Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

This weekend I am finishing up the last of 200 health-themed biomedical images for a PureStock CD-ROM. All of the illustrations were composed and rendered with Maya 3D software. This project started late in the summer, and is finally arriving at the last few images to complete the collection. Along the way I made use of some cool texture shaders to give the body parts an x-ray look, and cells an “under the microscope look.” If sales go well enough, I’d like to invest in more detailed 3D body models, with more veins, nerves, muscles and tendons. “Igor, come quickly, I’ve got a job for you!”

In an anxious alert to this years’s upcoming E3 game conference attendees, Sex and Games, warns of new rules in the Exhibitor’s Handbook. Serious game boys are not focusing on the vendors’ electronic entertainment. They don’t get out too often, and become hypnotized by booth babes. Fantasy role playing games never looked so real.

Some blame has been placed upon overachievers, such as a 2005 E3 Wheelchair Groper. See other photos of booth babes behavior and judge for yourselves, “Be they beautiful or be they bad?” Vendors may wonder if the new burka babes policy will dampen attendance.

Somebody on the CG Talk Forum dreamed this one up.

My impression is that the grand day of “Disney Animation” which is what they called their great hand drawn animation at Disney has been surpassed by Pixar quality computer animation standards. The atmosphere at Pixar the other day seemed quiet, as though there was a hushed excitement of anticipation over what changes might occur. Or more likely, computer animators are busy creating worlds of their own and are not thinking too much about billion dollar corporate deals.

I was underwhelmed by Disney’s Fantasia 2000 which I saw in IMAX. The original Fantasia was a Disney pinnacle of experimental animation designed around great musical themes. Fantasia 2000 seemed like a weak attempt by Disney to keep up with computer animation and the pack of animation innovators launched by MTV and the digital era. It is wise that Disney corporate is handing over plenty of creative control to the new generation at Pixar. It bodes well for both companies.

You can sign up to look for interstellar particles using an online Virtual Microscope at Stardust@Home.

As well as being the first mission to return samples from a comet, Stardust is the first sample return mission from the Galaxy. But finding the incredibly tiny interstellar dust impacts in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector (SIDC) will be extremely difficult.

Volunteers will appear as a co-author on any scientific paper by the Stardust@home collaboration announcing the discovery of the particle.

From the Sports section, a troubled ex-field goal kicker, Cole Ford told his psychiatrist…

while watching Siegfried & Roy he realized “what was wrong with the world was linked to the illusionists’ treatment, dominance and unhealthy intimacy” with their animals.

“He felt they threatened (the) world, and he began trying to figure out how he could stop them.”

Then in September 2004…

Ford drove past the sprawling Jungle Palace estate owned by Siegfried & Roy. Obscenities poured out of the slow-moving van, then blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun sprayed the entrance.

An obstinate Ford later appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom, demanding to plead guilty to the shooting. Instead, the judge ruled he was incompetent to stand trial and sent him to the state’s mental facility in northern Nevada.

“I’m perfectly competent,” Ford told the judge in January.

Although there is strong evidence that Siegfried and Roy’s DreamWorks 3D TV show Father of the Pride lowered the bar for 3D computer animated entertainment, that is no excuse for Cole Ford’s violent response.

The lighting and shading on the above image is unforgivable, enough to throw any respectable 3D artist into a tantrum. Most folks just changed the channel.

Cole Ford may have perceived part of the world’s problems while watching Siegfried and Roy’s live act. DreamWorks’ choice to outsource their FOTP 3D animation to China is yet another problem. So far no news of California 3D animators morphing into Yosemite Sam and going postal.

Learn how to reduce our dependence on oil here.

More about the film, Syriana and Participant Productions.

After reading both of Robert Baer’s books, I’ll be interested in seeing a cinematic montage of the many details. As is often the case, the books provide more stories and information than a 2 hour movie can incorporate.

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism by Robert Baer, former CIA officer.

Sleeping With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer, former CIA officer.

Last night the San Francisco chapter of SIGGRAPH presented a screening of the SIGGRAPH 2005 Electronic Theater at the Lawrence Hall of Science on the UC Berkeley campus.

First of all, I had never traveled up to that part of the Berkeley campus, very high up in the hills surrounded by Tilden Park. It was a clear night under nearly a full moon, and view of SF Bay was spectactular. Here is a web cam of the view.

The Hall of Science is was full of surprises: a robotic dinosaur exhibit, lots of hands on science and physics demonstrations, a gallery containing original M. C. Escher (no… not M. C. Hammer!) lithographs, and a very interesting museum honoring Ernest O. Lawrence, UC’s first Nobel laureate and inventor of the cyclotron. On display are early cyclotrons and films of the team working at Berkeley’s Radiation Lab.

One of the standouts of the SIGGRAPH 2005 computer animation festival was Cubic Tragedy, a very clever look at a 3D character learning polygonal modeling tools and giving herself unsuccessful geometric plastic surgery. There were a number of excellent non-commercial technical works, NASA’s MODIS Daily Global Snow Cover and A Semi-Lagrangian Contouring Method for Fluid Simulation. Not as technically challenging, and very funny in a unfaithfully based way, was Learn Self Defense by the wonderfully comic stylings of the Chris Harding Animation Concern.

Hello World! GeoSpot, the Internet start-up company where I am Creative Director, made our initial web site public today. I’ve been involved in the development of GeoSpot since April, working closely with the founding entreprenuer and software technology executive. The splash page on the web site is a one minute Flash preview of the big things to come at GeoSpot.