston’s guys to join the team as the primary designers of the faces and patterns on the Na’Vi bodies. They produced an enormous amount of work, including life-sized busts of the characters, and a full-sized Na’Vi body over nine feet tall. John Rosengrant headed up the team at Stan’s, and Joe Pepe, Chris Swift and Scott Patton all worked on the designs and sculptures being produced there, as well as a number of complex digital assets. They also made molds of all of the maquettes that I had done, and produced painted versions, with the now fully designed faces they had created replacing the rather rough ones I had sculpted. (These painted maquettes can be seen briefly in a “60 Minutes” episode.) Stan’s also produced the life-sized Mech suit (!), as well as a number of maquettes of the creatures for the film.

In the Spring of 2007, my involvement in ‘Avatar’ was drawing to a close, and I left satisfied with the work I had done. Weta Workshop worked heavily on the film as well, of course, producing set pieces, all of the Na’Vi accoutrements, native jewelry, the jaw-dropping animation (along with the legendary ILM) and refined things in the final analysis; the spirit and structure of my early maquettes was still intact in the Na’Vi, however. Unfortunately, I do not believe that my credit on the film reflects my contribution…but at least I can say that I was a major part of this fantastic design team. This is as thorough and honest an evaluation of what happened as I can recall. Let the controversy end now, for the love of Neytiri!

The title says it all, so what are you waiting for?

The Navi maquettes are all Jordu’s; however, the faces on the painted figures have been altered from his original sculptures. The clip is short but still cool.

It was the street I grew up on, like so many other children of the sixties and seventies; and, it would seem, every decade since. The Children’s Television Workshop launched Sesame Street forty years ago on the 10th of this month to a generation of kids previously raised on the standardized kid-show formats of Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and it changed and advanced the way children are educated. With short, commercial-length segments, colorful cartoons and, of course, the beloved Jim Henson Muppets, Sesame Street revolutionized not only kids’ programming, but television itself. Condescending to children was nowhere to be found on the program, and the diversity of personalities and ethnicities was long overdue on television. (Mississippi banned it initially, claiming that the state “wasn’t ready” to see a mix of races presented so equally.) But the show transcended its kiddie roots especially by being the first to deal with real difficulties, like getting lost, getting to know someone with a handicap, even death itself—a segment for which the show was widely praised.

For me, it introduced me to the incredible expressiveness of puppets as characters, and how faces can be created with an economy of form. Grover and Big Bird are marvels of simple design, and the puppeteering was astoundingly polished, giving so much life and believability to these furry creations that the kids featured on the show knew them not as inanimate objects, but as people.

Its influence is impossible to measure, the characters icons of Americana, and the sweet and gentle way in which it introduced so many children to the world is a testament to the loving people involved in its creation. Happy Birthday, old friends—and thank you!

(As of 2009, Sesame Street has won over one-hundred-and-seventeen Emmys!)

This image was posted on Avatar Movie Zone, and is a behind the scenes shot of James Cameron with a concept bust of the Na’vi sculpted by Jordu Schell. Enjoy.

And here is an interview with Jordu on io9.com, once again, about designing the Na’vi for James Cameron’s “Avatar”.

Jordu recently did an interview with Avatar Movie Zone about the creatures in James Cameron’s upcoming film, “Avatar” (duh). Jordu was the Lead Character Designer on “Avatar”, and was responsible for the look of the Na’vi. Click this link to read what he had to say.

The trailer for James Cameron’s long-awaited “Avatar” is online, and you can finally see the creatures of this new world, most specifically the humanoid Navi. Jordu was the lead character designer on these fantastic creatures. From the look of the trailer, they were faithful to his designs. The buzz around this movie has been huge, and the trailer looks astounding. This trailer was downloaded more than 4 million times the first day it was available on Apple Trailers, setting a new record for the site. Look for “Avatar” in theaters this December.

Here are the best of the Steven Spielberg’s Toilet Paper contest entries. If you don’t know what that means, it is high time you start listening to N.E.R.D.cast.

WINNER! Lyle Moore

Aris Kolokontes

Mikey Rotella

Nick Brown

And there is a very special place in Hell reserved for Mike Doran who suggested that Oskar Schindler’s actual list be used as Steven Spielberg’s toilet paper.

If you haven’t checked out our media gallery in a while, you may want to take a look. If you like what you see, go ahead and subscribe to our page on youtube. Don’t forget to leave us feedback and comments. Here is a taste of the newest media:

Warning:
This blog is way off-topic from monsters, creatures, robots, genetic mutations and Frankensteins. It is about film, though. Read on if you care to know any of my thoughts outside of making rubber junk.

Last night I saw a film on DVD. I am not 100% sure why I rented it; I guess the blurb on the back of the DVD clamshell case looked vaguely interesting. The film was entitled “Havoc”, and starred nobody’s favorite actress, Anne Hathaway. It concerned itself essentially with a group of spoiled, very wealthy teens from Pacific Palisades (an affluent community on the California Coast situated between Brentwood and Malibu), all of whom are obsessed with the ‘gangsta’ lifestyle. They talk, dance–occasionally rap (!)– in the style of Black and Latino urban gangs, despite the fact that none of them have ever really been exposed to the realities of this life. So for starters, you are already irked by watching these white folks adopt a lifestyle they know nothing about—especially when they try to act ‘tough’. It’s just obnoxious. Ms. Hathaway, horrendously miscast and looking like a complete idiot, tries to convince the audience that she really can s-t-r-e-t-c-h as an actress. Other than the numerous sex scenes in the film, a few of which feature the overrated assets of Hathaway and various other actresses, Hathaway doesn’t seem to be able to stretch at all. Watching her attempt to be black must rank as some of the most ridiculous, embarrassing and overall offensive filmmaking I have seen; dare I say, it even trumps Anthony Hopkins trying to convince audiences that he actually is black in the total piece of shit, “The Human Stain”. That gem also featured Nicole Kidman attempting to make us believe she’s a janitor. The preceding is not a misprint—I walked out of this piece of garbage faster than I walked out of “Bonfire of the Vanities”, and I only gave that one twenty minutes.

But back to the point: the utter travesty that is “Havoc”. Hathaway and ‘crew’ decide one night to go down to East L.A. and ‘get all up in da grill’ of some genuine Latino gangster types. The very idea that snooty, rich white chicks would even deign to look upon the urban blight of Los Angeles is absurd—but when you watch them actually become immersed in this culture and are accepted into it….well, you are making a fantasy picture more tripped out than Oz on acid. Of course, things end up going too far, and the girls get all freaked out by the filthy brown people, and then call the cops on them. So, just to clarify: They think they are tigers. They decide to go to the jungle and live amongst real tigers. Real tigers end up being dangerous and they bite and stuff. The fake tigers retreat to ‘civilization’, hire poachers, and send them out to kill all the real tigers. Who’s the victim? Who do you feel sorry for in that not-all-that-simplified clarification of this grotesque story? I’ll bet you don’t feel too bad for the fake tigers, do you? I sure didn’t.

Why, you may ask, am I writing this blog about such a stupid and worthless piece of trash? Because I was deeply offended by it. So offended, in fact, that I am contemplating writing the producers of this thing and laying into them. Where was the conscience of these filmmakers? Did they really expect us to sympathize with the Great White Hope who co-opts, then infiltrates something they can’t handle, and then wants to dispose of it once they realize it is beyond their abilities to control? What a disgusting message.

Now, this thing was released directly to video, and I’ll bet I know why, or at least this is what I’d like to think; Anne Hathaway’s ‘people’, upon viewing it, decided it might be best to keep it….quiet.
A. She’s topless in it—several times.
B. The subject matter and storyline are astonishingly vulgar and offensive and,
C. It reveals that she is a dreadfully bad actress, at least when she tries to play anything other than a dopey Disney princess.

Now of course, I believe in freedom of speech, and the rights of an artist to create whatever they think they need to. But there is, in my opinion, a certain responsibility in creating. A responsibility to present a well-thought-out piece of work that can inform, sometimes enrage, but always have integrity, and an understanding of the world around you. Only through this can one expect to make anything worthwhile, enduring and meaningful.

I have seen many films that have made me angry—David Mamet’s brilliant “Oleanna” comes to mind—but this is something else entirely to me; this ‘film’ is saying that you can adopt any little lifestyle you want, but that you can and should protect yourself against the realities of that life—basically, being a complete hypocrite is just fine, especially if you are rich—and white. I disrespectfully disagree. The thoughtless and arrogant attitude that this film presents is nothing short of a bold statement in favor of classism, racism and the rape of cultural ideologies. I can’t think of anything more irresponsible, appalling or shameful.

We just got back from Indianapolis and The HMA Mask-Fest where this was our display. Video courtesy of Gary Biro.

I have always liked this mask. I did it about five years ago. I must confess, however, that I do not like it enough to stain my body with it’s image for the rest of my life. This guy did.