Sunday, November 25, 2007

Back from Thanksgiving hiatus

A long Thanksgiving hiatus for me. Got back from my Bend-Hines trip last night, having left on Tuesday morning. Now I'm caught up on all my chores, mail, email, and even the Random Movie too, which was Beowulf, the 3D digital projection version. The 3D was good, but the animation wasn't so good. I don't understand why though, they used real actors with sensors and recorded their motions, but their gaits (and the horses' gaits too) were definitely off. And another strange phenomenon—while the male characters all looked distinctive, the female characters all looked somewhat alike. All had similarly shaped faces and noses, only their eyes and lips were distinct (although Angelina Jolie's lips were greatly reduced). I wonder a) if that means the range of 'acceptable looks' is smaller with actresses than actors, or b) presumably the animators were male majority and they were just more attuned to male faces?

A couple of garden pictures from before Thanksgiving. We've had a leak in the gutter for a few years, and last week, the leak turned into a deluge. On Monday, it poured cats and dogs so I put a big bucket under the leaky spot, figuring that I'd have to empty the bucket couple of times a day. It filled up after 10 minutes! So on Tuesday, before I left, I set up a little drainage thingie. I knew the roof tiles and tiles that I've been collecting would come in handy eventually:



And here's a shot of the persimmon tree:

5 comments:

gl. said...

good comments/questions about the Beowulf movie, shu-ju. sven says animators are mad because it's been nominated for some animation awards even though they used motion capture for it, which irritates those who do animation one frame at a time.

do you eat the persimmons?

fingerstothebone said...

Yes, I eat the persimmons! I love them! Do you want some? They should be picked in the next week or so; just come by with a bag if you want some.

I was really interested in seeing the motion capture stuff -- when Mike was in MPEG in the late 90's, they were working on the technology and I remember seeing some samples with stick figures, so I was curious on what happened with it. I do wonder why the gaits seem off. Mike just thought everyone looked like Shrek...

Michael5000 said...

You seem to spend a lot of time in Southeastern Oregon. Kind of an unusual vacation destination.....?

Hey, I don't judge. I'm just curious.

gl. said...

i've never had a persimmon that had any taste! i'd try another one if i thought it would be tasty. do you eat them straight or cook them?

fingerstothebone said...

They are sort of subtly flavored, but I really love them. They have such a nice custardy texture. I think Oregon persimmons don't get as flavorful as California ones either, we just don't have as long a growing season.