If you’re interested in making augmented reality characters feel natural in the real world, it’s well worth spending a few minutes with this tour of some key insights. I’ve heard once-skeptical Google AR artists praising it, saying, “This video is a treasure trove and every artist, designer or anyone working on front-end AR should watch it.” Enjoy, and remember to bump that lamp. 🙂
[YouTube] [Via Jeremy Cowles]
Hmm—I foresee having fun creating & donning our son’s infamous “Henry Face” and using it as a puppet. The combo of 2D stickers + 3D faces (jump to 5:52) makes me wonder whether we might see Bitmoji, which already exist in a limited 3D form, gain the ability to pair 3D face avatars with 2D preset reaction artwork (sort of the age-old “put your face through a hole in a painted board” tourist photo idea come to more life).
[YouTube]
“Oh God, not another haystack,” I found myself pleading as my folks dragged my young self through Chicago’s crowded Art Institute in the 80’s. Happily Google’s new Monet Was Here offers a much less jostling way to visit the places that inspired Monet throughout his life, from the coast to the city to the countryside, explore his paintings by color palette, and more. Enjoy!
Google’s newly announced Cloud Anchors help users place virtual content in the same real world location that can be seen on different devices. You can grab the simple, fun, open-source Just A Line app for iOS and Android to take it for a spin with a friend, or just to sketch in space solo:
Just put two phones side-by-side and tap the partner icon. Once the phones are connected, you and your partner will be able to see, and contribute to, the same drawing.
This makes Just a Line the first app that lets two people create together in AR, at the same time, across Android and iOS.
I’d never previously seen many of the pieces exhibited in this new gallery:
The “Faces of Frida” brings Frida Kahlo’s most iconic artwork together for the first time in the largest digital retrospective on Frida, that embraces her work, life, and legacy. Discover several of her pieces that have never been viewable online, as well as personal photographs, letters, journals, clothes, and early sketches of some of Kahlo’s finest work, which were hidden from the world on the back of finished paintings.
“How would great book covers from the past look like when set in motion?” asks animator Henning M. Lederer. “Here we go…”
[Via]
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]
