The above is an official tourism video for the city of Hakodate, Japan. Giant squid battling giant robots with local landmarks as collateral damage is nothing short of genius.
According to a survey of 100 aliens, Hakodate is the number one city they would most like to invade.
To see more videos in the series, all equally brilliant, you can hit up the Pink Tentacle link, which offers a breakdown of the back story. You can also find the rest on the official YouTube channel.
I've already posted on rgbFilter about the graphics power of Nvidia's long awaited Tegra platform that should appear on both Google's Android and Windows Mobile in the not to distant future. Beyond processing power, there were some new interfaces demoed at Mobile World Congress in 2009 worth highlighting.
Stantum demonstrated their new multi-touch technology, but what makes it different is that it's using resistive touch screens, as found in many current mobile phones, GPS units and more.
The TouchPark software solution allows for an unlimited number of touch points, accepts stylus, finger or even a paintbrush as an input device and most importantly, has pressure sensitivity. In a video captured by Engadget, a Stantum representative states that their technology can work with current resistive touch screens, and that the TouchPark framework also has 'sub-pixel' resolution, meaning that the accuracy is more refined than the pixel resolution of the screen.
Also on display were some new interface designs by TAT (The Astonishing Tribe). First up is a consumer friendly interface dubbed the "Foldout UI"...
Then there's an example of an interface that makes use of eye tracking and tilting to provide a virtual 3D experience. As TAT mentions in their description...
Imagine tilting your mobile so you can look around corners and behind objects in the GUI to access additional information. Imagine layered GUIs where pop-up windows really pop up.
There'll be no shortage of processers able to handle these types of interfaces, either. The Foldout UI was running on the Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor (the same processor found in the soon to be released Palm Pre), and Qualcomm has hit the 'high speed' mark with it's 1GHz Snapdragon, currently in the Toshiba TG01 mobile phone.
A new project that I've been working on with some friends is finally coming to fruition. That would be rgbfilter.com and it's related weekly podcast, the third episode of which you can watch part of right now. The section available below is basically a tribute to FX maestro Stan Winston after his passing.
I'm one of the co-hosts, as well as editor. Because of that, much of what I would be posting here ends up there. The focus of rgbfilter.com is on technology and entertainment, and we try to focus on the point of view for content creators, whether you're an indie film maker, animator, designer etc.
So I hope you check it out either by watching the full show with the Veoh player, or by subscribing to the RSS feed, and let us know what you think in the rgbfilter forums.
Sure, you could spend your hard earned seconds adding your signature any number of causes, but if there's only ONE Spacey Award nomination you spend your valuable activism time on, make sure it's to ensure that Todd McGuinness wins the 2008 Spacey Award for the Best Debut Performance by a Canadian Actor in a Supporting Role in a No-Budget, English-Language, Feature-Length Movie by a First Time Director Whose Name Rhymes With 'King-Pin' (Oh, and He Has a Ponytail, Too, The Actor We Mean, Not The Director). Don't take MY word for it though. See what TMcG himself has to say here.
If you've never seen his performance in "Killing Schrodinger's Cats" you can get a sample from the trailer from the KSC website. You won't be disappointed.
"But I haven't seen the whole movie, wouldn't it be wrong to add my name?", you ask...
Maybe, but remember these other very important factors. The director's name is King-Pin, and that's his REAL name, not some made up "I WANT to be cool" name. It's what he was born as. And Todd, well his last name is McGUINNESS. Guinness is the best damned beer in the world.
Last week I handed over the final special effects for Dave King-Pin Lei's feature film debut, "Killing Schrodinger's Cats". Even after it was all said and done, I ended up doing tweaks before burning the final images. The neverending battle between tweaking and making deadlines has to give sometime.
I also heard from Dave that the final picture edit is done, so now it's in the hands of the audio post crew. All I can say is "Congrats Dave! I can't wait to see the final results."
Comedy Central has been hyping it's Motherload online video clips for a while now. In an effort to be 'tech savvy' they've been putting up clips of The Colbert Report and other popular shows, and even allowing people to embed Motherload clips on their website.
Well, I did just that, and within a week or two, Comedy Central pulled the clip. They're well within their rights to do so, and I'm not gonna give them grief, but at the same time, they shouldn't expect too many people to use the 'embed' feature if the video is going to disappear.
I guess that the Viacom mothership can just keep issuing blanket DCMA notices to YouTube, and gather up so many innocent dolphins in their nets.
I guess this is what you get when you have marketing wonks who think that because they read this really neat article about "Web 2.0" then they're suddenly 'savvy'.
This isn't a knock at Colbert. I'm still waiting for the Colbert/Stewart (or Stewart/Colbert if you prefer) ticket to be announced in 2008.
Though the bit is funny in it's own right, the fact that Comedy Central seems to "get" this Web 2.0 embedded, sharing world better than most 'big media' organs deserves it's own kudos.
From the archives of Environment Canada's Hinterland Who's Who. Watch and enjoy as mean hearted scientist types experiment with dosing Wood Spiders with LSD and caffeine.
UPDATE: HERE is a post from the creator of the video, talking about how other's jacked his video, slapped Ebaum's logos on it and all that crap. If you thought the vid was funny, let him know. And if he ever gets around to putting it on metacafe or revver, make sure you watch it again!
Every year, the studio I work at puts out a little Christmas animation. Every year, it seems that the time to get it out the door grows shorter, and with the server issues mentioned in my last post, this was even tighter. Anyone coming here to view my quick RLA tutorials will probably recognize the character.
I originally meant to make this post pre-Christmas, but since both the domain and FTP were down that was just physically unpossible :) That's also why I had to kick it old skool with the ending.
Oh well, better never than late, and consider this a little post holiday hello.
I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. To make it up to you all, let me take you to the movies for 10 minutes...
The above is a short film by Paul, who's site is linked off to the left. It's well worth checking out, even though he crushed my spirit when he didn't allow me to help out on the project. Be sure to click on his Profile to check out some of his other stuff as well. If you register at Jumpcut, you can even send the video some love.
So go ahead and do it already.
Beyond that, I'm once again considering a new look for the site. Sure, it'll be yet another redesign, but since I switched over to playing with CSS, I'm getting the hang of it, and can probably improve on this, while trimming the fat.
Well, it's official, my good buddy King Pin has finalized the trailer for his first feature length film. You can pop over to his blog to view the trailer. Although I'm definitely biased, since I helped with the graphics, and was there for at least part of the shoot, where I had to put up with theseguys.
I gotta say kudos. And yeah, I know this post has MORE than it's share of hyperlinks per word.
At first I thought this was cool, just because it's fun to watch, and I dig the Japanese narration. Then I found out that science has found a way to prevent such a catastrophe.
