Animation

There aren't enough stop motion animation films starring light fittings, in my opinion. Until today, I only knew of one: Luxo Jr, by Pixar. Hyperion is the second, and it stars the eponymous insectoid light fitting, designed by Paul Heijnen.  Read More

Anyone who’s tried their hand at stop animation will know it’s an incredibly time consuming and delicate job. But spare a thought for scientists at IBM Almaden in California who have produced the world’s smallest stop animation movie by using a scanning tunneling microscope to move individual atoms. Rather than competing with Aardman or Pixar for a slice of the international box office, the film is intended to make the public aware of new technology that could increase computer memories far beyond what is possible today.  Read More

In a rare and brilliant move, Akihiro Hino (president of Japanese game developer Level-5) somehow convinced Studio Ghibli – Japan's most respected animation studio – to collaborate on a new video game. Even if Studio Ghibli's Oscar-winning director Hayao Miyazaki has been a vocal critic of the medium (nixing the possibility of his films being adapted to game consoles), and was not directly involved with Level-5's Ni no Kuni, it seems some of his magic still managed to rub off on it.  Read More

Actors may soon say good-bye to those humbling Lycra body suits commonly used in the visual effects industry, thanks to a group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPII). They've formed a start-up called The Captury that is set to deliver its proprietary markerless motion capture software later this year. Their software can even capture a costume's surface detail in three dimensions, like the draping folds in a ballroom dress.  Read More

The problems associated with rendering realistic hair has held video games back for years. When Nintendo first created the sprite for Mario in the original Donkey Kong, it gave him a hat because it was too difficult to animate his hair. When video games made the leap into the world of real-time 3D graphics, things didn't get much better. Today AMD is officially unveiling its solution, TressFX Hair, that will significantly improve the look of virtual hair beginning with the new Tomb Raider.  Read More

It may look like a rather beefy tablet, but the Lynx A is actually a device that could make life easier for graphic artists, animators, architects, 3D printing enthusiasts, and potentially quite a few other people. Putting it simply, it’s a point-and-shoot camera that creates digital 3D models of whatever it’s pointed at.  Read More

Ishac Bertran's Pas a Pas is not only a device for teaching children the fundamentals of stop-motion animation (and a little geometry for good measure); it also happens to be a gorgeous piece of product design (which, Gizmag guesses, is with good reason). All in, it's a welcome reminder that sometimes all that compelling new technology requires is a little original thought.  Read More

Fans of traditional flipbooks now have the opportunity to indulge their passion for miniature motion pictures with a new device being developed in Los Angeles, in the U.S. FlipBooKit, currently on the top fund raisers on KickStarter’s art projects, is a contemporary version of XIX century devices designed to create the illusion of movement. It is the brainchild of multi-media talent team Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel.  Read More

Take a look at all the Portal toys that are currently available, and you’ll realize just how much gamers like to own physical models of the digital characters that they know so well. When it comes to characters that are really physically “weird,” though, there can be a problem – goofy anatomy that works in a computer-generated world may not work in the real world. In other words, a physical model of a monster from a video game may be too top-heavy to stand up on its own, its arms may positioned in such a way that they can’t bend properly, or it may otherwise just be plain ol’ gimped. However, new software has been designed to solve those problems – it takes any three-dimensional computer character, and then uses a 3D printer to create a fully-assembled articulated figure based on it.  Read More