Objects at Rest Animation Studio

After watching a pretty amazing Adobe R&D video on vimeo, I browsed through the comments and stumbled upon this:

“There is totally a better word: Tesseracting. Because what you are developing at Adobe is a prototypical system for frameless, hypercubist cinema. I write a blog on the future of cinema and your tool fits nicely into my forecasting of the end of the celluloid-influenced paradigm of flat video frames, transforming them into hypercubes. -Gabriel Shalom”

The Quantum Cinema blog is now in my google reader…I’m quite excited!

Bonus link:MIT’s Center for Future Storytelling

I found another post on the web about the impact, or influence, of technology in filmmaking, videomaking, and animating. In this case it is the ideas borrowed from the semantic web that could be used to enhance traditional narrative structures and possibly change the way people consume-create media.

This approach lends to the portability of the character’s representation across multiple instances, types, and modes of story delivery.

Mike Brent recently posted the link to a very interesting blog called “storyfanatic” which, if you read it, will eventually lead you to Dramatica which is story creation software. Makes me wonder…does Dramatica support the creation, editing, and exporting of metadata structures?

The potential for innovation is very real if one were able to take a screenplay and export semantic structures and metadata as well. Screenplay files wouldn’t just be destined for printing on paper anymore. Subsequently, the support of editing and authoring software for video being able to embed that metadata similar to importing subtitles or other elements and being able to sync things up with timecode would be needed. If not in the NLE then perhaps have the metadata encapsulated in the typical MOV, AVI, FLV or other media container files.

I’m viewing this as a platform to remix my own projects. In that sense this model would support transmedia projects or a new forms of serialization. But, the reality is that the same platform would be available to the users or creators of any content for co-creative transmedia.

Possible workflow in the future?

• Create content (ie. text, audio, video, animation, etc.).
• Create metadata (automatically via the content creation stage above or manually).
• Bring content and metadata together in editing (ie. enhance media and semantic components).
• Author media deliverables with metadata channels embedded (visible or hidden).
• Author or user based post editing, remixing systems arise being able to search, find, index, collate, and remix media from any “smart media” files. From mixing entire projects or specific nodes of data deep within a project,

I made some story cubes over the weekend as a creative project.

Story cubes seem to be used for brainstorming stories or narrative content. You roll them out and based on the icons that are showing formulate some kind of story. Since they are physical blocks it adds a tactile quality to the activity which is nice.

Searching further on the web resulted in screen shots of the illustrations on story cubes. I found a set for purchase called Rory’s Story Cubes which unfortunately appeared to be sold out. So, I went to Michael’s and got 1 inch wood blocks and a small basswood box to make my own set of cubes.

The cubes on the web seem to be in groups of nine. But the box at Michael’s would hold sixteen blocks. So I made nine blocks and then added six more blocks with generic shapes and colors. I suppose the extra cubes could come in handy for added brainstorming. I was planning on painting the cubes white and using a marker to draw the icons but decided to use my wood burning tool and just stained the wood.

It was a fun creative diversion from animation and perhaps it will help when generating ideas for future projects.

Sources:

• http://www.thecreativityhub.com/index.htm
• http://www.thecreativityhub.com/blog/2006/01/rorys-story-cubes-counterbalance-to.html
• http://www.stevesimpson.com/home/late-late-late
• http://www.gamepuzzles.com/rscubes.htm

In my previous post I was pondering the impact of technologies on content in film-video productions. While searching for more examples of emergent or disruptive ideas regarding film-video making I ran across the Future of Cinema Debate on YouTube.

It’s worth a watch, specifically for the ideas offered by Arin Crumley on the idea of metadata which he explains starting at approximately 03:19. His suggestion is a perfect example of the impact of technology on content which I referred to in my previous post.

The moderator also touches on the concept of storytelling in new media not being so much an evolution of content but instead a mutation of content. I quite like the idea of content-hybrids or content-mutation.

I’ve recently come upon three separate quotes that, to me, speak to the need for animators to continually strive to innovate with their work in regard to contemporary creative technologies. Using a digital camera, and working from an NLE or animating in Flash or After Effects is using modern technology…but is not in itself innovative. I’m talking about innovation beyond form, style, method, or technique. What I find in these quotes that inspires me and makes me want to explore through my own work is that the content, themes, or ideas driving animation (or television or film or books for that matter) is not evolving much at all. Everyone, to me, is just recycling at this point in history.

Quote number one comes from Eugenia’s posting on the topic of what television should be like in 2008 and beyond.

“If I was to give an analogy for what I want, is the online massively multi-player version of a computer game rather than a single-player PC game played by just one person. I am not sure I can make it clearer than that. It just has to feel “bigger than life” by taking place in a believable new universe. Heck, why else would I watch TV? If I wanted to watch reality TV, or traditional TV series, I would just record my own life during the day and watch it at night. I would probably be less bored.”

SOURCE: ”How TV shows should be” by Eugenia Loli, Accessed 2008-10-21
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/10/18/how-tv-shows-should-be/

Quote two comes from ASIFA Magazine’s article on the CGI film “Beowulf” and motion capture technology to create animated characters.

“The Impressionists founded themselves upon the new medium of photography, using the camera as a reason to redefine painting and produce an era of work now documented in the history books. Therefore, it would not be absurd to assume that animation fueled by the onslaught of motion capture, will seek to redefine itself, producing cartoons whose main function is to convey the idea that they are cartoons. This competitive discourse is the means by which new forms of established systems are created.”

SOURCE: “The Myth of Beowulf” by Chappell Ellison. ASIFA Magazine Vol. 21 No. 1 Summer Issue 2008 Page 47.

Finally, quote three is from a video interview with Peter Greenaway. [Transcribed while listening to the video online so this text may not be totally accurate.]

“In my pocket is a pencil. This is an amazing object, a tool. And in a way all the modern technologies are really doing the same such thing as this. They are a catalyst of getting me and my imagination to some form of communication. But I do sincerely believe that every artist in the last thousand years, certainly since the Renaissance, has always used the current technology of his or her time.” … “The current tools that are available to artists have always been part of the vocabulary of anybody who has anything worthwhile to say. So, I think you are obliged if you are a contemporary artist to use the tools of today otherwise you’ve immediately become a fossil.”

SOURCE: “Peter Greenaway talks technology” Video interview regarding b.TWEEN 08
Accessed 2008-10-21 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIIfXrEAcbo

The almost primordial-mythic-soul that animation can convey with the interactivity, complexity, and serendipity of non-linear, online virtual environments…that is what I want my projects to be or at least “feel” like.

If you are an animator, how are modern technologies informing your ideas, you approach, your themes, your narratives - not just the tools you are using which are most likely digital at some point, but the interaction or experience you intened to provide to your viewers/users of your animations projects?