skynoise

Melbourne’s ACMI hosts a 20 year Pixar retrospective from June 28 – October 14 2007, which’ll feature paintings, sculptures, digital installations and a zoetrope that creates the illusion of motion using nearly 180 modelled characters. Naturally there’s a whole raft of screenings and opening weekend includes public talks with 4 Pixar artists, including Dan Mason who took time out to answer these questions…

What attracted you to the special effects animation of Ray Harryhausen?

I just loved to see the unbelievable. It amazed me to see The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad or Jason and The Argonauts on Saturday afternoon television. At first I wasn’t trying to figure out how they were made. That came later. I just loved the interactions between the animation and the “real” world.

You began shooting stop-motion animated films with a Super 8 camera. If you were starting again today what DIY animation techniques and technologies do you think you’d be excited by?

Computers and digital video have changed everything. We can all be filmmakers now. I would’ve loved to have been able to shoot something, edit it, add sound and show it immediately. I probably would have made many more films.

How’ve your roles and ideas changed in the time between Cars, The Incredibles & Ratatouille?

The challenges are always changing. In The Incredibles we all had to learn how to animate humans to look really good. I learned a great deal on that film because we had to loosen up the faces and get the weight right. Cars had a different challenge where we had to keep true to the material of an auto but still bring out the character. We used the wheels and tires along different suspensions to loosen things up. Each character drove in a different way. Then it was back to the organic movements of rodents and humans in Ratatouille. Each film and each character creates a new challenge.

What do you think of the ‘uncanny valley’ (where animated characters that look too close to real can seem odd), and in what ways would you like to see Pixar deviate along the spectrum from ‘abstract to realistic?

Yes, the closer to realistic the creepier it gets. I like to see human characters as more of a caricature. We can have a lot of fun with great stylized character designs. The medium of animation allows us to explore and have fun with caricatures, and we always strive to be believable, but never realistic.

What’s lost in the transition to computerised animation, and what strategies do Pixar employ to try and remedy this?

An Animator at Pixar designs every frame the same way a 2-d or stop motion animator would do. The computer wants all movement to be equal and linear. We spend a lot of time working against what the computer wants to give us.

What workflow differences are there between a feature film and an animated feature film?

A live action feature is usually shot by getting coverage of a scene with different camera angles and multiple takes. It is then put together in editorial where the director picks which camera angle and which take he would like to use. In animation all of the camera angles are worked out before it is animated. The choices come in the storyboard phase and then refined in Layout but once it is animated there is not too much one can change. There is a lot of planning up front in animation.

Can you foresee a Pixar animated film hybrid, where Pixar techniques and workflow are applied to combine shot footage, FX and animation?

If you mean live action with FX and animation …Sure we could use all of those elements to tell a story someday. I think Peter Jackson did a great job combining all the elements for the Lord of the Rings.

What does Steve Job’s experience with Apple software architecture bring to the animation table for Pixar?

Apple and Pixar are two different companies that happen to have had Steve as CEO. He has been a great leader at Pixar.

What kinds of innovative behind the scenes technologies exist exclusively at Pixar?

New technologies are being developed constantly at Pixar. If I told you more I would have to kill you….(joking)

As motion capture technologies improve do you see further possibilities for real-time, or live animation in various contexts?

We don’t use any motion capture at Pixar. But I’m sure in the industry there will be lots of opportunities where mo-cap will be used. I liked the way Peter Jackson used it in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Based on the repetitive nature of animation, you must have many dreams in which you were animating. Have any dreams stayed with you as potential future animations?

I’ve had dreams where see the shot I am working on. It seems that I find solutions to problems and come up with new ideas while I sleep.

Contemporary directors that push your animation buttons?

I love the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The animation and the nature they explore are so appealing. They also have great female characters. I love Nick Park and everyone at Aardman. Their sense of storytelling and comedic timing is so much fun. Mike Johnson did a great job with Corpse Bride – stunning. I am looking forward to seeing Henry Selick’s new film. And of course all of the directors at Pixar – I have been very lucky to have worked with brilliant directors here.

Europe. so. far. ( photos ). Currently recovering from last night’s 50 minute smoke & stroboscopic ‘Feed’ experience @ Sonar, about to re-launch into the Barcelona heat for more mayhem with Todd Synesthete, Toby Spark, dr.mo and Elliot from travel social network mycitymate.com. ( Shout outs to Eloi from Barcelona VJ collective telenoika.net, for magical hospitality a few moped coast hours north of Barcelona @ Madre Manya. )

“People doing strange things with electricity” – describes both the activities of global tech mischiefmakers Dorkbot, and how people are using the net increasingly as a means to organising meet-ups for like-minded enthusiasts. Latest group in the Dorkbot franchise? Dorkbot Melbourne, who meet last sunday of every month at Level 1, 124a Johnston St Fitzroy. As they did on May 27:

RocketCam + Inflight Wireless Video transmission (Michael Borthwick)

Number two search result for “rocket cam”, Michael uses off-the-shelf 2.4GHz wireless AV senders to transmit video footage from rockets as they travel up to 1500ft into the air, reach their peak then parachute back to earth. Every bit the obsessive hobbyist you’d hope to find at a Dorkbot meeting, the powerpoint display and talk zoomed in on the micro-details of fine tuning and customising the rocketcam to optimise the quality of video transmitted. The money shot is when the rocket turns over at its peak and the cam captures the curved horizon line of the planet – but this is also the rocket’s furthest point from the receiver and a range of workaround solutions are needed to really guarantee a good image and signal. Being a long standing member of the Melbourne Wireless community wifi networking group probably helps too. Michael’s personal website& rocketcam site (watch the vidi-yo’s! ) .

The Suspect Backpack ( Somaya Langley )

Visiting from Canberra, on her way to Montreal, NY, London & a residency at the Steim Institute in the Netherlands, Somaya demo-ed her “wearable mobile sonic media art experience”. A response to the climate of fear and paranoia around the war on terror, what we’re looking at is basically a backpack that produces sounds in relation to the distance of other people to the backpack wearer. A different soundtrack is also given to the backpack wearer via headphones, one which aims to induce a sense of alienation and tension in the wearer. The backpack is a heavy beast, filled then with a laptop running patch based software and a range of sensors detecting the closeness of others. Like a lot of ‘new media’ projects, it remains to be seen whether the results match the sentiment behind it, but in the end there’s no harm in a little more provocation on the streets. See http://suspectbackpack.blogspot.com & http://www.criticalsenses.com

Synthesising a Japanese Garden Soundscape ( Scott Brewer )

Never occured to me before, but there’s of course a sonic equivalent to visualists who try to document and replicate a natural environment virtually. Scott is a Master’s candidate at RMIT’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) Sound Studios and is researching the use of sound synthesis techniques to generate real world audio. Whereas visual modellers gain a capacity to use fancy camera angles and movements, and gain control over lighting and other elements, aural modellers gain abilities to vary individual components and effectively recreate a huge range of environments based on the one being synthesised. This might mean increasing the density of insects in one area, birds in another, the amount of reverb or space in another, and even the position of a waterfall etc. Original recorded sounds from a Japanese garden were analysed to determine the synthesising techniques, and the garden layers built up. How’d it sound in the end? Probably much more like a glitchy minimal techno party at slow speed than it was meant to, but somehow managed to convey a sense of atmosphere that ‘felt’ like a garden space despite that.

In the only city in the world existing on two continents ( Europe & Asia either side of the river ), the audiovisual collective Artificial Eyes can be found weaving their hi-tech pixel magic.

Wassup, AE?

Like any collaborative project with 3 x artists + programmers, Artificial Eyes are busy pushing the boundaries of what is possible with current technology. What helps make them noteworthy is that they have their own large audiovisual theatre venue in Istanbul, have development relationships with several dedicated video hardware manufacturers, write their own software and have oodles of experience between them all. Introducing:

Michael Parenti (exiledsurfer) – has directed over 200 music videos, has VJed internationally with over 150 different acts since 1998, blogs with unmediated.org, rhizome.org, eyebeam in NYC, curates the AE REBLOG, and it must be mentioned – as an avid bird lover, his list of previous pet featheries includes 2 x EMUs~!

Todd Thille (synesthete) – seen online recently “jamming with a plant” and “controlling software with his mind”, comes with a post-production and documentary film making background, followed by a long history of stateside VJ action.

Pascal Lesport (3rd Design) – studied music and programming at Ircam in Paris, discovered Max/Msp and DSP processing and more recently has been actively pushing forward real-time audio, video and streaming installations – developing OpenGL based real-time 3D applications, and teaching real time audio and video processing at Istanbul Kultur University.

Korhan Kaya – veteran amiga developer, OpenGL and DirectX specialist, and coder of PMX Pixelmixer (in beta), a realtime compositing application for the Windows platform.

And So..

There be lots of AE events and performances. Witness the gig fitness.

artificialeyes.tv teach classes and workshops in the video arts at various universities and institutions in Turkey.

They’re about to release their software :3L ( pronounced ‘Thrill’ ). Still in pre-release beta, pretty schmicko looking live 3D VJ software with special features for abstracting video or generating abstract video. (screenshots @ www.artificialeyes.tv/thrill ). And they run a dedicated audiovisual program at their theatre called “Live Cinema Nights”. What’s not to love?

And They Got Toys

Video Mirror Units: These can be fitted to many common video or data projectors to create a VideoMovingProjector. Basically bouncing a video projection onto a tiny motorized mirror, which easily be controlled to rapidly move the ‘screen image’ around the room easily. The controlling software has built-in audio responsiveness controls, and if you have a few – this allows on the fly compositing of projections on top of each other.

The Codanova midi controller is a deluxe dedicated midi controller/interface for video, with a new model being co-developed with Artificial Eyes.

VIXID – Leave the computer at home – this is a hardware based video mixer with 16 inputs, 4 outputs, and hardware based layering of video inputs, including various compositing modes ( ala photoshop ).

Oh, and ze cats are in cahoots with vidvox & M-Audio.

And Radness of Radness

They’ve invited me over to spend two euro-summer months with them in the AE studio. And I’ll be there 48 hours after pressing send on this here article, for all of june + july. Crazy video hardware reviews, and possible Turkish Batwoman sightings to come.