Cinematical has some suggestions for Indies on how to create a short film with little or no budget. It’s not really mind-blowing revelations, but good tips to keep on hand.

Billing itself as “A hardcore Christian cartoon for kids and adults!”, the new cartoon series Weight of the World is seeking Voice Actors and Animators. Auditions will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina on 9/16/2006.

We are holding Voice Actor Auditions in Charlotte, NC!
Where: Charlotte, NC
When: Saturday September 16, 2006

WRITE: TheW8OfTheWorld@yahoo.com and tell us what time would be best for you to audition. We will send you a audition form and a portion of the script!

I find it interesting that the producers are leveraging the power of Myspace to build viral interest (that is telling of the times we are in, and the changing face of media). For a closer look at the characters and concept figures, check out w8oftheworld’s Myspace page.

DVGuru’s got the linkage to a cool Instructables technique for doing animation simply, and on the cheap using a dry erase board and a webcam. The parts list is short, and it couldn’t be simpler to do. Check it out.

The Elmo SUV-Cam Micro Video Camera System is a tiny camera that captures MPEG-4 at 704×480 resolution to a SD card and is water proof to around 12ft deep. Will set you back around $750 bones. Nifty. The extreme sports applications alone are virtually endless.

(Via DVGuru)

HD-DVD and Blu-ray sales are not as good as analysts had hoped, and retailers are not happy with the market to date. Technical issues and confusion over the competing formats are a few of the reasons cited for the weak market response.

“Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up and other retailers have had the same experience,” said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn’s.

“…Blu-ray has faced complaints of sub-par picture quality on discs, talk of component shortages for players and other technical issues…”

“…along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung and that’s when my expectations were hurt. When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn’t look much better than a standard DVD…”

Here’s the biggest reason why I believe the hi-def DVD formats are faltering…they offer consumers no compelling reason to upgrade. I’ll elaborate:

*There is no increased convenience or capability.
Some of the reasons consumers embraced the DVD format over VHS were increased capacity, the convenience of chaptering, and no rewinding.

*The quality difference is not THAT MUCH better than SD DVDs.
Yes, you can see it. But it is an incremental upgrade at best, and the average consumer (that is content with cable TV or highly-compressed satellite MPEG-2 streams) does not see the value in the High-Definition upgrade.

We previously reported on the potential blue diode shortages that may limit player availability in the immediate future.

(Via Slashdot)