Seb Lester can somehow freehand draw the logos for the NY Times, Honda, Ferrari, Coca-Cola, and many more.

Watching the video, I didn't even notice any tracing...it's all freehand. Keep up with Lester's drawings on his Instagram account.

Before Marvel Studios was part of Disney, Marvel established a method of developing and packaging its own films in order to retain some control over the characters. Now Valiant Entertainment seems to be trying to do the same thing, by scoring a huge amount of investment capital from DMG Entertainment to develop a Valiant comics movie universe.

DMG has put eight figures worth of funding into Valiant “to further its efforts in international publishing, film, television, licensing and beyond.” But that’s not all. The press release announcing the deal also trumpets an additional nine-figure investment towards development of film and TV projects featuring Valiant characters such as Bloodshot, Shadowman, and Archer & Armstrong. The goal of the partnership between Valiant and DMG is significant, and they’re not hiding it, as the announcement proclaims the creation of the “largest independent superhero universe.”

Some of these have already been in development, as the press release notes:

• BLOODSHOT from Sony Pictures in partnership with Original Film
• SHADOWMAN in partnership with the Sean Daniel Company from a script by J. Michael Straczynski
• ARCHER & ARMSTRONG, also with the Sean Daniel Company from a script by BenDavid Grabinski

In addition to all this development funding and an upcoming push for Valiant characters in the US, DMG, which is based in China, plans a huge Valiant-based licensing push in China to develop the market there for these characters.

Granted, we know nothing about how this will all work out — it depends in the end on the scripts, and the other creatives brought on board to help turn them into movies and TV. But money helps with that, and Valiant has a lot of it right now. The fact that these projects could end up at different studios might be an issue, but if Sony already has Bloodshot, perhaps it wants all of Valiant’s stable.

Here’s the release:

(New York, NY and Beijing, China, March 9, 2015) – Valiant Entertainment – the award-winning comic book publisher with a library of more than 2,000 characters, including X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, Archer & Armstrong, and more – and DMG Entertainment, the Beijing-based leader in global entertainment, today announced a new partnership to span motion pictures, television, publishing, and licensing that will culminate in the big screen debut of Valiant’s universe of characters in theaters around the world.
 
In conjunction with this new partnership, DMG has made an eight-figure (USD) series C round of equity investment into Valiant, which the company will use to further its efforts in international publishing, film, television, licensing and beyond. DMG has dedicated an additional nine-figures (USD) of film financing capital toward the production of theatrical films and television programs based on Valiant’s library of iconic superhero characters.
 
In total, the new agreement is the first deal of its kind brokered between an internationally based entertainment company and a leading independent publisher of comic books and graphic novels. Utilizing DMG’s expertise in international film development, production, and distribution, Valiant will begin to establish its cinematic universe in the United States, China and beyond. Current Valiant feature films in development include the previously announced BLOODSHOT from Sony Pictures in partnership with Original Film; SHADOWMAN in partnership with the Sean Daniel Company from a script by J. Michael Straczynski; and ARCHER & ARMSTRONG, also with the Sean Daniel Company from a script by BenDavid Grabinski; among others. Valiant has also already begun development on several television projects.
 
The unprecedented partnership between Valiant and DMG offers both companies the ability to develop and co-produce tent-pole theatrical films for distribution and release simultaneously in the United States, China – the world’s fastest growing film market with more than $4.8 billion in box office receipts in 2014 – and the rest of the world.
 
“Global markets, like China, offer the greatest opportunities for monetization from merchandising, licensing, as well as revenues from film and television properties. Comic superheroes are the most lucrative and sought after IP for movie franchises, so taking a stake in the last independent massive comic universe is a strategic investment for DMG that will produce movies and TV that are both appealing and relevant to a global audience,” said DMG CEO Dan Mintz. “We are excited by the opportunity to bring these incredibly engaging characters and their stories to the big screen.”
 
Beyond film alone, DMG and Valiant will work in concert to form China-focused licensing partnerships for Valiant’s stable of characters in areas such as Chinese language publishing, animation, online gaming, toys, apparel, live events, theme parks, and more, with a focus on bringing Valiant’s iconic heroes to new audiences in China and Asia-Pacific.
 
DMG Entertainment has a proven track record of introducing celebrated superheroes to the Chinese/international marketplace. In 2013, the Beijing-based studio and production company co-produced and co-financed Marvel Studios’ IRON MAN 3 – the highest grossing foreign film of 2013 and sixth highest of all time in China­. DMG is currently co-producing high-octane thriller AUTOBAHN, starring Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Felicity Jones and Nicholas Hoult; and the extreme actioner POINT BREAK, directed by Ericson Core; both films will hit screens worldwide in 2015.
 
“Valiant’s iconic stable of intellectual property and world class management team coupled with DMG’s unmatched skill with entertainment brand building in China make a formidable partnership,” said Valiant Chairman Peter Cuneo. “We will look forward to introducing some of the most popular superheroes of all time to the world’s fastest growing market across all media forms.”
 
“Audiences in China and the rest of the world are hungry for heroic stories that they can more easily relate to…and with the international box office accounting for the biggest piece of the total gross, the time is right for a truly international superhero franchise. DMG will bring its unique global perspective to the task of transforming the Valiant Universe into the first international comic-movie universe,” said DMG President Wu Bing.
 
Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2015, Valiant is one of the most successful comic book publishing companies in the history of the medium with more than 81 million comics sold and a library of more than 2,000 distinct characters. Established by a brain trust of legendary comics creators – including former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter; seminal Iron Man writer and artist, Bob Layton; and the visionary writer and illustrator of Wolverine: Weapon X, Barry Windsor-Smith – Valiant’s heroes and villains inhabit the largest independently owned superhero universe anywhere in comics. 
 
Re-established in 2005 as Valiant Entertainment with a best-in-class management team that includes Chairman Peter Cuneo, CEO & Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani, COO & CFO Gavin Cuneo, President of Licensing, Promotions & Ad Sales Russell A. Brown, Publisher Fred Pierce and Vice Chairman Jason Kothari, the company returned to great commercial and critical success in 2012, winning a Diamond Gem Award for Publisher of the Year and numerous industry awards and accolades. To date, Valiant’s titles consistently rate among the best reviewed in comics.
 
“Today marks one of Valiant’s biggest milestones yet with a huge step towards bringing the Valiant characters to the big screen and forging the foundation of the first truly international cinematic universe,” said Valiant CEO & Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani. “By bringing Valiant’s biggest heroes to theaters around the world in concert with our new partners at DMG, we look forward to making Valiant not only an iconic name in comics, but global entertainment as well.” 

The post Valiant Gets Funding to Develop Marvel-Style Valiant Comics Movie Universe appeared first on /Film.

I see a lot of confusion, and to be honest ridicule, from iOS Developers when it comes to new Android versions. In iOS when Apple release v8, all the supported devices get it on day 1. In most cases this is great for developers, because sales go up thanks to people looking for apps that support all the new whiz-bang features.

Android is different. When version 5.0 of Android comes out, it’s the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) (Open Source) version, that manufacturers use as a base for building their own custom versions of it. HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola et al need to add their own drivers & firmware as well as supporting all the various functions they’ve built on top of Android. Google is always the first to ship a version of it, for its Nexus Devices. This is why I recommend all developers buy Nexus phones for testing. You’ll get the new releases first, and sometimes pre-release builds as well. sell.

The above is why you look silly when you poke fun at Android adoption numbers. For the majority of phones, big new versions of Android ship roughly 3 months after the AOSP release. Here for example are the numbers from early January:

People are often quick to mis-interpret these numbers. “iOS 8 adoption is at 64%, but Android 4.4, a version that’s years old isn’t even at that!”. There’s two things wrong with these kinds of comments. Firstly there are roughly 6-8x more Android devices than iOS devices in the world, depending on which market share numbers you use. This means that if a version of Android achieves 39% adoption, that’s a huge deal, and you could develop just for that platform and address a larger user base than targeting iOS 8 with its 64%. Secondly people confuse overall numbers, with actual numbers of people who buy apps. Here for example are the version breakdowns of people who buy Pocket Casts on Android:

So while Android 5.0 has less than 1% adoption in the overall Android eco-system, 23% of our customers already run it. This makes sense when you put a bit of thought into these numbers. People that have the money to buy apps, and are passionate about Android, have up to date phones. While some users who run Android 2.3 on their 5 year old phone might be perfectly happy, they probably weren’t ever going to buy Pocket Casts. It’s also worth noting that Pocket Casts sells in much larger volumes (and makes more revenue) than any numbers I’ve seen for an equivalent iOS app. We’ve slowly moved our minimum version from 2.3, to 4.0, v4.0, to 4.1 and it hasn’t hurt sales at all.

My last point is one very few iOS Developers actually know about. In iOS if your users want to take an advantage of a feature in iOS 8, they have to have iOS 8 installed. In Android this isn’t always the case. Google bundles features into two libraries: ‘Support’ and ‘Google Play Services’. Google Play Services is updated through the store, so it’s not tied to the version of the OS you have installed. The Support library is shipped by app developers inside their apps, and is updated regularly by Google.  ships a library called ‘Google Play Services’ which gets updated regularly.  When a new version of Android ships, you’ll often find a lot of the new APIs appear in one of these two libraries, this library, and not the core of Android itself. This isn’t the case for every API, but more often than not you can give your users on older platforms access to newer features, without waiting for them to update. Even when newer features can’t be brought to older versions, Google will often place ‘compatibility APIs’ into the Support library, Google Play services, so you don’t have to litter your app with runtime checks of which version you’re running on. It’s not a silver bullet, but backwards compatibility is far less of a headache on Android than it is on iOS.

TL;DR:

• There is no ‘day’ a major new version of Android comes out. Each set of phones have their own launch day. Nexus devices, then Motorola/LG devices, then HTC and Samsung devices. So it’s only useful to think about adoption numbers for a new version of Android after the last of those manufacturers ships their updates.
• Overall Android adoption numbers should be ignored by most developers, look up the ones for the category you plan to launch in. They are available in the Google Play Developer Console.
• Ongoing revenue on Android tends to be a lot higher and steadier than iOS, and you don’t get spikes caused by new Android versions being released.
• If you’re making a new app, targeting Android 4.1 and above will get you the most users. Targeting 5.0 only is probably not wise as of today, but will be in a few months time. 4.4 is also a perfectly acceptable minimum for an app you plan to release regular updates for.

Two years later, I don’t think “Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services” feels true any more. John Gruber, Tuesday 13 January, 2015

Today: Apple releases a bug that logs developers into other people’s accounts.

As a user of it, I can tell you definitively that iTunes Connect is still a buggy mess. These days it’s a very pretty mess though.  To me that’s more telling than anything else. Apple chose to make the interface look good, before it fixed all the bugs. That Gruber chose one metric and extrapolated it to mean something important was always going to come back to bite him. I bookmarked that link and began to write a long response about all the various things that were fundamentally broken in Apple’s web services. Turns out I didn’t need to, this one incident says more than I ever could.

So I raise my glass to you John, enjoy the chowder.

There wasn't anything like Grim Fandango when it first came out in 1998. Nearly two decades later, there's still nothing that comes close.

The adventure game tells the story of Manny, a salesman for the Department of Death who helps lost souls find better travel packages to the land of the dead. It's an epic and hilarious story that spans years, combining elements from Mexican folklore and film noir to create a truly unique and wonderful world that you just want to walk around in and explore. Half the fun in the game comes from just talking to other characters.

Grim was also arguably the last great adventure game to come out of Lucasarts, the studio that brought us classics like Monkey Island and Sam & Max, and it was the first...

Continue reading…