You’re the puppet now, dog: Designer, illustration, and natural-born showman Dave Werner does his best Strongbad (or is it Triumph?) impression in this altogether charming (and Bronie-tastic) live demo of the latest from Adobe Character Animator:
If & when Dave does Trogdor, my life will be complete. [YouTube]
Bill Lindmeier, whose flight paths in AR, also helped make a nifty project that captured particpants’ motions with tennis rackets to generate interesting animated artwork (see below). Reminds me of the Wiimote-powered Flash holographic drawing project that Adobe commissioned for MAX some years ago.
[Vimeo]
This super fun combo of style transfer & performance capture (see video below in case you missed the sneak peek last fall) is now accepting applications for beta testers:
Project Puppetron lets you capture your own face via webcam and, through a simple setup process, create a puppet of yourself in the style of a piece of referenced art.
[Y]ou perform various facial expressions and mouth shapes for lip sync, and then select the reference art and the level of stylization you want to apply to create a fully-realized, animated puppet.
Once Project Puppetron has created your puppet, you can perform your character or modify your puppet as you would any other puppet in Character Animator. Then, bring further dimension to your character’s performance with rigging, triggerable artwork, layer cycles, etc., through the broad array of tools offered in Character Animator.
[YouTube] [Via Margot Nack]
Heh—my 8yo Mini-Me Henry just crushed me at this game.
Starting today, you can use Google Maps to join in my amazing adventures for April Fools this week. Are you prepared for a perplexing pursuit? I’ve shared my location with you on Android, iOS and desktop (rolling out now). To start the search, simply update your app or visit google.com/maps on desktop. Then press play when you see me waving at you from the side of your screen. You can even ask the Google Assistant on your phone, Chromebook or Home device, “Hey Google, Where’s Waldo?” to start.
I’d love to see what someone like Russell Brown could do with tech like this:
A pre-trained deep neural network making predictions on live camera input, trying to make sense of what it sees, in context of what it’s seen before. It can see only what it already knows, just like us.
[Vimeo] [Via Luca Prasso]
Draw in 3D space on Android using Just A Line (for which the source code is available):
This short film from Masahiko Sato + EUPHRATES is poetry in motion:
[B]y extracting the movement of a dancing ballerina, we created a animation of locus drawn in the air, and dancing geometric figures, composed with a documentary picture. The geometric figures were created by connecting the movement of ballerina’s joints by using algorithm of computer geometry(such as “convex hull”,and “Delaunay diagram”). Our aim was to represent a complete new type of beauty, by showing the interaction of abstract animation with realistic movements and documentary film.
I’ve been getting a kick out of this spot running during the Olympics:
The minute-long spot features three animated graffiti characters stealthily shifting off a wall and, unseen by passersby distracted by drinking Coca-Cola, climb their way up skyscrapers towards their destination: a print ad of three bottles of Coca-Cola. The trio then enjoy the drinks together on the side of a water tower.
[YouTube]
Super fun style transfer + facial analysis enables animation:
Puppetron is a way to quickly combine a series of facial photos with artistic portraits to create puppets directly usable in Character Animator.
