Doctor Horrible - Act One

"I hold a PHD in horrible-ness" ~ Dr. Horrible

Wowsie Wow Award to this...so funny and so awesome...
Watch ACT I
Watch ACT II
Watch ACT III

Here is the trailer...

Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog, is a three-part musical mini-series which will be available for free from July 15-20. The schedule is: Act I goes up on July 15, Act II on July 17, and Act III on July 19.


Dr Horrible tells the story of a would-be villain (Neil Patrick Harris) who dreams of joining the Evil League of Evil. He's thwarted by arch-nemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and by his affections for the girl from the laundrette (Felicia Day). There will be action. There will be singing. And you can sing along.

Free viewing finishes on July 20, but the whole 42 minutes can still be downloaded via subscription. After that, a DVD will be available. And - get this - even the DVD commentaries are planned to be in musical form.

Siggraph 2008 LA August 11 - August 15th

Siggraph 2008

I am so glad that Siggraph is in Los Angeles this year. I don't have to travel or get a hotel! Also, the new staff for Siggraph seem to be working very hard to make the show more accessible to artists and broader than just the white papers and the usual techie stuff. The theme EVOLVE for this year's show couldn't be more on point.

I love the new perspective on what the show should be about, in light of the evolution of the medium and more and more artists working in visual effects. CG Society has a great article covering many of the new things Siggraph is exploring this year...Check the article out! It's looking like it might even reflect more of what Massive Black has been doing in San Francisco with the show Insomania.


The show is actually Monday through Friday (August 11 - August 15th) this year, instead of the usual starting on a Sunday. This is really better for the exhibitors since most people just are not there on a Sunday.

Last year, I was working for Side Effects Software. I got a real "behind the scenes experience" of what it's like to be an exhibitor for Siggraph. It's exhausting, so be nice to anyone you see working the floor and bring them a water or buy them a beer if you see them out at night. Especially Leyla Tirgari or Cristin Barghiel - they are going to need it.

As far as speakers, it's no secret I am a HUGE fan of Ed Catmull. last time I had the opportunity to see him speak in person it was 1995 at NATE and he was talking about the revolutionary new tool - NURBS. Wowsie Wow, that was a whiel ago. Anyways he is on fo the featured speakers and I just might have to be a little under the weather that Monday morning for work, if I am not allowed to attend.

Ed Catmull - Feature Speaker at Siggraph 2008

SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair Terrence Masson says to prepares for Siggraph this year: Ask your vendors for Exhibit passes as always ... but Basic one-day passes are only $45 (deal of the century IMHO), one day Computer Animation Festival passes are also only $50.

More details :
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/registration/fees.php

BOF's are here :
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/birds/

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Siggraph Parties:

Houdini - No Party This Year :(
It's the end of an era.
Houdini always was known for the best
party of the year at Siggraph.
But, no more...


****************************************************
Siggraph Chapters Party

...going to be at Dodgers Stadium this year!
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/reception/



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Softimage User Event & Party
Where: Club 740
Tuesday, August 12th, 8:00PM – 1:00AM

Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles
Celebrate at one of L.A’s premier nightclubs.
Featuring the latest news from Softimage
and unforgettable guest performances, this event is sure
to be the talk of the show.
Space is limited – register now

That is all I can find at this time.

If you know of an event, let me know and I will add it to this posting.

Hitler gets banned from Xbox live

Funny...
Some foul language, but it's in German with subtitles.
Watch at your own risk.

Pixar Leaked Trailer

Funny...

Slow Mo Stuff

Not sure what is more interesting - the footage or the narrator!
The slap is insane!
Talk about heightened entertainment!

Seeing it with a camera up to 400fps.
-water balloon
-disposable lighter
-brick
-propane balloon
-slap
-crossbow
-soap bubble

All My Base Cake

Couldn't help myself...
I thought it was funny.
How geeky am I?

My Spore Character

This is gonna be addictive - I can tell.

The Uncanny Valley explained...

OMG - so funny!

For anyone who may have missed 30 Rock last week, here's the uncanny valley better articulated with the kind of references we can all understand (porn and Star Wars).

"The Uncanny Valley": Why Porn Video Games Suck [NSFW Fleshbot NSFW]

Dr. Steel - Beauty and Robots!

I have posted about Doctor Steel here before,
but I just had to again...

I heard a rumor that Dr. Steel actually worked for one of those BIG animation studios once. I wouldn't doubt it. Dr. Steel is like shaking a little Walt Disney, A little Steam Punk, A little Wylie Coyote and a just little bit of extra hot sauce together and shaking it up. Fantastic!

Kewl Robotic Stuff

How would like an R2D2 projector or a flying jellyfish?

We Feel Fine and I Want You To Want Me

I found the mix of Internet, graphics, animation,
social communities and communication so interesting.

We Feel Fine

We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.


The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.


The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles' properties – color, size, shape, opacity – indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. The particles careen wildly around the screen until asked to self-organize along any number of axes, expressing various pictures of human emotion. We Feel Fine paints these pictures in six formal movements titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.


At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what's on our blogs, what's in our hearts, what's in our minds. We hope it makes the world seem a little smaller, and we hope it helps people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life.

- Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar
May 2006




The interactive installation "I Want You To Want Me", by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, for their "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition.

I Want You To Want Me explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating. It chronicles the world's long-term relationship with romance, across all ages, genders, and sexualities, using real data collected from Internet dating sites every few hours.

The piece is presented on a 56" high-resolution touch-screen, hanging vertically on the wall, and was installed at MoMA on February 14, 2008, Valentine's Day.

TSNS Studios

TSNS Youtube Channel

TSN Studios, LLC (TSNS) has expanded its vanguard technologies to the film production, entertainment and gaming industries. Through the application of advanced Extreme Loading^® technology developed by its sister company Applied Science International, LLC (ASI), TSNS offers a brand new level of demolition visual effects realism.

TSNS offer you solutions for creating Organic Demolitions, Blasts, Impact, Collapse, Seismic Sims, and Glass Destruction.

1. Software Leasing: Currently the software is standalone, the output files are easily imported into popular film production tools for further processing. Originally it was designed for Engineers but is easy to learn and Animators have complete control of the process and interface. We are in the process of creating a strictly animators version.
2. VFX/CGI and Live Film Project Services: Our services include Demolition Pre-visualization, Live Set Replacement, Multiple Scenarios, Model Optimization and Unlimited Camera Angles. If you have a project that involves demolition we would subcontract to you.
3. Production Pipeline Integration: Develop a partnership with your Studio and working our technology into your Studio’s VFX production pipeline for the greatest benefit (Every studio has different requirements).

The TSNS Technology gives you a model in the modeling environment format with all the key frames on each of the broken pieces. You can then color, texture, add smoke/fire, etc. You have full control of the outcome.

www.tsns.com

You can download examples to play with in Maya, 3DS, and Softimage at http://www.tsnstudios.com/Gear.aspx.

For further inquiries, contact salesinquiries@tsns.com

Sony Imageworks Peeps Are Talented

Those Sony peeps can dance!

Houdini For the Mac

Houdini Needs Beta Testers!

March 31, 2008 - Side Effects Software is pleased to announce the Houdini for Mac beta program. With the recent redesign of the Houdini UI, Houdini has become much more artist-friendly, making it a great fit for the Mac. At the same time, Apple’s switch to Intel processors provides Houdini artists with a wealth of processing power.

Check out the short film Pop Quiz

If you are a regular reader...you might remember my time last summer working for Houdini. Never in all my years in CG have I met a harder working team of people. To see more of what Houdini can do - check out their online Gallery!

Houdini also now has a Youtube Channel...
Below is the little animation I did for
Houdini's 20th Anniversary

I LOVE the cows in the tree! It's so practical! :)

And this demo was a big hit at the 2007 Siggraph

Magnetic Movie

Magnetic Movie by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt is really interesting. They have illustrated in 3D what magnetic fields look like.

Magnetic Movie

Hot Chip Rocks Friday!

Awesome awesomeness...

Kickstand: FACELIFT

Wowsie Wow...
I am really impressed with these plug-ins!

The best part is - Face Lift is designed to respect the anatomy of the skull using collision objects. You can adjust what the effectors control easily and add collision objects without making the rig really heavy.

Stretch mesh would be great to show the eyeball changing the shape of the eyelid as it looks around. The possibilities are endless.

Nothing drives me more nuts than when parts of the face are moving that are located in the "hard surface" areas where the skin is very close to the skull - like cheekbones, temple and chin. This tool looks like it will help make a dummy proof rig for animators who start moving stuff all over the face turning it to goo. Even Cartoony character animation has to respect anatomy.

Can't wait to see this plug-in for myself.

Kickstand

Crayon Physics

Awesome...Crayon Physics....

New Generations of 3D

Although this video is a bit old declaring that James Cameron's new 3D film - Avatar is due to be released in mid 2007, it does explain a bit about his new camera and techniques for achieving a 3D stereoscopic film.


The video below is really neato where this guy hacks a Wii remote using the infrared camera in the remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs) to accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual 3D environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space.

Christian Cenizal

I am fascinated by McSmarties in our industry. I think because I just don't understand how people make images with lines of code. It simply blows my mind.

I got a taste of this kind of technical artist - BIG TIME - working for Side FX Software, but this guy blows my mind. He works with me at Motion Theory and just writes all this kewl flocking, procedural stuff for fun.

Check out CJ's Blog.