“Competing with oneself, is conducive to continued learning.” I would like to take a second and salute Major Mariam Al Mansouri, F-16 fighter pilot of the UAE. This week, Major Al Mansouri led airstrikes against ISIS (or ISIL, depending on the news services). To become a pilot is a challenging enough, but to become a fighter pilot, that’s very rare. Major Al Mansouri’s dedication to her education, and her passion for her field sets an example for future generations. We need more people like Major Mariam Al Mansouri. You can read more about Major Al Mansouri here. 
Author: J. A. Heath
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Real life heroes
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Coming along
The control rig for Suzi is almost complete. I will be ready to start blocking in the motions for the Issue 1 animated episode by the end of the month. Exciting times! It’s all finally coming together, and I am very excited. I am targeting 3.19.15 for the premiere, so I have to get crackin!
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Movie Monday
If you like Galaxy Quest, you should love this!
20 things you didn’t know about Galaxy Quest! -
Animation’s afoot!
I have been working evenings hammering out the workflow so that I can create a Suzi animated series. I think I am finally on the right path, so I thought I would share this with you guys. Please bear in mind, this was just a quick test of the basic blocking of the shot. The animation is far from polished, so that is why it looks so mechanical at this point. It’s also a very low resolution clip. But it looks great to me, seeing Suzi finally moving! This image is also over on the Google Plus page, so if you are a G+’er, add the page and I will add you back.
I also want to give a thanks to Logiciel Lumiere for making the tutorials that showed me how to do all this! If you have any interest in animation, you can check out his Youtube channel here for some great lessons.
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Great little short film
This animated short has a great heart.
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Knights of Sidonia
I just ran across this and wondered if anyone has any thoughts. I love the mecha design callbacks to Macross-ish levels. Let me know what you think!
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Suzi Quazar: Grindhouse Style
I have been working on animating Suzi as a cartoon for some time now. I’ve got a ton of test footage that I wanted to use for something, so here we are. I will keep learning and refining, but for now, enjoy!
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The Commander
Who is the Commander and what is his mission?
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Very interesting
I don’t normally post trailers on here, but I love this take on Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics. I seem some very interesting parallels to our story 🙂
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25 cent comics
I keep a blog over at jaheath.com (that I don’t update often enough) and I made a post about 25 cent comics. To save you a click, the bottom line is that my digital comics are going to be priced at 25 cents. Yep, a quarter. And no DRM. Of course, the webcomic will still be free, and Issue 1 is free. Eventually I will put the paper version of the comic up here for sale, but that is still a ways off.
You are invited to go to the shop and download your preferred format of Issue 1 for free. I have the Issue 2 cbr available now, and the .mobi and PDF formats are coming this week.
Another cool thing I am working on is the novelization of Suzi’s story. The initial story of Suzi will be told in 10 issues. I am writing a novella for each issue that goes into a bit more detail, and those will be priced at 50 cents, with the first story being free. They will be DRM free epub, mobi, pdf and a special graphic novel cbr version. This is a great time to be a indie creative!
