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NMA.tv is here! Originally only on YouTube, our search-friendly website is a one-stop platform for all of our daily vids. As previously announced, we are working on making available in English a selection of our daily animated news reports from Taiwan.

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Let’s begin this blog post by quoting our good friends at Gawker: “These days, the way to judge someone’s buzz level has come down to one question: has he/she been animated by Taiwanese company NMA yet?”

Now that the Steven Slater rush has passed, Next Media Animation turned to some the not-so-wacky news this week and took on new territories: Google (not exactly a person), Rod Blagojevich (the first male American ex-governor to be Taiwanimated) and Australia (hello, neighbors - sort of). Let’s recap on several of the animations produced this week at NMA.

Note: Be sure to have “closed caption” turned on so you can read the English subtitles. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Google’s domination of the world and loss of mojo

Blago’s corruption trial ends in hung jury

Australia goes to the polls

Singapore-born pop star JJ Lin stopped by Next Media Animation’s studio in Taipei last week to get a full facial scan using the newest Light Stage X system.

Lin, who speaks Mandarin, English, Hokkien and Cantonese, has fans in all regions of the Chinese-speaking world, including Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Based in Taipei, he was here to prepare videos for his upcoming world tour.

Light Stage X at the NMA studio is one of a kind. Developed by the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at University of Southern California (USC), the system is the newest model designed to capture facial scans and render them for characterization in animations. Previous models, which vary in size and capabilities, have been used to film the movies Spiderman, King Kong, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Avatar and more.

The system includes a computer set connected to a sphere that measures 2.5-meter wide and tall. There are 331 light units connected to the computer, each composed of 12 LED light sources. That’s 3,972 LED lights. 4 sets of scans are recorded during each session. Each set of scan consists of 4 seconds of sitting very still, while 2 cameras take 15 consecutive scans of the face. Characterization models that result from this can look so realistic it’s difficult to tell the difference.

“JJ Lin is the world’s first Chinese-speaker to use Light Stage,” he proudly proclaimed, speaking about himself in the third-person.

Watch the behind-the-scenes clip here:

Read more about JJ Lin in English and Chinese and more about Light Stage from ICT at USC.

In this animation, Lilo crashes Herbie while sipping martini, pretends to be Lady Gaga, gets in steamy shower with lesbian prisoner, gets kissed and spends her 90 days of rehab on the beach. Did daddy Michael Lohan really throw a shoe in Kate Major’s face? NMA has the footage.

Lindsay Lohan out of jail, heads to rehab:

Listen up, folks. NMA World Edition has an announcement: We are here to make available to you, the best of Taiwan’s animated news, in English.

Our good friends at Apple Daily have been reporting animated local and international news on a regular basis. (By regular basis, we mean several times a day.) In addition to the web-based reports, the Chinese-language animated news can also be seen on the morning, noon, evening, late night and entertainment news broadcasts (LIVE!) on Next TV, Next Media family’s new venture. (Watch it 24/7 here.)

Starting today, NMA World Edition will be bringing you the best of Taiwan’s animated news on a daily basis. We will be subtitling the reports in English and uploading them onto our YouTube Channel for you. On rare occasions, we may even dub them into English. (For example, the “Eye on the World” newswrap from this past weekend was dubbed. See below.)

There are five ways to stay connected to NMA World Edition:

Subscribe to us on YouTube.
Follow us on Twitter.
Like us on Facebook.
Visit our Blog often.
Learn about us on our homepage.
Go ahead, try them all.

The daily clips will come from an array of places, including daily newspapers Apple Daily Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as from the different programs on our TV network, Next TV. They may be international news important to you and I; local news that may spark your interest; and entertainment news that are too good to pass.

Here is a look at “Eye on the World” from this weekend:

A new batch of 90,000 documents classified military documents released by the WikiLeaks website have revealed the true cost the war in Afghanistan is having on civilians. The documents detail many new deadly attacks while shedding new light on several other previously reported incidents - drastically increasing the death toll in some cases. Newspaper reports and analysis on the warlogs are available from the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel.

NMA reports three incidences between August ‘07 and September ‘09:

This has put renewed focus on military analyst Bradley Manning, the alleged source. Manning has been held in custody since May after being detained in Iraq just days after he allegedly boasted to hacker Adrian Lamo about the leaks in an Internet chatroom. Lamo later informed the authorities. Manning, who has been charged in connection with the earlier “Collateral Murder” leak, faces 52 years in jail if he is convicted on all charges.

NMA reports:

Update: Washington Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen views that WikiLeaks “must be stopped” (2010.08.03).

After Apple Daily’s NMA News reports on Tiger Woods, Leno/Conan, Al Gore, Justin Bieber and Steve Jobs (which, at time of this post, has reached 1,137,915 hits), the animated news team has made its first female star. Over in the U.S., Jon Stewart’s female staff defended the late night show’s woman problem; here, Sarah Palin’s CGI figure has come to show the Taiwan newsroom how it’s done:

Sarah Palin stars in the newest NMA report.

With sexy cleavage, the lady in red hunts, participates in the family reality show, pole dances, gets in a mud fight with Obama, and eventually wins the race to the White House. Russians and William Shakespeare even make a special cameo.

(For English subtitles, click here where you can turn on closed caption.

What do Steve Jobs, iPhone 4 and Next Media Animation have in common? It’s our newest feature piece, titled, “Reality distortion field remains strong with Steve Jobs after antennagate” (watch it below), where we summarized Apple Inc.’s infamous Antennagate mess. The clip is now viral on the internet. Thank you everyone for your support.

We’re attaching it here, in case you haven’t seen it yet:

(If you insist on having subtitles, here it is in English. Let us know if there are other languages floating out there.)

We’re not saying there’s a correlation between the U.S. trade deficit and how Palin earns or spends money for her mama-grizzlies at the SarahPAC, but it is quite interesting when looking at them side by side. So here they are:

US trade deficits rise despite export growth
Despite solid export growth the US trade deficit increased from April to May 2010. This is because US imports are rising even faster. The 4.8 percent increase in the US trade deficit caught many observers by surprise. While some say higher exports signal a return of consumer confidence, others worry that the rise in trade deficits could threaten future growth.

SarahPAC reports record quarter
Former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin’s political action committee raised $865,000 in the 2nd quarter of 2010. The fundraising success of SarahPAC has fueled more speculation of a possible presidential bid by Palin in 2012.

According to London’s Sunday Times and Reuters, BP is rumored to strike a US$10-billion deal with Houston-based Apache Corporation for its assets and oil field stakes in Alaska. The BP share rose 9% on Monday following the rumor and success news of the new cap over the blow-out preventer, closing at $36.76 on the New York Stock Exchange. That’s a 36% increase since its historical 14-month low on June 25.

Apache Rumored to Offer $10-billion for BP Assets

New cap over blow-out preventer

The Internet may have made Justin Bieber, the 16-year-old hearthrob from Ontario, but there are millions of people out there who want to knock him down just as quickly as his rise to fame. See Justin survive a car crash, visit an STD clinic, dance with Kim Jong Il and get beaten up by the Jonas Brothers.

Hey, it’s animated, so it must be true, right? Here it is in his newest music video:

While Germans want to fry him, Spanish PM Jose Zapatero has offered him state protection. The eight-legged underwater creature has made another prediction. For Sunday evening’s FIFA World Cup final between Spain and Netherlands, he’s picked Spain. Watch it in action here.

We at NMA would like Paul to live, but we would like to have takoyaki for dinner tonight. For those unfamiliar with the Japanese delicacy, it’s fried octopus balls. Delicious.

About the video: Paul the psychic octopus has once again predicted the correct result in the World Cup, much to the disappointment of German fans. Paul, resident at the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, correctly predicted Spain would defeat Germany in Wednesday’s semifinal match, taking his streak to six games. A ten pound accumulator that followed Paul’s prediction’s would have netted around 2,000 pounds.