Google Wing begins drone deliveries in Australia

Miscellaneous

So, do falling burritos corkscrew to earth counterclockwise down there…? (Either way, I’m in.)

The team writes,

Today, we are excited to be launching our first air delivery service in North Canberra. Our service allows customers to order a range of items such as fresh food, hot coffee or over-the-counter chemist items on our mobile app, and have them delivered directly to their homes by drone in minutes.

The delivery service will initially be available to a limited set of eligible homes in the suburbs of Crace, Palmerston and Franklin. We expect to gradually expand to more customers in Harrison and Gungahlin in the coming weeks and months.

NewImage

[YouTube]

Mill Mascot promises rich puppet animation

VR/AR

This thing looks quite impressive:

Mill Mascot combines real-time game engine technology with motion sensors, so characters can be puppeteered through hand and facial gestures. This gives directors, creatives and artists the ability to ‘direct’ or ‘perform’ CG character animation live and make creative decisions on the fly.

The system by-passes the lengthy timelines involved with traditional animation and pre-rendered content, reducing animation and rendering time down to 42 milliseconds per frame.

[Vimeo]

Deliriously awesome drone + drifting

Photography

Amazing flying, shooting, and drifting on what appear to be the roads above Silicon Valley:

See also this short racetrack clip. Seems that the footage comes courtesy of one of these little goblins:

[YouTube]

Imagine Peter & The Wolf dropping acid…

Design

…and feeding it into Cinema 4D.

Tobias Gremmler used a modified baton and 12 cameras to capture conductor Sir Simon Rattle’s movements & create these thrilling visualizations:

I created dynamic visuals based on the movements of the conductor and music, and extracted high resolution stills for the visual identity of the orchestra.

It starts with the arms of the conductor forming a hexagonal shape that propagates like sonic waves in linear space. When the music becomes louder, the linearity gets bended by the motion of the baton, which results more complex visual arrangements. Textures, colors, materials and lights are inspired by classical instruments (wood, brass, wind, strings) and the atmosphere and architecture of classic concert halls. In the last sequence, the conductors motion turns into strings. The waveform of the sound adds to the form of motion, like mixing audio waves.

[Via] [Vimeo]

Augmented dance: Projection + power

Design, VR/AR

I’d love to see this in person:

Colossal explains,

Pixel is an innovative dance performance conceived by French performance artists Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne, known collectively as the Adrien M / Claire B Company, in collaboration with hip-hop choreographer Cie Kafig. The hour-long performance incorporates a host of digital projection mapping techniques, 11 dancers, and bills itself as “a work on illusion combining energy and poetry, fiction and technical achievement, hip hop and circus.”

[Vimeo]