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Category: Art+Design

Arsenal camera assistant

Arsenal camera assistant

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The Arsenal device attaches to your camera and provides a number of previously more manual operations. It’s supposed to automate photo stacking, long exposures, focus stacking, timelapse, removes moving elements (people/cars/etc), color enhancing, and other features using advanced intelligence and AI.

I got captured by their ad because almost everything was filmed here in Oregon and boy is it slick looking:

Is it any good? I wondered if they were able to put the smarts of a good photographer into a device. Well…the British aren’t one for candy coating things:

So, it’s another great reminder that you should take the fabulous promises in a slick video and a smash Kickstarter with a grain of salt.

Yanko Designs turntable

Yanko Designs turntable

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Yanko Designs reports that Miniot has decided to re-invent the record player. Miniot calls it simply Wheel. It features a neat upright design and plays records from the back. One of the most unique elements is the barely visible tactile control system that lets you press and push parts of the hidden wheel to jump tracks, change volume, and even set the stylus weight.

The Miniot site shows it runs $2187 – $4156 depending on the options and color you select.

Invisible until it moves

Invisible until it moves

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Interesting visual effect where objects animated on a random field of black and white pixels are only visible when they are moving. Still images just look like random noise. Maybe this is how animals with highly motion based vision experience the world?

A game called Lost in the Static uses a very similar effect: https://silverspaceship.com/static/ Lost in the Static dev Sean Howard wrote a blog entry on how it works.

The graphics for the youtube video were generated by a simple Win32/C++ app at https://github.com/ChrisBLong/POV

Teenage engineering – the new Bang and Olufsen?

Teenage engineering – the new Bang and Olufsen?

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Teenage Engineering is a funky little product design company. They have an eclectic collection of beautifully designed products from a desk, to bags and clothes, to a flat pack computer case – but primarily focus on audio devices. What they’re really known for above the products themselves – is there incredible design.

One of the coolest new devices is probably the TP-7 audio recorder. These devices do a top-notch job technically; and are even more striking for their design. This one features a spinning wheel while recording and playing back that you can hold to stop playback or shuttle back and forth like a mixing dj.

The devices aren’t for everyone. They come at eye-watering prices that relegate them to lifestyle purchasers that care more about looks than price. As an example, the TP-7 is $1499. And less you think that’s ridiculous for a hand-held audio recorder – it is currently sold out.

There seems to be a trend towards interesting new designs for our gadgets. It reminds me a bit of the Nopia.

Genius: AI generated comic books

Genius: AI generated comic books

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I gotta hand it to Nathan Truesdell. He has a whole line of AI based coloring books – that likely took him all of an afternoon to create. It’s highly likely it only took him an hour or two with some prompts to make the line art. He then probably worked with an online physical book publisher – who may even be printing them up on demand for him to avoid handling stock or shipping – and now sits back and watches the money roll in with pretty much zero effort.

He didn’t even bother to fix the 7 fingers and thumb.

3D-printed building façade

3D-printed building façade

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Studio RAP has completed the ceramic house in Amsterdam which features a rippling, 3D-printed façade. Opens some very interesting possibilities for building decoration.

They also are experimenting with other 3D printed interiors and exteriors. Worth checking out on their website.

Articles:

Recreating famous scenes with CGI

Recreating famous scenes with CGI

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Blender Guru walks us through how a modern CGI workflow would work for a scene everyone knows – the elevator scene in the Shining.

He breaks down all the tools and rendering tricks he uses as well as points out 3 key elements that most VFX artists get wrong and makes CGI workflows look bad: grain, focus, and levels.

He shows why CGI has gained so much traction. The cost for the practical effect version of the elevator scene would likely now run around $50,000-$100,000. The CGI version? $14,000-$20,000.

He needed about 6 days to re-build the CGI version of the scene and 4 days of rendering. He does a fantastic job showing off how modern workflows work.

Tools he used:

Motion capture artist

Motion capture artist

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曦曦鱼SAKANA shows off some of amazing skills one needs to have if you’re a motion capture artist working for a video game. She seems to have mastered both male and female (and zombie!) walks along with lots of interesting and really unique kinds of swagger and variations.

https://youtu.be/RJNmcHuygUc?si=rhVEUVlCOX_YGVX1