Social Change Through Animation

I find that some of the most effective ways to trap people's attention about something important is with well designed motion graphics. Below are some social messages I found on Vimeo promoting social issues, and what we can do about them:


The Innovation of Loneliness from Shimi Cohen on Vimeo.



Water Changes Everything. from charity: water on Vimeo.





TakePart: Participant Media - Waiting For 'Superman' - Infographic from Jr.canest on Vimeo.



Beyond Bytes from Florian Köhne on Vimeo.



The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.



History of the Internet from Melih Bilgil on Vimeo.



Master Plan - About the power of Google from Jonas A on Vimeo.

Glen Keane and a new way to animate

After 30 years working as an animator at Disney, Glen Keane wanted to free himself of boarders on his animation.  After leaving Disney, he met the designers of Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) through a friend.  To test their latest animation project on Motorola's latest phones, the team asked him to draw up a story for them to test the phone's capabilities.  This style of animation was unlike anything Disney films could produce since it depended on the owner of the phone to physically follow the characters through the story.  Phone holders would physically move their phones, following the characters as they crawled or danced through friends and over fallen trees.    He came up with the short film Duet (link: http://tinyurl.com/n6tg655) with help from his family along the way.

Google Doodle Fun

Today is Valentine's Day. The biggest highlights of my day were the warm weather (no gloves!), working in the floral shop at Wegmans helping flustered men find flowers for their significant others, and discovering the new Google doodle for the day!

Here is that doodle.

I have found that I am intrigued by these Google doodles. I wasn't even aware that they had a name, but they always bring a smile to my day. These doodles started off as still images. The Google founders played around with the logo to create a humorous image for the Burning Man festival. Two years later, in 2000, they asked Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time to create a doodle for Bastille Day. This was such a success that he was given the title of chief doodler. (See the source webpage here)

Nowadays, these doodles have a massive range of purposes from small moving images that dance when the mouse passes over them to in depth games to attached videos or audio snippets. Here is an example of an in depth game that has distracted me as I write this blog: Dr. Who.

It is astonishing that even though these look so simple, they can be so entertaining and fun. Who really expects to find something that makes you smile when you go to do research for an analytical paper? Even though some of these may not classify under motion graphics and animation, some of it must be created using these tools. In the Valentine's doodle seen above, each of the hearts has a story told with small animated shorts playing out across their surface. These are small creations that I would love to learn how they are made and created. So simple in look, though I'm sure they are complex, but so fun and popular nonetheless. I always look forward to seeing what Google has done to its logo on holidays.

To browse through the doodles, check out this website!

by Amber Capogrossi

Childhood Memories Revisited

I was looking at the news yesterday and came across a headline about the death of Arthur Rankin Jr, 89 years old, on January 30th. It took me a while to figure out where I heard that name before, so I typed it into Google and I realized that this was the man (and his partner Jules Bass) responsible for the creation of one my greatest childhood memories: the stop-motion animation of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

For those of you who might not know what this is (shame on you!) here is a snippet:

Now that brings back some great memories of snowy days, christmas trees, and hot chocolate. I absolutely love this song. I was the type of child who went on movie sprees, not with different movies, but with just a single movie watched about twenty times over three days or more. It drove my brothers crazy. This specific movie was one that kept me entertained for a long, long time. It first aired in 1964 and I was born in the 1990s, so this just goes to show how successful this stop-motion animation was. It was sad to hear how one of its creators has passed on.

Arthur Rankin Jr. was also responsible for films like "Frosty the Snowman" (another personal favorite) and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." 

Rankin-Bass productions also produced hand-drawn animation, but was best known for a stop-motion animation technique called Animagic, which used small, wire jointed dolls instead of clay (see Los Angeles Times article reference HERE). In this article, it quotes Rick Goldschmidt, who wrote about the history of Rankin-Bass Productions, who states that Arthur Rankin was "... a great influence on the Tim Burton films and even more so on Pixar." This history of animation, from where it started to where it is today, is incredible to discover. It has come so far in so short a time and yet, even the old styles of animation are still admired and loved today. "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is just one example. Other examples are squeezed into my movie cabinet on VHS. Disney created stories in a very different way for animation, as we saw in class with the video on the animation of "Bambi." This is so different from live action films, where the older they are, they are sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes less enjoyable because we are so used to the technology we have now. Yet, animation has never (at least in my personal opinion) experienced that problem. The characters that are created are unique, unforgettable, and lovable to the point where students in college still talk about them or go to the movie theatre to see them.

It is amazing to learn new aspects or details on things that you cherished in your childhood. These films were classics that inspired and warmed your heart to watch. This style of animation is rarely seen anymore, and no wonder since it takes a really long time to film stop-motion animation. Yet, the stories Rankin-Bass Productions told and brought to life visually are ones that will continue to be passed down through generations. 

By Amber Capogrossi

First blog post for the class... Here it goes!

So I decided to make this post about something that Arturo mentioned towards the end of the class that really sparked my attention: Render-farms. It peaked my interest because I LOVE computer stuff and hearing it made me think about it and want to look more into it. So away we go.

Doing some research online about what a Render-farm is, I come across a slew of images.Taking a look at these, clearly the range in size from small enough to fit into filing drawers or large enough to blow your mind. That's what they would look like. However, when you hear the words "render-farm," I'm sure you're curious to know what it actually is. The simple definition is a large number of computers all wired together in order to render large videos. A more technical definition, according to Wikipedia, the higher the quality of the images and videos, the more processing they would need to keep that quality. When an image needs more processing, clearly more time is going to be needed. So in order to shorten that time, having more computing power does just that. The more computers you have and the more power you have in each of said computers, the faster the rendering will be completed WHILE keeping the quality that you want.

So in retrospect, if you want a feature length film that is shot in 1080p to be finished by a deadline in a week, a Render-farm is most definitely going to be in need.

Google Glasses

Along with taking MG&A this semester I am also taking New Telecommunications. In this class we talk about the latest technologies that are being created in the world. Google Glasses came up in one of our discussions today, I was interested in what this product was so I looked it up and found a video explain what the product has to offer. 

While watching this video i started to notices the graphics that were being placed on the screen. Although this wasn't the most challenging video in the world I still this that it is really interesting that by the use of graphics it helped explain what the product can do. 

-Tori 

Today's Google Doodle

Hey guys!

So I don't know if any of you noticed or not but today's "Google Doodle" is an animation using Eadweard J. Muybridge's famous film animation of the horse galloping. If my memory serves me right Arturo introduced us to this short little film at the beginning of the semester, correct? Or maybe it was last semester in his 3D animation course that he spoke to us about it. Anyway, in case we didn't actually talk about it in this class or you forgot what was said, I thought I'd give you a little background on the history. This animation, which Muybridge made even before film strips were invented, was originally created to settle a debate over whether or not all four legs of a horse are off the ground at one time when it gallops. According to ABC New's Science blog, Muybridge was hired by the governor of California to settle this debate by taking a picture of a horse mid gallop. After proving that a horse does in fact have all four feet off the ground mid-gallop he decided to take the photo project even further by taking a series of photographs of a horse as he runs. He did this by setting up several cameras in a row. Each camera's shutter was linked to a line of string so that when the horse ran past it would release the shutter to snap the picture at the right moment. The images he took were then viewed through a device he invented called the "zoopraxiscope" which made the photos look as though they were moving. As ABC's blog post states, "The series of images as seen in the zoopraxiscope is regarded as one of the earliest efforts in taking motion pictures and probably inspired Thomas Edison’s invention of the kinetoscope."

Oh, and today is the 182nd anniversary of his birthday, which is why choose his animation as the inspiration for today's Google Doodle.

"Address is Approximate" - Stop Motion Short Film

A friend of mine showed me this short stop motion film the other day. It is about a toy robot who wants to explore the world and does so the only way he knows how, through a toy car and google maps. The concept is extremely creative. With today's technology the possibilities are endless when it comes to storytelling. This director took the technology from Google Maps and made a beautiful short film. This is just one example of how a little creativity can go a long way.

The Wilderness Downtown

I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard of this because it came out a couple of months ago, but I thought it was really cool and relevant to the class. It's a project that google created to an arcade fire song and I think they titled it an "interactive film." Anyway, I had never really seen anything like it before and it's really cool, so you guys should check it out here.