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I remember being blown away when I first read the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Well, the turtles are back in a big way this summer with a new re-boot flick coming out in August 2014. To hold you over until the movie comes out, check out the new TMNT x Kidrobot line!
We find more cosplayers at FanimeCon 2014. Ramen & a Half host Jonelle spots a cool One Piece cosplayer. All the way from Reno, Charmie Sweets is cosplaying Nico Robin from the anime/manga One Piece.
While in the midst of pre-production of The Hateful Eight film, a possible influential spin-off from The Magnificent Seven, Quentin Tarantino is also working to release a Comic book about Django and Zorro! Tarantino is co-writing the comic with Matt Wagner and edited by Reginald Hudlin.
Find out more at : comicvine/Djangomeetszorro
Why do you need to go to Universal Orlando? Do I have to ask why? If you are a true Harry Potter fan then a point of destination is the land of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando. The buildings, all the details, it just looks and feels you’re in that world. Amazing. Check out this video walkthrough of Diagon Alley by Inside the Magic!
Here’s more videos from FanimeCon 2014! Interview with Hayashi from Akai Sky an indie-American Jrock band.
Built for the Sony’s iconic driving-game franchise Gran Turismo, this a sneak tease of the Nissan Concept 2020 VISION. Is this next generation Nissan GT-R?
Summer is beach parties, barbecuing meats of all kinds and ice-cold beer. Keeping the beer cold is the key, and this portable beer cooler is the answer – The JamCooler.
FanimeCon 2014 had their own mini-Street Fighter Tournament over at Stage Zero. Ramen & a Half host Eddie Ballar grab Julio Fuentes aka MMG Julio for a quick interview on plans and prepartion for EVO Championship Series in Las Vegas, July 2014.
Our Ramen & a Half host Eddie Ballar does a mini jam session with the talented Anton Bex. We sit down and talk about his latest project, the fan film Dragon Ball Z: Light of Hope. Anton plays “Future Gohan” in this YouTube web series.
Just what does it take to become a Comic Artist? Tomas Overbai explains everything to Ramen and Half‘s host, Eddie Ballar, what got him into comic art and eventually comic story telling with his upcoming Book One of ICHIDO – a post apocalyptic science fiction fantasy comic where a threatened Empire goes to war utilizing the traditions of kung-fu fighting and futuristic advanced robot warfare. The comic is like the battles of a Shogun Empire meets Robotech! 
LINK: http://www.fallensunasylum.org/ facebook/TomasOverbai twitter/TomasOverbai
At FanimeCon’s Artist Alley we find artist Ben Costa with 2 published comics already. His Xeric Award Winning Web Comic follows Pang, a Shaolin Monk in 17th Century China.
If you ever wondered how Pokemon animals would look like in real life? Well, artist RJ Palmer draws many of the Pokemon animals in a real-world realistic way. A mix of art, imagination and paleontology by artist RJ Palmer.
Our host Ramon Angel interviews RJ Palmer at FanimeCon 2014.
You can follow RJ’s work at: arvalis.deviantart.com
Ramen & a Half host Jonelle interviews her favorite cosplayer idol Yaya Han at FanimeCon 2014. Yaya kind of admitted that this might be her last appearance at FanimeCon. She also talks to Jonelle about Heroes of Cosplay tv show and cosplaying in general.
I look at my cousins now who grew up in the 2000s, I know that technology has spoiled them from the sleek smartphones, the sexy iPads, the 4G speed, and the big-screen LCDs. I grew up without the internet and like many kids went out to the playground or played baseball with my brother. But the most enjoyable memories was waiting to get our hands on the Sunday newspaper with my siblings. Of course, we would dig through all the cool Toys R Us ads, the Sports Section, but also the Sunday comics section. One section was just dedicated to cartoon strips like Peanuts, Garfield, Doonesbury, Hagar, Beetle Bailey, and others. Out of all the comic strips we liked was Calvin & Hobbes. I used to cut out the strip from the newspaper and collect it into a photo album, until they published trade paperbacks of Calvin & Hobbes. Every time my family was at the mall, I would directly head to the bookstore like Barnes & Noble and make my mom buy me a Calvin & Hobbes trade paperback.
In revamping the successful Tomb Raider franchise – we got a re-boot! Just when we thought Lara Croft would move forward from her ninth adventure to another artifact finding mystery, we get to find out about her – the origins of Lara Croft. We’ve all read her back story, but where was the episodic adventures that led to the skilled, acrobatic, and duel pistol-drawing heroine – Tomb Raider?
Meet the Power Girl from Vegas – Vegas PG! We swung by her booth and asked if she could give our Ramen and a Half crew a shout out – Mary Jane Watson style! She happily replied, “Well of course I can”.
If Vegas PG is not enjoying the comic convention strip, you can find her being as spokesperson for events and entertaining the world commercially or artfully as an actress.
I picked up this game a few days ago and I was a bit excited to see how this game was going to be. Played the game for a whole day and came to the conclusion that this game is exactly like another popular game – Infamous. Now I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing. I love the three Infamous games and they’re a ton of fun to play, I just didn’t expect Watch Dogs to play like them.
The two main differences between the games are 1) you traded in your superpower abilities for some awesome hacking abilities and 2) that you can drive a car in this game which is, oh boy, let’s just say the driving feels awkward. For instance, the first time I hit the gas I crashed into a wall. I thought I’d get better as time went on, but even as I got near the end of the game, I still can’t drive from point A to point B without crashing into a minimum of five things. You will be driving to a lot of places since there are a total of 39 missions in the game split into five Acts. Frankly, this is probably one of the longest games I have played so far this year, which is a good thing since most games you play nowadays can be beaten in a little over ten hours.
The video game media went bonkers when Ubisoft unveiled Watch Dogs at E3 2012. The much anticipated and delayed game is now finally out and does it live up to the hype? I don’t know yet, but will get on my hands on a copy for my Xbox 360 soon. Just a quick note, you can also look for our review of Watch Dogs by our Retrenders video game guru Ramon Angel soon. But for now, I’m reviewing the release of The Art of Watch Dogs published by Titan Books.
In Watch Dogs, the GTA-type game, you play hacker anti-hero Aiden Pearce. Now on the path of revenge he uses Chicago’s Central Operating System (ctOS) to hack into security cameras, lock doors, control traffic lights, locate targets of interest and grab information on his enemies. The city of Chicago is now your playground.
I usually do a Viral Video Friday, but this is our Viral Video Friday – a video tour of FanimeCon 2014! Our Ramen & a Half crew takes you around what is the biggest anime convention in NorCal every year – FanimeCon. We take to the Dearlers Hall, Artist Alley, Game Room and more! We also interview Vice-Chair of FanimeCon 2014 Gary de Guzman and the man in charge of Stage Zero – Wendell Nacnac.
Here’s the first trailer for the much anticipated anime Sailor Moon Crystal. Look for July 2014 release in Japan. The trailer maybe only in Japanese, but I’m already very excited.
Dragons, like vampires, werewolves and zombies are all the rage in movies, TV shows, books, comics and video games these days. Besides the dragons in HBO’s Games of Thrones, Dreamworks animated How to Train Your Dragon (2010) is also very popular. I was pleasantly surprised how good the first one was and now I’m just excited for the sequel – How to Train Your Dragon 2 being released on June 13, 2014. Titan Comics will be releasing graphic novels of all-new adventures based on the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.
While everybody is awaiting for the release of the LEGO Ghostbuster toy this month, here’s a custom LEGO build of Stay Puft marshmallow rampaging through New York streets. This city-street probably took months of planning and thousands of LEGO bricks.
Our Ramen & a Half crew of Eddie Ballar, Ramon Angel and Jonelle recap the NorCal anime extravaganza that is FanimeCon! No long lines this year, now that’s a big plus! The team reviews their adventure and we throw in some cosplay highlights as well.
I know I was just the camera operator at the scene, but after Ramen and a Half’s host Eddie Ballar interviewed Mike Mignola, I started to pick up on some very correlating personality traits between Hellboy and it’s Creator, Mike Mignola. Here, we find out what’s in store for Hellboy after it’s 20th year anniversary and if there will be another upcoming film on the comic superhero?
Los LINKS: Art of Mike Mignola facebook/MikeMignola twitter/MikeMignola
Since the release of the 2 Guardians of the Galaxy movie trailers, I’ve been actually quite excited for the upcoming movie. You could say I’m a big Marvel fangirl, every month I have a stack of Marvel trades and comics sitting on my desk, but I wasn’t a fan of Guardians, until maybe now. And with LEGO putting out their Marvel Super Heroes product line, now they are releasing LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy toys.
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