Friday, September 02, 2016
Claymation Rotoscoping Is Now a Thing—And It's Incredible
The Creators Project: Imagine if you discovered a deleted scene at the end of an old Gumby VHS, and our gummy green hero was eating magic mushrooms in the woods. That's the closest we can come to describing depthcope, a new video experimental animator Baku Hashimoto made for a Japanese TV show called TECHNE - The Visual Workshop.
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7 comments:
This is a really cool way to do Claymation and a great way to make it precise. If the program is already made for the sculpture that they would like to create, then almost anyone could build the clay formation to be what the designers wanted. It takes away the time and struggle of knowing what to make the figure. This technology could be very useful for other types of sculpture and art. It could be used as a teaching tool on how to create a certain object because all they would have to do is make sure all of the dots are green and then they could see how to make the object for the future. This is really like a human 3D printer because the human is just following everything the computer tells them to make. I really hope this technology is used more in the future because it is very innovative and can help out certain art forms.
I think that this video is incredible, not only does it look fun (though perhaps tedious) to make, it also captures something very human. But what I like most about this video is that it uses something as common and inexpensive as clay, and by combining it with an early animation technique, does something that looks like an animator’s acid trip. It’s incredibly effective, and complex, and it all stems from the artistic tool that is most heavily used by every middle school art class ever. Now I know that clay isn’t an uncommon tool for artists, or even for animators, but to be able to use something so simple in such an elegant way takes a commendable amount of vision. Some of my favorite art (and things in general) come from interesting and unorthodox crossroads, and in fact, combining ideas to create new ones might be the most effective way to be original.
This is a pretty snazzy way to create an "accurate" three dimensional shape or form. I can't even begin to imagine all of the possibilities for this kind of technology. (Side not- I think there is a fascinating crossover here in that this technology was first used and developed by the military and now artists are using it as an alternative way to create pieces.)
I wish the article would had touched on the degree of precision that the green dots are able to afford you. My sense of scale is totally up in the air right now. Are there 100's of dots per square inch? Or is it more like a dot for every 1/4 of an inch?
Regardless, I'm curious if this could be adapted and included in the scenery building process. Using it to get scenery pieces within a very specific and minute degree of accuracy to the designers draftings. This could also come in handy when dealing with several pieces of scenery that have to interface with one another in a very seamless manner.
First of all the video is really fun to watch, and it makes you kinda excited to not only see how amazing it is that artists always have creative and unconventional ways of utilizing existing tools, but also start thinking about the possibilities this technology could be applied to theatre industry. Like Ben said above, if this depth camera provides great precision with high density of dots, and it can detect materials other than clay, then it could be used by technical directors to make sure scenery pieces match exactly their drawings so as to make up for human errors during building phase.
But on the other hand, while this technology seems fun and incredible, the video does look cartoonish. The Claymation use in The Wicker Man (mentioned in the article, interesting video clips as well) is a really reasonable not-so-sweeping-off-your-feet kinda stretch of thinking. Right now I don't have any idea readily available in my mind about how to apply this to actual props making or scenery piece making. Clay is cheaper than wood but then again it will be much heavier. I could not wait to see yet another unconventional way of using Claymation in our industry!
This sense of exploration and finding new ways to utilize and repurpose tools is key to the advancement of the arts. Teachers have often mentioned that many things and tools used in theater, or the arts as a larger sphere, are simply items meant for one kind of use that we repurpose into being applicable to another. From shaping terrain models for military use, to this beautiful video, the depth camera presents a variety of opportunities.
Another compelling aspect of this project and the subsequent video is how labor intensive and intricate the creation and execution process for each frame is. Baku Hashimoto's vision and dedication are immense, and I truly believe this work will help pave the way for future, alternative uses of the depth camera to be explored. I would have loved to have seen a behind-the-scenes video that detailed this video's construction, more so than the images included with the article.
Jumping on the, "claymation" bandwagon! I must say I'm such a fan. Technology is ever evolving and amazing me. I'm most impressed with the Kinect Depth camera and how it has little beams of instruction with the little dots that change color once the mold is complete. I also really like how it's, "human powered" and you form the clay yourself. Watching the process happen, and having it come from you is always five times better to me than putting it in and having a product come out. I really appreciate the exploration of color of the clay, it really gives the animation some life. I'm wondering how far this can go;The artist creates various objects and shapes, and I'm thinking that it may be possible to tell a story with "claymation" as well. I think it would be a fun format for educational video's in schools, as every child relates to clay. I am definitely looking forward to seeing how this develops in future!
As a person my first reaction is “this is so cool!” my reaction as a creator of cool things is “the computer vision software is so cool!” and my reaction as a TD is “how can we use this to put sets in the right place.” We often joke about mounting a projector in the steel grid and projecting a ground plan onto the floor and just “coloring within the lines” at install. This technology could take it one step further, the projector idea can only do as much as a ground plan can do. Errors are made at interfaces, and decks can only get so complicated, if we had a system that could detect errors in 3D space, now that would be cool. Especially for the show we are doing now, we could use this kind of a system if the designer actually cared about the accurate replication of a 3D model.
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