Realism in todays CGI

It is amazing how realistic animation and CGI is looking now a days. It's only a matter of time before it truly becomes hard to know whats real and whats not.

Here are some examples below of projects currently going on.

Work in progress, hand-made with Lightwave, Sculptris and Krita, composited with Davinci Resolve Lite.

Los Platanos // Ten Turned to Two // Mortis Studio

MORTIS STUDIO

Mortis-Studio is a creative agency specializing in analog & digital design. They offer an array of creative services ranging from print and packaging to SFX and VFX.

CLIENT LIST:
ADULT SWIM
Road Runner Records
Crap Eyewear
Sony
WeAreAwesome inc.
Urban Outfitters
Stussy
Obey Records
Castle Face Records
Thrill Me records
Dine Alone
Swami Records
Burger Records
Small Plates
Electric Orange Studio 

 This is my friends company that I hired to shoot a music video for my band Los Platanos. They use animation in addition to green screen and other styles and effects. Due to the unfortunate loss of my brother shortly after filming, the video took much longer to finish and was done under budget so it turned out the way it did. I still think they did an amazing job with what they had to work with. Please check it out and share it if you like. Thank you!   

SERVICES:
-Advertising
-Animation
-Art Direction
-Babysitting
-Creative Direction
-Digital Content
-Event Design
-Graphic Design
-Illustration
-Music Videos
-Print Design
-Promotional Materials
-Special Effects
-Storyboards
-Type Design
-Video Direction
-Video Production
-Visual Effects
-Visual Identity

NETWORK:
We love collaboration and welcome new projects. Our doors are always open for comments or general inquiry. Drop us an email, give us a call or find us online.

EMAIL:info@mortisstudio.com
INSTAGRAM: @mortis_studio
TEL: 1.978.786.5077

UENO

A digital marketing company based in a few locations around the world. I really like them because they make simple straight forward sites and animations while also having them be fun. They made a bunch of nice looking sites but I'll try to just show you the animations


UENO

The first is an team up with another animation studio to do a rebranding of some kind of independent pharmacy company. They have cute little animations for whats generally a boring subject.

https://ueno.co/work/prescribewellness


The second is some kind of Santa tracker app/interactive thing(?). It's a bit barren and unusable now but it looks like as the days go by in December more interactions are unlocked. Unfortunately it's April so nothings open. But the video I provide probably gives an idea into what they were going for when they created it.

https://santatracker.google.com/village.html

Probably my favorite thing they've done is their interactive interview site where you click on little avatars and meet various people at the company. It's hard to describe the experience but it's silly, quirky, and shows that the company doesn't take itself too seriously.

https://interview.ueno.co/

BUCK

Buck is a design company located in LA, New York, and Sydney.

It consists of a team of artists, designers, and storytellers who collaborate together into creating works for advertisements, broadcasts, film, and entertainment industries.

I came across this powerful animation that was a 24/hour counseling service for young people. I felt the combination of animated typography and sounds to be brilliant.

ChildLine - First Step

Other works they have done were a little more lighter, such as having done ads for the iMac Pro.

iMac Pro Ad

And last was an ad for Tinder which I found was pretty funny.

Tinder - Invention of Together

They use a wide range of medias to express their works. Either 3D graphics, stop-motion, rotoscoping, Buck's design is open for all types of art styles and animations.


More of their work can be found Here.  

Nurture Digital

Design Exploration

Nurture Digital created a website with eye-catching animations and satisfying transitions. It is a company that creates videos, sites, and mobile apps for marketing and branding purposes, and this is clearly reflected in their website. Their opening front page starts with a looped animation that displays the process of what drives their business. It’s highly responsive; as soon as you roll over text within the animation, a section of it becomes more vibrant and it immediately underlines itself. When you roll away, the vibrant section of the animation returns to its desaturated state and the underline smoothly returns to oblivion. When you click click on one of the text buttons, a page pops up with a brief description about the topic with an obvious “X” to click out of the description.

If you click their drop down menu, it is not conventional, because the drop down selection takes up half the web page, but it adds a pleasant amount of empty space with easy to read text such as “About”, “Contact”, etc.

When you click the “about” page, the loading icon appears, and it is their logo with a loading circle orbiting it. It is a pleasant way to add extra branding to a space that might otherwise just say loading. The number “22” appears in large text that is masked so that a video can play within the number and there is a large dot that is also masked and follows your cursor so that you can reveal certain parts of the video too.

Once again, the description in the “about” page was short and to the point just like in their front page. If this website did not have animation and interactivity included, it would still be a very well-designed site, however that interactivity within it adds and extra punch that makes it stand out more than other sites. One way I noticed that they keep their website stimulating is by putting making moving content/video on one half or two-thirds of the screen while the other side is text. The section with text often allows you to scroll while to the moving content stays in place, but once again it's always brief. The downside to this is that the client might not get all the information they are looking for, but nonetheless it is an impressive website that shows rather than tells. They don't try too hard to pitch cheesy copywriting at you, Nurture Digital's website makes their skill level clear through video, animation, and interactivity.

-Mia Snyder

Framestore

Framestore

https://www.framestore.com/Framestore is a studio founded in London's Soho in 1986 they create stunning visual effects for hollywood movies. they also have work in advertising. they have recently won a Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 90th Academy Awards, for its work on Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049. 

Framestore has worked on multiple movies including the upcoming Avengers infinity war and they have also worked on animated movies like Christopher robin and Paddington.

Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli

Hayao Miyazaki is a well known animator and co-founder of Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki had an interest in manga and animation at a young age. In 1963 he started working at Toei animation as an inbetween artist. Later in 1985 Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli and directed several films such as Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service.

In this interview Miyazaki explains his idea behind the film, The Wind Rises.  https://www.awn.com/animationworld/the-hayao-miyazaki-interview

Many of Miyazaki’s films emphasized on themes such as environmentalism, love and family.

Studio Ghibli’s animation techniques are traditional and all frames are hand drawn as Hayao Miyazaki believes that ‘hand drawing is the fundamental of animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaO2HEkC_qQ   In this video it shows Kazuo Oga paint a background painting. I thought this is really fascinating to see how the artist use techniques and puts in really intricate details in the painting.

I think what sets Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s work apart from others is the storytelling is very unique. Each film has a theme, the theme isnt obvious or told in the film, its subtle in a way. For example in Spirited Away the film focuses on a coming of age theme and you can see a change from the main character from when she was introduced to the end, the main character develops throughout the story. The character designs are very interesting as well and it adds more to the whole style to Studio Ghibli’s and Miyazaki’s work. The artwork and the animation also has a very unique style. The animation is very smooth and life like. The animation is very detailed to the artwork and the animation. Its because of the traditional way of animating by hand that makes it as smooth and dynamic.

Artist/Studio/Resources Exploration

Animator Guild is a website ran by a young animator Howard Wimshurst that contains various videos and tutorials all dedicated to Animation; and the reason why I wanted to share it is because he uses Animate CC. If you want full access to all the features like sound effects packs you have to pay for a membership, however most of the tutorials and videos are free and also available on YouTube.

Stylistically he has a loose, sketch-like style that really plays well into what he does, which from what I’ve seen, is fast-paced action scenes with a lot of dynamic camera movement. One downside to some of his videos is that sometimes he tends to go off and ramble more about the philosophical aspects of creating and animating, like industry advice such as how to handle harsh criticism, overcoming art frustration, and if 2D Animation is a dying industry. All that extra information can be off putting to those who just want to figure out how to particularly do something; but, if you’re into that kind of stuff I think you’ll find his tutorials and discussions very interesting.

animatorguild

howardwimshurst.com

YouTube Channel

Artificial Rome

When I first clicked on this site it seemed rather wordy, but would interested me was the short clips. It took me a few hours and breaks because of my short attention span, but after going further and further into their work I was amazed by this kind of technology. Artificial Rome works on several kinds of projects. Some on their own and some partnered with other companies. They break barriers with a lot of the things they do so they have ti begin from complete scratch and make new codes made using mathematical problems. Their work spans from mobile apps to large installations.

Here is a short clip for one of the installations called Siemens Home.

http://www.artificialrome.com/siemenshome/

AR used anamorphic 3d mapping so and a camera tracking system to be able to accomplish the main goal which was for the single viewer to not have to follow the scene but rather it follow and surround him.

Another one of their projects that got my attention was the Kia GT Ride. This game has been made in a large version and has been compressed to be played a smaller scale as well
http://www.artificialrome.com/kia-gt-ride.html

Some History on Computer Animation

Ivan Sutherland using Sketchpad in 1962

Sutherland's demonstrating Sketchpad

   














 
     Created by the MIT Lincoln laboratory, Sketchpad was a program developed by Ivan Sutherland as a design tool. Sketchpad became the first program ever to utilize a complete user interface, paving the way for human computer interaction. One of the breakthrough features of the program was that it utilized geometric constraints which allowed the user to easily change geometric properties of a drawing such as being able to change the length and angle between two lines.


Humming Bird 

Created by Charles Csuri in 1967, Humming Bird became one of the first computer animations to include digital morphing.

CCP demo

Csuri quickly became one of the first people to discover the computers potential for making art and in 1971 he established a computer graphics research group at Ohio State University. By 1981 he established Cranston/Csuri Productions after teaming up with an investment firm called the Cranston group. They became a computer animation production group that animated logos for channels such as abc news, abc sports, nbc, and many others.

Csuri Project Website

By the late 1980s, computer animations had begun to take a shift from being made on expensive mainframe computers to cheaper desktop computers with 3D capabilities, a change that helped spring many competing production houses. With Alias being one of the new breakthrough programs, animators were now able to render photo realistic animations into their films such as the t1000 from Terminator 2 and the Jurassic Park dinosaurs

Bonus:
Slow death of flash 


Throughout my childhood and elementary school days i remember there being a time where it seemed like flash games ruled the world. With websites like Crazy Monkey games, addicting games, gamesloth, new grounds, mini clip, etc, It almost seemed like flash games were all over the place at one point. What set these games apart from all others was the fact that the people making them weren't game developers by any means. They were ordinary people like you and me who had the passion and curiosity of making a game for themselves. Nowadays the massive growth of handheld devices and apps have caused many to stray away from flash games. But that doesn't mean we can't still appreciate them and the great times they've brought to our lives.

Dave Donut

Dave Donut is a French artist who creates animations using flash. The majority of his work is short, simple videos. You can find his videos on his YouTube, David Besnier. 

Some of those works include:


Rabbit Advice

Discocoin

It's Quite Refreshing

He is not necessarily a huge artist, as he is not well known and, from what I understand, does not do these for a living. He is simply a simple guy who likes to make animations, and I think that's just fine.

His videos are entertaining to watch, and his understanding and execution of flash is amazing to me, as I am still stumbling along with animation.

My absolute favorite media he has put out, however, has to be his interactive banner, found on his Blogger profile.

Banner

It is fun to play around with and everything does something! So, overall, I think he is a great artist and great at flash and making animation. He definitely shows that he has extensive knowledge on what we are/have been learning in class!

Some History of Disney Cartoon Animation

Hey everyone,

Today I'm going to share with you all some of the techniques used in the beginning with cartoon animation

Disney in the Start

The Process in 1936

Disney's invention of the multiplane camera was a groundbreaking achievement in film, enhancing the feeling of depth in traditional animation. This video showcases Walt's explanation of how the camera works from the "Tricks of Our Trade" episode of Disneyland, which aired February 13, 1957.

This Technique was used for 70 years by Disney! Here is a boat load of examples of their work.

The amount of work they use to do for a 10min bit is amazing compared to what tools we have available today to use. 

They could have 300 people working on one cartoon.

Technology has now made is so much easier too create animation with powerful computers and software. While there are still a lot of "hand drawn" aspects in there animation today. Disney did shut down there hand drawn production section. 

Here is Why

Here is an example of production of "Moana" 

A cartoon animation by Disney from 2016, 80 years later.

Here is a bonus video explaining the 5 types animation types there is!

AI | Holograms | Fractals

Hi there class,

Today I want to share with you a broad range of resources, things, and ideas.

First, here is a great article about Elon Musks company Neuralink.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

This is a very well written piece and also quite long of an article. The first time I came across this I spent about 3 hours going in on it.

Essentially this is brain machine interface technology. The foundation needed for cyborgs.

This next link here is about holograms and the ability to interact with people who are no longer alive.

https://news.usc.edu/54019/a-survivor-for-the-ages/

Artificial intelligence to preserve history in a personality...

Now here is something silly using a rudimentary form of this technology. Kinda strange, but also interesting. Will probably be a good marker as the beginning of this technology.

Okay, carrying on now...

I imagine someday this breathing app idea will be linked with artificial intelligence.

http://ayny.org/breathing-app/

Now this seems relevant to the topic... Black Mirror... a tv show ... but this scene specifically...

This book is relevant to this conversation too.... FEED by MT Anderson. The "1984" of this generation. 1984 is a book by George Orwell.

https://www.amazon.com/Feed-M-T-Anderson/dp/0763662623

Okay, heres a curve ball... This is essentially the organic origins of visual effects and the ability for computers to create stunning real life imagery from fractal geometry.

Arthur C Clark hosting Fractals the colors of infinity with Mandelbrot.

Visual effects studios...

https://www.ilm.com/in-production/

https://www.digitaldomain.com/

https://www.technicolor.com/

Visual effects software...

https://www.autodesk.com/products/flame/

https://www.autodesk.com/products/smoke/overview

Flame is amazing and does so much more than After Effects can. If I could go back in time I would start to learn Flame, and Smoke at a young age.

And last but not least...

A great piece about visual story telling...

Rafaël Rozendaal: Collection

Rafaël Rozendaal is a visual artist whose canvas is the internet. He has a collection of websites where each one has a unique animation he created, and some allow its viewers to interact with the media. He is one of the first artists to sell websites to art collectors as actual art objects. 

A sample of his website works are:

Interactive Rain 

Interactive Color Explosion

Interactive Hand

He has many, many other websites on his primary website, as well as his other works such as haiku poetry, and samples from his exhibitions.

https://www.newrafael.com/websites/

While not all are interactive media, they are entertaining and almost mesmerizing to look at.

Powerhouse Animation Studio

www.powerhouseanimation.com

Powerhouse Animation Studio is a multimedia animation studio based in Austin, TX. Powerhouse was started on April 1, 2001 as a privately held animation studio by Frank Gabriel, Brad Graeber, and Bruce Tinnin. Powerhouse produces film, television, and game animation. Among other services include making commercials, video game cinemas, character designs, storyboards, animatics, and flash games. They have a large variety of different services including traditional animation, flash animation, pixel art animation and many other services. Other services include helping in character design, storyboards and design. Powerhouse's mission statement is “To better humanity through the miracle of traditional animation and space-age multimedia technology; to promote truth, justice, and commerce through cartoons.” bringing their skills together to accomplish this. The amount of different creative services Powerhouse offer is staggering and something I've not seen in other production companies.

Powerhouse's client list include Disney, Netflix, ESPN, and are commissioned to work with some of the world's most important brands: Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics. Powerhouse has produced animated game assets and video game cinemas for many Game companies including Volition on their game Agents of Mayhem working on all the cinematic cut scenes.

Agents of Mayhem

In 2016 Powerhouse was contacted by Frederator to make their first major series in Castlevania. Based on the game series started in 1986 the 2016 Castlevania focuses on Trevor Belmot taking up arms against Dracula and his evil army.

Castlevania

Interknowlogy | VSBLTY | XENOHolographic

Virtual Reality, VR is most suited for gaming use cases.  When wearing a VR headset you see nothing of the outside world.  You most certainly cannot do any of the functions of real life like driving a car when wearing a VR Headset.  Your view to the real world is completely occluded …blocked…when wearing a VR headset

Augmented Reality is where virtual objects or holograms appear in the real world.  Augmented reality devices don’t occlude your vision from doing the normal functions of the real world like walking.  Pokemon Go is a good example of an augmented reality game where middle aged men walk through the park looking for virtual objects amidst the real trees and bushes and stretches of grass or fields that would be typical of a park.

Mixed Reality is the bold promise of Augmented Reality.  MR has all the features of augmented reality.  You can drive a car while wearing mixed reality glasses.  But, the virtual objects in MR are interactive.   Lets stay with the car metaphor.  You are driving and you are wearing an MR device.  And you say, ‘Mickey Mantle in the Passenger seat.”  or Maurice Richard….  And he appears next to you sitting in the passenger seat and he’s wearing a Habs jersey.  And you say, “rocket, where is the closest Putin that is decent and how to I get there?”  and then richard functions like a GPS with yelp like ratings help to talk you throught getting there.

Lets skip ML for the minute and go to AI.  And let’s stay with the Rocket Richard metaphor. 

Artificial intelligence in this use case would be driving towards the putine restaurant and asking Maurice Richard a question like, “hey, rocket, what was your favorite year in hockey?”  and the interactive hologram of Maurice Richard would answer back, “Well, Mark, most people would think it was the 44/45 season where I scored 50 goals in the first 50 games.  But, really my favorite years were those 5 straight Stanley cups between 56 and 60.”

Another example of AI in the Rocket Richard metaphor would be the ability for the Maurice Richard interactive hologram to see with computer vision.  Rocket may say something like, “You really should have stopped at that red light.  You cut that one awfully close and you cannot afford another ticket.”

Machine learning paved the way for all this amazing high tech.  And the machine learning revolution has really just started.  It has exploded in the last couple years and that is because we have so much processing power in the cloud that is inexpensive to use.   In the richard use case Machine Learning provides the ability for us to build traffic light classifiers that can be recognized by computer vision.  It facilitates the interactive hologram of Maurice Richard to answer questions in context in a human way  like “my favorite year was actually a grouping of years.”

Today, and as far as XenoHolographic is concerned we are not talking about Virtual Reality and we are not building solutions for the Virtual Reality industry.  AR, MR, AI and ML, however, are very important to the software that Xeno is bringing to market.