Techdirt. Stories filed under "animation"

SOPA Gets Taiwanese News Animation Treatment

Mike Masnick — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:48:39 PST

Want to know when a bit of news has really hit the mainstream? It's when the Taiwanese company Next Media Animation does a computer generated animation of the story. These videos have become a media sensation. Guess what they just took on? Yup, the battle over SOPA, which they animate by showing Hollywood lobbyists seeking to attack the internet, and showing not only how tech companies teamed up to fight this, but that internet users are pushing back. Amusingly, they make use of the imagery from the UC Davis pepper spray incident to show how Hollywood and the government can "knock out" sites under SOPA.

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DailyDirt: You Can't Believe Everything You See

Michael Ho — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:00:00 PDT

We've mentioned some interesting CGI work before, but the field of advanced video processing just continues to be amazing. Big Hollywood budgets won't be necessary if CGI software keeps getting better and better. Here are some cool clips we've seen.

Fix your shaky home movies with some image stabilization software. A nice benefit from military research to make your kid's first birthday videos watchable without Dramamine. [url]
Being John Malkovich could be a lot easier than crawling down some dark tunnel. Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.... [url]
Disney and Carnegie Mellon researchers are working on software to make animated faces look more realistic. And actors will eventually need to be Andy Serkis. [url]
This HDR video system merges three simultaneous images to obtain some really cool-looking shots. The software that creates these videos lets the director choose some nice lighting effects. [url]
To discover more tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Animated Version Of TSA Naked Scans And Gropings

Mike Masnick — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:16:11 PST

With all the recent stories of questionable TSA searches of people who opt out of both the TSA naked backscatter scanners and a personal groping by a TSA agent, it really was only a matter of time until the famed Taiwanese news animators NMA stepped up with an animated recreation, which I would say... um... takes some poetic licenses with the story -- especially when it comes to the availability of a private search area for the grope. That said, it covers the story of the "don't touch my junk" guy (and shows picketers with a sign saying that), as well as a planned protest of the machines for November 24th, one of the biggest travel days of the year. Among the more amusing bits are a prediction of all naked flights (on which the people all seem way too happy) and terrorists laughing at our new security measures.

Meanwhile, for those of us in the US (I know, I know, don't blame me, blame Viacom), you can watch Stephen Colbert's take on the TSA security mess, involving "x-raying your x-rated parts," along with noting that it appears the company making most of these devices, Rapiscan, hopefully is not pronounced "rape-iscan":

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

TSA Full-Body Scanners - Jeffrey Goldberg

www.colbertnation.com

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South Korean Animators Protest Banksy Simpsons Opening... Which They Animated

Mike Masnick — Tue, 2 Nov 2010 10:07:31 PDT

You may remember the attention paid recently to the Banksy-created opening of the Simpsons, which (among other things) portrayed animators working under sweatshop-like conditions, to produce the cartoon. We had mentioned it after Fox issued a DMCA takedown on the video, which had been uploaded to Banksy's account. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but that YouTube video is back up: That said, what may be more interesting is this story about how the South Korean animators who did, in fact, animate that opening sequence protested the whole thing, and pushed back until at least some of the sequence was changed. I will admit that my first impression on hearing about it was to think that Banksy confused North Korea with South Korea, and that does appear to be what some others have said as well. While it is true that South Korean animators make less than American animators, it's hardly "sweatshop" conditions. Still, in the end, the animators animated the sequence in question, but are making it known that they don't think the depiction is fair.

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