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

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

Animated Tattoos

There's a Marx Bros movie with Harpo opening his shirt to show an animated tattoo on his chest. I have a vague idea it was a dog coming out of its kennel.

the other day - for no reason at all - I recalled the scene, and wondered if tattoos could in fact be animated. I know that certain fish and reptiles can change the colour of their skin, so in theory, they might be able to do it, though they would have no reason to.

Of course, all I needed to do was look up 'Animated Tattoos' and find that not only has it been done, but the idea has been around for quite a while; I never cease to be amazed.

Not only can the tattoo be animated, it can be changed by reprogramming. The potential for these seems endless. Apart from identification, one might hire ones body out to advertisers like celebrity tennis players do with their clothes.
The next stage is to add a soundtrack. Anyone betting it can't be done?

At last it's happened!!! - once again. 3D has hit the TV screen.
Of course, anyone who follows these things will give a big sigh and list previous times it has happened; and I can't say that I've actually seen the latest system working, but you can find out all about it at:
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2006/11/18/forget-hdtv-the-future-is-3dtv/

Galloping technology has reached a point where nothing seems impossible, and technhologists are now the Wizards and Prophets of the TechnoGods, so it was not such a surprise when I came across the article http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/11/atheists_the_ne.html suggesting that Bill Gates might be considered as President.

I, for one would vote for him, if they could prove that electronic voting machines were foolproof.
It is not on the basis of his political acumen, but because I have a pretty good idea of his interests, and they are much closer to mine than any other president I know. But then I voted for Mrs Thatcher when she first came to power, and she had been a Chemist.

So I may end up settling for one of the latest Japanese Androids that look human enough to fool most people from a few feet away; have a vocabulary of around 40,000 words, and do as they are told (at least for the time being).

Stan

Signs of Things to Come

I was once picked up one night by the police for driving my moped on a Motorway. I had turned off at a busy junction that had lights and signs everywhere, and I was confused. The police told me that 'The signs were large enough to see so I should not have made the mistake', then let me off with a caution.

The next night I went to the junction again to see why I had missed the signs; In spite of looking at a huge sign showing the directions, I couldn't read anything because lights from the other signs reflecting on each other made several of them unreadable.

I doubt whether that excuse would have stood up in Court, but at the time I thought there must be a better way of helping drivers. There is; you can see it at
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html

Briefly, it is to do away with signs, signals, and the plethora of flashing commands that distract rather than help drivers. Hopefully the next stage will be to cut down on the animated adverts that now decorate bus stops, shop signs, and poster sites.

Another way to help drivers is get more people off the road. We all know that is 'other drivers' who are the cause of all traffic problems. Well, animation plays its part there as well. Software originally designed for Morphing is used for Face Recognition and prevents banned drivers from applying for licences under another name.

I remember a 'Columbo' detective plot from the 1970s where a driver's alibi was that he could not have been at the scene of the crime as he had been caught on a traffic camera for crossing a red light. He had an accomplice wear a photo of his face, and deliberately cross the lights.

Of course, Columbo caught him out because photos reflect light in a different way to faces. But imagine what it will be like when traffic cameras use facial recognition so your number plate, car make, and face are all recognised in one go. It would even have Big Brother looking over his shoulder.

Stan

Animated Science

Around about 1926 Einstein worked on an animated movie about Relativity. True he was only a script consultant but who knows what he might have achieved if he'd stuck with it.

The thought came to mind as in an idle moment I checked out an Animated Periodic Table, and going through the various Elements, noted that Einsteinium was one of the elements. Getting an Element named after you is second only to getting an ice-cream named after you - as was the case with Dame Nelly Melba.

I believe that you can pay to get an Asteroid named after you, which seems a good way to get funding for research.
Of course, large companies commonly sponsor TV series and the like, but would they ever start sponsoring animated movies like 'The Periodic Table'; something which any science student will tell you has been crying out to be animated since day one.

I believe the time has come to start teaching animation as part of Science courses. There must be a zillion subjects out there perfect for sponsorship if animators knew they were there and scientists knew how to visualise. I think a dating agency for the two would be the perfect starting point to get things going.

Stan

Singing Chickens

The early Disney films had many characters that seemed to have disappeared from history. One was Horace Horsecollar - a Goofy-like horse - and another was Clara Cluck, a singing chicken.

You don't see many singing chickens around nowadays, so it was with some interest I noted the news item at http://www.portsmouthtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=680&ArticleID=1875576 about animated chickens singing against keeping Battery hens caged up. Unfortunately the news item doesn't have a video to do with it.

But another news item does. Kentucky Fried Chicken has made the record books by having the first company logo that can be seen from Outer Space
You can see a pixilated version of it being built. No doubt to attract passing aliens to pop in for a quick bite. Let's hope that the aliens don't resemble chickens.

Though nothing to do with animation, but much to do with singing, I noted that Dolphins can learn to sing, which means both vocalisation and rhythm. Apparantly the only other mammal than humans to be able to do so.
though Whales can sing, apart from the famous Disney one, they aint got rhythm.
It ocurred to me that with the computerised Air Guitar (yesterdays Blog) a dolphin might be fitted with a Water guitar, and move around to accompany itself singing.
It may be a bit fanciful, but as I intend being reincarnated as a Dolphin, I feel it is something that might usefully be pursued.

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

Silent Voices

Have you ever had to get your movies translated into another language? Subtitles are not great because you miss the action while reading them. Dubbing is not all that good as it is usually obvious that the lips are not in sync with the sound. In live-action the background actors can sometimes get by saying 'Rhubarb, rhubarb' and making suitable gestures, but it's a problem yet to be solved.

As I am severely deaf, I have learnt to lip read to a limited extent. I never took lessons, but often watch TV with the sound off. It works OK with news readers but not so well with actors; so I am always interested in new ideas related to hearing.

One idea I read about yesterday at http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19225755.800-its-the-next-best-thing-to-a-babel-fish.html describes a method whereby the speaker simply mouths the sounds in one language and it gets instantly translated into another language.

The method is not yet perfect, but the potential for the Movies is fantastic. As it depends on facial movements instead of sound, then an actor could be connected to many machines and do translations into dozens of languages at once. A step further would be to record the facial movements for a given actor and apply these to an avatar. For the technically minded you can look at http://www.mcrlab.uottawa.ca/papers/ACM-postr3.pdf dealing with Virtual Reality.

What will they think of next? Well, if you want to find out then take a look at Lip shapes .
If you just want to amuse yourself then try http://www.dookyweb.com/avatars.swf

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

Unusual Displays

In the early 1960s I was on holiday in Ibiza; at that time totally off the tourist track and having lots of artists doing their thing. One of them - who was not in the film world - said to me that he had a brilliant idea. As underground trains had a series of windows that were like film frames, you might be able to have pictures along the tunnel so that they appeared to be moving as you passed them.

I explained that you needed a 'gate ' so you only saw the image for a fraction of a second, and that the train would need to have a steady speed from start to finish, apart from the fact that lighting varied along the track, etc. But the idea was not lost on the Advertising people who saw the unused walls of the underground as potential space.

A few years later I noted that Sony had come up with a system showing moving pictures in the tunnel, but I never saw anything indicating it had been used or how it was done, so last night when by chance I switched on 'The Gadget Show' and saw that such a system was now working in the USA I was particularly interested.

Apparently it requires images to be flashed on the walls rather than fixed on the walls, and the flashes synchronised with the train speed. In effect, the train was acting as some form of projector.

The idea of projecting onto unusual screens is common enough; the same Gadget show had ladies parading around with screens built into their clothes. I have seen films projected onto waterfalls, blocks of ice, through mist, onto people, and two movies projected onto a single screen; and I seem to remember that someone tried projecting onto clouds, and the idea of using all your walls and ceilings as screens is just around the corner. One day you will wake up to the sounds of the dawn chorus, and see the sky above and the forest around you, while laying in the comfort of your bed.

The screen I'm waiting for does exist, but is not cheap; It's the 'Head-up-display' used by pilots, where the screen is their visor which is rather like Virtual reality helmets . I would like to be able to put on a pair of glasses and see movies in a way comparable to using an Ipod. I'm prepared to bet that something like that will be around in a year or two.

Stan

Visual Literacy

Nearly a hundred years ago, Thomas Edison the great inventor envisaged film being used in schools as a teaching aid; it didn't happen, at least not in his lifetime.

The term 'Visual Literacy' was coined in the 1960s, and coincided with the rapid development of Advertising in its various forms.

At the time I remember there was a great enthusiasm for technology about to solve all the worlds problems - particularly education. Single-Concept 8mm films would allow students to teach themselves; Audio-cassettes took over the language learning field, and Microfilm enabled you to have a library in your pocket.

Most of the equipment ended up in school cupboards unused because they were more bother than they were worth. Teachers like teaching, not setting up equipment so students can teach themselves; while students are often unmotivated for self-instruction.

My own opinion is that it needs a generation brought up on images before Visual Literacy can really take off. My generation (pre-war) had comics like the Beano and Dandy, and there were several illustrated magazines like 'Everybody's' around, but newspapers of the time had few photographs, and none in colour.

Children of the 1960s were in their twenties before personal computers were commonly around, and even those born in 1980s hasn't given a full generation of computer literates.

Visual Literacy suffers from an identity problem; comics, photo-mags, advertising, and the like are the most commonly quoted examples. But this is because 'Writing' is a core subject in schools while drawing/photography isn't.

Today's Blog is inspired by the fact that Google has just released its Literacy project:
http://www.google.com/literacy/ link which appears not to include Visual Literacy as far as I can see.

A good site to start with is the following one, aimed at Primary schools.
http://k-8visual.info/

My main interest is to teach Storyboarding as an introduction to movie making. The Wiki link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyboard explains the basis of it.

But storyboards can be used for just about any form of planning. I noticed one being used for a bank robbery in a movie.

Check out: Visual Literacy


Stan

Movement Notation

The name of Eadweard Muybridge is known to just about every animator; his books analysing motion in humans and animals have been the bible of the animation industry even today though they were published over a hundred years ago.

Dancers also use various forms of movement notation, and Choreologists work with Choreographers to record dance routines using such systems as the Labanotation and the Benesh method among others.

In 1958 Noah Eshkol and Abraham Wachman published a notation for describing movement based on a geometric concept, and was one of the systems used by NASA to see how astronauts would move in zero gravity.

When I started in animation I wondered if the two concepts of pictures and notation could be put together. On joining the Computer Arts Society ( www.computer-arts-society.org) in the early 1960s I met John Lansdowne, an architect who had an interest in ballet, and had created program that combined the ideas of pictures and notation.

His system had a set of numbered figures in various positions. By typing in the number sequence with the number of frames for each image you could create a dance sequence.
In those days you had to print out the images, but the concept was proved even though I am unaware of it ever being used seriously by dancers.

Things have moved on, and Motion Graphics allow movements to be recorded in real time. An example is at http://www.biomotionlab.ca/ which lets you to play around with some simple walk cycles.

If you want something better you might look at Poser 6 (http://www.poserworld.com/Home.aspx) which has libraries of figures ready to animate.

Muybridge would have been proud of his heritage.

Check out: Movement Notation

Stan