Good Intentions

"The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions", so they say. I would have thought 'Good Inventions' might be more appropriate. But intentions - good or bad- precede our actions, if in fact we act on them.

I have a diary full of intentions that rarely get fulfilled, and also a shed of equipment that I intend to fix, and drawers of papers I intend to sort out. Somewhere between the Intent and the Action there is a gap.
Scientists have now been able find that gap in the brain - and what is more - make an animation of it.

You can see it at http://www.physorg.com/news90164161.html but whether that changes your life waits to be seen.

Is Computer Animation about to take over the world? Well, of course it is, but when? It awaits the time when computers are fast enough, cheap enough, and simple enough for them to replace writing with images. Not much hope of that for a while, but the first commercial Quantum computer has just been launched
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/08/1355255 and that may be a small step for mankind but a giant step for computer animated characters.

Better news is that Disney is bringing back 2D hand-drawn animation; Hooray! Back to the future, or should I say Forward to History.
http://us.indiantelevision.com/end/y2k7/feb/9febge2.htm
It heralds in a new era where children will be able to copy the cartoon characters to learn drawing, waste time during school lessons, and produce a better class of grafitti.
Who can name a single 3D character (apart from Wallace and Gromit) that is as memorable as the early Disney and Warner Bros characters.

Of course, 2D hand drawn animation never went away. In fact it has proliferated in the form of animation workshops in schools, community centers, and increasingly on the Internet. You can find some examples at http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=top&newsitem_no=19027

Stan

Robots and People

Those of us in the Animation industry have always known that robots understand humans, just as much as animals and objects can think and talk. It seems that Scientists - sceptics that they are - have just gotten around to knowing it as well, and are now building robots that do understand us. Have a look at http://money.canoe.ca/News/Sectors/Technology/2006/11/25/2488865-ap.html, and don't forget to pass it on to any robots you know.

Although there are some people who feel that people don't understand people, and that is why the world is in such a state, perhaps robots can explain to the rest of us why we do what we do.

Of course, we (people) are a bit afraid that robots will one day take over the world. It seems that animated creatures are on the way to doing just that, as this year has seen an explosion of animated movies, probably the biggest release of any year. But why?
It could be that computers have reached a point where they can produce an animated movie that is comparable in cost and time to a live-action movie. This is the spin-off from libraries that allow characters created for one movie to be recycled for others. It could be that audiences are tired of the big action-packed kill-em-all movies. On the other hand it could be just market forces. A hit animated movie has great merchandising potential, which is rare for a live-action film.

Animated shorts are not missing out either. Waste you time looking at some animated jokes.

Stan

A Matter of Taste

Imagine going into a restaurant and saying to the Waiter "For starters I'll have a Bugs Bunny, followed by Pinocchio with some Bambi on the side, Ah yes, the Wallace and Gromit looks nice, I'll have that for desert".

The Waiter might think you are a couple of frames short of a cycle, but it could make sense if you suffered from synesthesia; a condition where the senses overlap so that words and pictures, get translated to tastes and smells.

It is a condition that quite a lot of people have. I play the guitar, and think of different keys as colours; F is green, while G is dark red. I have spoken to several musicians who also think like this, but have their own colours.
Now that recent developments allow computers to handle smells there seems to be a niche market here for movie makers.

A news article today announced that an animated movie 'Elephants Dream' is the first one to be made totally with Open Source (free) software.
This might seem a small step for a man but a giant step for a cartoon character. If movies can be made with legally free software then that opens a new entrance level to the industry.

Of course, there is much free software available, but most of it is not up to doing commercial work, and the time taken to learn it makes not worth the bother. Perhaps a new era has started, but in this business that's a daily occurence.

For those of you who do have time to spare, take a look at the National Film Board of Canada site http://www.nfb.ca/atonf/events/moreManchette.php?nav=6&v=h&lg=en&id=1228 for the 'Make the Pixels Dance' competition.

Stan

The Real World

Welcome to the Real World. In case you are one of those people who spend time using machines to listen to music, watch TV, play games, and the like, this is to let you know there is another world out there; one in which poor people strive to earn a living and hopefully get some spare cash above their survival needs so they can buy machines to listen to music, watch TV, play games, etc.

I make this point because a certain Mr Bill O'Reilly feels many of us are losing touch with reality. You can find his comments on http://gamepolitics.com/2006/11/18/bill-oreilly-slams-playstation-3-launch-gamers-ipods-tech-not-in-that-order/
My theory is that Civilisation is in fact built on our needs to escape reality, and movie makers do more than their share in setting up escape routes.

There is one reality we can't escape, and that is crime, so I welcomed the news that the Police are now trying out a new 360 degree camera small enough to be mounted in a helmet. I'm sure Documentary Film Makers will welcome it with open arms.

Of course having eyes in the back of your head won't totally cut down crime; which is a good thing for the Movie world, Bruce Willis, and Politicians.

Much crime - like Computer crime - isn't caught on camera. As we know, it relies a lot on words and numbers, but could it be caught on camera? Part of the problem is that the high bandwidth needed for images is not generally available to most of us, but the Computer Cavalry is riding over the hill to save us.

IBM has just raised the bar with a new computer that will do 8000 teraflops, compared with todays fastest that does 280 teraflops. Have a look at http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2006Nov/bch20061117040548.htm

But speed is not enough, it needs to be pumped down the line, and the scientists at the following address http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~jtillots/ seem to have solved that problem as well, so we will be able to get hi-res images on our PCs equal to the 'Real World' movies.

But, not to be left behind, the folks at Utah are getting closer to making a Quantum computer. When they arrive we will have so much information our minds will be boggled to the point that we will need digital implants to comprehend it all.
By that time we will be able to encrypt our posts with real-time, 3D, speaking images of ourselves that are totally hackproof.

Having got rid of just about all crime, computers of the future will only have Adultery left to contend with. That seems an easy to solve if the new Androids shown in this weeks Gadget Show are anything to go by. They look human from a few feet away, and have a vocabulary of around 40,000 words (most of us have about 15,000), and with the added advantage that you can switch them off.

Real World? What Real World?

Stan

Air Guitar

Happy Birthday World Wide Web - 16 today - and like all teenagers - confident of going onwards and upwards but not quite sure where. I was over 60 when the Web was born, but cannot now imagine what life would be like without it.

Just today I came across yet another marvel; A T-Shirt that you can don and play Air Guitar.
There have been other 'computerised' Air Guitars, which work on the basis of Motion Graphics as used for 3D animation, but this one uses Intelligent Textiles; similar in principle but more sophisticated. In this Blog of 20th October, I reported on a T-shirt with a built in screen, so we are getting close to becoming walking computers.

My interest in the Air Guitar is that I am a strummer myself and use guitar programs that teach by having animated scales and chords. I have seen robots that play piano quite well, and knew of someone who used a midi-keyboard to operate theatre lighting.

One of my pet themes is to be able to create movies in the way one can write scripts. It requires some form of visual input device rather like the above T-Shirt instead of the network of attached wires used in Motion Graphics. Perhaps future T-shirt will have on them 'Been there, done that, now watch the Movie'.

Stan

Is There a Doctor in the House?

I have a friend whose parents run a pharmacy. She tells me that they advise her not to take pills, creams, tablets etc. What good advice! as we all have medicine cabinets full of such stuff tried a few times and found either not to work, or we get better before it has any effect.

That is not to say that trying to cure oneself is a bad thing, but just that we often don't know what is wrong with us in the first place, and the pharmacist will helpfully sell us anything. My guess is that the drugs industry grows rich on what we throw away.

You will be happy to know that our doctors often don't know much more than we do; but that is about to change as they are now turning to Google to get their diagnosis sorted out, as you can see at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=415641&in_page_id=1774

I have been using Google for years to do this, and proud to say I have survived lots of illnesses I would not have known I had if it hadn't been for the information on the various websites dealing with medical self-help.

What has this got to do with 'Animation'?, well, many of those sites use animation to show how the body works. You can find quite a few good examples at: Diagnosis and with a good site at http://www.animatedhealth.com/?gclid=CPG3ocrFw4gCFRRZMAod4BsWDA

I have feeling that if this catches on Medical School will be little more than a computer and some holographic cadavers. It may well cut down on Medical costs and improve treatments, but what will happen to all those Hospital based TV Soaps?

Stan

Future Shock

How would you like to see what the future holds for you? Well you can - in a sort of way that is. A program with the springtime name of APRIL lets you see what you might look like at some distant time; the Christmas of your life.

Forensic animation has been used for a while to help visualise missing people and see what they might look like after some years. It's also used to see what dead people might have looked like alive. A gruesome subject but one that will play an increasingly useful role in changing our behaviour if the health authorities have their way.

The above program can indicate what you will look like in a few years if you choose a decadent life style. I recently saw examples of it on TV when certain celebrities who punish their bodies in various ways from drug taking to excessive fitness regimes were shown as they are now, and how they will be in twenty years time. I can image a sneering image of ones aged self staring back from the screen and saying "Look what you've done to me you idiot".

The program would have obvious uses in the Movie world to show how actors might age in a role. It might also have a slightly more sinister use if we secretly checked out how our partners might look in the future.
I know that similar programs have been used to morph the faces of parents to show what their unborn child might look like, but have never seen whether this actually works.

Of course this does put an emphasis on beauty, and we intuitively feel that two beautiful parents will produce a beautiful child, but apparantly not, though 'beautiful' parents do tend to have 36% more chance of having a girl child. I'm not sure what it all means, but animators looking for new directions in the industry might check out beauty salons or mortuaries for vacancies.

Stan

Being Funny

I understand that Science has seven big fundamental questions of the order 'How did Life start'. I can't remember what the other six are, but one of them must surely be 'Why are some people funny and others not'. I am happy to say that Science has now solved this problem, with the little help from its animation friends and a morphing program.

"The characteristics of a feminine face imply that the person may be agreeable and co-operative, which can be causal in our first impressions of comedians as being friendly and funny."
Dr Little used computer software to blend together 179 different facial aspects of 20 top comedians, resulting in the "perfect comedy face".
And picked Ricky Gervais as having the perfect comedy face - so that proves it.
Find out more at: "http://www.itv.com/news/entertainment_0e6a2a3f4a4578cb05bb63d81a59b4f7.html

I would like to see the system applied to Politicians, and a few others who we might put our trust in.


A recent study regarding 'Prejudices and what we look like' can be found at http://www.badscience.net/?p=219. It supports the obvious in that we are attracted to beautiful people, but that is partly because - as those of us in the movie business know - the good are beautiful and the bad are ugly. Disney made a mint out of it; and anyone working in the Animation industry is aware that a Cartoon's face is its fortune.

The constant reinforcement of what is Good and Bad stemming from the worlds of advertising, movies, and fashion may be conditioning our brains in a way that Religion did in history.

If computer games are making children violent then animation has a lot to answer for. On the other hand, if animation can define the 'Perfect Comedy Face' then perhaps there is a 'Perfect Tragedy Face', or a perfect face for any attribute you can think of.

It would certainly be handy for checking passport photos, Internet dating photos, and personal photos for our CV, but I can see the possibility of plastic surgery opening up new fields of expertise with body parts as yet unexplored.


Stan

Man Bites God

A few posts ago I mentioned advances in movie projectors and referred to projecting onto clouds. One reader - Deborah Kelly - sent me an image of her work doing just that(http://www.bewareofthegod.com/?cat=9).

But what was of more interest was her work as an Activist-Artist.
Having 'Beware of the God' projected in Heaven seems a good way of getting the message across, bearing mind the recent trouble with the Prophet Mohammed cartoons published in Denmark. No one questions the power of Political cartoons; apart from their instant summing up of a situation, they are globally recognised. It is a power that has yet to reach its full potential.

The 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' made the ultimate blasphemy of having God as a Super-computer - it is a belief that gains adherents daily - so it was interesting to note that scientists who build such machines are turning to animation for the next divine upgrade.

It seems that the chips that power computer games are currently the most powerful ones around, and will be the basis for the next Supercomputers, but they will not be for playing games, only rather boring things like curing diseases so the world become over-populated, and designing bombs to cure the problem.

As we all know, there is only one problem in the world - other people - and computer games at least allow us to live in virtual worlds where other people either live by our personal standards or get zapped for not trying. Someone - whose name escapes me for the moment - said "All the Worlds a stage". My guess is that it's a computer game, or soon will be.


Stan

ps. Some of you might be interested in http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=24217&in_page_id=2

Interesting

How do you measure how interesting something is? Well one way is feedback. If someone has a Blog that gets 10K hits a day then you might guess it is more interesting than one that gets 5K hits daily. But that is a measure of quantity rather than quality, so is a statistic rather than a 'value'.

I mention this because Flickr has just taken out a patent on 'Interestingness' for searching images. I don't know how it is done, but the idea itself is interesting. If my computer recognises that I spend much time looking up trends in Animation it might guess (in its own computer way) that I find 'Animation' interesting and be able to assess my taste in this field. I would guess the system might have more applications in computer dating though.

I sometimes add little animations to my posts to friends; typically small Gifs of something relevant to the message. It ocurrs to me that these might be used as 'Digital signatures' or 'Watermarks' to assure my friends that they come from me.

Such animations might also be used as a Password. I'm guessing it would be easy to do, and make it more difficult for hackers to get to your passwords. My thoughts on this were prompted by an article about 'captchas' which describes how images instead of words are now being used to try and fool hackers.

Of course, it is well known that most of us use passwords relating to something that is of interest to us. Using a picture or animation of something that is of interest to us would certainly raise the bar for hackers. Perhaps Flickr knows something that we don't.

Stan

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Back in the 1950s some experiments were done on using movies as anaesthetics with some success, but as far as I know this method was never used in hospitals.

While working at the Canadian Film Board in the early 1960s I met Norman McClaren, the experimental film maker, and asked if he thought films could be used in this way. I got a record on self-hypnosis, and he had some experimental films with concentric circles gradually shrinking. We put them together and showed the result. It made many people seasick!!!

I never pursued that line again, but later worked in advertising when Subliminal Advertising was tested. It was so successful that it was banned, or supposedly so, but one doesn't know if it actually was, but 'Placement Advertising' is perfectly legal, so in effect the method is still being used.

I have used it in animation as a Special Effect. If you want to create a disturbing image you can colour it with two very close colours and let them flicker. It is not visibly noticeable but mentally upsetting.

These ideas came to mind recently when reading about Spam mail. It seems one way to fool Spam filters is to have the background colour actually several very close colours.
You can write white text on a very slightly off-white background and mentally take it in without actually seeing it; a hi-tec invisible ink. And text can easily be implanted into an image. This is a common encryption method.

Forgetting Conspiracy Theories of us all being brainwashed, could such methods be used as anaesthetics? Could it be a way to control crowds with flashing lights? Could it be used in education? Whatever, there is no doubt that Animation has come a long way from funny cartoons.

Stan

Writing for Animation

By chance today I see that Microsoft has just taken out a patent on software to help "children write stories". I wondered if Microsoft are trying to put me out of business! But on checking their patent, it seems to be related to manipulating images- so that's OK.

The easiest way to get children to start writing is to let them write 'All About Me', covering what their favourite food, sport, lessons, etc, are, and what they dislike most. Of course, Social Networking and Blogs are just that in a more elaborate form.

Writing about oneself is a great therapy - as is talking about oneself. And part of that therapy is due to the fact that someone is actually interested in us. But of course, not everyone who is interested in us has the same motives.
There are lots of online questionnaires asking us details of our buying habits and social activities so they can draw up a 'Profile' for marketing; that's innocent enough, and we all know what it is about.

But supposing these marketing profiles and our networking/blog profiles were matched up, it would give a fairly accurate picture of who we are and what we look like. Well, the 'Big Brother' idea has been done to death, but I'm thinking in terms of creating characters for stories.

Would it ever be possible to feed a computer a profile of someone based on their Blog/Network profile, and buying habits, and get a reasonably accurate image of the person?
I for one, wouldn't say it couldn't be done. I shall be keeping a beady eye out for more Microsoft patents.

Stan

Biometrics

Ideas are bit like buses, you wait for ages then three come along at once. One idea that has been around for quite a while is computer odor recognition. This week I saw a computer being used to transmit a smell using a PC. You click on an image of a flower or whatever, and the smell is transmitted.
My first thought - naturally - is how could that be used in animation? One idea would be to link it to animated Greeting cards for birthdays, Christmas, and the like.

My second thought is how could it be abused by hackers. Well, they could spam you with nasty smells I suppose, but smells might also be the ultimate password. Check
http://ezinearticles.com/?Biometrics---Customer-Friendly-Computer-Security&id=106788

Another problem is that smells aren't easy to pin down. You can say something smells like a rose, but what does a meadow smell like after the rain? You need an image of a meadow, and sorting images out has been another problem waiting to be solved, and perhaps it now has; or so they say at
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/11/02/tech-imagetag-061101.html

The Gadget Show is the show to see for all those gadgets that you cannot imagine anyone buying. This week an inflatable church big enough to hold sixty people (could be a cinema), and yet another attempt to make a 360 degree cinema screen so that you feel you are in the centre of the action.
Of course, Multi-screens have been around for very many years, but the main problem is having projectors both small enough to fit into the cinema, and synchronising them. Both problems now easily solvable; it only requires suitable stories to make use of them now.

Stan

Input Output

When I started in Computer Animation in the mid 1960s, Input devices were limited to a teletext type keyboard, a lightpen (if you had a screen, and most didn't) and a Puck; a sort of pre-history mouse. Your output was punched cards, and later punched tape. On one ocassion around 1970 I was on a TV programme about computers; I held up a piece of punched tape and said "One day film will look like this".

Things have moved on, and Input devices come in many forms; a very interesting one that looks to change the world can be seen at
http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han&flashEnabled=1
The "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure.

Output devices are no slowcoaches either. The largest digital photo has recently been shown, coming in at around 35x32 feet and 8.5 gigapixels. True it's not a moving picture, but a week or two might change that. You can see it at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/29/2239224

Using the brain as an input device has always been the realm of Science fiction, but getting increasing attention in recent years. Biofeedback was quite popular in the 1960s, but lacked the technology to do anything serious.

One aspect of recording brain patterns I find interesting is not as a computer input device but as a lie-detector. As a writer 'telling lies' is something inherent in many stories; Crime and Love obviously, polititicians, car salesmen, lawyers, and Estate agents might consider the ability to lie as an asset. Doctors may have to do it to be kind, A TV programme on 'Honesty' said that Society would break down if everyone was honest!

Another interesting article came out today about a competition I'd never heard of called the Hutter Prize http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/29/2127201
It is about compressing data, and presumes that compressing data in files is similar to how the brain works.

There are some people who believe that the brain is a bit like a cupboard, and that you can only put so much into it. Others (and I am one) believe that the brain can hold an unlimited amount of information. The reason animation works so well as a teaching aid is that it eliminates all but the essential material of the subject it is presenting.

The fact that people with phenomenal memories say they recall numbers as pictures indicates that we might have been using our brains in the wrong way for a few thousand years.
Need I say that teaching animation as a core subject in the curriculum will change all that?


Stan

Drawing in the Air

It's Fireworks day next week; as a child I used to wave sparklers in the air to create patterns. At best I could get circles, and perhaps figures-of-eight, but not pictures, though I have seen simple pictures created in the air by lasers.

Of course, if you could move the laser fast enough you might create a whole picture. It works by persistance of vision, but that only lasts for a fraction of a second.

Supposing you could draw slowly and still see your picture? Well, that's what some clever people have done. Not only can you draw slowly in the air, you can do it in 3D, and have the object you drew actually created. Don't believe me? then go to http://blog.pcnews.ro/2006/10/28/sketch-your-furniture-in-the-air/
Apart from drawing in the air, you can also project images onto air. Take at look at http://blog.pcnews.ro/2006/07/27/real-display-like-in-star-wars-movie/

Miracles are getting commonplace now in the world of animation, so we need a new word to cover things that can only be done by divine intervention. But even the divinity is getting mapped out by animation. Look at http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/category/educational/ a 3D weather map. Scientists have just launched a satellite to map a 3D picture of the Sun as well.

Not many of us have a need for 3D images of the Sun, but how about having your own avatar that can try on clothes for you? If you're interested look at http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/category/clothing/

The scariest aspect of 3D mapping I've seen was on a Horizon show last week where they showed experiments for mapping the brain. Different areas of the brain are highlighted as you think about different things. They say that one day they will be able to replay the images from your brain so you relive the experience, even to the point of capturing dreams!!!

I'd have second thoughts on that one, and just hope that the second thoughts don't get mapped.

Stan

Save the World

Hardly had the ink dried on my laser printer from yesterdays post about computers recognising movement when I came across and article about a computer that does just that. Check it out at http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10387-surveillance-system-spots-violent-behaviour.html
It seems it can distinguish between friendly and hostile behaviour. Put one of these on a robot and let it roam the streets and we will live in a peaceful, though somewhat inhibited society.

Of course, the world has other problems apart from our trying to destroy each other. In our spare time we also try to destroy the world; but not any more, the people at GlobalSchoolNet are looking for ideas to prevent global warming. You can find their site at http://www.google.com/educators/globalwarming.html
The idea is to get children and young people around the world to submit ideas and work together collaborating on movies and projects to get it sorted.

Once crime and global warming have been solved there are quite a few other problems to keep us busy. You can find some of them at Save the World

Stan

Face Recognition

An interesting article in the nerdy news today about computer face-recognition. Look on www.MyHeritage.com for details, and on http://www.saynotocrack.com/index.php/2006/10/23/celebrity-look-a-likes-part-i/ for the article.
Put up a photo of your face and it will compare it to a list of celebrities to see who you look like. Someone tried it with some 3D animated characters. This is one with the teletubby who seems to come off well by comparison.

The system works by comparing the face with a list of celebrities who have already been digitised. I tried the program using 2D characters but it doesn't work, but if it did, it seems to be a good way to find those elusive cartoon characters who you can't remember the name for.

I wonder if the system might be extended to check movements such as walk-cycles. If it could then it might be able to guess someones age, gender, height, weight, etc reasonably well by the way they move. That could be useful in looking for people in a crowd, a bit like spotting car numbers as they move. A step in that direction has already been made, which you can check out at http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Jan2005/8955.htm.

Stan

Virtual Fantasy

Today I came across a news item at http://infolab.northwestern.edu/project.asp?id=40 . It is about news casting with computer generated characters.

Aparantly news items gathered by search engines are transcribed from written text to spoken text - as against simply reading the written text; Clever!!!

Even as I was reading the article it ocurred to me that it would be nice to scan in a novel and have it instantly turned into a movie.
But that is an obvious application. It would be pretty useful to have technical data spoken to you on how to operate your washing machine, or what your mortgage contract is actually saying.

Only last week I read of a handheld computer used by troops in Iraq that can do instant translations, so put them together and you could talk to anyone around the world using a nice looking version of yourself. It seems to me something that could put the Generals out of work.

I have always felt that animation can save the world, and it is certainly making inroads into crime. A recent article stated that video tapes of criminals caught on CCTV are now having their walks analysed by computers. We all have a walk cycle as unique as our fingerprints so it seems a good idea.

What else can be done? As CCTV cameras don't have sound they can't capture voiceprints, but that can't be too difficult to do.

A couple of years ago we ran a workshop called 'Kids Crack Crime' getting young teenagers to suggest ways of catching criminals, and making a short cartoon of it. The project went well, the group we worked with won the Guy Ritchie Award.

I look forward to 'Crime Watch' being shown with Computer generated presenters, with the crimes being re-enacted by avatars. We might soon be calling Reality 'Virtual Fantasy'.

Stan

Computer Games

The first computer game I played was 'Lunar Lander' on a Mainframe machine in the late 1960s; we didn't have screens; you typed in coordinates for speed and distance, and it calculated your descent and how much fuel you had, then printed out the answer. It was played so much some colleges banned it.

My first games addiction was the Purple People Eaters on the BBC Micro; Mice weren't available then, so I got Repetitive Strain Injury like most games players of the time. I moved on to Lemmings on the Amiga, but when my PC came along I had passed my games phase, and apart from Freecel and Spider Solitaire, never play games.

But I was invited along to the London Games Festival earlier this month to hear discussions on Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games; the next 'big thing'. I wasn't all that impressed by what I saw or heard.

Being a scriptwriter I find Computer games lacking in plot, but the main point of the discussions was how to put more 'Emotional attributes' into the Avatars.

I suggested that Games developers were going along the same learning curve as Film makers had done many years ago, and that though good design in games is essential, it is parallel to having celebrities rather than good actors in roles.

I left the show feeling that it will be some time before Avatars can put emotion into acting, but I was wrong. Take a look at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/movies/15waxm.html?em&ex=1161144000&en=40ce02b6fecabbcc&ei=5087%0A

Without doubt this is the beginning of a new era in Computer Graphics and Movie making generally. It is not difficult to see that this technology will end up on the desktop within a year or two.

The merging of Games and Movies really is one giant step for Avatars; it just needs Surround Screens, Holograms, and Virtual Reality to catch up now.

In the mean time look at:
http://www.avatarist.com/
http://www.google.com/search?q=Motion+graphics
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=CGI+%2B+animation&btnG=Search

Stan

Animation Data Banks

When I started in Animation around 1958 life was simple in the Animation World. Animation fell into just a few categories of drawn, cutout, and model/puppet -which covered just about anything in 3D. There were some experimental techniques, but generally speaking you could see how any technique worked just by looking at it. Apart from the techniques, anyone from cameraman to editor could go to any studio in the world and all the equipment would be more or less the same.

Not so today; in fact two animators doing exactly the same type of work might well be using entirely different computer programs to do it, and the time taken to learn such programs would often mean they are stuck with their choice of program. As many programs come and go, it is worth spending time finding out what is likely to be around for the future.

As I am constantly looking for trends in animation I spend much time checking out links to the various animation categories. It can be quite frustrating at times, so I was pleased to come across the site at http://www.visualcomplexity.com/ which shows how Computer Animation can help out with visual search engines. The top image is an example of a visual data bank.

As far as I know, none have been applied to the 'World of Animation', but the potential is there, and if anyone gets around to doing it, much time and effort will be saved.

There are - of course - some good specialised Animation data banks. One of the best is:

http://www.awn.com/ and a subsection at http://schools.awn.com/

The big problem is that search engines have difficulty in searching for specific images. If you want a particular Bugs Bunny movie you can check out Chuck Jones, but the vast majority of animated movies don't get listed in a way that is easy to categorise. Until they do the best that can be offered is Animation Database and Animation Databanks

Stan

Instant Animation

In a few days I'll be 76. Someone asked me if I lived my life over again what would I do that I hadn't done. The answer was easy; I would save the world.

Of course Superman - who is roughly my age - wanted to do the same thing, but his approach is to take out all the bad guys, whereas my approach would be to teach everyone animation which, as a universal language, would help the bad guys and good guys get along better.

Teaching everyone to animate is not an easy task, but it will become easier with a program a friend directed me to yesterday at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df8wAla57PI

This is one of a new breed of programs like K-sketch which enables users to animate without having to learn animation. You can also use libraries of free animations such as: http://gifanimations.com/ and http://www.animationlibrary.com/

The idea of using art to unite the world is not entirely new either. UNESCO runs a number of programmes at Digiarts.

Some other sites can be found at Kids Art and Freebies

Stan

Lip Sync

About thirty years ago when I was involved with computer animation at the Imperial College, one of the projects we looked at was creating automated lipsync.
In principle it was fairly easy; a set of lip shapes were matched to a set of phonemes in a look-up table, and you typed in the syllables and gave them a number of frames.

In those days there was no instant playback so if you got the timing wrong it took some time to check. But it wasn't practical for other reasons such as needing different shapes for different faces, also size, gender, age, and accent affect the shape of the lips.

I am not an animator but a scriptwriter, and my interest was the idea that one day I would be able to type in a script and both see and hear it played back. I thought it might always be a pipe dream, but I have recently seen some examples that come close to doing just that. One of the programs is http://www.reallusion.com/go/crazytalk/default.htm which allows you to record your voice and have it spoken by an animated character.

I recently looked up "lipsync for animation" and got a hit rate of over 300,000, so developments have moved on.
I haven't tested them but here's a couple examples here that you may like to look at to see the current state of the art.

www.thirdwishsoftware.com/magpie.html
www.lostmarble.com/papagayo/index.shtml

Also some other sites: Lip Sync


Stan

Drawing

Usually the first problem I find with teaching children to draw is getting them to hold a pencil correctly.
As a child before the war we had to spend hours doing copper-plate script to write neatly. It was boring, but you could read most children's writing. Not so today with biro's and word processors.

I always say "Hold your pen like a dart", but though that is typical for animation, Fine-artists use different methods. One method I came across is at http://thegluckmethod.com/html/freelesson/index.html which is worth looking at.

You don't need to be able to draw to animate though. Take a look at:
www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/java/smoothteddy/index.html (just type in 'smooth teddy' to get listings) to see the trend in simple animation. This appears not to be a commercial program yet, but it will be fun for kids when it is.

Another similar 'instant' animation program beingdeveloped is http://www.k-sketch.org/
This could really take off in schools when it's available.

This trend will bring back the Light-pen as an input device. They were common in the 1960s but went out of fashion when the mouse and drawing tablet became available.

Another recent development yet to hit the shops is a screen that is so thin and flexible it can be rolled up. This would be suitable for a cheap light-box/monitor when it's available.

Then there is Googles own drawing program at http://sketchup.google.com/product_suf.html
It does 3D geometric shapes but easy to use.

It will be interesting to see if a killer-application comes these instant animation programs as there is no doubt that there is a great need for a graphical language that overcomes the barriers of the spoken and written ones.

Look at: Drawing Techniques

Stan