animation

Using Keynote As a Motion Graphics Tool

Bill Keaggy just posted on the XPLANE blog about using Apple’s Keynote presentation software to make motion graphics and movies. We’ve found that in some cases, a Keynote-authored video is what you might call the “good enough” solution. […] Keynote lets you create and edit presentations, make things move, is ridiculously easy to learn and exports […] » about 100 words

Tankmen

Tankmen is funny, no doubt, but I wonder what it means when we’re deeply embroiled in two of the longest running armed conflicts of US history that we find it so easy to make comedy about war.

CSS Transformations in Safari/WebKit (and Chrome too?)

The cool browsers support radius corners, but Safari supports CSS transformations that allow developers to scale, skew, and rotate objects on the page like we’re used to doing in PostScript. And better than that, we can animate those transformations over time — all without any JavaScript.

Fire up Safari or Chrome and mouse over the examples here. The screencast at the top is from the menu on that page. There are, obviously, better uses for these transforms, but it’s easy to see it at work there. Also see this screencast. It shows a rendering error, but it’s a better use of the tech.

Now kick it up a notch with 3d transforms. They only work on the iPhone and iPod touch for now, but they’re quite nifty. See these examples: one, two. Paul Bakaus offers more detail, and Matthew Congrove offers this example of flick navigation.

Charlie The Unicorn

Meg was never shy about asking me what rock I was found under when I stunned her with my complete ignorance of major pop culture touchstones, so I put my mind to it and after significant remedial work I thought I’d caught up. But, no.

I’d not seen this video and only discovered it when Blyberg pointed at it as an icon of network-enabled pop culture.

The Candy Mountain video has been circulating for almost a year now and it’s a prime example of how network effects are allowing society to disseminate, in this case, popular culture, and ultimately the bulk of information deemed “important” by our fellow citizens

Indeed, my 17 year old nephew laughed when he learned I’d not seen it, lording it over me in the sort of superior way teenagers do when they discover they’ve just won a game on a walk.

Update Matty thinks he’s all that because he posted the video in January. My nephew would still laugh at him, though, as he claims he saw it a year ago.

Flipbook Animation

I love this flipbook animation on YouTube (jump ahead to about 3:05 for it), even if the live-action preface is somewhat tiresome. And even with that, it still doesn’t rate as bad as some viewers think it is.

This is the “making of” / behind-the-scenes sneak peak at my upcoming movie “Annihilation”.

I had hoped to finish Annihilation in time to turn it in for my Cinema class, but I didn’t… so I had to make a movie about my failure to complete the movie, and turn that in instead.

The full flipbook animation movie will be up soon. Checkout http://www.zacksmovies.com for other movies.

I’m looking forward to the complete movie.

Can Actors Sell Their Digital Clones?

| <a href="http://web.media.mit.edu/~wex/">Alan Wexelblat</a> in <a href="http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2006/03/15/what_right_in_digital_actors.php">Copyfight poses a question</a> from a reader about the future of entertainment: <blockquote>what rights do you purchase/license/contract for in creating such a reproduction of a real person? Rights to the “likeness?” Performance rights? Do either of these cover things the actor never physically did or said? Is there an exclusivity clause? There are clearly some issues around the ownership of a character, if that character has appeared before (e.g. Connery's Bond) but usually the character rights reside with the studio. But if you want the Connery Bond instead of a generic James Bond you also have to incude Connery in the deal, as well as whatever studio or estate has the Bond character rights.</blockquote> » about 300 words

Supamonks Video

Al sent this video along via email, and it seems perfect for Friday afternoon. It’s all about super-monks (supramoine in French?), a kind of European Shaolin, maybe. alan baker, animation, battle, cartoon, combat, friday, funny, martial arts, monk, rock, supamonks, super monks, supermoine, supermonk, supramonks, video, violence » about 100 words

Edward Gorey’s “Elephant” House

Edward Gorey is known for having created the Gashlycrumb Tinies, an alphabet of ways young children can meet an early end. That, and the bumper animations for public television’s Mystery! (here, have some games). Gorey is dead now, but his house in Yarmouth is open to the public. Admission is $5 for adults (http://edwardgoreyhouse.org/, phone […] » about 200 words

The Codex Series

This, from Chris Anderson: The Codex is a 20 episode series of machinimas made on Xboxes running Halo 2. The result caught the attention of his six- and eight-year-old children, and then him. Machinimas are computer animated in real-time, using video games to create the environment, and human “puppeteers” to drive the action. The action […] » about 200 words