News - PinkBear, supplier of official Tintin merchandise in Australia

The Art of Herge Volumes now available !

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -1100

We are delighted to announce that we now have available all three volumes of the English version of the Art of Herge books produced by Moulinsart !

These are fantastic books about the artwork of the Tintin albums from 1907 to 1983. These albums present a selection of Herge's outstanding - often unpublished - drawings showing the diversity of his work and offering the reader a view of the range of his talent.

Author is Phillippe Goddin, born 1944, who is considered to be one of the top experts on Herge's life and work. Translated by Michael Farr. Each book is 207 pages long.

Check them out at http://www.pinkbear.com.au/shopping-cart/books-special-editions/

Tintin movie to open in Australia on Boxing Day !!

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -1100

Check out the Tintin.com website where you can view the movie trailer and lots of other Tintin news !! Awesome - www.tintin.com

Check out the official movie site !

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -1100

Excitement over the movie is growing by the day now ! Check out the official movie site which includes a great movie trailer !!

http://www.us.movie.tintin.com/

The movie trailer is almost here !!

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 -1100

The Tintin movie trailer is on the way very soon !!

Steven Spielberg finished filming The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in March 2009 after a mere 32 days of shooting with the same performance-capture technology James Cameron used for Avatar. Since then Peter Jackson’s WETA Digital have been working their magic, but instead of aiming for photorealism they’ve gone for a classic Tintin look.

The only marketing thus far has been the release of some stills back in November last year, but now Alberta Film Ratings has updated their site stating a teaser trailer lasting 1 minute and 3 seconds has been submitted by Paramount Pictures, so we can probably expect it to be released sometime soon.

The likely bet is for it to be released alongside Kung Fu Panda 2 as it is also a Paramount movie, which means we only have roughly 2 weeks to wait.

In the film Jamie Bell stars as journalist and adventurer Tintin with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing detective twins Thompson and Thomson and Daniel Craig playing villainous pirate Red Rackham. Paramount will release The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in the US in December, with Sony releasing the film in Europe and overseas in October.

Check this link out: http://filmonic.com/the-adventures-of-tintin-the-secret-of-the-unicorn-trailer-coming-soon

The Tintin bust is here !

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -1100

We are hugely excited about the arrival of a brilliant new product - the Tintin head bust !

These stand 35cm tall and are going to be hugely popular. They come in 3 styles - white, grey and blue shirt. An awesome gift and great for the lead up to the movie release.

We already have a number making their way by boat from Belgium. They should be here in March.

Check out the white and blue ones now at http://www.pinkbear.com.au/shopping-cart/collectables-resins/

Remember these are limited edition and they will go fast !!

New products for Christmas !

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -1100

Check out these fantastic new products for Christmas !!!

1. A new box scene based on The Crab with the Golden Claws where Snowy gets his head caught in the crab tin !

2. A tremendous new collectors cube capturing the moment that Tintin meets Captain
Haddock for the first time !

3. Great new T-shirts on the "I Love" theme !

First Tintin movie scenes !!

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -1100

Empire publication has a sneak peak at the first full pictures from the Tintin Movie - The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The movie , from Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, stars Jamie Bell as Tintin and Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock alongside the likes of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (as Thompson and Thompson), Daniel Craig (as Red Rackham), Cary Elwes, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook and Daniel Mays.

The Adventures of Tintin opens December 23, 2011.

Avatar, Tintin and the future of movies

Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:00 -1100

While working on the movie Avatar, James Cameron wanted to showcase his invention to two other legendary film directors, in case they wanted to work with similar technology for their future ventures. So he invited Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to his set. Spielberg was very enthusiastic for the advanced motion capture and virtual camera system, so much so that he planned his next project, "The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn" to be based on the very same technology. Set to be released on 2011, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is a complete 3D CGI movie, in which all the animation part will be the implementation of Performance Capture of live artists. The filming of the movie was over in just 32 days. After the motion capture data capture, the complete project will be handed over to Peter Jackson's WETA Digital studio, for the post-production and CGI works.

It sounds insane at first, that the post production pipeline of the movie will be twenty times lengthier than the actual shooting. But, if we hear it from Peter Jackson, the movie is somewhat ready in a very raw state; there's nothing more to create or produce - it's just the rendering of the film in the presentable media, that will take two long years at WETA Digital's render farm. Apart from these intangible technological break-throughs, sometimes small and legacy armaments also can make significant differences. Although the full Direction credit goes to Spielberg for this first movie, some sources revealed that Peter Jackson, though bodily present only for the first week, thoroughly assisted Spielberg with the filming direction, over videoconferencing from New Zealand. So, as you can see, tele/video-conferencing may just be a past and twentieth century phenomena, but it is sufficient enough to work as a never-before seen collaborative (remote) film direction platform.


Spielberg, directing a MoCap shot	Another MoCap on progress, from Tintin set

Not just a one-off film; Tintin is going to be a complete motion picture series. Peter Jackson will be co-directing future sequels, all of which will feature this new dimension of film technology at its core. Check out the images to find out the filming, right from the capture set. Rumor has it that, apart from the existing technologies, "The Adventures of Tintin" will introduce a few more step-forwards. While in Avatar, the technical implementation led to an Augmented Reality; for Tintin being an animated movie, the production house will have to work on an Augmented Virtuality ambiance. Avatar being the usher of new-age mainstream motion pictures, we'll see how the legend continues with Tintin, in the animation industry.

Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg

On the contrary, not everyone is welcoming this entire stereoscopic 3D filming and performance capture augmentation, spontaneously. For example, lets take The Hobbit series; the next project of Peter Jackson with Del Toro. Guillermo del Toro wanted to keep it sync with the former LOTR series, not only in story representation or cinematography, but also continuing the similar technology, and filming it with 35mm traditional lens. But Peter Jackson, the producer of these films, who have already decided to move completey to 3D for the rest of his production life, has been continuously evangelizing for shooting in 3D. Del toro firstly compromised with 3ality, a propitiatory 2D filming format, optimized for the captured video to be converted in 3D. No wonder nobody liked that idea; hence finally the team decided shooting in 3D is the best idea, if they really have to publish in 3D formats at the end of the day.

Conclusion

Some critics have claimed that these advances in technology would be the doom of traditional acting and animation. For most of us though, these advances are a convergence of live action and animation; coupling the very best of both worlds. For the audience, the only thing that matters most is the movie experience. If a very realistic, technically-flexible, life-like motion capture can be offered, why not to embrace it? If a stereoscopic 3D movie can make you 'feel' the movie, then why not to like it? All that is new, is not necessarily bad. This point is what is moving the film industry into a whole new era of motion picture. And with the infinite possibilities offered by this new tech, the next 10 or 20 years of cinema will only be limited by the imagination of the creators.

Makeup artists move from Avatar to Tintin !

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -1100

Makeup artists move from Avatar to Tintin !

Most people don't think of makeup as a cutting-edge discipline, but in the aftermath of "Avatar," it has gained recognition as a critical component of performance-capture technology.

Lots of attention has been lavished on the film's breakthrough editing, which digitally stitched together performances from different takes, and on its cinematography, which seamlessly combined live-action and CGI. But it was "digital makeup" that helped make possible the human-like facial expressions and emotions of Pandora's inhabitants.

The technique isn't new, but "Avatar" advanced it to a new level. The film's makeup department head, Tegan Taylor, has used it on films dating back to 2004's "The Polar Express." By now she's built up enough experience to qualify as the makeup queen for 3D performance capture.

Unlike traditional film makeup, which prepares actors for photography, Taylor prepares them for their roles by applying hundreds of reflective dots onto their faces, allowing their emotional expressions to be fed into the computer software that renders the animated images.

Her art has evolved. On "Polar Express" she and her team painstakingly applied hundreds of reflective beads on each actor's head to help capture facial data. "Avatar" used a more advanced computer system along with miniature head-mounted cameras to capture the nuances of the actors' faces. For that film Taylor replaced the beads with a phosphorescent paint she had to invent. "Nothing existed on the market," she says.

No sooner was "Avatar" complete than Taylor ported the same techniques to "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn," a 3D opus helmed by Steven Spielberg set for release in late 2011. The film is now in post-production, with Weta Digital handling the digital fx, as it did for "Avatar." Weta topper, Peter Jackson, is a producer of the film, along with Spielberg, and is in line to helm the sequel.

"Weta was in the room with us," says Taylor, referring both to "Avatar" and "Tintin." "My job as department head was to make sure all their needs were being met." She also had to balance Weta's requirements with the concerns of "high-profile actors like Sigourney Weaver, making sure she is comfortable and the products I'm using are compatible with her skin. That's one of the fine lines we walk."

Taylor, who trained as a traditional makeup artist 20 years ago, continues to develop her own digital makeup products - or "potions," as she calls them. "In between 'Avatar' and 'Tintin,' I slightly altered them, changing the consistency for longer-lasting results," she says. "I found paints with fluorescent and black-light properties that glowed in the dark."

Taylor just completed her work on Simon Wells' "Mars Needs Moms" and is in tests for Robert Zemeckis' "Yellow Submarine."

Which Tintin adventures will feature in the 2nd movie ?

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -1100

In January, Peter Jackson will choose which Tintin adventure he is going to adapt to the big screen. It will be the second full-length movie in the trilogy that he is planning to create with Steven Spielberg.

Until now, the word was that The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun were being lined up.

"I'm going to reread all the Tintin books over Christmas," Peter Jackson confided to PIXmania.com website, "and then I'll make my decision."

In the special edition of Le Monde newspaper, dedicated to Tintin (Tintin, le retour), the New Zealand director confirmed that The Black Island was one of the first Tintin books he read.

All bets are on!