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Glen Keane, legendary Disney animator behind characters such as Ariel from Little Mermaid and Beast from Beauty and the Beast, draws in virtual reality, using an HTC Vive headset coupled with the 3-D painting app Tilt Brush. Of technology, Glen has said:
“I am convinced that animation really is the ultimate form of our time with endless new territories to explore. I can’t resist its siren call to step out and discover them.”
Via Endgadget:
The film, directed by Ashley Rodholm, shows how virtual reality allows Keane to finally bring his characters to life. “When you draw, you’re expressing something that’s real, visceral,” he says in the short. “By making a line, it’s sort of a seismograph of your soul.” Instead of a paper and pencil, Keane draws life-sized versions of Ariel and Beast in the short with an HTC Vive headset and the 3D painting app Tilt Brush app (which is now owned by Google). And rather than just being static on a page, he’s able to walk around his characters as if they were fully three-dimensional. Most impressively, the short, which was shot in a day, only documents Keane’s second time using VR tech. There’s still plenty of room for improvement.
Blizzard Entertainment shows that it’s still the king of computer game cinematics in its latest Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void trailer. Legacy is the third installment in its set, and is part of the wildly successful Starcraft series, a military science fiction real-time strategy game. The first Starcraft game was first released in 1998, and has since gone on to sell over 11 million copies. The series is still one of the most popular online games in the world, and is South Korea’s national e-sport (over 4.5 million copies have been sold in South Korea alone), where professional gamers have television contracts, sponsorships and win tournament prizes, just like other sports athletes.
The games industry has long outstripped the movie industry in terms of profit revenue, and it’s not difficult to see why. Previous cinematics:
And of course, here’s one from Blizzard’s massively profitable game, World of Warcraft, which in itself brought in a billion dollars in revenue in 2013:
Today in Australian Politics, summed up by the ever popular Michael Leunig. Some great quotes from international news:
Covering Australian politics feels more like conducting a triage of the wounded and slain. The bloodletting has become so brutal that party rooms have come to resemble abattoirs. Were a movie to be made of Australian politics over the past decade it would have to be X-rated, and, as I have said before, be directed by Quentin Tarantino.
… from the BBC
The Australian people greeted another bloodless coup at the pinnacle of their government with indifference—and onions.
… from the New Yorker
Abbott, the nation’s fourth Prime Minister in five years, exhibited a feckless machismo, which often verged on eccentricity. Visiting a farm in Tasmania earlier this year, he picked up a raw onion and bit into it as though it were an apple. It was the GIF seen ’round the world. “Better than any other onions I’ve eaten in a long time,” Abbott said, as the farmer stood dumbstruck. Soon after the result of the dramatic leadership challenge was announced, #putoutyouronions was trending on Twitter, and thousands of bulbs of all varieties were photographed on front porches, and even outside Parliament House, in Canberra. It was less a loving tribute than a door slam after a drawn-out breakup. Like Beyoncé might have said, “Everything you own in the box to the left,” Tony.
Finally.
The original voice of Siri explains the art of the voiceover. Susan Bennett is a voice actor who started working in the industry in the 1970s, singing the Tillie the All Time Teller jingle, one of the first ATMs. Since then she has recorded narration for PA systems, answering services and commercials, until she finally landed Siri in 2005. It was hard work, according to Vox.
Talking to Susan Bennett is surreal — at one moment she sounds completely normal, except she has the most pleasant voice you’ve ever heard. But in a flash she can turn on the Siri voice, and you start thinking you’re talking to your computer. […] When Bennett recorded the voice for Siri in 2005, she had no idea it would end up on the iPhone. She recorded it well before the company that built Siri was bought by Apple, and she didn’t even know she was the voice of Siri until the product debuted in the App Store in 2010 and then appeared on the iPhone 4S in 2011. But as seamless as Bennett sounds as Siri, it was a surprisingly difficult project to capture her voice.
“I recorded four hours a day, five days a week for the month of July,” Bennett says. For a voice actor, that workload causes a lot of strain. “That’s a long time to be talking constantly. Consequently, you get tired.”
Good morning Monday! Have you seen Bank of America’s campaign with Billy Idol? It’s a series of TV spots mocking the process of making ads: some parts definitely cut a little TOO close to the bone. It’s a type of campaign that risks getting annoying (ING Direct, we’re looking at you), but this series of ads manages to strike the balance between subversive and deadpan. The others:
Credits:
Client: Bank of America
Agency: Hill Holiday, Boston
Chief Creative Officer: Lance Jensen
Group Creative Director: Spencer Deadrick/Will Uronis
Associate Creative Director: Matt Rockett
Copywriter: Mark Nardi
Art Director: Matt Rockett
Agency Executive Producer: Brian Gonsar
Agency Assistant Producer: Patrick Carney
Account Team: Leslee Kiley, Nancy Lehrer, Jeff Nowak, Kim Almazan, Andrew Still, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Brooke Patkin
Project Manager: Alison Baker
Planner: Linda Lewi
Business Affairs: Lenora Cushing
Production Company: GO, Hollywood, Calif.
Executive Producer: Gary Rose, Adam Bloom, Catherine Finkensteadt
Director: Christopher Guest
Managing Director: Gary Rose
Cinematographer: Anthony Hardwick
Line Producer: Mark Hyatt
Editorial: Jump LA
Editor: Patrick Griffin
Post Producer: Caroline O’Sullivan
Executive Post Producer: Betsy Beale
Licensed Music: Artist/Title: Billy Idol “Rebel Yell”
Post Production: Brickyard VFX
Executive Post Producer: Ellen Schmitt
Type Design/Animation: Blind, Inc
TypeDesign/Animation Head of Production: Amy Knerl
Telecine: Tom Poole at Company3
Audio Mixer: Mike Secher/Brian Heidebrecht at Soundtrack Boston
Voiceover: Will Arnett
Our favourite of this relatively recent ad genre remains 1one production’s “Jesus’ Marketing Team” ad. Now that’s a hilarious ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12pTd_N4dtc
Tom Hiddleston is back in a second installment of Jaguar’s Art of Villainy campaign, with ‘There’s a New Boss in Town’, also featuring Nicholas Hoult (Xmen, Mad Max). The previous ad was banned in the UK by Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority for seemingly exceeding speed limits in an enclosed environment despite not actually doing so. Naturally, this didn’t stop the ad from going viral online, since it combined the magic combination of Tom Hiddleston, his legions of fans, Shakespeare and fast cars. Oh well. Nice try, ASA.
Previous banned ad:
Considering the audience that Tom Hiddleston generally appeals to, does this actually sell more Jaguars? Do Loki fans buy Jaguar cars? No one knows. But it’s definitely a very made-for-digital ad for the tumblr age. From Kim McCullough, the Vice President of Jaguar Land Rover North America:
“Jaguar had fallen off the radar for a generation of car buyers, and it was very important to raise the profile,” she says of the $25 million-plus campaign that introduced the F-Type Coupe. “It was the beginning of a complete brand transformation.”
“Good to be bad,” which became the most-used hashtag during the game, featured actors Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong and Tom Hiddleston doing their most magnetic and cheeky British villain patter.
Hey guys. We’re looking to sell our file cabinets.
They might be a little old, but they’re full of character! Perfect as a prop. Or as a conversation piece.
Or if you’re looking to size down from a phone box.
*We don’t recommend actually using them as dinosaur cover. But don’t worry. T-Rexes were most probably just scavengers! Also, they probably had feathers. Dinosaur speculation aside, if you’re looking to give some cabinets a new home, check our listing and email us at office@starship.com.au.
Update
We’ve sold the three cabinets listed above \o/ In celebration, have you seen the Fat Bird T-Rex theory? Seen here with Saitama of One Punch Man fame:
Also, everything you know about Velociraptors is probably a lie:
Velociraptors were actually only about the size of a domesticated Turkey, being only about 3 feet tall and 6 feet long, with most of the length coming from the tail and weighing in at around 20-30 pounds full grown. More than that, they also looked somewhat like a Turkey as well, but with a long tail obviously. It turns out, Velociraptors were very similar to birds in a lot of ways. They had hollow bones, feathers, built nests for their eggs, and are thought to have behaved very similar to birds.
Have a nice day 🙂
Solarbeat is a cool digital music box created by visual designer Luke Twyman, using the real orbital frequencies of the solar system. Originally designed in flash in 2010, it’s been remade using the WebAudio API, coinciding with NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entering Ceres’ orbit. Have a listen! It’s oddly calming, the UI is fun, and with the sliders, you can adjust the music to suit yourself. Via Mentalfloss:
Space is a quiet place. Because the large area between stars and planets is more or less a vacuum, sound has nothing to bounce off of. Hence, the old adage that no one can hear you scream. But that doesn’t mean the universe is silent.
Each planet is assigned a musical note, and every time it rotates around the sun, that note plays. Because the planets orbit the sun at different rates, it creates a unique melody, reminiscent of a particularly melodic doorbell.
Twyman first created SolarBeat in 2010 and updated it this year with more sound controls. You can now adjust the speed of the planets’ orbits and various aspects of the sound, like the bass levels and the echo, molding the solar system’s music to your whims. Play around with it on his site.
In an ingenious attempt to increase tourism for the cat-obsessed digital age, Hiroshima prefecture’s tourism board has launched a Google street view-esque cat’s eye map for cats. Walk through the city of Onomichi at cat level – other cats in the area that you can see are tagged with their profiles, which you can click to check out if you can read Japanese. Currently there are three paths to take, with more to come in the future in October. Watch this space:
“We were seeking to introduce a different way to look at our cities and offer a view of the streets that wasn’t available before,” a Hiroshima tourism official said. They decided on a cat’s-eye view because Onomichi, a port town known for its large number of cats, is also home to a museum dedicated to Japan’s ‘maneki-neko’ cat dolls, the official said.
The prefecture said it used 360-degree cameras similar to those used for the street-view maps created by Google Inc.
The map now covers a shopping arcade and surrounding areas in Onomichi, which is about 70 kilometers east of Hiroshima city. It includes most features seen on other interactive online maps, such as camera angle functions and details about local shops. It also has a selection of 11 pet cats kept in the area with links to their backgrounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOv3Qi7Vr5g
This Target ad does get a bit long, but it’s a hugely heartwarming spot celebrating kids’ love of Star Wars and Star Wars nostalgia. With the movie coming in December, retailers everywhere seem to be preparing for a collective marketing tie-in. Speaking of which, has everyone seen the new BB-8 toy? Already touted as the best Star Wars toy ever made, it does come at a hefty pricetag here down under at around $200+. But it is amazing. Also, your pet will like it.
Via Gizmodo:
As far as apps for toys go, though, Sphero’s BB-8 app is a wonderful thing. It’s as Star Wars-branded as a Star Wars app can get (which is a good thing) and is saturated with graphics, animations, and sound effects all taken from the Star Wars universe.
If you’re planning to buy Sphero’s BB-8 you’re probably already a big Star Wars fan and will undoubtedly love all the little Star Wars touches. But the app is also incredibly well laid out, responsive, and surprisingly easy-to-use without having to sit through a long tutorial — although they are included the first time you use it. No complaints there.
[…]
It’s also just incredibly fun to play with. The reactions you’ll get from people will help you understand why other Star Wars fans spend thousands of dollars building their own remote control replicas of Artoo and other droids. And you’ll be glad you only had to spend $US150.