Results tagged “kids” from Swell 3D

At 3DPregnancy, one of the ParentsConnect family of websites maintained by Nickelodeon, you can view 3D illustrations of gestating babies in utero. There are 42 images, one for each week of pregnancy, showing embryonic and fetal development. (The picture above is the 39th week.)

(A hat-tip and congratulations to Kellie Lambert, in her eighth week.)

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D was released in 2005, and is now available on DVD. Max is a schoolboy whose imaginary superheroes Sharkboy and Lavagirl unexpectedly become real, and he must go with them to help save the world.

 

Sharkboy lost his father in a storm at sea, and was raised by sharks. The story was conceived by a seven-year-old boy, and polished into a movie script by grown-ups. It is full of the charming sort of nonsense that only young children can dream up.

Dan Ridley-Ellis made this sweet video of happy children chasing bubbles at an outdoor fair in Edinburgh, Scotland. The slow motion works particularly well, as the ecstatic children seem to float just as weightlessly as the bubbles. The melancholy music is the old barbershop quartet standard, "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles."

I'm forever blowing bubbles, Pretty bubbles in the air, They fly so high, nearly reach the sky, Then like my dreams they fade and die.

What is it about slow-motion film that makes happy moments seem bittersweet? Is it because it reminds us that these moments are fleeting? Or is it just because Hollywood has trained us to think of slow motion as foreboding and ominous? I'll leave you to ponder that as you watch Dan's delightful video.

My daughter Faith was very excited to find that she could get 3-D glasses for her character at the Able Sisters store in Animal Crossing, a simulation game by Nintendo. I do not believe the glasses are functional, but they look nice.

(The game is available for the Nintendo DS at Amazon.)

This Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D Activity Book is just as good as the movie! Which is to say, insubstantial and barely adequate. I would reluctantly recommend it as (1) a cheap gift for a child you don't know very well, but you know he liked the movie; or (2) a way to get an okay pair of 3D glasses at a local bookstore in an emergency.

I don't want to be too critical. It's not that the pictures are bad. In fact they are very good scenes, and the 3-D effects are well done. It's just that there aren't enough of them. The book only has 20 pages, and too many of those are filled with make-work "activities" such as easy mazes. I didn't buy this volume -- I just read it in the Barnes and Noble -- and I do not recall exactly how many 3D images are actually inside, but a dozen wouldn't be far off. Twelve pictures for six dollars is just not a competitive deal in the Internet Age, when you can look at much better stuff for free.

It does come with 3-D glasses bound inside, so it might come in handy if you need a pair right away, and cannot wait for mail delivery. The glasses will work well with any regular red/cyan anaglyph images, but I have two warnings: (1) these are the "hand-held" kind, with no stems, so you have to hold them to your face; and (2) make sure they are really in the book! The bookstore I visited had three copies, and the glasses had been removed from all three. They hadn't been stolen, just torn out by curious book-shoppers and then put back on the shelf.

This is the very first 3-D artwork by my daughter Abaigeal Gleeson. Abby is seven years old. She drew the scene of a girl with a butterfly in marker on paper. The drawing was scanned in and converted to 3D anaglyph in Photoshop.

My girls, Faith and Abby, are looking in wonder and joy at "Die Fee im Nebel," a 3-D drawing dedicated personally to them by khnemo.

Thanks, khnemo!