Hasta La Gadget!

Before the internet as we know it came to be, there were other services that delivered news and information to homes via computers and TVs. Like AT&T’s failed Viewtron system, which required content creators to shell out $34,000 for this Frame Creation Terminal that produced crude computer graphics even by Mario Paint standards. More »

We drive around in circles trying to find the place. There’s no signage indicating our destination — no giant, looming cartoon characters or even a logo, just a faceless building in a maze of industrial parks, about 17 miles outside of Portland. It’s a beautiful drive of course, sandwiched on a vaguely winding highway by dense Pacific Northwest foliage, past Nike’s global headquarters. Compared to the world-class tracks and fields dotting the shoemaker’s campus, Laika’s own offices are an exercise in modesty (in spite of financial ties Phil Knight), virtually indistinguishable from the densely packed businesses that surround it. There are, perhaps, certain advantages to such anonymity — for one thing, it helps the studio avoid random drop-ins by movie fans hoping to chew the ear off of their animation heroes. It also means that our cab driver does a good three passes before finally getting out of the car and asking a smoker standing outside a nearby building where to go. He thinks about it for a moment and indicates a building — a large, but otherwise indistinguishable space.

The lobby doesn’t scream Hollywood either, but it certainly offers some less-than-subtle hints that we’ve found the place: a wall-sized black and white image of classic film cameras (ancient devices, someone tells me, that were utilized on the company’s previous film), and in one corner, a tiny room encased in glass, with Coraline seated at a table in its center. This building is the house that she built — or at least kept the lights on; “Coraline” was released after its planned successor “Jack & Ben’s Animated Adventure” failed to materialize. Inside, the cavernous space in excess of 150,000 square feet has become a bustling small town of creatives, laboring away in its recesses, many having traveled through several time zones to be in its rank, like carnies hopping from town to town. Stop-motion animation, after all, isn’t the most prevalent of professions, and while we’ve arguably entered a sort of golden age for the infamously labor-intensive art form, thanks in large part to the success of projects like “Coraline,” the number of studios actually investing in the form can be counted on one hand.

Continue reading How 3D printing changed the face of ‘ParaNorman’

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

How 3D printing changed the face of ‘ParaNorman’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The minds at Disney Research aren’t only interested in tracking your face — they want to map, shave and clone it, too. Through a pair of research projects, Walt’s proteges have managed to create systems for not only mapping, digitally reconstructing and removing facial hair, but also for creating lifelike synthetic replicas of human faces for use in animatronics. Let’s start with the beards, shall we? Facial hair is a big part of a person’s physical identity, a quick shave can render a close friend unrecognizable — but modern face-capture systems aren’t really optimized for the stuff. Disney researchers attempted to address that issue by creating an algorithm that detects facial hair, reconstructs it in 3D and uses the information it gathers to suss out the shape of the skin underneath it. This produces a reconstruction of not only the skin episurface, but also of the subject’s individual hairs, meaning the final product can be viewed with or without a clean shave.

Another Disney team is also taking a careful look at the human face, but is working on more tangible reconstructions — specifically for use on audio-animatronic robots. The team behind the Physical Face Cloning project hope to automate part of creating animatronics to speed up the task of replicating a human face for future Disney robots. This complicated process involves capturing a subjects face under a variety of conditions and using that data to optimize a composition of synthetic skin to best match the original. Fully bearded animatronic clones are still a ways off, of course, but isn’t it comforting to know that Disney could one day replace you accurately replicate your visage in Walt Disney World for posterity? Dive into the specifics of the research at the source links below, or read on for a video summary of the basics.

Continue reading Disney researchers can now digitally shave your face, clone it for animatronics (video)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots, Software

Disney researchers can now digitally shave your face, clone it for animatronics (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Aug 2012 03:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s almost impossible to pin down when and where the first computer animation was created, given several companies and research facilities were dabbling in the new medium at the same time. But AT&T—formerly Bell Labs—and others believe this simple clip dating back to 1963 could indeed be the world’s first CG animation. More »