Finding Online Easter Coloring Projects

Easter is often a time of burgeoning color, as spring begins to manifest and even the sky grows brighter. This is why Easter coloring pictures just seem to fit so naturally into activities for kids at this time of year.

There are a great many crafts that children can do as they prepare for the celebration, including making baskets or displays or even helping with the baking of seasonal treats. But adding bright colors to Easter pictures and other decorations remains a very popular option. It can be as easy or as complex as the child's age and imagination dictate.

For other Easter graphics, though, there are a great many sites that offer a multitude of different pages to download. For example, the www.coloring.ws website has what seems to be hundreds of pages for coloring, conveniently separated into categories such as Bunnies, Chicks and Ducklings, Eggs, Kids, Lambs, and Religious Pictures.

On some websites, parents can pay for coloring kits that will be mailed rather than downloaded. Of course, for parents who want their children's Easter coloring to be mainly confined to spiritual themes, there are explicitly religious sites that provide plenty of pictorial downloads for this purpose.

There are a great many available options online for Easter coloring projects, and they can be used in the classroom as well as at home.

For example, the www.eslflashcards.com website, which supplies graphics for English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction, provides Easter clipart as flash cards, both for coloring and for learning the vocabulary of the season.

Kids who want to color some bright pictures for Easter and the coming of spring will never run out of material.

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Keeping Children Entertained With Easter Crafts

For most people, Easter is a happy, hopeful time, and Easter crafts for kids tend to reflect that bright, fresh feeling.

It's true that for many Christians, the season also carries a more solemn message of sin, death, and redemption, but even in that case the final result is an attitude of rejoicing as churches celebrate the resurrection of Christ.

The Easter message of hope and new life, combined with the fun of other symbols like flowers, the Easter bunny and children's crafts make this celebration very upbeat.

In addition to coloring, kids love Easter crafts where they can make things. As well as creating little baskets, cards or decorations from raw materials, often they enjoy helping to bake special Easter treats.

Whether it's making and decorating sugar cookies with mom, or helping to bake hot cross buns, children can really get into the spirit of things. Christian holidays often provide the chance for seasonal cooking with special meanings.

One must never forget the egg hunt when planning Easter crafts for the kids. The children really enjoy decorating their own eggs, whether the parents provide designs for them or family members create their own designs.

In Christian families, often the eggs are used as an object lesson about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, where the shell represents the tomb and the inside of the egg signifies the new life.

Egg decorating and other crafts can make Easter a very bright, special time for kids.

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Finding Anime Online UK For British Fans

The anime online UK situation varies widely from year to year, almost from month to month, depending on a host of factors. For a long time, even as both manga and anime were becoming extremely popular in North America, UK audiences detected only hints of this.

Manga, the Japanese style of comic book, was rarely seen in the country until sometime in 2006, and very few anime series were broadcast. The only solution, for fans of anime, was to watch anime online. And even that wasn't easy at first, until the technology caught up with the growing demand.

There had been a few paltry anime glimmers early on, such as a few series from the long anime list penetrating into kids' television in the UK. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece and Dragon Ball Z did make an appearance, but all of those series except perhaps Dragon Ball Z were really tailored for a younger audience.

The only way fans who might have been interested in more complex or adult series could find out about them was through a few anime online UK websites that provided news.

Fortunately, the anime online UK answer to British fans' desire for this type of animation has become much easier to access since the demise of the Anime Central channel.

Video streaming and downloading technologies have advanced in leaps and bounds, and many distributors have now placed entire anime libraries online, on their own video portals or on dedicated channels in places like www.youtube.com or www.joost.com.

It has finally become possible for fans in the UK to watch free anime or even to download and own episodes for a fee. Internet streaming and downloading have finally given UK fans' pent-up desire for more anime a solution.

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Better Websites With Anime Reviews

Anime reviews can be found everywhere on the internet, though the quality and depth of these reviews will vary widely. You might find a fairly small site where the author covers only their favorite anime series, and this can be valuable if you have similar tastes.

But you'll probably want to visit one of the more extensive sites that review a wider range of titles and attempt a degree of objectivity. Some add details about the industry, voice actors and even merchandising, but the most interesting sites are the ones that provide expert assessments of the anime series themselves.

T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews (http://www.themanime.org/) is a prime destination for those who want to learn about individual series. Originally, under the patronage of T.H.E.M., the science fiction and fantasy social group at Arizona State University, this site now operates on its own, relying on donations and operated by many volunteers.

The website does reviews of anime series, but as many of these sites do, it also has regular contributors who cover anime conventions and other events associated with the industry.

One difference between sites for personal anime reviews and those that have sponsorships and attempt to be more professional is that the personal sites might vanish or become inactive, as the authors get too busy or become incapable of maintaining their site.

This is one reason why you should keep many review sites bookmarked for gaining anime news. Before you commit to buying anything, you'll want several different opinions anyway, so taking advantage of all these different reviews can only be beneficial.

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Looking For Your Favorite Anime Download

When people think of an anime download, they virtually always think of the sort of websites where anime episodes themselves can be downloaded onto someone's computer, cell phone or other portable viewing device.

It is true that the main purpose of such websites is to allow people to download anime episodes, whether those are free or purchased through an official online portal.

But even though acquiring actual episodes is the main type of downloading, the vast popularity of anime has given birth to several other types of electronic files that can be downloaded as well.

It's now possible to join mailing lists, either for the major distributors or even news sites, and receive notifications of the latest anime news or the release of new titles. As with so many other types of downloads, these can be sent directly to the person's portable device, or to their email account.

They can also go to news sites or online anime stores and download image files that might contain wallpapers for computer desktop backgrounds, or screen savers comprised of images from their favorite series. An anime download can contain many different types of files.

Fiction might be a different sort of anime download, though it would actually be the rarest form. Most fiction written by fans is stored on large sites created for that purpose, like www.fanfiction.net, or placed on personal blogs on sites like www.livejournal.com.

But some stories, with the author's permission, can be downloaded by their own fans. The most common form of download, though, is either a digital file of general anime information or, of course, the anime episodes themselves. This animation genre is so prolific and so interesting, that it keeps its online fans busy in countless different ways.

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Watching Anime Videos and Anime TV Series On Demand

The Japanese infiltration into American animated programming began with the first few anime English-dubbed programs in the 1960s and 1970s. A show like Astro Boy, which began airing in 1963, had such a space-age quality to it, not just from the subject matter but from the animation style itself, that American audiences were fascinated.

As series trickled into North America, one or two at a time, no one knew that eventually anime videos and anime TV series would mushroom into a huge entertainment industry all over the world.

When DVDs began appearing on the scene, many converted their favorite anime collections from VCR to DVD. This new technology made it even more possible for anime videos and anime TV series to diverge into separate spheres, yet they did remain intertwined to a large degree.

The number of anime broadcasts on television skyrocketed in the 1990s and this prompted more purchasing of anime videos, which in turn encouraged more television exposure. The two media formats fed into each other.

It took the growth of the internet, however, to make anime videos and anime TV series almost independent of each other.

In the twenty-first century, video streaming technology now threatens to replace media formats like the DVD almost completely, as anime fans begin to watch their favorite series on computers, their cell phones, and computer components plugged into television screens. Wherever there is a screen, a distributor can stream anime completely independently of any television schedule.

This has added to the woes of many TV networks, yet it has given anime fans control of what they view, and when and where they view it.

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The Different Styles Of Anime Series

What makes Japanese anime series different from those produced in North America? Both can be richly colorful and take great animation skills to produce. Clearly, the actual styles are different, with many people being familiar with the larger eyes and slightly exaggerated features of the characters in anime.

But apart from the often more lush visual quality of this type of animation, when you watch anime episodes you begin to discover a certain depth, both of plot and character, that you don't see nearly as often in North American animations.

This complexity isn't always visible at first glance, for some anime series. For example, in the Sailor Moon series, the main character was often very silly. Yet Sailor Moon, probably the most beloved anime girl in the world, also had moments of nobility and strength.

The plot of this anime frequently veered between rather fluffy episodes and scenarios where this character or her companions might need to make deep personal sacrifices to save the world. This is a strong feature of anime; extreme silliness in one episode followed by heart-wrenching drama in the next.

Fullmetal Alchemist is another of the anime series with lighter moments, yet the thrust of this popular title is sober and dramatic. Two young brothers must undo the results of committing a terrible taboo of alchemy, while becoming involved with saving their country from destruction at the hands of unnatural alchemical forces.

Series like this and others are among the top anime titles precisely because they know how to balance the lighter, more ridiculous moments with more complex and dramatic plot elements. This intensity and complexity sets much anime apart from other styles of animation.

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Production Companies Compromizing Over Anime Downloads

Illegal online downloads might have started with music, but they certainly didn't stop there. It took longer for video technology to develop, but illegal anime downloads eventually began posing the same problem for anime distributors that song downloads did for the music industry, early in the century.

Once a few people had the digital files from any series, it was easy for these to be uploaded to fan sites, and soon people could watch anime free online, and download the files to their own computers, without any consequences.

Just as Bandai and FUNimation took their hard public stance against illegal anime downloads, another Japanese entertainment company, GDH/Gonzo, began to demonstrate the real road to the successful resolution of the problem.

By joining forces with a fan site that had been strongly criticized for streaming anime illegally, Gonzo allowed the streaming to continue, but made higher quality versions of those videos available for a fee. This might not have eliminated illegal downloads entirely, but it mitigated the problem to a great extent.

It is to FUNimation's credit that they either followed Gonzo's lead, or at least developed a similar plan to deal with illegal anime downloads. The company hasn't entirely abandoned its prosecutorial ways, but it did set up its own video portal, positively loaded with free streaming anime.

It streams vast chunks of its anime library for free, while fans can take advantage of a download-to-own option, one episode at a time. This approach has worked very well to make the company's fans happy, while providing publicity and extra revenue as well. Gonzo may have had it right from the beginning: "If you can't beat them, join them."

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Fan Sites With Free Online Anime

One of the advantages of having free online anime at various websites is that people who can't afford to buy DVDs of whole series or download single episodes can still watch their favorite entertainment genre.

Many networks have stopped broadcasting anime, so the publicity this produced for these products has vanished. It serves the distribution companies well to allow people to watch free anime because it whets their appetite for the products the way TV broadcasts once did. People who can't afford to buy anime are happy beneficiaries of the arrangement.

What some may find surprising is that this online anime isn't always located at the websites of the distributors, even though its streaming is distributor-approved.

The Japanese entertainment and anime production company, GDH/Gonzo, does have its own branded YouTube channel where some of its series run, but it has also made arrangements to provide free streaming anime on at least one fan site.

The usual practice is that videos on fan sites are of lesser quality, and fans who want better quality episodes will purchase them legally.

In the same way that it might seem counterintuitive to provide free online anime in order to increase revenues, some North American distributors are following another practice that might sound contradictory.

The sensible course, in the minds of most people, would be to offer streaming only of series that have been around for awhile and might have run the course of the initial buying enthusiasm.

But some distributors are also letting fans watch anime free that has just been broadcast in Japan. By all these different means, publicity and good will are created, and this can only end up benefiting both the fans and the distributors.

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Award Winning And Popular Anime Movies

You will get the same range of anime movies as you do in Hollywood, Bollywood or any other genre or production center. Some will clearly be just plain bad, while others will be obvious attempts to cash in and make money by producing a low-quality knock-off of a better movie.

But then you will watch anime movies that stand alone as probably the most creative and captivating animated films anywhere on the planet. Some of these are inspired by anime series, but others tell their own important stories.

Some anime movies are disappointing because they play upon fan devotion to the original series. The final episode of the popular Fullmetal Alchemist anime left many things hanging. It was clear that the creators simply expected fans to fork over money for the anime DVD of Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conquerer of Shamballa, for the resolution of these issues.

Most fans did so, but there was a lot of grumbling. On the other hand, movies like the ones based on the Naruto anime, while not spectacular, have been enjoyed because they feel more "honest," fitting in well with the ongoing series itself.

When you first think about it, the idea of anime movies doesn't automatically connect in the mind with events like the Cannes Film Festival or the Academy Awards.

But with Miyazaki's Academy Award win, and the applause other films have won at some of the major film festivals, there clearly is a quality and depth to these films that many other animated movies don't have.

Anime characters in the best series have long been recognized as multi-faceted characters, and anime plots can be both comic and tragic. These movies can stand at the top of the field with the best films.

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Sharing Your Pictures Of Baby Animals With Friends And Family

Pictures of baby animals are rather popular. If you bought a puppy for Christmas, you can take a series of images, as the puppy grows into a large dog. This sequence of images can be placed online to show your friends and relatives. You may even send emails to your friends as you continue to place new images online.

There may be animals in your yard with newborn. For example, you may have a pair of rabbits, looking after their newborn baby rabbits. You can take images and watch the rabbits grow into adult rabbits, taking a series of images, following their path to adult rabbits.

We have birds in trees in our backyard and they continue to produce baby chicks. I like to hide behind a screen of leaves and branches with my long lenses, and take images of the birds feeding their hungry chicks.

When you buy a puppy for your children to keep in the yard, you may take images of your puppy playing around with your children. Some of these photos may be shared online with other family members, living far away.

These pictures may be loved as much as images of your newborn. As the baby grows into a child, you may continue to share these images with your relatives.

The same goes for images of your small puppy. As the puppy grows into a dog, you can continue to place updated images on your family website, for the world to see images of your growing pet. The small puppy may grow into an enormous German Shepherd, terrorizing unwanted prowlers from walking around your yard.

Baby animals tend to be very active, so when taking images of baby animals, you need to be ready with your equipment. Take the picture when he hears your voice and looks at you, as these are often the best pictures. Especially when the animal is awake and looking at the camera.

Now you know how to take better pictures of baby animals.

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Starting A Career In Product Photography

Product photography is a popular career choice for many photographers, especially those who like taking photographs for catalogs, fliers and other advertising media. If you have a good grounding in photography, you may know the quality of photos needed to please the client.

To develop an understanding of the work required, you should look at catalogues, fliers, magazines, advertising and almost anything with product photos. To start off, you can attempt to create you own product catalogues by taking images of products to display on an imaginary catalogue. You can refer to the work of other photographers and see if you can meet the same standard of work.

A good way to start a career, is as an assistant to a professional product photographer. There is always a demand for assistants, and most professional photographers, started their career as an assistant.

Once you create your portfolio of product photos, then you should make a few calls to photography studios and see if there is a need for a new assistant for product and commercial photography. Always keep your eyes open for assistant jobs in classifieds in newspapers and online classifieds.

Getting a foothold in the industry is quite tough, but once you begin your work as an assistant and you continue to include more images in your portfolio, you may develop a solid reputation of producing quality work and be in demand for product photography.

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Comic Books With Political News

Some say that "Captain America" and "Superman" were little more than symbols of American patriotism, calling citizens to accept the call of duty for their country and do something larger than life.

Superman fought the Japanese during WWI and Captain America punched Hitler in the face during WWII. However, today's political news resounds through the comic graphic novels world in an entirely different way now.

Some dark comics came out of the Reagan years, but superheroes have been plunged into all-out civil warfare against their own governments.

Political news isn't always so directly reported through comic book art, though. Sometimes, events in modern life are paralleled through events in the comic book heroes universe.

For example, Marvel Comic's "Civil War," released in 2007, introduces an epic battle following the passage of "the Superhuman Registration Act" (much like the Patriot Act in our world), which asks that people trade in some of their liberties for security.

The Registration, more specifically, requires all costumed heroes to be licensed and trained, disclosing their secret identities to the government. While some characters in the DC Universe, like Fantastic Four's Reed Richards and Iron Man support the registration, others like Captain America develop an underground resistance.

Spiderman initially supports the idea so much he unmasks himself on live television, but later recants when he sees the Abu Ghraib-like prisons. Whether these obtuse allegories are an effective way of making a political statement or not remains to be seen.

There are also political news people like K. Thor Jensen and Jenny Gonzalez who focus on war stories. In "House of Twelve Goes To War," the depictions focus on little-known aspects of the War on Terrorism. "Some sad, some action-packed, some unfathomable, but I promise you each and every one is 100% true," the website declares.

"Team 12 was drafted by the government and forced into working towards its war effort. When we returned, we decided the truth must be told in the most effective way possible; auto-bio comics! These are our stories of our experiences during the Great War."

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Comic Collector Buying And Selling Online

So you want to become a comic collector? Perhaps it's the vivid colors, clean lines and creativity of the comic book art that draws you in. Or perhaps it's the compelling story lines, the delving into science fiction fantasy combined with character development that draws you in.

Maybe you're an aspiring artist studying Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. You go to the comic book convention every year, so why not collect too? Most comic collectors are, in fact, die-hard, devoted fans.

Comic book collection values range from a few dollars over face value to six-figures, so the financial side of things depends upon the condition, rarity and issue. If you decide to collect, then you should be in it for pleasure and a sense of community, more than for business.

To become a comic collector, you'll first need to determine what kind of comic book series you want to collect. Naturally, you'll want a collection that most appeals to your interests and personality.

There are science-fiction comics, detective/mystery graphic novels, political comics, realistic comics, horror comics, outer-space comics and more. Chances are you already have some favorites if you're a true lover of a comic book series.

If you interests run really far and wide, then you may want to begin reading Issue 1 of each different comic book series and see which one speaks to you most. If you already have a killer collection from your childhood, then why not look into filling the gaps?

A comic collector will naturally be curious about what old comic books are worth. Popular and respected guides include The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, Comics Buyer's Guide magazine, Wizard Magazine, the Comics Buyer's Guide Standard Catalog of Comic Books, and the Human Computing's ComicBase software program. Online, comic collectors can also check out free resources like www.comicbookrealm.com, www.comicspriceguide.com or www.nostomania.com.

At www.gpanalysis.com buyers can view price data gathered from online auction houses and private dealer sales, which are updated daily. Leveraging against several sources is usually the best way to determine an old comic's true value.

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Download And Read Comic Books On Your Portable Device

There are countless ways to read comic books in 2008. Dating back to the 1930s, kids would take their nickels into the local comic book store to buy and read the latest graphic novels.

They loved the feel of the paper, the way the colors jumped out at them and the portability of taking it anywhere they needed to be. Today, kids have unlimited ways to experience their favorite characters, whether on a DVD, on their iPhone or on their laptop.

The $1.99 "ComicZeal" program allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to download, convert and read comic books on their portable devices! The program is fast, smooth and versatile, allowing easy resizing.

Comic book series can be viewed in "landscape" or "portrait" mode and changing the page is as easy as tapping a button at the bottom of the screen. If the comic reading gets interrupted, "ComicZeal" remembers where the reader last left off. One of the best features is that the program comes with a converter so all comic files can be quickly converted to the resized format.

One more way to read comic books is in "Motion Comics" format, which includes limited movement, music, pans and zooms to bring the story to life. "We want people to see these stories through as many distribution points as possible," explains Marvel Comic Books.

Marvel has teamed up with Stephen King to create "N," as well as the character "Ultimate Spider-Man." DC Comics have released "Watchmen" and "Batman Adventures" as Motion Comics. These issues can be purchased for Microsoft Xbox and Verizon VCast!

The world of comic book art and story telling is always growing, and it seems the new technology compliments this genre quite well.

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Exploring Universal Themes With Comic Books

Call it a friendly rivalry, but DC Comic Books and Marvel Comic Books have been on top of the graphic novels world since the 1930s. Despite newer labels, like Dark Horse Comics and IDW, it's unlikely that any other major publisher can supersede these leading giants.

While both graphic novels series explore universal themes, like the conflict between good and evil, the natural human aversion to anything that rebukes the status quo, and what drives human behavior. Yet there are also many clear distinctions that set the two publishers apart.

There are subtle but noticeable differences between Marvel and DC comic books. DC superheroes are focused on their own lives and purpose, whereas Marvel heroes are being hit with villains and extreme situations at every turn.

DC characters are proud of their abilities and strong in their beliefs, often delving into superhero life because they feel tremendous emotional/psychological drives to do what's right and seek justice. In contrast, Marvel comic characters struggle with the burden of their powers more often than not and long to pursue other ambitions.

In the end, it's hard to really say which comic book series reigns supreme. DC, the old dinosaur, has the oldest legacy of all comic books and can rightfully claim the invention of superheroes as we know them (with Superman debuting in 1938).

Their characters were perfect, supreme, and almost god-like in their abilities and powers. However, Marvel Comic Books brought a whole new spin on superheroes with their modern take; that many superheroes were just ordinary people with day jobs and complex emotions, yet wound up finding their callings as heroes (or villains) following a series of unusual events.

Many comic fans will read both so the rivalry has always been friendly, but a person's favorite character may say a lot about why he or she reads.

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