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- April 18, 2005
Adobe Buys Macromedia
April 18, 2005Read moreJust heard from Duncan that Adobe bought Macromedia for 4.3 Billion. Wow. I think that’s good for us as far as interoperability goes. But it sucks from a vendor diversity perspective.
- April 18, 2005
Hamburger Variations
April 18, 2005Read more
Robert forwarded me a couple links related to McDonalds marketing to Asians Pacific Islander Americans. It’s bizarre. Very Bizarre. I haven’t found an equivalent site for other minorities in the US, but let us take an international tour through the eyes of McDonalds. You can see a list of all the McDonald’s country sites, and travel at will.
- April 14, 2005
The Making of Lauren
April 14, 2005Read more
Wrapping up Spooky Human-Shaped Things Week is The Making of Lauren, a look inside the studio of a mannequin sculptor.
When I was a kid I thought they made them by dipping people in plastic and sawing their limbs off for poseability; I don’t know where the idea came from, but they used to really FREAK ME OUT. In truth, the good ones are fabricated by master figure sculptors like Len Gifford.
- April 14, 2005
WordPress Memory Usage
April 14, 2005Read moreI have been noticing intermittent Internal Server Error messages occuring with WordPress for the past several weeks, and inquired today with my ISP, Pair Networks, about the problem. Apparently, my blog is exceeding the allowed memory allocation for scripts allowed to run on their server. In other words, I’m being a memory hog.
The culprit? I don’t know! So I’m trying a bunch of things in order to be a good shared hosting customer…
- April 13, 2005
The Uncanny Valley of the Dolls
April 13, 2005Read more
Continuing along the thread of human simulacra this week, I’m struck by the advances in rendering human faces and figures using 3d computer graphics software. There’s a thriving international community of 3D artists out there with simply astonishing work. A couple of good places to go to have a gander at the best independent work are 3D Artists and CGTalk, which is a creative board. The image to the left is one such sample by Andreas Hebel. It has a nice illustrated quality to it. Try browsing the thumbnails on 3D Artists…they’re in reverse chronological order. You can go all the way back to 1995 and see how computer graphics rendering has improved over the years in the hands of dedicated artists. Pretty inspiring stuff, with a range of subject matter.
The quest for realistic human 3D modeling has been in progress for quite some time. Perhaps the first female character to pique universal–well, male–interest was the venerable Lara Croft (right). And then there was Square’s 10-year mission to create a compelling photorealistic 3D animated feature, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. That fell pretty flat on its face, unfortunately for Square. Dr. Aki (left) is probably the best known virtual actor from that film.
The public fascination with 3D femmes continues to grow, particularly in places like Japan with their virtual idols. It’s just starting to go mainstream here in the US; Playboy even had a video game character centerfold spread, and a couple of books have appeared.
This stuff is pretty hard to do well: not only do you need to have a fantastic sense of anatomy, you have to be an expert 3d modeller, animator, and texturer lest you fall back into the Uncanny Valley. Check out some of the work at 3dshop…it’s good stuff, but the best characters are a bit more stylized than photorealistic.
On the photorealist front, Kaya (left) is a well-known independent effort to create a photorealistic human (I believe only the head was done back in 2001 when she debuted). I also was checking out the work of Liam Kemp (right).
There’s more to be seen on 3D Artists and CGTalk. Check it out. The Uncanny Valley beckons!
