I’ve seen Stefan’s work in miscellaneous places, but Food Fight takes the cake. BoingBoing’s version of Food Fight adds some subtitles to identify the events being portrayed (for those of us that need to brush up on our history). After watching Food Fight, I immediately sought out some of his other work and was happy to come across his website Tourist Pictures. At the very least, take a look at his 2007 Reel to see some samples of his other work and to get a good feel for his style of motion graphics. It looks great and he can convey some pretty complex ideas with minimal work (at least compared to 3D). If I had a “Where Words Fail Us” award, he’d get one.
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I Met the Walrus is a wonderfully animated interview with John Lennon. When Jerry Livitan was 14 years old, he tracked down Lennon and interviewed him in his Toronto hotel room, almost 40 years ago.
Youtube also has a high quality version.
“Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes.”
The making of this video can be found here. Thanks goes to Simon and Dan for this one.
Graffiti animation? In Buenos Aires, BLU has drawn… painted… I mean this achievement is… I… I cannot begin to imagine the amount of work required to pull this off… I just… I’m speechless.
Just watch the video already.
More info on BLU’s other work can be found here.
Daft Bodies – Harder Better Faster Stronger
Groovy Dancing Girl
Softimage has introduced ICE (Interactive Creative Environment) in XSI 7. Taking strong cues from Houdini’s procedural workflow, ICE finally brings XSI a particle system and much much more.
Despite what the general public thinks, there is a LOT that can be done on a 3D production that does not require a programmer. Using node networks, we are attempting to keep it that way. However, this doesn’t mean there isn’t some serious logic puzzles to figure out, it just means that the keyboard and typos are less prevalent.
If you are a 3D professional that is curious or if you’re a newb that wants to see a slick way produce do 3D effects, please take a look at Softimage’s XSI 7.
– = UPDATE =-
The Softimage community website has a list of videos with some jaw dropping examples of how ICE is being used. You can dissect the IK solver? Uugh… geek heaven.
One day movies and video games will meet in the middle, just as the boundaries between brains minds and machines will fade. Of course, this assumes we don’t blow ourselves up and out into space.
Human 2.0 Documentary (48 minutes)
Wired magazine’s articl on Ray Kurzweil was an informative article on the singularity. Specifically the section entitled “Never Mind the Singularity, Here’s the Science” did a pretty good job in discussing the possibilities and also the unlikelihood that we will see a real-life Ghost In the Shell anytime during our lifetimes. I keep hearing that I need to ready some Vernor Vinge very soon.
Thanks again to Planet Damage for the video link.
“…this instinct is, for all intents and purposes, an evolutionary novelty among humans. Nothing comparable occurs in other mammals nor probably elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Our talent for unconscious entrainment lies at the core of dance, a confluence of movement, rhythm and gestural representation.”
Big Buck Bunny, Blender’s open source movie has been released! Yes, I know I’m a little late on this announcement, but better late than never. I received my DVD in the mail a few weeks back and was stunned at the quality of the short. The story is a little odd and violent, but entertaining! The deformation of the character rigs is wonderful and the animation was surprisingly flushed out. They certainly put more time and focus in this area than they did with their first open source film. Not too shabby for a 3D application that’s less than a 10MB download.
The DVD contains the full short film, plus all the assets used in production. Including the 3D characters, sets, storyboards and animatics. If you are curious about what is used in a 3D production pipeline, this is a priceless resource.
Did I mention that this was created entirely with open source software? The primary pieces of software used were Ubuntu, Gimp for textures & Blender for 3D and compositing.
I’d recommend downloading the HD version of the Big Buck website, but for those that are lazy and willing to sacrifice the quality, it’s also viewable on YouTube:
Nope, it’s not a sequal, but a digital update of the original release. Does that mean there’s no more green holographic images? Well, according to these screenshots, it seems so. And all this time I thought they wanted it it to look retro. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the upgrades. The only question is, “Do I need to own two copies of the same movie?” Maybe… maybe.
Checkout the 2.0 trailer below.
In other GITS news, I broke down and picked up this little beauty. She sits next to Walter on my desk at home. Also started watching the Stand Alone Complex episodes. Though obviously not the quality of the films, they do a good job of providing me with my Ghost in the Shell fix.
Thanks to Planet Damage, a pretty killer cyberpunkish blog.
Simple little short that does a good job of explaining the abuse of the term “Trusted Computing”. We tend to pay more attention when there’s a slick presentation.
Could this make file management tasks enjoyable? They just need to throw in some batch renaming tools and pretty much anything that ACDSee does, and it’ll be purrrrrfect.
Last night was the first time in 2 years, where I could bust ass in Maya, with ZERO pain or tingling sensations in my forearm. Been using the Evoluent Verticle Mouse for about 2 weeks now. It took me about 4-5 days before I felt like my speed an accuracy were up to where it was with a traditional mouse. However, it felt comfortable the very first time I relaxed my hand on it. One thing they fail to mention on the website is how your wrist is less restricted when flapping, instead of trying to move side to side. This is a BIG factor in it’s comfortable use. Because I’m able to swing my arm around more comfortably, I’ve lowered the mouse speed so it’s not as sensitive. On a traditional mouse, I usually work with a pretty high sensitivity, to limit my wrist’s side to side motion.
The Evoluent V3 has just come out.
* UPDATE *
It’s been over a year now and I still use the Evoluent. I’m still a fan and I’ve seen a few popping up around the studio as well. When I’m forced to use a normal mouse, I shiver.
Steven Stahlberg’s paintover thread on CGTalk. Tons of pages here for me to checkout yet. Comparisons are definitely teaching me a trick or two about lighting. He’s really making the characters pop out.
Starting on page 11, he started using animated GIFs in order to more clearly show the before and after shots.
I’ve heard of this as an “Animation Synth”. Being able to take keyframed animation and then applying it to a dynamic dummy. Why haven’t I played with the demo yet? I’m disappointed that I haven’t yet animated a cartwheeling fool roll off a cliff… and then drop a safe on his head.
Combine this product with Massive, get yourself an animation library of some sword hacking and it sounds like you’d have hours of fun w/ a virtual camera. I mean… why leave the house?
Dan passed over this cool link to a TED talk presented by Torsten Reil. He explains how the study of biology was used in developing Endorphin or Euphoria.
One day I’ll have to take the time to type out my thoughts on Randy Pausch. The inspiration that this video provided me is priceless.
Randy also has a great talk on time management.
Without a doubt, there’s going to be some serious destruction in Peter Jackson’s rendition of King Kong. Word is, Weta Digital is currently using BlastCode to handle some of the tricky dynamic simulations. I’d highly recommend checking out some of sample movies they have in the gallery. Yeah. YEAH! NUKE THAT HOUSE!!! I love the smell of… the hum of computers simulating… boom.
Finally gave Plastic Animation Paper a try and HOT DAMN is it fun and simple to use. The free version functional enough to have fun with although it doesn’t include the blue sketch pencil or the ability to import sound. I hear that the application runs in 8 bit mode, which is probably why sketching runs so smoothly. Also, no prerendering is neccessary to view your animations. Currently I’m using it for my gesture sketches. I have a slideshow running in ACDSee and I sketch in PAP. I just tap a single key for a new cell, every time a new pose pops up. A home version of the gesture sketches often done in life drawing classes. Haven’t tried this on a single monitor setup yet.
Carlos has been animating for 8 years now and most animators are familiar with his work. CGTalk has an “Meet the Artist” thread where he’s doing a little Q&A. I find his responses quite inspiring and would recommend checking it out.
CGTalk’s Meet the Artist
Unfortunately it looks like his Fingerboarder site is down. Was an entertaining vid that you might be able to track down… somewhere.
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