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.

COLOR

Hi there everyone.

Today I want to share a link about color science.

Maybe you have heard of Khan Academy, they offer online courses for free.

In this course they teamed up with Pixar to really go in on this subject and help bring light to the phenomenon that is color.

Here is the Khan Academy link.

Color is such a big deal in story telling, and really has the ability to change the mood and feel of your work.

Although Color Science can become quite mathematical and dry, I think it is good to think about color science occasionally.

Color is this seemingly normal thing we take in everyday, but it really is quite a mystery. I think it is valuable to remember this when crafting any digital media.

Felix Colgrave - Surrealism Animation with Flash

Felix Colgrave is an Australian animation artist who exclusively produces with Adobe Animate and Adobe Photoshop.   He is known for creating surreal or "trippy" animated shorts that often include elements of dark humor.
 He has produced episodes for the television series "Party Legends" on Vice and many independent online shorts. He also is currently working with Comedy Central on some upcoming projects.  Felix has also designed in game animations for several titles including"Fallout 4". However, Felix is probably best known for his Youtube video creations.
 Felix first joined Youtube in 2008 and his first video to reach over one million views was "Shoe - EGG (official music video)". Since then his popularity has grown with over 10 million views of his animated videos.
I find his work to be very entertaining and somewhat mesmerizing due to his attention to detail and the extreme exaggeration within his designs.

Felix Colgrave Website

Felix Colgrave Clipshow

Studio MDHR/Cuphead

Studio MDHR is a fairly new company established in 2013 

founded by 2 brothers Chad & Jared Moldenhauer. They mortgaged their homes, quit their jobs, and signed up for Microsoft's ID@Xbox as a publisher. Even though they dont have much to their name all they needed was one game to put their names on the map. Cuphead was studio MDHR's first and only game so far. They won three major awards at the DICE awards; The Game Award for Best Art Direction, The Game Award for Best Independent Game, The Game Award for Best Debut Indie Game. 

                                                                                                      

Cuphead is a classic run and gun action game primary focused on big boss battles. It is inspired by cartoons from the 1930's, but with the inspiration also comes the workload. The audio and visuals are made with the same techniques they used for animations in that era, by using traditional hand drawn cell animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings.The soundtrack was composed by Kris Maddington and performed by 42 musicians, including a 13-piece big band orchestra and various soloists and ragtime pianists. The game was created with a team of only 20 people. In addition to hand drawn cells they also made 3D models for some fights. I chose to talk about Studio MDHR because I feel that with their game Cuphead  was a perfect way to bring the style of classic golden age animation into the modern age.

New Media-Technology: ’Tilt Brush’ & ‘Occulus Medium’

Tilt Brush ($29.99) and Occulus Medium ($19.99) are two apps that you can purchase which allow the user to create three-dimensional pieces of artwork using either the Occulus Rift or HTC Vive virtual reality gear.

Tilt Brush allows you to create fully immersive pieces of art and installations that are room-scale, or if you rather stay seated you can scale down and rotate your canvas while you work. Tilt Brush also provides you with a virtual palette that comes with a variety of brushes and tools which you can work with in layers; you can even add environments like a night sky or space constellation to your pieces. When exporting & sharing your work you can choose to share your pieces room-scale or as small, animated GIFs.

Occulus Medium is another similar virtual reality art application, however, where Tilt Brush is more of a v.r 3D painting app, Medium is more of a v.r 3D sculpting app, but you can still paint in it. Medium also provides a couple cool features on it that Tilt Brush doesn’t offer yet, such as being able to save and print your artwork into actuall tangible pieces of art if you have access to a 3D printer. Another cool feature Medium has is that you can collaborate and share with other users in real-time.

/https://www.tiltbrush.com

https://www.oculus.com/medium/

The Animator's Survival Kit

The Animator’s Survival Kit was written by Richard Williams, the animator who directed and designed many characters in the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” which helped initiate a renaissance for animated Disney movies throughout the 90s. Companies like Disney, Dreamworks, and Industrial Light send animators to mentor under him as he is considered the link between hand-drawn Golden Age animation and computer animations. Having been in the animation industry for 50 years, he has mentored many new generations of animators, and he is still alive to this day. In the book, he shares knowledge about the principles of animation, insight about what animation used to be like, and many examples of how to make characters move.  He learned from animators at Disney how to animate during the Golden Age. One of those animators, Milt Thomas said “Our animation differs from anyone else’s because it is believable. Things have weight and the characters have muscles and we’re giving the illusion of reality.” The author gives the readers tips they may otherwise not think of such acting in order to draw movement or taking figure drawing classes in order to have learn how to draw people and anthropomorphic creatures. An animator named Emile Cohl said something that inspired him, “Don’t do what the camera can do - do what the camera can’t do.” In other words, the characters should do unbelievable things with believable motion. Williams reflects back on animation’s history and many memories he has studying great animators and telling their stories.

Not only does he explain principles of animation, but also uses examples that are very helpful and allow you think about things that you might miss. Here, Williams shows us that when easing the action of pointing, you have to be mindful of the curve of the finger in order for it to look life like and believable. He also shows us how movements are more life-like drawn in an arc.

He goes into other topics that also advance the animator's ability to create believable movement such as overlapping action. Different parts of the body move at different times.Things like hair and long ears don't catch up to subject until it has settled for a little bit just like the cheeks and ears on this bulldog.

Here, Williams shows the animator how far he/she can push the principle of anticipation. He mentions antics, accents, and a settling position after the action is completed. As you go down each row of drawings show here, you can see how the animation becomes more exaggerated to clearly express the emotions felt by the character.

These are only a few pages from the Animator's Survival Kit and there is a lot of information in this book. While it is important to understand the media you are working with and stay updated on new technology, it is also important to understand the universal concepts that you can apply to any software.

Survive!

The modern video gaming world has currently been taken over by popular titles such as Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) and Fortnite. These types of games are part of a new emerging genre named "battle royal games". These types of games pit large numbers of players in an open sandbox map. The players start with virtually zero items and are forced to scurry around in the beginning stages of the game searching for items that can better their character. The items that can be found are randomly generated, and therefore adding a unique dynamic to the entire experience. Unlike other games in the past that focused on continuously gearing up a character that gave you an overall advantage over your opponents, Fortnite and PUBG allow a brand new player the chance to drop into their first match and potentially dominate with some lucky drops.

With battle royal games being so popular right now, nearly everyone is starting to fall into the trap of trying these games out at a friends house and being hooked right away.  Without owning ansurviv.io Xbox, PlayStation, or high-end gaming computer it is hard to play these titles without lag or crashing. Luckily someone went ahead and created a Flash spin-off of the game that can be played on nearly any browser. Instead of focusing on detailed drawings and sounds, the creator decided to focus on the core aspects of the game instead. By replicating the random drops, weapons, and power-ups, a player gets the same feel they get when coming across an extremely powerful item on the console platforms.

Surviv.io

HAUS Design

For my Exploration I chose to explore HAUS, a design firm based in Los Angeles, CA. This design firm stood out to me because both their website and the websites that they create are riddled with fun and engaging visuals and animations. As soon as you enter the website you are instantly introduced to their style of design. The main page includes a brief statement of who they are and what they do, then these animated characters begin to appear. As you roll your mouse over or near each one, they each display their own reaction. I found this very intriguing and effective because right off the bat you discover who they are and how they design while also having some fun.

Their projects usually have a campaign style format where they have a specific theme or story. They first determine the target audience, then they move on to determine the sorts of devices that will be used to consume the media they produce in order to tailor the interactive interfaces. Each project involves animation and interactivity to make each user connects with the campaign. Their methods really make their sites easy and fun to use while also creating a lasting impression. 

https://madeinhaus.com/