Posted on 12/29/2005 1:55:33 AM PST by Stoat
MALAYSIA'S wildlife department says it will investigate claims that man-like "Bigfoot" beasts are roaming the jungles of southern Johor state. Newspapers have this week aired stories of sightings of the legendary creatures, and photographs of a giant footprint left near a jungle swamp.
The director of the wildlife department's Biodiversity Conservation Division, Siti Hawa Yatim, said they would examine the prints, which reportedly measure up to 45 centimetres).
"We are going to check first if the case is a true one," Siti Hawa said.
She said officials would interview people living around the Kota Tinggi area, where workers last month reported seeing two huge creatures and a youngster, and may set up cameras in jungle areas to try to capture images of any beasts.
"If we can't work out from the evidence what it is and we can see the footprint is still there, and there's the possibility of something other than animals, then maybe we would put camera traps," she said.
Johor is home to large tracts of jungle, including its famed Endau-Rompin National Park, and unconfirmed sightings of large creatures surface periodically.
An adviser to the Johor branch of the Malaysian Nature Society, Vincent Chow, has been lobbying the government to look into the claims and said an investigation could spur global interest.
"We are sitting on a wonderful opportunity by way of the Bigfoot research to spur ecotourism in Johor, taking the cue of Loch Ness in Scotland," Chow was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.
Chow took the photographs of the footprint and estimated the beast was three metres tall, based on a broken tree branch found hanging over the site.
Brown hair reeking of body odour has also been retrieved around the area, he said.
Sightings of mythical ape-like creatures have been reported in wilderness areas all over the world. They are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the United States and Canada, and yetis in Asia.
"No, I said that my FEET are 21 inches long. My brain has been shown to be this big"
That explains a LOT of things! Thank GOD for the Swifties.....they saved us all from more than anyone realized!
Perfect!!!
'.....at some time something we call a Troll did exist, and may still exist somewhere."
SHAKE Rocks King Kong
If all you wanted for Christmas was a giant ape holding a beautiful woman atop a landmark building on a superwide screen, this holiday has certainly turned out for you. “King Kong” roared into theaters just in time for the holiday, carrying big name talent, Oscar buzz and eye-bending special effects.
The visual effects were created by Weta Digital, the same company that did the effects for Kong director Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. And as it did for “Rings,” Weta used Shake as its primary compositing tool on “King Kong.”
Even More Effects
Matt Welford, the film’s 2D sequence lead who worked on most of the film’s New York sequences, quantifies the task. “Kong has a little shy of two and a half thousand visual effects shots.”
This was a more intensive effects package than “Lord of the Rings,” says Welford, “because ‘Kong’ is more action-packed from start to finish. In the ‘Rings’ trilogy there were frequent breaks in the action. Not so in this film. And then of course, there were all the creatures that Peter Jackson loves to put into these films — the bugs and worms and flies. So the shot count went up just because of those sequences.”
Synthetic City
It is difficult for people who have seen “King Kong” to believe that the sequences, which prominently feature 1930’s Manhattan, were shot on a one-story high New York street back lot in New Zealand and then “digitally extended” by a crew of 500 artists and technicians using thousands of carefully researched and prepared elements.
“We had a huge library of reference photos, and a department of researchers who were able even to find out what color the street signs were in 1930’s New York,” says Welford.
He points out that that the jungle scenes were similarly shot and altered. “Animation would animate the creatures, the modeling guys would build the models, the TDs would light whatever was needed, and then pass them over to the comp department. We would take those elements and integrate them into the plates that were provided by Peter Jackson and the shooting crew. Then it would be our job to basically layer it together with any extra 2D elements that we need. Using Shake, we could integrate those in with the CG and the plate and come out with the final shot.”
Welford says that Shake was also used for some 3D work in the roto and paint departments. “Our TD’s could actually do rough comps of their work before they pass elements off to the comp department, so they could check that their elements were working before we actually start.”
Composite Solution
Welford, who has used Shake since it came out, says the product was perfect for their task. “Personally, I’m a big fan of the node-based compositing. It’s a lot more logical and it allows for you to change things quickly, so you can experiment and jump around to different parts of the tree. You’re not locked into pre-rendering elements and then working on those pre-renders.”
Another advantage of Shake was its ability to work with independent bit depth images.”You can have an 8-bit file, a 16-bit file and a float file and Shake will resolve and comp them all together,” he says.
And at a fundamental level, the large available Shake talent pool allowed Weta to scale up quickly and dramatically from a small core compositing crew — essential, it turned out, to meet a challenge as big as Kong.
Sounds to me the second story you wont hear a peep about reading the entries from the website.
ROFLMAO BUMP!!
I believe this is a hype-campaign for Shadow of the Colossus for Playstation.
=)
Happy New Year, FRiend.
=)
Well, ummm......actually no I didn't. I'm not even remotely close to being a hardcore gamer (game controllers aren't designed with stoat paws in mind....I have enough trouble with a standard keyboard """"""sad""""") and I don't really follow that avenue of consciousness with any degree of closeness. As a result, I had to look it up to get an idea of what you might be referring to :-)
(((((EMBARRASSED))))))))
Happy New Year, FRiend.
Thank you, and happy new year to you and yours as well :-)
<<<< putting out a dish of Purina Squirrel Chow \_______/
lol
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from December 2005, related to two others.
'Bigfoot' sightings in Malaysia
News 24 (South Africa) | January 8, 2006
Posted on 01/08/2006 4:35:59 AM EST by Stoat
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1554010/posts
Malaysia Creates Team to Track Bigfoot
Fox News | January 26
Posted on 01/26/2006 2:02:37 PM EST by pcottraux
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1565583/posts
I'm delighted to hear that the finest minds in the universe will now be focused upon this weighty issue (snort!) . With such overwhelming intellectual horsepower being brought to bear upon the subject we will no doubt have a definitive answer in short order. :-)
Perhaps if they have time they can also find evidence of the long suspected direct genetic link from Helen Thomas to her forbears.
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