Hasta La Motion!

Buddy Guy plays “Stormy Monday” as Jimi Hendrix watches in awe. Then about half way through the video Jimi gets on stage with him. Definitely not high-quality video but talent sure is high-quality and then some….enjoy! This is from 1968.

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A man obsessed with vanity enters a futile race against time. 4:21 minutes, HD video, Color, Stereo Credits Scenario, Direction, Additional animation: Alan Jennings Actor: Daniel Rowe Music: Shannon Lee Voice: Beth Murphy Set Design and Construction: Frank Criscione Special Thanks: Daniel Rowe, Beth Murphy, Bill Jennings, Shannon Lee, Justin Lampka, Frank Criscione, Leslie Shershow & Everyone at Framers’ Workshop, Brookline, MA, USA This film was funded in part by The Somerville Arts Council, A division of The Massachusetts Cultural Council. Screenings 11th Athens Animfest. April 7-13, 2016 (Greece) Find out more about this film here: http://alanjennings.net/timelines/

Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana has inked a broadcast deal with Sprout, the preschool destination within NBC Universal Cable Entertainment’s Universal Kids network, to bring the adventures of its successful original series Ranger Rob to viewers across the U.S. The animated series’ first and second seasons, totalling 40 episodes, began airing 8 July, 2017 on Sprout.

“We are thrilled to work with leading broadcaster Sprout and bring the wonder of Ranger Rob to audiences in the U.S.,” said Nelvana Enterprises head Pam Westman. “The series is all about igniting a sense of adventure and curiosity in kids and we are delighted to share Ranger Rob’s adventures to a new set of fans and encourage even more kids to explore and discover the world around them.”

Ranger Rob follows ranger-in-training Rob around the adventure park Big Sky Park as he ziplines, swings and snowboards discovering and exploring all that the park has to offer. Big Sky Park consists of every kind of outdoor environment within its borders and each episode takes viewers on a new adventure, cultivating the spirit of exploration and curiosity and inspiring kids to get outside to play and discover.

Through its winter and spring 2017 seasons, the series has ranked #3 on Corus’ Treehouse network in Canada for boys from two to five years and two to 11 years.

It is a top ranking series in additional territories such as TF1 in France, Super RTL in Germany, Disney Channel in Australia, Nickelodeon in Italy, Canal Panda in Portugal, YLE/TV2 in Finland, and HOP in Israel.

The post Nelvana’s ‘Ranger Rob’ makes US debut on Sprout appeared first on AnimationXpress.

Faceware Technologies, the leading provider of markerless 3D facial motion capture solutions have announced an SDK for its real-time facial mocap (motion capture) and animation technology, Faceware Live.

The Windows Native C++ SDK will enable developers and creatives to build their own real-time, interactive applications. SDK users can allow live player-to-player chat in games, live interactive displays and activations and even integrate the SDK into their own production tools and processes.

“With the rise in VR/AR/MR, interactive marketing and the use of CG, we are seeing a growing number of inquiries from many different markets,” said Faceware Technologies vice president of business development Peter Busch. “Rather than addressing each and every request, we’ve created a SDK to enable developers to develop the tools they need to meet their own needs. We have got some amazing use cases I can’t wait to talk about.”

Features of the new SDK include:

• Windows Native C++
• High-frame-rate tracking, with no visible latency
• Over 100 APIs developers can use to track and animate faces in real time
• Create facial animation in real time from a person’s face on video
• Tracks 82 landmarks on the face and streams over 40 animation controls
• One second camera-to-face calibration
• SDK can track facial movement from a live camera feed, a video file (for example .mov file), or an image sequence (for example .jpg)
• Works with almost any camera or webcam, including head-mounted cameras
• Easy to adjust camera settings for optimising the user experience
• Tools to multiply and adjust animation output values to match your characters
• Simulate animation output for easy debugging and testing your character animation before use

“We’re really excited to put our real time facial tracking technology directly into the hands of developers,” said Faceware Technologies director of software and technology Jay Grenier. “Faceware Live has or is being used for a number of real-time applications, such as Hasbro’s live-streamed social media announcement for Monopoly and the recent Macinness-Scott installation at Sotheby’s Art of VR event in New York. And now, with Faceware LiveSDK, the community is about to get a fantastic new tool to develop their own amazing applications.”

Faceware will be speaking about the capabilities of the SDK at Siggraph 2017 (Booth 741) from first to third August.

Faceware LiveSDK will be available soon on a limited basis. Companies interested in using the SDK can visit the website for details regarding the purchase.

The post Faceware Technologies announces Faceware LiveSDK appeared first on AnimationXpress.

—– Blu-Ray discs available here: mikeolbinski.com/shop/ Music by Peter Nanasi, find his work here: https://peternanasi.bandcamp.com/ Follow me: twitter.com/mikeolbinski / facebook.com/mikeolbinskiphotography / instagram.com/mikeolbinski ——- On June 12th, I broke down into tears. Minutes earlier, I had been outside my truck, leaning against it, head buried in my arms, frustration and failure washing over me. I wanted to quit. I got back in the car and as I drove, the pain got the better of me and the tears came. This past spring was a tough one. Supercell structure and beautiful tornadoes had been very hard to come by. In fact, the tornado in the opening of this film was the only good one I saw this entire year. I had been on the road longer than ever before. Driven more miles. I was away from my family for 12 straight days at one point, and when I got home, I had to tell them I was going back out 24 hours later for June 12th. It was just too good to pass up. It promised to be a day that I could get everything I had been hoping for this spring and I had no choice. My wife understood, even though I knew she wished I stayed home. And I wished it too. I knew right where I wanted to be that day. But this year I struggled with confidence in trusting my instincts. Maybe it was because the lack of good storms this spring made me question my skills, or maybe it was something else inside of me. Whatever the case, I let myself get twisted and unsure, and found myself 80 miles away from where I had wanted to be when the tornadoes started to drop and the best structure of the year materialized in the sky. The photos from Twitter and Facebook started to roll in and I knew I had missed everything. It may not be easy to understand why, but when you work as hard as I did this spring, a moment like that can break you. I felt like I let my wife down. But mostly I let myself down. I forgot who I was and that’s not me. Or it shouldn’t have been me. I failed myself. And it seemed like the easy choice to just give up and head for home. But I didn’t. I’m not sure why, but the pain slowly began to subside. I realized it was only 4pm and the storms were still ongoing. Maybe if I could get in front of them the day could be saved. Ninety minutes later, I got out ahead and saw some of the best structure I’d seen all spring and a lightning show that was so incredible it’s one of the very last clips of this film. And that’s why this film is called “Pursuit.” Because you can’t give up. Keep chasing, keep pursuing. Whatever it is. That’s the only way to get what you want. I learned something about myself on June 12th which carried over to the final few days of chasing this spring. I trusted myself again and those days were incredibly rewarding. This was who I’d been all along but had forgotten. I can’t wait for next year. The work on this film began on March 28th and ended June 29th. There were 27 total days of actual chasing and many more for traveling. I drove across 10 states and put over 28,000 new miles on the ol’ 4Runner. I snapped over 90,000 time-lapse frames. I saw the most incredible mammatus displays, the best nighttime lightning and structure I’ve ever seen, a tornado birth caught on time-lapse and a display of undulatus asperatus that blew my mind. Wall clouds, massive cores, supercell structures, shelf clouds…it ended up being an amazing season and I’m so incredibly proud of the footage in this film. It wasn’t the best year in storm chasing history…but I got to chase storms and share it with you guys. All worth it. I wanted to do something new this year, so I worked with composer Peter Nanasi to develop a custom track for Pursuit. I’m super excited about it and loved the process of exchanging ideas and building the song as the editing of the film progressed. I am so thankful to Peter for what he came up with, I’m in love with this track! The time away from my family turned out to be over a month all told. I’m always and continually blessed by a wife who supports what I do and backs me completely. But not only do I have her to thank this spring, but also her parents who hung around for a good chunk of May and early June, to help out wherever needed, watch the kids, run errands and generally be there for Jina. I don’t have enough words to convey how appreciative I am for them being around while I was gone. I think that’s about it. I could write a lot more, but I’d rather you watch the film and hopefully have a taste of what I saw this spring. There is nothing quite like strong inflow winds, the smell of rain and the crack of thunder. I miss being out there already. I hope you enjoy and I’ll do my best to answer any questions in the comments below! Technical Details: I used two Canon 5DSR’s along with a Canon 11-24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 135mm and Sigma Art 50mm. Manfrotto tripods. The final product was edited in Lightroom with LR Timelapse, After Effects and Premiere Pro.