The other day I saw a random post inviting me to follow a link and check out the way that Disney made cartoons “Back in the Day”.  I love animation, and more specify, I love Disney.  I grew up watching the live action and animated features as well as the Wonderful World of Disney TV show.  I loved drawing and decided that I would someday work for the Disney Animation Studios.  I went to art school at Arizona State University, got a degree, and interviewed at Disney… and I didn’t get in.  I came back to Phoenix and interviewed at Fox Animation Studios… and didn’t get in.  There’s quite a bit of competition in the animation and film industry and (I can admit now) that I just wasn’t good enough.  In fact, there are LOTS of people that are better at this stuff than me, but when I saw that link, and I watched Walt at the studio, I remembered what it felt like growing up on Disney animation, and it makes me happy.  It makes me want to go out and fulfill that dream of being an artist and storyteller.

That link started me on a bit of a quest.  I’m working on a project right now that has its roots in traditional animation techniques (more to come on that later).   So I started to look into what I found and I’ve decided that I would use this post to catalog my findings.  It’s going to be long and drawn out, so if you’re interested you can check it out after the break.

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Advertised as “Amazing iPad Animations”, the video below uses a technique as old as animation itself, and really, it’s not that amazing.  Well, turning your $500.00 iPad into a $10.00 pre-schooler’s board book is pretty amazing I guess.  So here’s the amazing video.

 With the publication of his 2007 children’s book, Rufus Butler Seder called this display technique Scannimation.  In gathering information about his books, Seder states that he has invented this technique for books and has obtained a patent for it.  See the video for his explanation of his invention.

Interestingly, the Scanimate program was being used for motion capture experiments, animated intros, and animated logos back in the 1960’s.  There’s a pretty interesting news report video here.  But this whole process and technology goes back even further than that.

The Zoetrope was created in China around 180 AD and then refined in 1834 by British Mathematician William George Horner. The Zeotrope is made from a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinder’s interior. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together so that the user sees a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, the equivalent of a motion picture. Cylindrical zoetropes have the property of causing the images to appear thinner than their actual sizes when viewed in motion through the slits.

This AMAZING moving picture parlor trick led to the creation of flip books, and then motion photography, and then film, and then animated motion pictures, and then super technical 3D computer rendered imagery!  Then the technology advanced and compacted and now we can walk around with the equivalent of a whole BUILDING’S worth of 1960’s computing power in the palm of our hands!  What better use of this magnificent marvel of technology than to turn it into a toy from the 1800s.

Associate professor of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California Berkeley Daniel Fletcher posed a challenge to his students.He said to imagine working in a remote African village at the time of a disease outbreak, and that all they have at their disposal is a camera cell phone and an assortment of basic optics lenses and mounts. He asked if it would it be possible to convert the camera phone into a sort of mobile microscope that could be used to diagnose the disease?

A small team of graduate, postdoctoral and undergraduate students has worked with Fletcher to refine their invention which they call CellScope.

In some sort of super powered Team up, the Wizards of Aardman Animation (Wallace & Gromit) are using the brand spanking new 8 megapixel Nokia N8 and the CellScope to create the animation below.

Here is a fabulous behind the scenes look at the creation of this World Record holding animaiton.

I think that we are all familiar with the epic duel between David and the “giant” Goliath from the first book of Samuel. Twice a day for forty days, Goliath, the giant champion of the Philistines, comes out and challenges the Israelites to send a champion of their own to decide the outcome of their conflict in single combat. The Israelites are afraid of him, but the boy David steps up to the challenge. Armed only with his staff, a sling, and 5 stones, David faces Goliath and his armor and sword and shield. He strikes Goliath in the head with the first stone from his sling, and the Philistine falls on his face. David takes Goliath’s sword and decapitates Goliath.

While this story is an example of faith and trust in God, it has also become the rally cry of the entrepreneur. One person CAN compete. An individual can stand up to the big man and over come the odds to win. In this story we see that there was only one person in the whole army that was willing to take a chance, but those numbers are changing. With today’s technology an individual can set up a business and be a success.

As I am working to understand more about this changing market and my place in it, I’ve found a prime example of this principle on the internet. With the popularization of web and mobile applications, there is a rush to cash in on the next big iPhone app. The iTunes store seems to have its favorites, its Goliaths, that gain in popularity as they are pushed to the front lines, but where are the Davids? How does a little guy compete with that ocean swell? That Gigantic corporate structure with it’s herd of fans doesn’t know me or what I might want but my friend Blake has an idea.

Blake is David. He’s the guy with the idea. He recognizes that there is a vast ocean of opinions about these different applications so he’s made a way to turn to and trust his friend’s opinions called Appteria. By tying into his social network on Facebook, and inviting his friends to join together with their social networks, he has made a way to get a more trusted recommendation on new applications. Check out the site and find some great new programs. It’s such a great idea that Apple decided to make their own fan page on Facebook.

Goliath is not as tall as we once thought, and the stones in my sling just got better.

In a fantastic combination of technology and geekery comes the TomTom portable navigation device with turn by turn directions from none other than his royal Lord of the Sith, DARTH VADER!  Over the next few months you will also be able to download the voices of C-3PO, Yoda, and Han Solo. The Darth Vader voice module costs $ 12.95 and can be downloaded from their website here.  In the video below, you can a taste of how difficult it was to work with Vader on this project.

My friend Blake sent me a link yesterday to the “Linchpin Index“.  I was a bit taken aback to see my photo on the page, then I was deeply flattered.  You see, Blake works for the community website Squidoo which was founded by Seth Godin.  On the Squidoo site, users can create their own pages called “lenses” to share their knowledge on all subjects.  Seth Godin is, well, he’s a thinker.  His views on marketing, media, fans, and platform vs. eyeballs have helped to shape the way I work.

In his new book, “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” Seth describes that, “…in the old days, a linchpin was a tiny piece of hardware, very light in weight and low in cost that held the wheel onto the wagon. Without a linchpin the wheel would fall off. It’s the part you can’t live without.
And I use that as a talking point to get me started down this road of talking about how our economy has shifted from 150 or 200 years of industrial compliance in which a workers job is to feed the machine and keep the system running, to a new age which just dawned, a revolution, in which the employees we’re willing to pay, and the people we seek out, and the jobs that we care about, are done by people, not who follow a manual, and do what they’re told, but people who matter, who make a difference, who are linchpins, who we can’t live without.”

I’m thrilled to be listed with people who make a difference.  I guess it’s time to get to work!

When Netflix was established in 1997, it was venturing into some uncharted waters. Instead of running down to Blockbuster or your local Video Shack, a Netflick subscriber creates a list on the company website, called a rental queue. Then, for a flat monthly fee, the movies are delivered to the subscriber’s home. It’s pretty cool stuff. After spending nearly $300 million a year on postage, the company seemed ready to make another leap forward in technology and truly put the NET in Netflixs by offering streaming video.

I have a Playstation 3 and I’ve been very happy with it. I was thrilled to learn that through the wireless connection I could watch YouTube videos, and for a little while, Hulu was available on the PS3. However, it seemed that whenever I went tried to use these services the connection was always slow and would be constantly buffering the video. We would connect my wife’s laptop to the tv and watch Hulu wirelessly as a test and that seemed to work just fine. I decided to use the Playstation Store to rent a movie to see if their own service worked better.  I started the download and walked away for 30 minutes so that enough of the movie could download for me to watch it.

So when I first heard that Netflix would be streaming video to the PS3 I was skeptical.  They don’t have the same number of shows available streaming as they do in the regular delivery service but 17,000 movies and recorded television shows isn’t bad. I put the Netflix disk in the system and in just over a minute I was watching Legend of the Seeker without a hitch. Well done Netflix, well done.

My wife has worked very hard to get our kids into a night time routine so that they’ll go to bed without too much fuss.  Somewhere along the way, they decided that they needed to have flashlights.  We couldn’t stand to walk into the room and find the kids asleep with the batteries dead on the flashlight.  So for Christmas we found some Wind-Up flashlights and they have been pretty awesome.  Well, the other day I saw a great concept from designer Qian Jiang, Wind-Up Batteries!  Get more info at Yanko Design.

I spend the majority of my working time in front of a computer connected to the internet.  I LOVE the idea of having an iPhone, but I feel like it’s a lot of technology that would go unused because I’m never too far from my computer.  Also, the majority of my family is on a T-Mobile plan so we have free mobile to mobile calling.  That being said, there are some new uses for the iPhone that I am REALLY liking.  I am working on building up my online network through this blog, YouTube, and Facebook.  When I’m away from my computer at conventions, I’d like to stay connected and the iPhone seems to be trying to make that all possible.

1.  Connect to Facebook through the iPhone and update status.  One of these days I may even start to twitter.

2.  Take photos and now video with an internet access on the phone to upload to YouTube and flickr and then blog about it… on the phone.  *YouTube is now connected to Facebook to automatically post your YouTube videos on your Facebook page if you choose.

3.   New developments with the Ustream app mean that live streaming video BROADCASTING from the iPhone may be right around the corner.

4.  With iSwipe, iTouch2Pay and the new Square Credit card reader it is now possible to take credit card purchases while I’m at a convention.  If I don’t want to use these, I suppose I could just allow people to use the phone to access their payPal accounts.

5.  With the changes to in new media, I could be creating my own comic books to deliver through the Apple Store as well as my own animated shows, video podcasts and of course animated games.

I need somebody to send me a free iPhone3G S to test all of this stuff out on ok?  :D

I found out about PayPal mobile today on PayPal’s homepage and went on to read some more about it here.  I could have used this information over the weekend.  So for Father’s Day my brother and I took my Dad out to Joe’s Farm Grill (they grow their own food and grill and WOW, but that’s another story).  Because I’m a struggling artist, I knew that my Dad or my brother would try and cover the bill for me.  I didn’t want them to do that so I brought some cash with me and when my brother jumped in front of me to pay the bill, I slipped the cash in his pocket and called it good.  One of the promoted uses of PayPal Mobile is “Split the Bill”.  You can send money through PayPal on mobile web at mobile.paypal.com or you can activate your phone and send money by text.

Another “fun” feature that they are trying out is called “Making an offer”.  How many times have you sat around and said, “I’ll give you $20 if you go eat that corn dog off the ground”.  Now with the PayPal offers you can make this game into a reality.  Here’s a real sample from the website.  Victor propositioned Domenico $7 to “Stop being such a creep”.

Also available as an iPhone and Android application making spending money and double-dog daring your friends to do stupid things all the more easier.  :D