CNet UK has a nice little info-video online (Perhaps we need a new word?) chronicling the history of the iPhone from inception to the iPhone 5 (Which wound up being the 4S actually).
Watch out for the number of transistors inside an iPhone 4, which we compare to an early Intel chip. It’ll blow your mind — and help explain why the whole world thinks it’s normal to be able to find out where the nearest good pizza restaurant is while watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster and tweeting about it.
A surprisingly good combination of information & motion graphics here, makes for a fun watch.
An interesting bit intelligent software from IMAX and Janro Imaging Labs tries to assign 3d stereoscopic depth information to classic 2D cell animation processes with surprising success.
As you move the Wand, the Sandde system tracks its position and orientation. Sandde then interprets the Wand’s coordinate data to create and display 3D stereoscopic lines that correspond to your real-world movements. And all of this outputs in real-time to any 3D display, so that you can see your work in 3D as you draw it.
FXGuide talks to two of the guys behind some of this year’s SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival entries, including some great details with Damian Nenow on his impressive geometric clouds in 3dsMax.
Most people would do clouds now as volumetric renders, but I didn’t want to use a volumetric solution because it’s hard to control them and know the final shape. So I created them first as low-poly geometry based clouds. Then, using the Vertex Color Tool in Max, which is an almost forgotten tool, I could use the vertex color data to illuminate the clouds in the way I wanted.
The way it worked was I created these low poly elements, then covered them with thousands of sprites. They had alpha channel textures on them. You can then add photorealistic textures, like photographs of fragments of actual clouds, or you can add hand-drawn ones, which is what I did. So that’s why they look pictorial. I was able to get very fast render times – between 10 to 30 seconds just using a simple scanline renderer.
The Vertex Color tool is far from forgotten in Scientific visualization arenas, we use it regularly here. I can easily see how it’s not particularly useful amongst “normal” animation people tho.
SIGGRAPH has posted their preview video of this year’s Computer Animation Festival, showcasing the best of short films, visual effects, and video games in the last year. I recognize some slips from projects like Portal2 and a few movies, but much of it looks brand new and exciting this year!
Looks like we get a little sneak peak of Pixar’s newest short “La Luna”, to be premiered at the upcoming Annecy International Animation Festival this June.
“La Luna is the timeless fable of a young boy who is coming of age in the most peculiar of circumstances. Tonight is the very first time his Papa and Grandpa are taking him to work. In an old wooden boat they row far out to sea, and with no land in sight, they stop and wait,” reads the synopsis.
“A big surprise awaits the little boy as he discovers his family’s most unusual line of work. Should he follow the example of his Papa, or his Grandpa? Will he be able to find his own way in the midst of their conflicting opinions and timeworn traditions?”
FlowingData brings us a neat animation created by Waze, Gray Area Foundation, and Nik Hanselmann showing 24-hours of traffic in Los Angeles.
It starts at 5pm, right in the middle of rush hour, slows down in the late hours, and then of course picks up again around 7am, as people commute to work. Red dots indicate high levels of traffic and green dots indicate hazards, which I assume are accidents. Watch the day unfold in the video below.
I assume most of this data comes from Waze’s mobile app for navigation. They allow users to contribute information on accidents and hazards, as well as tracking traffic usage and merging in other external sources. I’m not sure what the “flashing” roads mean in the visualization tho. Ideas?
In April, the Citrus Cel Animation festival will be underway in Jacksonville, FL, showing off some great animation work including 2011 Academy Award Nominee “The Lost Thing”.
We are counting down the days for the next installment of the Citrus Cel Animation Film Festival. Things are getting exciting! So many great entries are coming in and special guests are committing. We are looking forward to celebrating animation as a cultural and commercial medium with three days of screenings, contests, parties, special guests, and panels here in Jacksonville, Florida.
A great short film from Andrew S Allen tells the dramatized story of the Thomas Beale Cipher, a famous legend that encrypts the location of a huge cache of gold. The film is part historical, part drama, and simply beautiful to watch.
Using pioneering animation techniques to create a look never seen on film before, this 10-minute award-winning film tells the true legend of history’s most challenging cipher. Professor White, cryptographer extraordinaire, is on the trail of the notoriously uncrackableThomas Beale cipher—a century-old riddle hiding the location of a fortune in gold that has tormented its pursuers since inception. But White is not alone—shadowyforces are tight on his tail.
It’s been almost 18 months, but the animated short ‘Cat Shit One’, the epic tale of two bunnies in wartime, is now coming to English audiences for free viewing on YouTube this February.
A group of desert terrorists kidnap civilians. A team of rabbit commandos, Packy and Botasky, from the Carrot Military Service, a private military company, witness a murder of an escaping hostage. Afraid that the rest of the hostages will undergo the same situation, the team demands backup. However, the backup arrival time will be too late for the hostages. ‘Their lives are in our hands!’ Without any other options, the rabbit commandos charge for the enemy line on their own.
The film hasn’t performed as well as hoped in it’s native country of Japan, but seems it could do quite well here stateside. Check out the new english trailer below, and you’ll be able to see it on Youtube and buy it on BluRay and DVD via Amazon next week. The animation is good, but the lip-syncing is a bit off (probably due to the translation). Skip to the 1:20 mark to bypass the opening promo for some action figures.
To generate some buzz for the 4th Ice Age Movie “Continental Drift”, 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios created a new short with everyone’s favorite little squirrel Scrat who remains in pursuit of that same acorn. Shown first along with Gulliver’s Travels, it’s now online for all to view.
CNet UK has a nice little info-video online (Perhaps we need a new word?) chronicling the history of the iPhone from inception to the iPhone 5 (Which wound up being the 4S actually).
An interesting bit intelligent software from IMAX and Janro Imaging Labs tries to assign 3d stereoscopic depth information to classic 2D cell animation processes with surprising success.
FXGuide talks to two of the guys behind some of this year’s SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival entries, including some great details with Damian Nenow on his impressive geometric clouds in 3dsMax.
SIGGRAPH has posted their preview video of this year’s Computer Animation Festival, showcasing the best of short films, visual effects, and video games in the last year. I recognize some slips from projects like Portal2 and a few movies, but much of it looks brand new and exciting this year!
Looks like we get a little sneak peak of Pixar’s newest short “La Luna”, to be premiered at the upcoming Annecy International Animation Festival this June.
FlowingData brings us a neat animation created by Waze, Gray Area Foundation, and Nik Hanselmann showing 24-hours of traffic in Los Angeles.
In April, the Citrus Cel Animation festival will be underway in Jacksonville, FL, showing off some great animation work including 2011 Academy Award Nominee “The Lost Thing”.
A great short film from Andrew S Allen tells the dramatized story of the Thomas Beale Cipher, a 
To generate some buzz for the 4th Ice Age Movie “Continental Drift”, 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios created a new short with everyone’s favorite little squirrel Scrat who remains in pursuit of that same acorn. Shown first along with Gulliver’s Travels, it’s now online for all to view.
VizWorld.com 
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