Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

More of the same in software food chain evolution, Adobe announced it is acquiring Macromedia. Of course this is a big buzz all over the Internet, so I had to get my 2 cents in.

Many say it’s Adobe’s defensive move against giant Microsoft. Others say against Apple. Whatever the case, this is no surprise, and big fish eats little fish business as usual for many industries.

From my own experience, Macromedia’s upgrade prices have always been aggressively high, so just maybe with Adobe’s large product and license base, those costs might come down. Also there is some hope of better product integration, for those who bounce from Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop to Macromedia’s Flash.

Story behind the story, the illustration above was originally designed and created in Flash, but WordPress 1.5 doesn’t integrate Flash files yet, so what you see is a substitute animated GIF. Maybe Adobe will buy WordPress, and fix that, but for what price? WordPress is currently free.

Quarterly publication CINEFEX celebrated its 100th issue recently with a panel interview with 50 of today’s leading visual effects professionals, including questions such as, “We have terrific visual effects in movies now. Is it possible we’re getting too much of a good thing?” John Gaeto of Matrix series renown states, “I would have liked half the shot load.” Instead, the whacky Agent Smith effects apparently influenced Kung Fu Hustle, the over the top spoof of kicking and flying action fight films.

Also discussed is the drift of visual effects from the cinematic aesthetic, into CG non-photographic looks. Virtual cameras, video game image assaults and I’d like a Raging Bull Monster drink with my popcorn dude!

Last night the San Francisco ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter hosted an evening with Walt Disney Feature Animation at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater. Speaking straight from the mouse’s mouth, Disney Producer Don Hahn led the presentation. Don has been at the center of Disney’s animation renaissance, having produced Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The audience of over 200 was treated to four previews of upcoming Disney 3D animated feature projects, Chicken Little, Rapunzel Unbraided, American Dog and A Day with Wilbur Robinson. With fresh stories and terrific looking design, Disney Animation is clearly entering the 3D Animated Feature horse race with all four legs galloping. Also in the works is Toy Story 3, so obviously no one at Disney is looking up to Pixar for their 3D animated bling bling supply.

Don described the story lines, inspirations and creative references of the features, followed by three senior Disney Animation staff member presentations and demoes of Look Development (3D surface texturing) software, Effects and Shot Finaling. Disney makes use of many third party tools, such as Maya, Shake, Photoshop and Renderman, as well as actively developing their own software for lighting, 3D painting, hair and fur control, and visual effects production.

The Disney group fielded questions from the audience, such as “How do you define family entertainment?” Don answered simply, “Something the entire family would enjoy.” The meeting concluded with refreshments and breakout discussions in the theater lobby, the crowd buzzing about the big things to come from Disney.

Soothingly advising customers about skin care, a flesh crawling musical jingle can be heard at this beauty products site. For the thick-skinned only, you’ve been forewarned!

CGTalk Forum has some very impressive discussion threads. Animators are observers, and they are impressed by good acting. Check out this thread: “I can’t believe **** was the dude in ****!!” which at this writing has nearly 17,000 viewings! Sounds like the basis for a good movie trivia game.

For example, I can’t believe Ray Milland was the dude in “The Thing With Two Heads!”

Sunday, April 10th was a celebration of various kinds of green power. Islamics in Baghdad gathered in protest of the 2nd anniversary of the falling of their city to the Coalition of the Willing strike forces.

Back in the USA, the Masters Tournament plodded on for the prize, a green jacket. Great golfers learn to tune out all distracting crowd noises in order to make good scores. And so they did.

Looking back to Iraq, will freedom mean installing country clubs and golf tournaments in and around Baghdad? It would be too simple to say that places with golf courses and miniature golf parks tend to be peaceful. For now, Muqtada al-Sadr and many Iraqis do not seem to be interested in lengthening their drives and sinking long putts.

Recently I’ve noticed many flags at half staff around town, flying mournfully over various strip mall stores. I wonder, “Who died? Another random Iraq bomb casualty? The Pope? Johnny Carson? The Prince of Monaco?” I don’t know what the rules are anymore. Is this part of a big Government-Business-Religion soft sell marketing pitch to appeal to humanity’s tragic tendencies?

A review of Spamalot in The New Yorker quotes Oscar Wilde, “It is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy. The worship of pain has more often dominated the world.”

Or as Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, let fly on Bill’s Corpse from Trout Mask Replica,

“The only way they ever all got together was
Not in love but shameful grief.
It’s not the way I’d like it to get together
That’s not the kind of thoughts I’d like to keep .”

In my History of Visual Effects class, instructor Shaun Featherstone poses the question, “Let’s consider which of the following has the most impact upon 3D digital animation… is it Harryhausen’s and Tippett’s Puppet construction? The techniques of Replacement Animation? Or the aspects of Claymation?”

I suppose I was involved in the history of 3D digital animation, having worked at NYIT Computer Graphics Lab in the early 80’s, where many software techniques were just being developed, from paint systems on up.

Around 1983 there were very few if any flexibly jointed character animations. The state of the art was Robert Abel‘s famous “Sexy Robot” can commercial, a stiff jointed character. I was anxious to see flexible joints in characters, and was able to work with a software engineer, Richard Lundin, who animated the famous NYIT Ant robots. We used a model created by Edwin Catmull of his wife’s hand. It had no knuckles or joints, and we tested methods of generating polygons along B-splines created in-between joint nodes. This led to my modeling a Gumby character, on which we ran Dick’s flex software. This was all done long before SoftImage, XSI, Alias, Maya, Lightwave, 3D Studio, etc., etc.

Claymation and the freedom expressed in all of the flexible skinned stop motion puppets gave us a goal to aim for. The digital technique was very different, and in many ways required as much or more patience and determination to achieve.