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"Alabama Education News" is published monthly except for June, July, and December by the Alabama Department of Education. This publication, authorized by Section 16-2-4 of the "Code of Alabama", as recompiled in 1975, is a public service of the Alabama Department of Education designed to inform citizens and educators about programs and goals of public education in Alabama. This issue contains the following articles: (1) First Choice: The Right Choice for Alabama Schools; (2) Teach in Alabama Revolutionizes the Education Job Market; (3) FEMA Stresses Preparedness for Upcoming Hurricane Season; (4) Students Go West Every Week to Attend Classes in "Hollywood"; (5) Parental Communication on the Rise, Fewer Students Use Drugs; and (6) State Board Appoints New Deputy Superintendent. Regular features include: (1) Good News in Alabama Schools; (2) Awards, Opportunities, and Professional Development; (3) Calendar; and (4) Teacher of the Month.

Designed for media specialists and educators, this issue includes three articles which provide practical information for those who want to try making films with adolescents and children. The first article discusses cel animation techniques and explores applications of this type of filmmaking to the regular curriculum. The article touches on the filmmaking settings; potential problems; handy supplies; handling frustration; and avoiding equipment, artwork, and filming process disasters. The second article details the process of tracing paper/line animation--a technique found to be successful in workshops with rural Vermont children. Emphasis is on children's imagination and perseverance rather than drawing skills. The final section reports on liveaction filmmaking workshops with children and teenagers in an urban youth center, a hospital spinal injury unit, and at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (New York). In this article, filmmaking is seen as an alternative to traditional art activities and as a way in which youngsters can acquire necessary technical skills. The issue concludes with a filmography listing of over 50 animation films. (LH)

The paper centres on short promotional film, perceived as a separate film genre treated marginally within the framework of film studies. The focus is placed on animated promotional film. In the introduction, the author centres on some of the key particularities of short film, stressing the different treatment of characters and action in short and feature-length film. A much greater importance of visualisation and condensed narration in short forms, particularly noticeable in character profiling and presentation, seems to be crucial. The author then goes on to provide a compressed history of animated commercials and short comparative analysis that defines commercials as pertaining to a form different from promotional videos due to their focus on a product to be commercialized. The focus on a product in commercials is the reason for the use of some specific narrative strategies and forms, discussed further in the paper. The author ends with a discussion about a couple of illustrative examples of animated commercial videos pertaining to the British and Swedish cinema traditions as well as the Zagreb School of Animated Film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geological modeling strategies are like snowflakes - no two are identical. Although this provides a level of job security, it also means that care must be taken to use the proper strategy based on the geological framework. To illustrate this point, this paper provides three different strategies and associated case-studies for modeling and visualizing groundwater contamination. The first example involves a case-study in which historical well data was used to create annual models of a plume migrating through glacial out-wash over a 34-year period. The second example involves contamination migrating through an epikarst environment into fractured carbonates sampled quarterly over a one-year period. The third example involves a single "snapshot" of a contaminant within a flood deposit. From the onset of each project, it was recognized that automation was the key to completion and to processing future data in a timely fashion (i.e., not reinventing the wheel when new data becomes available). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuity of a personified object as a non-human actor in three technological and aesthetic traditions This discussion by a pronounced animation researcher is centred on sketching a theoretic model for the animated doll with a special emphasis on the genre in contemporary times, when technology has left behind a large number of devices and customs from earlier periods of doll animation in moving images. The questions that the digital revolution imposes (If theatre is the source of the doll-film, can the same relation be established between film and digital/3D CGI animation? Can we talk about a continuity between digital and traditional film animation? Can digitally created anthropomorphic characters be considered dolls? Where is their stage?) can be answered with the claim that the digital doll-film is an entirely new form. However, the author argues that there is a continuing development of the animated doll as an object as such and so the digital doll stems from theatre and film animation, which is further discussed in the subtopics of the paper. Ajanović’s paper defines the term ‘doll’, explains its relationship with the human world, as well as its modes of expression and the relationship between animation and film, and gives a positive answer to the question about the existence of the digital doll-film, placing special emphasis on the humanization of the digital animation (in this case doll animation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a short introduction that provides an explanation of the analytical approach to the subject-matter, the paper focuses on the practical aspect of the theory of literature and film, the narratological analysis. Three fairy-tales in literary and cinematic art form are analysed: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Sister Alenushka and Brother Ivanushka. The author describes the time in terms of order, duration and frequency in art works and makes a comparison between the revealed temporal characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the film animation of Yellow Submarine movie produced by Al Brolax, head of the Television and Motion Picture Division of King Features Syndicate in the U.S. The author presents the plot of the movie reaching 87-minute mélange of art work and gags. Moreover, Brolax worked with Czech-born commercial artist named Heinz Edelmann and animator John Hubley.

Video games are one of the (popular) forms of media that have been developed through digital technologies and they are unique in terms of its processes of combining interactivity and the concept of games. However, they take on many aesthetic characteristics of traditional media, such as fine arts, literary and cinematic narrative structures, sound, music, etc. The process of integrating video games in the academic, artistic or cultural discourse keeps picking up the pace. The author analyses the aesthetic qualities of video games, the concept of playability and interactivity. He presents key theoretical and aesthetic concepts related to video games, singling out mechanics which bears the aesthetic potential of interactivity. Convergence has been presented, through digitalization, as an important process of integrating aesthetic characteristic into the new media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animated film represents one of the most prominent aspects of animation and a complex combination of media formats. However, its interdisciplinary tendencies introduce certain problems when it comes to its theoretical classification. This paper examines relevant theories and animated film characteristics in terms of aesthetics, media and technology, in order to depict the complex nature of animation and animated film as media that combine the cinematic and fine arts artistic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the condition of Walt Disney Productions after the death of its founder Walt Disney in 1966 in the U.S. It highlights the increase of the company's revenue from 116.6 million dollars to 329 million dollars and corporate profit from 12.4 million dollars to 40 million dollars after seven and a half years. It underlines the death of Roy O. Disney, brother of Walt and a founder of the company, in 1971. It states that Walt Disney remains a family-owned business enterprise wherein Ronald W. Miller, son-in-law of Walt, is the executive producer and Roy's son. Roy E. Disney is the head of television (TV) projects. The executives continue to bring up the philosophy of Walt in discussing plans or projects.

The forthcoming Disney film has previously faced racist backlash for casting Halle Bailey, a Black actress, as Ariel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at the development of the identity of Indian animation in relation to the growth and identity of the Indian nation. It covers the period marked by socialist context in which two government-funded organizations, the Cartoon Film Unit (CFU) at the Films Division of India (FDI) and the National Institute of Design (NID) produced a total of 266 animated films. In the first decades it is an era characterized by broad international influences in animation and design, works of producer Jehangir Bhownagary and the rise of Indian animators such as Ishu Patel, R. L. Mistry, Ram Mohan, Binita Desai and Pramod Pati, as well as by making of the first independent Indian animated film The Banyan Deer (1957). Then the paper examines more closely two films that illustrate how the filmmakers in the following decades tried to integrate indigenous narrative traditions, sound and visuals to create films to deliver essential messages that were relevant to the growth of the Indian socialist nation: Vijaya Mulay's and Bhimsain Khurana’s Ek Anek Aur Ekta (One, Many and Unity, 1974) and R. L. Mistry's National Highway (1984). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animation and small multiples are methods for visualising dynamically evolving graphs. Animations present an interactive movie of the data where positions of nodes are smoothly interpolated as the graph evolves. Nodes fade in/out as they are added/removed from the data set. Small multiples presents the data like a comic book with the graph at various states in separate windows. The user scans these windows to see how the data evolves. In a recent experiment, drawing stability (known more widely as the “mental map” ) was shown to help users follow specific nodes or long paths in dynamically evolving data. However, no significant difference between animation and small multiples presentations was found. In this paper, we look at data where the nodes in the graph have low drawing stability and analyse it with new error metrics: measuring how close the given answer is from the correct answer on a continuous scale. We find evidence that when the stability of the drawing is low and important nodes in the task cannot be highlighted throughout the time series, animation can improve task performance when compared to the use of small multiples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the animation for the litigation of an air crash. Topics discussed include the number of parameters captured by the digital flight data recorder (DFDR), the sounds in the cockpit recorded by the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), and the use of the animation in the decision making by the jury or judge hearing the case.

High Energy Physics processes, such as hard scattering, parton shower, and hadronization, occur at colliders around the world, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. The various steps are also components within corresponding Monte-Carlo simulations. They are usually considered to occur in an instant and displayed in MC simulations as intricate paths hard-coded with the HepMC format. We recently developed a framework to convert HEP event records into online 3D animations, aiming for visual Monte-Carlo studies and science popularization, where the most difficult parts are about designing an event timeline and particles' movement. As a by-product, we propose here an event-time-frame format for animation data exchanging and persistence, which is potentially helpful in other visualization works. The code is maintained at https://github.com/lyazj/hepani , and the web service is available at https://ppnp.pku.edu.cn/hepani/index.html. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hollingsworth family sat down with For(bes) The Culture's #CultureTalks to discuss their mission to bring education, diversity and fun to YouTube viewers through their hit series "Gracie's Corner." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We propose a framework to reconstruct the 3D pose of a human for animation from a sequence of single-view video frames. The framework for pose construction starts with background estimation and the performerʼs silhouette is extracted using image subtraction for each frame. Then the body silhouettes are automatically labeled using a model-based approach. Finally, the 3D pose is constructed from the labeled human silhouette by assuming orthographic projection. The proposed approach does not require camera calibration. It assumes that the input video has a static background, it has no significant perspective effects, and the performer is in an upright position. The proposed approach requires minimal user interaction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It can be envisaged that the use of multimedia computer technology as replacement, or supplement to, human educators in engineering education would become widespread in the future. Such technology can be employed to demonstrate and correlate real life applications and theories, thereby promoting deep learning, and may be extremely useful where trained human resources in the engineering education sector are limited. This paper discusses the current trends of incorporating new technologies with technology assisted problem solving (TAPS) packages in the teaching of engineering subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the development of technology-assisted problem solving (TAPS) packages at University Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). The project is a continuation of the development of interactive multimedia based packages targeted for students having problems in understanding the subject of Engineering Mechanics Dynamics. One facet is the development of Engineering Mechanics Dynamics problems for core undergraduate engineering courses. An interactive multimedia environment for solving relative motion of a rigid body using rotating axes is discussed. The framework used to develop the multimedia package, highlighting the multimedia design process and philosophy, is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TOL's regional roundup: Russian submarines; Mongolian cashmere; Metallica and Romania; a Czech student animation; and East Germans in Bulgaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the film "Allegro Non Troppo," an animated film that features classical music and is directed by Bruno Bozzetto.

The article reviews the animated film "Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure," directed by Richard Williams and screenplay by Patricia Thackray and Max Wilk.

The article reviews the film "Heavy Traffic," directed by Ralph Bakshi.

The article presents a chart which lists the publication's recommended 55 motion pictures that children should see in viewing order by age as of July 2014, including "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!," "The Sound of Music," and "Miracle on 34th Street."

Ezra must rescue an Ithorian baby, but the Seventh Sister and the Fifth Brother have other plans in this new clip from Star Wars Rebels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Kanan and Rex go undercover as Stormtroopers for a rescue mission on Star Wars Rebels. Will they succeed before they kill each other? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a Christmas classic, but it's also filled with everyday life lessons, 3 of which are examined here. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Each week, we crown the Bob's Burgers extra-rare performer of the week. This week, Mall Santa takes the title. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The groundbreaking film is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Each week, we crown the Bob's Burgers extra-rare performer of the week. This time, Thanksgiving Bob takes the title. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ezra Bridger has been many things but, when Hondo Ohnaka returns to Star Wars Rebels, he finds himself learning all sorts of new lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]