Artificial Output

The Interview Project

2009-07-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

I think this is a pretty smart project:
About the Interview Project

If such things could be done worldwide, like local institutions interviewing the people in their own surroundings and so on, it would make the world a significantly more peaceful place I imagine. Everybody would understand each other better and all that... Plus we would have a huge database for potentially amazing knowledge from a wide variety of people from all cultures. It's worth thinking about...

Lie to Me*

2009-05-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

As an animator and someone intensely interested in psychology, I found this TV show to be highly entertaining:

Here's some more info from Wikipedia:

Lie to Me* is an American television midseason replacement that premiered on the Fox network on January 21, 2009. The main character, Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth), aided by his colleague Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams), detects deception by observing body language and microexpressions through the Facial Action Coding System, using this talent to assist clients (such as law enforcement). The character is based on Paul Ekman, notable psychologist and expert on body language and facial expressions. Dr. Ekman and his colleague, Dr. Maureen O'Sullivan, identified "naturals" in what is known as The Wizards Project, which identified 50 people with the ability to spot deception after testing 20,000 people from all walks of life. In real life, they call these "naturals" Truth Wizards, or wizards of deception detection.

The TV show is also fairly educational by the way, it was even a little too unnatural at times, in my opinion. But it's okay. Check it out if you're interested in human nature, as you should be.

Anyway, apart from that, I was actually at a presentation by Paul Ekman once. It was two years ago, at the FMX in Stuttgart. He was in fact just a guest if I remember correctly, but he still showed the audience some interesting footage about microexpressions. The presentation was more about a 3D project based on his work though: Facial Animation Toolset

The toolset basically implements the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) into 3D models. It's quite useful. It enables you to create complex facial gestures with ease. Well if you don't know anything about 3D it's hard to explain why it's as cool as it is, but it's cool. :) Part of its coolness comes from it being a free, open source software though. If you register over there you also get access to a Facial Expression Repertoire and things like that, it's interesting.

We even used the toolset on our music video thingy back then. We weren't able to finish it (long story) but you can still download the finished half of it here: Remembered for Whatever - Prevaricator

Or you can watch a slightly lower quality version too:

If you watch it you'll see a singing tear-like creature in it. To animate his lips and the rest of the facial movements during singing, at first we tried to film and track my face with infrared markers+cam while I pretended to sing, but that didn't work out well since we didn't really have any face tracking experience before. (The mouth was opening and closing but the calibration was too bad and the setup too simplistic. It just looked like a spastic 3D version of South Park style animation.) So we ended up having to hand-animate all the details. In the end the lipsync and the facial expressions of the singer-creature is good enough, I think. But it had other problems and it isn't finished anyway, so who cares... :)

Finally, remember that the best way to ensure that you won't get caught while lying is to be honest. Honesty is also more fun for everybody. :)

Gods Must Be Crazy

2009-04-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

Wonderful movie. So unique.

I had seen the series on TV when I was very little. I had only vague impressions left from it in my mind. I just saw the first, original movie once again. It's amazing that a film like this really exists, must have been a very interesting production.

Some more details here:
http://67.118.51.201/Gods/GodsMustBeCrazy.cfm
http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/gods-must-be-crazy-1--2-the.html

And 6 years ago, our hero died apparently:
'Gods Must Be Crazy' star N!xau dies

I think seeing the stark contrast between two lifestyles like at the beginning of the movie is really something worthwhile. It's very meaningful, it's enlightening and thought-provoking. Actually thanks to YouTube you can already see it here and now:

Not the best quality, but it's not bad either. I recommend seeing the whole movie in a better quality though. And I'm not sure why but I really love how the children dance and sing at 4:10. If I can convince a few friends I'll try to do the same dance with them. It looks like fun.

Daito Manabe

2009-04-15T12:18:00.001-07:00

He's a japanese, innovative, high-tech artist-like person. I found his work quite impressive.

This is his website: http://www.daito.ws/

I didn't yet check it out but I looked at his Youtube channel and seeing some of his videos convinced me that he'll be a much more famous guy one day, if he can keep doing his thing. He plays with the muscles' signals and uses the body's electricity to make noises/music for example:

And vice versa:

It's all still pretty experimental obviously, they're works in progress, but I think the potential is also obvious. He has many more videos on YouTube.

P.S. Discovered through Derren Brown's blog: http://derrenbrownart.com/blog/?p=1026

And this is also interesting:

Pjotro.

Where The Wild Things Are

2009-03-29T10:02:00.001-07:00

This looks promising:

This is the official Website of the movie:
Where The Wild Things Are.com

The song used in the trailer is from Arcade Fire's first album, titled Wake Up.

Sarah Silverman

2009-03-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

I had heard about her before, and I had seen a few clips of her in the past, but recently I started watching her show* and I'm impressed. The Sarah Silverman Program is probably the smartest and the most creative TV show I've seen since Arrested Development. Actually I didn't watch any TV shows since then. :) At least not in their entirety, just a few episodes of certain shows to get an idea. But I keep an eye on new stuff, so I guess I would've caught if there were any other excellent things out there.

Silverman has a very active, productive mind, for all kinds of ridiculously silly stuff. But she'll never ever be taken seriously about serious things after all this again, not in the near future. :) I used to be a more silly person myself. It's a lot of fun, but has its difficulties sometimes...

*: What triggered my interest in the show was this: SS at AME

Soulseeking

2009-01-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

I might comment on this article some time in the future:
Losing track...

I had similar experiences and thoughts at times... Nick Southall has written a series of "Soulseeking" articles apparently, the others may be interesting too.

P.S. Oh, wow: Baby born with foot in brain (actually more like another fetus)

Processing

2009-01-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

I could use a book like this:
Learning Processing

I wonder if I'll ever be able to dive back into that kind of art stuff as deep as before...

Animal Collective > New Sigur Rós, New Múm

2009-01-15T22:27:00.000-08:00

I hereby claim that both the last Múm and the last Sigur Rós albums were inspired strongly by Animal Collective's "spirit". And I like both of those albums better than I would've otherwise probably. So... well inspired... it is a more exciting, dynamic, healthier "spirit".

P.S. I also like things like these:

"Monkey Jazz" BEARDYMAN & mr_hopkinson™ from David Hopkinson on Vimeo.

Maybe I should use this blog mainly like this instead of just talking about my own stuff, since I don't really produce that much regularly... Alright, makes sense, I continue: Although I don't watch as many movies or listen to as much music nowadays there are certain pieces I can't dare miss, i.e. I loved "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and I'm looking forward to "Synecdoche, New_York".

The Iron Giant

2008-12-02T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Iron Giant by Brad Bird. Cool movie. Better than I anticipated. In fact it was one of the best feature animations I've seen, should have seen it years ago. It can easily compete with modern Pixar material.

And here's The Making Of The Iron Giant - Part 1 of 8

(The same Youtube channel has also many other animation making ofs, check them out if you're interested. I love the internet.)

And here's what's still left from it's website:
http://movies.warnerbros.com/irongiant/

It's not bad really, there are some interviews and drawings and so on...

Living Without Heads, Feeding Without Mouths: Chickens and Babies

2008-11-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

I recently heard about Mike the Headless Chicken. You can also find videos about him on Youtube.

Basically it's a rooster that lived for 18 months without a head, more or less... Most of his brain stem and the sufficient veins were still there aparently. It's sort of exciting to imagine what this would be like with humans, and what it would mean about the human nature. I offered my dad to try something like this on him, but he didn't trust me, rightfully. He said that I might end up killing him and that I should first do the necessary research to operate properly.

Anyway, one inevitable consequence of missing a head is also missing a mouth. In Mike's case he was fed with an eyedropper, right into his open gullet. This reminded me of something. I actually had the idea of making a short film about someone who has to feed through his umbilical cord for his entire life. The storyline was something like this:

A pregnant woman is kidnapped by a mad evil scientist. After the baby is born the scientist puts the baby in another room, binds both of them to different beds but there's a hole on the wall inbetween and the umbilical cord is somehow still intact. And the guy somehow also seals off the child's mouth. So he keeps feeding the mother regularly and the baby continues to live normally, starts to grow up. After a while the mother dies for some reason and the mad guy kidnapps a new woman. The umbilical cord is now artificially connected to this new "mother". While many "mothers" come and go, he develops a gadget for the child, something like an artificial mother: It can digest whatever food you throw into it and it has an output mimicking the women's. As the story continues the child is no longer bound to the bed-thing, he learns to live with the gadget. And one day he manages to run away, into the wild. He swears that he'll come back and take revenge...

And in the end he probably takes his revenge, or forgives the scientist, or something else, I don't know... I hadn't determined all the details. This was sort of the introduction into a bigger story. (I actually thought about combining this one with another idea I had about a tree by the river that envies the birds and wants to fly. It ends with the tree "flying" down a waterfall.) I came pretty close to start drawing a storyboard back then, but the timing wasn't right. It was too big for one unexperienced animator. So I laid it aside. Somewhere, I do have a few drawings of the grown up version of the character though, but I wasn't so pleased with the design, needs more work. (The gadget I'm talking about was attached to him like a backpack, with a funnel-like-opening on top for food entrance to throw in fruits and pieces of animals or whatever. He was sort of like a wilder version of He-man with a sealed mouth and a jet pack.)

Nowadays I'm pretty sure that I'll never keep working on this project, I just don't care so much about it, or I should rather say that I care much more about other stuff. If there's someone out there who has enough time and interest in these ideas, feel free to be inspired and use them. Even though I'm not enough motivated to work on this project, I would still be interested in watching/reading stuff like this.

Autodesk Signs Agreement to Acquire Softimage

2008-11-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

http://area.autodesk.com/softimage_announce

This was unexpected, might have pretty interesting results. Maybe Autodesk should be internationalized or something like that...

About

2008-07-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

This blog will be about my artistic creations, I'll post some stuff that gushed out of my brain for whatever reason. I was planning to build a webpage, but what the hell... Maybe later.

I'll add some decent "About" text to this blog post later... But when exactly..? Unknown.

In the mean time you can click here to view most of my work; use "sadunkal" and "sadun" as usernames for 2 different accounts, and "asdasd" as password for both to gain access. It's not very practical, I know. The files are ordered chronogically in the first account.

UPDATE: I uploaded most of my stuff on youtube finally. You'll still be missing some relatively interesting pieces if you don't check out the rest of it on that website above. Here's my youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/sadunkal