BREAKING NEWS
LATEST POSTS
-
AI and the Law – Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal sue Chinese AI firm MiniMax
On Tuesday, the three media companies filed a lawsuit against MiniMax, a Chinese AI company that is reportedly valued at $4 billion, alleging “willful and brazen” copyright infringement
MiniMax operates Hailuo AI
-
Mariko Mori – Kamitate Stone at Sean Kelly Gallery
Mariko Mori, the internationally celebrated artist who blends technology, spirituality, and nature, debuts Kamitate Stone I this October at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. The work continues her exploration of luminous form, energy, and transcendence.
-
Vimeo Enters into Definitive Agreement to Be Acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.38 Billion
-
ByteDance Seedream 4.0 – Super‑fast, 4K, multi image support
https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedream4_0
➤ Super‑fast, high‑resolution results : resolutions up to 4K, producing a 2K image in less than 1.8 seconds, all while maintining sharpness and realism.
➤ At 4K, cost as low as 0.03 $ per generation.
➤ Natural‑language editing – You can instruct the model to “remove the people in the background,” “add a helmet” or “replace this with that,” and it executes without needing complicated prompts.
➤ Multi‑image input and output – It can combine multiple images, transfer styles and produce storyboards or series with consistent characters and themes. -
OpenAI Backs Critterz, an AI-Made Animated Feature Film
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-backs-ai-made-animated-feature-film-389f70b0
Film, called ‘Critterz,’ aims to debut at Cannes Film Festival and will leverage startup’s AI tools and resources.
“Critterz,” about forest creatures who go on an adventure after their village is disrupted by a stranger, is the brainchild of Chad Nelson, a creative specialist at OpenAI. Nelson started sketching out the characters three years ago while trying to make a short film with what was then OpenAI’s new DALL-E image-generation tool.
FEATURED POSTS
-
Cinematographers Blueprint 300dpi poster
The 300dpi digital poster is now available to all PixelSham.com subscribers.
If you have already subscribed and wish a copy, please send me a note through the contact page.
-
Methods for creating motion blur in Stop motion
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_motion
Petroleum jelly
This crude but reasonably effective technique involves smearing petroleum jelly (“Vaseline”) on a plate of glass in front of the camera lens, also known as vaselensing, then cleaning and reapplying it after each shot — a time-consuming process, but one which creates a blur around the model. This technique was used for the endoskeleton in The Terminator. This process was also employed by Jim Danforth to blur the pterodactyl’s wings in Hammer Films’ When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and by Randal William Cook on the terror dogs sequence in Ghostbusters.[citation needed]Bumping the puppet
Gently bumping or flicking the puppet before taking the frame will produce a slight blur; however, care must be taken when doing this that the puppet does not move too much or that one does not bump or move props or set pieces.Moving the table
Moving the table on which the model is standing while the film is being exposed creates a slight, realistic blur. This technique was developed by Ladislas Starevich: when the characters ran, he moved the set in the opposite direction. This is seen in The Little Parade when the ballerina is chased by the devil. Starevich also used this technique on his films The Eyes of the Dragon, The Magical Clock and The Mascot. Aardman Animations used this for the train chase in The Wrong Trousers and again during the lorry chase in A Close Shave. In both cases the cameras were moved physically during a 1-2 second exposure. The technique was revived for the full-length Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.Go motion
The most sophisticated technique was originally developed for the film The Empire Strikes Back and used for some shots of the tauntauns and was later used on films like Dragonslayer and is quite different from traditional stop motion. The model is essentially a rod puppet. The rods are attached to motors which are linked to a computer that can record the movements as the model is traditionally animated. When enough movements have been made, the model is reset to its original position, the camera rolls and the model is moved across the table. Because the model is moving during shots, motion blur is created.A variation of go motion was used in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to partially animate the children on their bicycles.