The Universal Studios Costume Department has announced the grand opening of its latest innovative service, the Digital Design Workroom. In a 3D virtual environment, Workroom staff can create a designer’s garment using talent measurements, fabric type and color, and overall fit. The Digital Design Workroom technology saves time in design, approval, and manufacturing while reducing fabric waste by creating more accurate patterns.
“The Workroom is very flexible. Designers can bring in photos and sketches or even actual garments to replicate,” said Poppy Cannon-Reese, director of Costume at Universal Studios. “The Digital Design Workroom staff provides hands-on client support from concept to printed pattern to manufacturing.”
Designers can provide the Workroom staff with objects such as fabric samples, buttons, buckles, straps, and zippers to see life-like attributes and behaviors for their desired garment. Print placement for fabrics, stitching, and logos can also be displayed in the system. The software simulates draping, accounting for fabric weight and texture, and allows for multiple iterations on customized avatars. Images and videos of the designs can be shared for approvals via email, enabling a quicker turnaround. Once approved, the design is converted into a pattern that is printed on site. Designers can take the pattern with them, or have Universal Costume finish with sewing and alterations.
Universal Studios Costume Department is a unit of NBCUniversal, a leading media and entertainment company in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks, and a suite of leading Internet-based businesses. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More