How to Get the Na'vi Look with AVATAR Movie Jewelry

AVATAR jewelry is made from natural materials, a palette of the colors seen on Pandora. The jewelry ranges from very simple to highly crafted ritual pieces. There are many different types of AVATAR movie jewelry, but here we will learn how to make Neytiri’s bracelets.

Guest post by Rebecca Scudder

No AVATAR Cosplay or Halloween costume would be complete without some genuine AVATAR movie jewelry, and many manufactured costumes that you may buy will be missing this very important detail. So, to help you get that authentic appearance you’re looking for, this article will teach you how to make a couple different kinds of bracelets Neytiri wears.

To start, your AVATAR movie jewelry should look like it might have been worn by a Na'vi, using natural looking materials. The Na'vi use wooden beads and carvings, clay or glass beads, seed pods and feathers. The jewelry is strung on rustic looking cord or leather lace. The bracelets we are making here, however, are strung on bead elastic, because the elastic won’t show. Bead elastic is slightly stiff, and so it is easy to thread through fairly small beads.

To recreate the bracelets Neytiri wore on her left wrist, start by gathering the below listed materials:

a. Bead elastic. This is clear. Buy the slightly thicker elastic if there is a choice;

b. Size E or larger seed beads. Beads up to a 1/8th inch are great. (2mm to 4mm) Use earth tone

colors, and try to get two or more sizes.

c. Scissors and a paper clip;

d. Super glue, jewelry adhesive or strong craft adhesive - not white glue.

Start with your earth tone beads. Beads that slightly differ in size are good. This creates the natural look you are going for. Pour at least three different earth tones into a small bowl or saucer and mix them together.

Cut a 10 inch (25 cm) length of bead elastic. Tie one end to the paperclip, so your beads do not slide off the end as fast as you put them on. Start sliding beads onto the elastic. Use a totally random mix of colors and sizes, but no larger than 1/8 inch. String 7 1/2 inches to 8 inches of beads for a woman's bracelet, or 8 1/2 to 9 inches of beads for bracelets for a man's wrist.

As you string the beads, indentify one with a wider than usual hole. Place this on your bracelet as the last bead. Untie the elastic from the paper clip, making sure you do not lose any beads. Tie the elastic together, snugging the knot close to the beads so the cord will not show between the beads. Use a square knot, and pull the knot tight. Put a drop of your adhesive on the knot. When the adhesive is set according to the directions, clip the ends of the elastic as close to the knot as you can. Wiggle the bead with the larger hole over the knot.

Now you have a circle of beads without cord showing. It will stretch as needed to go over your hand, and then return to the circle of beads on your wrist. Create at least twelve of these since Neytiri wears about a dozen of these on her left forearm. Do not try to repeat patterns or colors- each is hand strung and unique. They will blend with each other because they contain similar beads and colors

How to Make Some Larger Bracelets

Neytiri wears four larger beaded bracelets on her upper left arm. These seem to have a repeating pattern. There is a rusty red, pale green, turquoise blue and a medium green bracelet, from the highest to lowest. They are pushed together on her upper arm above her biceps. You can use the same colors or other natural colors that fit the AVATAR palette.

The beading pattern seems to be the same for each of them - a slightly larger bead of a lighter or darker color, then two inches of beads that are smaller and roughly the same color and size, another single larger bead, two inches of smaller beads and so on.

Needed:

a. 1 mm bead elastic;

b. About 12 to 17 inches each of 1/8 inch or 3/16 inch beads in rusty red, pale green, turquoise

and medium green;

c. 6 to 9 beads each of a slightly larger size, in pink, a medium green, darker blue and a pale green

color;

d. Scissors and a paper clip;

e. Craft adhesive;

f. Measuring tape.

Measure your upper arm, just above the bicep. This could go from 11” to 20” or larger. Remember these bracelets need to be snug to stay in position. Divide by two. This is how many larger beads you will need. Line those beads up and subtract their length from your measurement. Take the remainder in inches or centimeters and divide this by the large beads. This should be approximately two inches (25 cm) or a little less. String this length of small beads between each large bead.

Tie elastic three inches larger than your measurement to the paperclip, and string a larger bead. String smaller beads and add another large bead. Repeat until you have used the total of small beads. Tie the ends loosely. Try the bracelet on your upper arm for fit. Add or subtract small beads if necessary. Once you are sure of the fit, knot tightly. After the knot is made, glued and the ends snipped off, you will slide it beneath the larger bead at the start of the bracelet. For a more authentic look, be sure not to line up the patterns of each bracelet as you place them on your bicep.

Finally, you can enjoy your handmade jewelry – a great piece for your AVATAR costume or as part of your everyday jewelry collection!

Love AVATAR? Build the Ultimate AVATAR 3D Home Theater For You & Your Friends

With a 3D enabled television system, a Blu-ray player, HD cable box, or HD satellite box, some 3D entertainment content and 3D glasses, you can enjoy the realistic experience of 3D home theater. Both Comcast and DirecTV are upgrading their systems to have more 3D content (Imagine: AVATAR home theater!), and other providers will follow closely on their heels. Those in the entertainment and electronics industries believe that 3D content is here to stay, and having access to it at home will appeal to millions of people worldwide.

Guest post By John Sinitsky

You didn't think the consumer electronics industry was going to sit-out the current craze for 3D, did you? The success of recent 3D offerings, particularly the movie AVATAR, has made manufacturers of electronics push to get 3D home theater technology available. There have been a few TV programs broadcast in 3D, and there are a handful of 3D movies available on Blu-ray, but the results until now were far from satisfactory. Now, 3D home theater is considered by many to be the next big thing in home entertainment.

What will you need so that you can jump on the newest technology bandwagon? You need four things to have your own 3D home theater.
First, you need a 3D enabled television or video projector. It may be an LCD, plasma, or DLP television. DLP stands for digital light processing and is a type of projection television. Any 3D enabled television or projector will work with 3D standards approved for Blu-ray, cable, satellite, and broadcast transmission.

Second, you need a 3D enabled Blu-ray player, HD cable, or HD satellite box. While manufacturers of new Blu-ray players will tout their products as being specially designed to handle 3D content, some current Blu-ray players can be made 3D ready by use of downloadable firmware upgrades. The Sony Playstation 3 is the only Blu-ray player that's specifically scheduled for an upgrade to 3D. With HD satellite boxes and HD cable, you might have to get a new box, or you may be able to upgrade the one you have. Your service provider will be able to tell you.

The third thing you need to complete your 3D home theater is 3D content, whether it's in the form of Blu-ray discs, or programs on cable or satellite. More content should become available at the same time as new 3D televisions and Blu-ray players come out, or when firmware upgrades are available. Comcast is planning to upgrade to comply with new 3D programming standards, and DirecTV plans a full-time 3D channel on its lineup.

Finally, the fourth thing you need for your 3D home theater is 3D glasses. The 3D glasses for home use are not like the 3D paper glasses most of us know about. There are two basic types of 3D glasses available. Passive Polarized glasses look a bit like sunglasses and are big enough to cover existing eyeglasses. They are generally available for under $20, and prices depend on whether they're plastic, metal, flexible, or rigid. The other type of 3D glasses are active shutter glasses. They're a bit bulky because they have batteries and a transmitter. The transmitter synchronizes rapidly moving shutters for each eye with the on-screen display. They're more expensive: $75 to $200. The type of glasses you need will depend on the model and brand of TV or projector you have. Today's LCD, plasma, and DLP televisions mostly require the active shutter glasses.

Is the Environmental Message in AVATAR Good or Bad?

If you bought the Avatar DVD this Earth day, you're probably aware of the environmental messages that AVATAR is trying to pass along. Here's a look at where the good ideas lie and where the movie stumbles in its portrayal of modern environmental concerns.

Guest post by Ty Wingfoot

Earth Day was originally established to raise environmental awareness, albeit in a much more radical way than the mainstream hippie-love-fest that Earth Day has become in 2010. Of course, this Earth Day is a little different than the ones before it because it coincides with the release of the AVATAR DVD, which should do for DVD market what it did for the theater market while still in wide release. But all this talk of environmental awareness raises an interesting question – does AVATAR’s message really represent the realities of the world we face today? Is the environmental message in AVATAR good or bad? So let’s play Devil’s Advocate.

A Good Message

AVATAR’s message is fundamentally a good one when it comes to the environment. The movie does feel like it goes out of its way to promote a pro-Pandora future for the Na’vi who are being destroyed on the planet because of the vast amounts of unobtainium they’re sitting on top of.

The message (especially for kids) is one that promotes respecting the Earth the way the Native Americans established long ago, even before the first American settlers came over. The Na’vi are in tune with nature, they constantly communicate with it and worship at its altar. Provocative scenes where there are “horses” on fire and dying just serve to promote more this pro-environmental message. This would all be fine in an indie movie or a critical darling that made no money, but to see a movie of AVATAR’s great standing tackle an issue that most Americans aren’t too concerned about in the present was a risky move that ended up paying off for James Cameron.

A Problem and a Syndrome

The only snag we hit with AVATAR’s message comes in the form of the heavy-handed way with which it tries to solve all its numerous plot problems by using the pro-environmental position. AVATAR suffers from something I’m now terming “Pocahontas Syndrome”.

What I mean by this is that the movie is rather lovely and nice about nature until you realize that while the nature presented in the movie is magnificent, without the mineral required by the movie, a lot of people on Pandora and Earth would be lacking serious technology and money – these are two things humanity absolutely cannot live without.

Ultimately, progress comes at a cost for all of us. Be it a monetary cost, an environmental cost, or even an emotional cost, we must keep moving forward in order to constantly be ahead of our enemies (yet another plot hole in AVATAR). Time and time again, we see deforestation happen here on Earth in order to satisfy the needs of an ever-growing world.

Sure, the people mining Pandora could have realized a number of things before planting down there and deciding to create a real problem, but with the sort of unobtainium found on the planet’s surface, it could make sense either way.

Overall I’d like to believe AVATAR’s message is one of peace and harmony with nature, the evidence to the contrary is quite small and you can rest assured that if you bring kids to see the movie they’re probably going to be more concerned with the big blue people and the copious number of explosions than the overarching environmental message.

What's Your Na'vi Name? Best AVATAR Name Generators

Most languages evolve organically over thousands of years but Na'vi is the creation of linguist Paul Frommer, a professor of clinical management communication at U.S.C., who created the Na’vi language from scratch for James Cameron. So how do you figure out your Na'vi name? Rum & Monkey has created a Na'vi Name Generator. All the names generated are based on the real Na'vi language. Put in your name (or any handle or word you want), choose your gender, and you'll have your Na'vi name. If you know what your name means in non Na'vi (Jake = God is Gracious; Trudy = Spear, Strong; find out what your name means here) then you can also find you Na'vi name by looking up the closest meaning in the Na'vi language at Learn Na'vi. Finally, if you're a Facebook user and want to share your Na'vi name with your Facebook friends and the world, you

Behind the Scenes Look at the Motion Capture Technology Used in AVATAR

AVATAR director James Cameron’s own research and needs for creating a realistic alien world in the blockbuster movie lead to him developing a performance capture camera. In AVATAR, motion capture is achieved with several cameras positioned around a huge sound stage as well as special equipment on the actors themselves. Here's a look at the motion capture and computer generated imagery (CGI) technology Cameron pioneered and how it works.

Guest post by Christian Cawley

How was James Cameron able to create the amazing effects in AVATAR? AVATAR saw the adoption of new cinematic techniques – and in some cases the development of new technology – in order for director James Cameron to apply his unique vision of the world of Pandora to the cinema screen.

The world of Pandora was the result of years of development and artistic conceptualizing. The key to the success of AVATAR are the Na’vi, their design and how the actors playing them were able to portray the most realistic intelligent alien society seen on screen to date, not by applying makeup or prosthetics, but by simply acting out their moves in front of special motion capture equipment.

Capturing Movement and Performance

In order for James Cameron to realize his vision for AVATAR, motion capture technology transformed Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and others into members of the blue-skinned, Amazonian Na’vi race, the indigenous people of Pandora.

Whether the actor concerned was playing a Na’vi or a human avatar designed to look like a member of this tribal society, filming of scenes featuring the blue-skinned creatures had to take place in very different surroundings to those usually encountered by actors and actresses.

Traditional movies use a sound stage for shooting scenes; for AVATAR, James Cameron introduced a motion-capture stage, an area made up of several motion capture cameras designed to record and transform into digital information both the movements of the actors and their facial expressions.

Performance Capture – AVATAR's Crowning Glory

Motion capture is only half of the story. Bringing together an enhanced form of the motion capture technology used to create Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy with James Cameron’s virtual camera system allowed the motion of the actors to be instantly recorded, converted into digital information and relayed to the director as an augmented reality on a monitor. With this, Cameron was able to alter angles and look around the whole virtual landscape while in front of him the actors went about their business in front of an array of positioned cameras.

Performance capture, AVATAR’s real star, allowed the actors to display emotion and speak, move their heads, blink and so on while apparently looking like a member of the Na’vi but without applying a single drop of makeup.

Director James Cameron pioneered a brand new type of camera specifically designed for this purpose. Worn by the actors like a skull cap, the device is equipped with a small boom that hangs over the forehead and places a camera around 6 inches from the actor's face.

This improved method of capturing facial expressions was then recorded digitally and used later on by animators to deliver the most revolutionary computer generated imagery (CGI) performances seen on film.

Free Blu-Ray Player and AVATAR DVD - Enter to Win!

We're giving away still more Blu-Ray players and Avatar DVDs! To enter, all you have to do is join the AVATAR Typepad Community, answer the weekly question below, and you'll be entered to win a free Blu-Ray player or AVATAR DVD!

Each week we pick a new winner. Winners are chosen based on composition and originality of their answers to the question. And there will be a new question each week, ending June 6 so check back often for your chance to win. Prizes include a a Panasonic DMP-BD45 Ultra-Fast Booting Blu-Ray Disc Player and an AVATAR Two-Disc Blu-Ray/DVD Combo. You must be a member of the community and leave a comment on this blog post to participate.

Official Rules & Regulations of the “AVATAR Blu-ray” Promotion

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Weekly Question - Answer to Win!

Pandora, the Na'vi, the science, the language... What do you think is most impressive about the world that James Cameron has created in AVATAR?