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An Exercise in Subtractive Color

Someday my daughters will only work with the additive method of color mixing. That day is not today.

A Play Doh Afternoon

Today’s Play-Doh remainder is being added to a large mound in the middle of the living room. Perhaps it will become a volcano or a mountain like the one I keep dreaming about.

It WILL take over your life.

Marketplace.org Drupal Presentation

As a long time listener of American Public Media’s ‘Marketplace‘, I was pleased to find out that the Downtown LA Drupal meetup would be having the Marketplace web development team to discuss the recent re-launch of their site. The amount of content they handle is astounding (52,000 pieces of content!), so it’s telling that they chose Drupal as their CMS. The LA Drupal guys posted the video of the presentaion and I’ve included here.

 

Night of Animation

No photos inside please

Last month’s LA ACM Siggraph meeting was held at Disney Animation in Burbank. They were gracious enough to provide food, beverages, and their theater for a viewing of the SIGGRAPH 2011 Computer Animation Festival. Though not an animator, I’ve always enjoyed the medium and the whole package – the festival, the place, the proximity to home – was a real treat.

The festival itself was quite an inspiration. Though some of the reels were geared towards industry professionals and focused on the tools and effects of the trade,  there was some very creative storytelling going on as well.

The three films that I enjoyed most were ‘Paths of Hate,’ ‘Flamingo Pride,’ and the Best in Show Award Winner ‘The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.’ ‘Flamingo Pride,’ about a straight Flamingo at a gay Flamingo fest, was the Best Student Work winner and had everybody cracking up. It’s a lot of fun but I can’t find it on YouTube to post.

‘The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore’ was produced by Moonbot Studios (from Louisiana) and was truly a notchabove the rest. Moonbot has more info about their process and the interactive apps they build on their website.

My favorite film, however, was a stylized aerial dogfight film that poses a moral question, called “Paths of Hate” by Damien Nenow. The look of this is amazing. It looks like a graphic novel in three dimensions. Seriously, the towering clouds are the most painterly 3D models I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, this video has been made available by Platige Image on Vimeo.

Damian Nenow’s SIGGRAPH presentation at Autodesk booth from Platige Image on Vimeo.

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab

Last month’s L.A. ACM Siggraph meeting was at the JPL which gave me a moment to walk around the newly renovated museum. Among the other wonderful displays there was this scale model of the Galileo space craft. The museum is periodically open to the public and worth a visit if your into cool things like space, multimedia displays of space, models of spacecraft, etc.

Galileo Static Display
The presentation was nothing short of amazing. NASA’s Mars Rover drivers discussed the advantage that stereoscopy affords them when piloting the rover, from a desk on Earth, across the alien landscape. Using 3D they are able to avoid piloting the vehicle down a crevasse that would otherwise look like a shadow. We were shown examples and the benefits really were amazing. Have glasses and want to try it out? Here are some shots >

It was truly amazing to hear the Rover pilots discuss their jobs. They drive across Mars all day! They work on Martian time. Continue reading