Aight, I'm gonna go watch a TED talk about an idea that's probably much better than my garbage. See ya Friday.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
World We Dare to Imagine brainstorm/draft
I imagine a world where anyone with access to a set of headphones can experience surround sound as if they're sitting in a movie theater. My company takes surround mixes of movies and music, and converts the audio to binaural stereo using state-of-the-art personalized HRTFs. Just send in a few photographs of your head and ears, and we'll send you your own algorithm to turn multichannel audio into a virtual experience.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Challenge for Africa post 3: The Criminal Projective in 3D
In one section I read, Maathai discusses how the concept of land ownership has changed since the arrival of colonists. Originally, land was considered to be generally owned by a family, but when the colonists came in, they introduced the concept of land nominally owned by a single family member, sealed by a contract. I find that the native method is a lot more reasonable, especially considering the structure of tribal society.
Maathai also criticizes how the African tourism industry is controlled predominantly by foreign companies, while local Africans mostly perform service-level jobs for the industry. She recommends that the industry be run by local Africans with the local people and culture in mind, and believes it could help create a richer cultural experience. I also think that this is a good idea, as it can revitalize the economy in a way that is directly helpful to locals.
Maathai also criticizes how the African tourism industry is controlled predominantly by foreign companies, while local Africans mostly perform service-level jobs for the industry. She recommends that the industry be run by local Africans with the local people and culture in mind, and believes it could help create a richer cultural experience. I also think that this is a good idea, as it can revitalize the economy in a way that is directly helpful to locals.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Challenge for Africa post 1
Something that interested me in the beginning of Challenge for Africa was how unskilled farmers were contributing to the degradation of the environment. One group of farmers that the author encountered, due to ignorance of proper farming techniques, were cutting plants in a way that would minimize water retention and increase erosion, and eventually make the land useless. Maathai also notes that while large-scale industrial work does a majority of the damage on the environment, such farmers finish the job with their unsustainable methods, completing the damage of the land. As this is taking place in one of the earth's most valuable rainforests, such degradation has consequences not only for locals, but for the world's climate and ecosystem at large.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Stuff again.
Later today I'll be able to register for classes, so I guess I'll talk about what I'm taking. For my Animation minor, I'll be taking "Animation Theory and Techniques" (which is basically working on the thesis project), and "Visual Music". I tried to take the Visual Music class last year, but it filled up really quickly. For my Math major, I'm taking 475 - Introduction to Theory of Complex Variables - and 445 - Mathematics of Physics and Engineering. I think 445 has some overlap with 475, and there are a couple other classes I'd rather be taking, but it's one of the only ones that fits into my schedule. And as a random elective I'm taking Introduction to Digital Logic. No idea why, it just sounds interesting. It's a 102 class, so it should be pretty easy. For the most part, I don't want to bog myself down with too much homework, because I want a lot of time to work on my animation thesis. And hopefully I'll be able to use some stuff from the Visual Music class in my thesis too. So, yeah, that should be cool. Last semester ever! And it's the first time that I'm taking less than 16 units. Cause some of the classes are 2 or 3 units. Then I'll be gone.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Interview with Paul MacKay
Paul MacKay is an economist who promotes the concept of anthroposophy. He believes that resources should be given value based on how people make use of them, as opposed to having value by themselves, since they exist independent of human work and ingenuity. He also thinks that the economy would be healthier if there were less focus on "virtual value," which is value created in terms other than human labor and intelligence. Virtual value is displayed by things such as the stock market and high prices for natural resources. MacKay believes more of this money should be used to fund more tangible needs, like education and research.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Genius ch. 14
So this chapter is talking about metaphors to labyrinths and touchstones, and horizontal and "vertical" movement. "Horizontal" movement represents the physical transaction, and "vertical" movement represents the metaphysical value of the transaction. At this point I really think Bloom is pulling shit out of his ass, cause I don't know what the relevance is to anything. Just more stuff about physical and spiritual sides of money, I guess.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Genius of Money, ch. 6
This chapter deals with the presence of distinct and often conflicting values in society and business. Bloom describes a Renaissance painting in which material and spiritual values appear to be competing in many ways, some of them very subtle. He describes these conflicting values as "polarities," and likens their presence in the painting (and implications about the society of the painting's provenance) to similar conflicting values in his own life. The conflict, as well as the balance, between material and spiritual values is as strong in today's society as it was in the time that the portrait was made, although many aspects of the values have switched over time.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
3 paragraphs about nothing
Player pianos are pianos that can play automatically when loaded with a specially formatted ream of paper. These rolls of paper have holes in them, so that as they scroll past the hammers the piano plays the notes. Most models have a variety of levers and switches in order to control dynamics, speed, and articulation. They were fairly popular in the early 20th century, and lost mainstream popularity once phonograph technology developed further. In their day, they actually caused some controversy among companies that published sheet music, for threatening business and de-emphasizing the need for actual piano-playing skills.
But some piano roll artists made a name with pieces that couldn't possibly be played by an actual person. From around 1950 on, we have the works of Conlon Nancarrow, who found that most pianists of his day could not meet the demands of his complicated pieces, so he turned to write music specifically for the player piano. Most of his studies deal with complicated meters and polyrhythms. Many contain distinct voices playing the same line at different tempos, often in odd ratios. On top of this, most of the lines themselves tend to be highly dissonant and hard to actually play. While some of his earlier studies were influenced by jazz - some of them are quite catchy - the later ones are basically just random, and don't really sound like much as a whole.
Marc-Andre Hamelin, already a virtuoso pianist in his own right, has also made a few unplayable pieces for piano roll. His tend to be a lot more friendly to the ear than Nancarrow's polytempic experiments, give or take an assortment of random glissandi and tone clusters. One of his most well-known pieces of this type is Circus Galop. To actually play it would take at least four pianists, preferably on separate pianos, but would still be near-impossible to pull off faithfully because of the precise, multi-octave glissandi. While tamer than Nancarrow in terms of consistent tempos, it does throw an occasional polyrhythm around in the faster sections. Many internet users have created their own pieces in this vein, thus creating the genre of "black MIDI." I like it when people create a genre without knowing it. Especially if it doesn't take off until long after the founding work was created. And then people look back, and it's like, "oh yeah, that guy made that thing that sounds weirdly similar to what we have now, but it was a long time ago!" But I hate when the reverse happens, and you think you've found something like that but it's actually not. Like this one abstract animation they showed us in History of Animation from, like, the 20's that had an electronic-sounding soundtrack, and I was like, "oh, that's pretty awesome that they were able to make stuff sound like that way back then," but then the teacher mentioned that the soundtrack was added later from like the 60s or something. But even when it is real, the derivative works have often expanded the concept so much that looking back at the original is like, "meh," because compared to the later stuff it's only kind of interesting. Okay bye!
But some piano roll artists made a name with pieces that couldn't possibly be played by an actual person. From around 1950 on, we have the works of Conlon Nancarrow, who found that most pianists of his day could not meet the demands of his complicated pieces, so he turned to write music specifically for the player piano. Most of his studies deal with complicated meters and polyrhythms. Many contain distinct voices playing the same line at different tempos, often in odd ratios. On top of this, most of the lines themselves tend to be highly dissonant and hard to actually play. While some of his earlier studies were influenced by jazz - some of them are quite catchy - the later ones are basically just random, and don't really sound like much as a whole.
Marc-Andre Hamelin, already a virtuoso pianist in his own right, has also made a few unplayable pieces for piano roll. His tend to be a lot more friendly to the ear than Nancarrow's polytempic experiments, give or take an assortment of random glissandi and tone clusters. One of his most well-known pieces of this type is Circus Galop. To actually play it would take at least four pianists, preferably on separate pianos, but would still be near-impossible to pull off faithfully because of the precise, multi-octave glissandi. While tamer than Nancarrow in terms of consistent tempos, it does throw an occasional polyrhythm around in the faster sections. Many internet users have created their own pieces in this vein, thus creating the genre of "black MIDI." I like it when people create a genre without knowing it. Especially if it doesn't take off until long after the founding work was created. And then people look back, and it's like, "oh yeah, that guy made that thing that sounds weirdly similar to what we have now, but it was a long time ago!" But I hate when the reverse happens, and you think you've found something like that but it's actually not. Like this one abstract animation they showed us in History of Animation from, like, the 20's that had an electronic-sounding soundtrack, and I was like, "oh, that's pretty awesome that they were able to make stuff sound like that way back then," but then the teacher mentioned that the soundtrack was added later from like the 60s or something. But even when it is real, the derivative works have often expanded the concept so much that looking back at the original is like, "meh," because compared to the later stuff it's only kind of interesting. Okay bye!
Food Post 3
The author's troubles with the deer eating his apple trees reminds me of the deer near my house. They eat some of our roses every so often. It also amused me to read about some of his attempts to deter the deer, and how one section he ignored for several years actually grew enough weeds to keep the deer from finding the trees. Heh, he mentions Pollan's Botany of Desire. And recalls how the plants and animals are basically "using" humans to thrive. I should probably watch the rest of that video some time. And he goes from finding the baby lambs cute to happily eating them. Classic comedy.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Animation in the Modern Age
Computer technology has transformed the way we produce and
experience media, and animated content is no exception. Since 1996, Flash
animation has revolutionized the way much of animation is produced for both the
internet and television. But like any technology, Flash has changed things for
both better and worse. While the software has allowed animators to produce
content of high quality more quickly than before, it also lets content creators
crank out exceptionally low-quality animation with unprecedented ease.
Flash animation has been one of the most widely expanding
tools for internet and television animation in the past two decades. Currently
one of the most popular tools for 2D computer animation, it can create
animation much more quickly and efficiently than traditional cell animation.
Thus, it has become nearly ubiquitous for web-based animation, and is decently
popular for televised animation. However, Flash’s efficiency and ease of use
has had two contrary effects: it allows animators to create detailed animation
more quickly, producing high quality animation that can rival the output of
traditional animation; but it also lets animators create cheap animation really quickly, resulting in mediocre
animation that can be hard to watch if executed poorly. We will look at
examples of both ends from the internet and television.
Flash vs. Traditional
Animation
The Flash authoring tool provides many features that make it
more efficient than hand-drawn animation. The most prominent of these are
vector graphics, recyclable animation, and automated tweening (Finkelstein and
Leete 2). Vector graphics are a method of storing and rendering images based on
points, lines, and fills. This setup produces images with clean, sharp lines
and flat shading that take up very little memory. These lines and colors are
very easy to edit, which means one can fine-tune the graphics easily. This
makes drawings much easier to manipulate than hand-drawn work, where such
fine-tuning would, at best, require copious erasing and re-drawing.
Another huge timesaver is recyclable animation. A sequence
of images can be stored as a re-usable chunk of animation called a “symbol,”
and used as many times as is needed. This method does exist in hand-drawn
animation – watch any Hanna-Barbera cartoon – but it is especially powerful
here, as these symbols can be replayed at arbitrary size and rotation, and
duplicated indefinitely within a single shot.
Lastly, tweening is a process that smoothly interpolates
graphics across a series of frames. This allows for smooth changes in position,
scale, rotation, and a number of other properties. In traditional animation,
such changes generally require redrawing each frame by hand. These features
serve two purposes: they make animation very easy to create and manipulate, and
very efficient to store on a computer – a three-minute cartoon can take up less
than 600 kilobytes of space, while a decent-quality video file of the same
length can take up 60 megabytes!
Bad Examples From the
Web
Great timesavers they may be, heavy or unrefined use of
these techniques can create less-than-pleasing results. This fact is visible in
abundance in early internet cartoons, from a time when slow network speeds
necessitated these shortcuts even more than production constraints. For our
first example, let’s look at one of the very first internet cartoons1,
John Kricfalusi’s The Goddamn George
Liquor Program2. The graphics themselves are quite good, with
smooth, nuanced linework and a style that translates easily from John K’s
earlier hand-drawn cartoons. However, the animation itself is ridiculously
limited and choppy – most looped actions consist of only two or three frames,
and characters just snap from one drawing to another – a stark contrast to the
relatively detailed graphic style.
Now for cartoons with a different set of problems, we could
look at pretty much every cartoon ever posted on Newgrounds, but let’s just
consider a few decently well-known ones. We’ll look at David Firth’s Burnt Face Man,3 the earliest
episodes of Jon Mathers’ Neurotically
Yours,4 and Shawn Vulliez’s video for Lemon Demon’s “The
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.”5 These cartoons all have the
same issues: the line quality is chunky and jagged (courtesy of the smoothing
algorithm on Flash’s “paintbrush” tool), and animation is quite limited, making
heavy and obvious use of motion tweens for most character movement. While the
animation is passable compared to John K’s early Flash work, the graphics are
fairly hard to look at.
Good Examples From the Web
On the other side, there are internet cartoons which make
good work of Flash’s toolset. A prime example of animation that uses limited
animation to an advantage is Matt and Mike Chapman’s Homestar Runner cartoon series.6 With the exception of
the very earliest cartoons, the series uses clean, simple, flat graphics and
fairly restrained animation, but in a way that produces an appealing result.
The animation style uses the efficiency of Flash’s tools to their full
advantage, without falling into the caveats that make other cartoons display
them for the worse.
Then there are more modern internet cartoons that go in the
opposite direction to make more complicated animation that either feels
hand-drawn or is very smooth and nuanced. Such is the output of many modern
internet animators such as Harry Partridge,7 Chris O’Neill and Zach
Hadel,8 and Max Gilardi.9 All of these animators tend to
use very smooth and full animation that looks miles better than older Newgrounds
fare. This is likely in part due to the fact that faster internet speeds have
made streaming video a viable platform, so animators don’t have to worry about
file size constraints. As well, streaming video allows animators to composite
Flash animation in other programs, to add subtle video elements and shading
effects that enhance the look of the cartoon to beyond what one can achieve
with pure vector graphics (Gilardi).
Flash has also seen a moderate amount of use for television
animation. You would expect that a professional studio using such an efficient
program would produce quite good animation. Often, yes, but unfortunately not
always. Many Flash shows have surprisingly mediocre animation, for example Johnny Test,10 which switched
from hand-drawn to Flash in Season 2 (Collideascope); Eliot Kid;11 and Home
Movies.12 These shows are mostly passable, but the animation is
largely flat; consists of thick, bright colors; and uses motion tweening rather
obviously for character movement, along with a decent amount of snapping
between positions. The animation on these tends to be comparable with that of Homestar Runner – which was made by two
people producing an average of three minutes of animation per week.
However, there are a few shows that are considerably worse.
Instead of using Flash to make decent animation more efficiently, these shows apparently
use it to keep budgets as low as humanly possible. For example, My Life Me13 and Pixel Pinkie14 have animation
that’s closer to early Newgrounds fare. Characters tend to be very stiff, and
when they do move it’s usually tweened in a very clunky manner. While the
graphics are cleaner than amateur internet cartoons, the design styles tend to
be pretty unappealing, too. When near-amateurs on the internet can make
animation miles better than your studio-produced TV show, you know you have a
serious problem.
Good Examples From TV
Fortunately, there are shows that actually do push the
envelope with Flash to create animation that can compete with traditionally
drawn work. Shows like Motorcity15
and Metalocalypse16 (especially
Season 3 onward) – both produced by Titmouse Animation – have animation that
uses recycled drawings and tweening to a decent extent, but pulls them off in
an appealing and detailed manner. In addition, the graphic design is quite
well-done, with subtle colors, detailed backgrounds, and composited lighting
effects adding up to a pleasing style. This is a stark improvement over the
bright, flat palettes of the more mediocre shows I discussed earlier.
But not to be too hard on bright, flat colors, because our
last show takes the complete opposite approach to good animation. Superjail!,17 animated by
Studio Augenblick (Season 1) and later Titmouse (Seasons 2-4), goes for a
hand-drawn feel, because it basically is hand-drawn. Nearly all character animation
is redrawn frame-by-frame, making Flash more of an incidental medium for
animation than an actual style (Simpson). This hand-drawn animation is quite
smooth and detailed, especially in during the show’s many over-the-top action
sequences.
Conclusion
As with any technology that makes an art form easier to
access, Flash has produced animation that’s both some of the best in recent
memory, and some of the worst ever made commercially. Both amateur web cartoons
and professional televised fare have output that encompasses a surprisingly
high amount on either end. It is somewhat alarming that companies will settle
for output that is so low-quality for the sake of a cheaper budget, especially
when producing good Flash animation is cheaper still than most alternatives.
But, such is business. As long as well-produced cartoons survive, it’s worth
the trade-off.
Links
References:
Finkelstein, Ellen, and Gurdy. Macromedia Flash 8 for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Print.
Gilardi, Max. Hotdiggedydemon.
26 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 Sep. 2015. http://hotdiggedydemon.com/post/117447750464/a-little-info-for-those-who-are-interested-on
“Johnny Test Test.” Collideascope
Animation Studios. Collideascope, 29 May 2006. Web. 26 Sep. 2015. http://collideascope-animation.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html
Simspon, Aaron. “Superjail Super Interview.” Cold Hard Flash. 26 Sep. 2008. Web. 26
Sep. 2015. http://www.coldhardflash.com/2008/09/superjail-super-interview.html
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
First Draft
How Flash Has
Improved and Worsened an Art Form
Computer technology has transformed the way we produce and
experience media, and animated content is no exception. Since 1996, Flash
animation has revolutionized the way much of animation is produced for both the
internet and television. But like any technology, Flash has changed things for
both better and worse. While the software has allowed animators to produce
content of high quality more quickly than before, it has also let content
creators crank out exceptionally low-quality animation with unprecedented ease.
Flash animation has been one of the most widely expanding
tools for internet and television animation in the past two decades. Currently
one of the most popular tools for 2D computer animation, it is widely used due
to its ability to create animation much more quickly and efficiently than
traditional cell animation. Thus, it has become nearly ubiquitous for web-based
animation, and is a decently popular medium for televised animation. However,
Flash’s efficiency and ease of use has had two opposite effects: it allows
animators to create detailed animation more quickly, producing high quality
animation that can rival the output of traditional animation; but it also lets
animators create cheap animation really
quickly, resulting in mediocre animation that can become hard to watch if
executed poorly.
Flash vs. Traditional
Animation
The Flash authoring tool provides many features that make
Flash animation more efficient than hand-drawn animation. Of these, the most
prominent are vector graphics, recyclable animation, and automated tweening.
Vector graphics are a method of storing and rendering images based on points,
lines, and fills. This setup produces images with clean, sharp lines and flat
shading, while taking up very little memory. Further, these lines and colors
are very easy to edit, which means one can fine-tune the graphics easily. This
makes drawings much easier to manipulate than hand-drawn work, where such
fine-tuning would, at best, require copious erasing and re-drawing.
Another huge timesaver is recyclable animation. A sequence
of images can be stored as a re-usable chunk of animation called a “symbol,”
and used as many times as is needed. This method does exist in hand-drawn
animation – watch any Hanna-Barbera cartoon – but it is especially powerful
here, as these symbols can be replayed at arbitrary size and rotation, and
duplicated indefinitely within a single shot.
Lastly, tweening is a process that smoothly interpolates
graphics across a series of frames. This allows for smooth changes in position,
scale, rotation, and a number of other properties. In traditional animation,
such changes generally require redrawing each frame by hand. All of these
features serve two purposes: they make animation very easy to create and
manipulate, and make it very efficient to store on a computer – a three-minute
cartoon can take up less than 600 kilobytes of space, while a decent-quality
video file of the same length can take up 60 megabytes!
Bad Examples From the
Web
Great timesavers they may be, heavy or unrefined use of
these techniques can create less-than-pleasing results. This fact is visible in
abundance in early internet cartoons, from a time when slow network speeds
necessitated these shortcuts even more than production constraints. For our
first example, let’s look at one of the very first internet cartoons1,
John Kricfalusi’s The Goddamn George
Liquor Program2. The graphics themselves are quite good, with
smooth, nuanced linework and a style that translates easily from John K’s
earlier hand-drawn cartoons. However, the animation itself is ridiculously
limited and choppy – most looped actions consist of only two or three frames,
and characters just snap from one drawing to another – a stark contrast to the
relatively detailed graphic style.
Now for cartoons with a different set of problems, we could
look at pretty much every cartoon ever posted on Newgrounds, but let’s just
consider a few decently well-known ones. We’ll look at David Firth’s Burnt Face Man,3 the earliest
episodes of Jon Mathers’ Neurotically
Yours,4 and Shawn Vulliez’s video for Lemon Demon’s “The
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.”5 These cartoons all have the
same issues: the line quality is chunky and jagged (courtesy of the smoothing
algorithm on Flash’s “paintbrush” tool), and animation is quite limited, making
heavy and obvious use of motion tweens for most character movement. While the
animation is passable compared to John K’s early Flash work, the graphics are
fairly hard to look at.
|
|
Good Examples From
the Web
On the other side, there are internet cartoons which make
good work of Flash’s toolset. A prime example of animation that uses limited
animation to an advantage is Matt and Mike Chapman’s Homestar Runner cartoon series.6 With the exception of
the very earliest cartoons, the series uses clean, simple, flat graphics and
fairly restrained animation, but in a way that produces an appealing result.
The animation style uses the efficiency of Flash’s tools to their full
advantage, without falling into the caveats that make other cartoons display
them for the worse.
Then there are more modern internet cartoons that go in the
opposite direction to make more complicated animation that either feels
hand-drawn or is very smooth and nuanced. Such is the output of many modern
internet animators such as Harry Partridge,7 Chris O’Neill and Zach
Hadel,8 and Max Gilardi.9 All of these animators tend to
use very smooth and full animation that looks miles better than older
Newgrounds fare. This is likely in part due to the fact that faster internet
speeds have made streaming video a viable platform, so animators don’t have to
worry about file size constraints. As well, streaming video allows Flash
animation to be composited in other programs where subtle video elements and
shading effects can be added to enhance the look of the cartoon to beyond what
one can achieve with pure vector graphics.
|
|
Bad Examples From TV
Flash has also seen a moderate amount of use for television
animation. You would expect that animation made by a professional studio using
such an efficient program would generally come out really well. Often, yes, but
unfortunately not always. Many Flash shows have surprisingly mediocre
animation, for example Johnny Test,10
Eliot Kid,11 and Home Movies.12 These shows
are mostly passable, but the animation is largely flat; consists of thick,
bright colors; and uses motion tweening rather obviously for character
movement, along with a decent amount of snapping between positions. The
animation on these tends to be comparable with that of Homestar Runner – which was made by two people producing an average
of three minutes of animation per week.
However, there are a few shows that are considerably worse.
Instead of using Flash to make decent animation more efficiently, these shows
use it to apparently keep budgets as low as humanly possible. For example, My Life Me13 and Pixel Pinkie14 have animation
that’s closer to early Newgrounds fare. Characters tend to be very stiff, and
when they do move it’s usually tweened in a very clunky manner. While the
graphics are cleaner than amateur internet cartoons, the design styles tend to
be pretty unappealing, too. When near-amateurs on the internet can make
animation miles better than your studio-produced TV show, you know you have a
serious problem.
|
Good Examples From TV
Fortunately, there are shows that actually do push the
envelope with Flash to create animation that can compete with traditionally
drawn work. Shows like Motorcity15
and Metalocalypse16 (especially
Season 3 onward) – both produced by Titmouse Animation – have animation that
uses recycled drawings and tweening to a decent extent, but pulls them off in an
appealing and detailed manner. In addition, the graphic design is quite well-done,
with subtle colors, detailed backgrounds, and composited lighting effects
adding up to a pleasing style. This is a stark improvement over the bright,
flat palettes of the more mediocre shows I discussed earlier.
But not to be too hard on bright, flat colors, because our
last show takes the complete opposite approach to good animation. Superjail!,17 animated by
Studio Augenblick (Season 1) and later Titmouse (Seasons 2-4), goes for a
hand-drawn feel, because it basically is hand-drawn. Nearly all character
animation is redrawn frame-by-frame, making Flash more of an incidental medium
for animation than an actual style. This hand-drawn animation is quite smooth
and detailed, especially in during the show’s many over-the-top action
sequences.
|
|
References
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