Critter

Critter or critters may refer to:

Critter

Critter may refer to:

See also

Critters (film series)

The Critters film series, from New Line Cinema (which is owned by Warner Bros. subsidiary of Time Warner), comprises four movies that combine elements of horror, science fiction and comedy. The first film, called simply Critters, was released in 1986 and received "two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert.

Although widely believed to have been made to cash in on the success of the similarly themed Gremlins (which is also owned by Warner Bros.), director Stephen Herek has refuted this in interviews, pointing out that the first Critters script was written by Domonic Muir long before Gremlins went into production and subsequently underwent rewrites to reduce the apparent similarities between the two films. In any case, the basic plotline of the first film - mysterious strangers arrive in small town to repel marauding invaders - is more like a classic Western narrative.

The central focus of the series is upon a group of malevolent carnivorous aliens from outer space, called Krites, that have the ability to roll into balls (cf. hedgehogs) and combine into a pernicious sphere that can roll across the landscape and cause mayhem. In appearance, the individual Krites resemble small furry/spiky animals with large mouths and many sharp teeth. Throughout the movies they attack humans by biting and attempting to eat them, or at least a piece of them. The spikes on their backs can be launched as projectiles (render the victim unconscious). The coloration of the Krites varies between black, brown and navy blue. In the original film they were also able to grow to a much larger size, although this ability was dropped for the sequels.

Critters (block cellular automaton)

Critters is a reversible block cellular automaton with similar dynamics to Conway's Game of Life, first described by Tommaso Toffoli and Norman Margolus in 1987.

Definition

Critters is defined on a two-dimensional infinite grid of cells, which may be identified with the integer lattice. As in Conway's Game of Life, at any point in time each cell may be in one of two states: alive or dead. The Critters rule is a block cellular automaton using the Margolus neighborhood. This means that, at each step, the cells of the automaton are partitioned into 2 × 2 blocks and each block is updated independently of the other blocks. The center of a block at one time step becomes the corner of four blocks at the next time step, and vice versa; in this way, the four cells in each block belong to four different 2 × 2 blocks of the previous partition.

The transition function for Critters counts the number of live cells in a block, and if this number is exactly two it leaves the block unchanged. If the number of live cells is zero, one, or four, the transition function flips the state of every cell in the block. And finally, if the number of live cells is exactly three, the transition flips every state and then rotates the whole block by 180°. Because the function that combines these operations is invertible, the automaton defined by these rules is a reversible cellular automaton.

Ayla

Ayla may refer to:

Characters of Chrono Trigger

This is a listing of notable characters from the video game Chrono Trigger, a role-playing video game released in 1995 by Square Co. (now Square Enix) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. In keeping with the time travel theme of the game's storyline, the characters hail from different eras of a fictional history, ranging from prehistoric times to a post-apocalyptic future.

Creation and influences

The characters of Chrono Trigger were designed by Akira Toriyama based on sketches from the story planner Masato Kato. The development team wanted a diverse cast to reflect the various eras visited by the player; while working on the in-battle actions of the game, they decided to include a playable character that was neither human nor robot. Kato drew sketches for a cast of eight playable characters, comprising a male protagonist, the daughter of a fairy king, a tin robot, a monster man, an inventor girl, a demon king, a primitive girl, and an old sage. Pig and monkey characters were also considered. Six of the initial ideas were reworked by Toriyama, while the old sage character was scrapped and the monster man replaced with Toriyama's own frog man design.

Ayla (Earth's Children)

Ayla is the main character of Jean Auel's Earth's Children novels. She is a Cro-Magnon woman who was raised by Neanderthals. Ayla was played by Daryl Hannah in the 1986 movie The Clan of the Cave Bear. Ayla's character has been described as an example of the "rebellious primordial" that conquers adversity with wit and will.

Background

Ayla is orphaned as a young Cro-Magnon child when an earthquake opens a fissure in the ground into which the camp of her parents and the group of which they are part fall and are destroyed. Ayla is swimming nude in the river beside the campsite when the earthquake starts and watches the tragedy in horror. Wandering aimlessly, alone, frightened, hungry and helpless, Ayla eventually encounters a cave lion which chases her into a narrow crack in a rock wall. Attempting to pull Ayla out, the lion gashes open Ayla's leg, leaving four deep parallel wounds on her thigh. After a day spent hiding in terror and driven by thirst, Ayla, emerges from her hiding place to drink at the nearby stream and then collapses, delirious from fever and starvation. There she is found by a group of Neanderthals, a "Clan" led by Brun, and adopted by Iza, that Clan's medicinewoman or healer. Though neither Iza, Ayla's adoptive mother, nor Creb, the "Mog-ur" (a Shaman-like character) her adoptive father, know Ayla's age for certain, author Jean Auel places Ayla at the age of five years in the book's second paragraph, and her foster family eventually guesses her age accurately.