Warned one of those creepy cutout letter missives typically associated with death threats and ransom demands. The curious come-on continued: ‘expect bloodexpect uncensored violence, butexpect No Mercy!’ Since it was desktop-published, at first I figured some overwrought programmer had finally snapped and was warning people away from multimedia as a career choice. Nope, it’s gotta be for a cd-rom, I mused, correctly, as subsequent mailings revealed.

The confirmation was (a picture of) a severed limb touting that Expect No Mercy, the interactive martial arts adventure game produced by Microforum (based on the eponymous movie from Alliance), is coming in September to a computer store near you.

In the pursuit of high realism ideals, the fighting bits were done in tandem with the film’s producer/star Jalal Merhi, including lots of realtime never-before-seen-in-a-game moves. Microforum’s vp Claudio Baoicchi believes the virtual environments hatched in Microforum’s ‘virtual reality studios’ will up the mortal combat ante.

Initially it’s being released for the pc world, and eventually doing a Sega version is being looked at. The nine-month project is budgetted in the $500,000 arena.

Reanimating ancient Greeks

On an equally combatative, but more classical note, M.C. Squared Design Lab, a Toronto multimedia animation company, is dabbling with Centaurs and waging Trojan wars to add some magic to an eight-part doc series on Greek mythology produced by John McGreevy Productions of Toronto.

Taking Hi-8, s-vhs and still images, the toga-clad cast (friends of mc creative director Richard Cortes undressed in sheets waving foamcore swords at mosquitos in the Muskokas) is digitized.

Abetted by Adobe Premier, Illustrator, Fractal Painter, Photo Shop and Macromind Director, the animated Greek antics begin.

Commodore Amigas running Lightwave were also used to create some of the sequences that bring the terra cotta gods to life.

The series, featuring the dulcet tones of Sir Peter Ustinov, debuts in pal this fall, and its European airing will be followed by North American broadcast on cbc, pbs and The Learning Channel in the new year.

Dome’s cyberchoppers

For the Matrans Productions $13 million hi-def sci-fi feature Habitat (about a mad scientist who tries to save the world from being ecological toast), Dome Animation and Design helped writer/director Rene Daalder drop a tarp over a house that was accidentally turned into ooze (oops) in a botched attempt to recreate Eden.

Dome digitized an Apache helicopter model and then added two virtual copters in three scenes. Senior animator/tech director Will Anielewicz made the chopper animation and tarp drop fly realistically with motion blur and scene atmosphere.

A lot of high-calibre effects talent are in on this Canada/Netherlands coproduction, including Academy-award winner Tom Brigham.

Matte painter/supervisor John Fraser has been hanging at Dome for the past four months doing all the backdrops for Habitat, using Matador paint software on an Indigo 2.

Visual effects supervisor is Eric Mises Rosenfeld, and John Galt is tech adviser.

Rene Malo is executive producer, producers are Claude Leger and Pieter Kroonenburg.

Toronto steals one back

In an all-too-rare manoeuvre in the escalating talent war arena, Toronto’s C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures has lured an animator away from the clutches of l.a.’s Digital Domain.

Torontonian Caleb Howard (Apollo 13, Interview with a Vampire, True Lies) is returning to his native soil after two years away, joining c.o.r