Showing posts with label 2d animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2d animation. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
The Future of Computers Is the Mind of a Toddler
Machines contain the breadth of human knowledge, yet they have the common sense of a newborn. The problem is that computers don't act enough like toddlers. Yann LeCun, director of artificial intelligence research at Facebook, demonstrates this by standing a pen on the table and then holding his phone in front of it. He performs a sleight of hand, and when he picks the phone up—ta-da! The pen is gone. It’s a trick that’ll elicit a gasp from any one-year-old child, but today's cutting-edge artificial intelligence software—and most months-old babies—can’t appreciate that the disappearing act isn’t normal. “Before they’re a few months old, you play this trick on them, and they don’t care,” says LeCun, a 54-year-old father of three. “After a few months, they figure out this is not normal.”
One reason to love computers is that, unlike many kids, they do as they’re told. Just about everything a computer is capable of was put there by a person, and they've rarely been able to discover new techniques or learn on their own. Instead, computers rely on scenarios created by software programmers: If this happens, then do that. Unless it's explicitly told that pens aren't supposed to disappear into thin air, a computer just goes with it. The big piece missing in the crusade for the thinking machine is to give computers a memory that works like the grey gunk in our own heads. An AI with something resembling brain memory would be able to discern the highlights of what it sees, and use the information to shape its understanding of things over time. To do that, the world's top researchers are rethinking how machines store information, and they're turning to neuroscience for inspiration.
This change in thinking has spurred an AI arms race among technology companies such as Facebook, Google, and China’s Baidu. They’re spending billions of dollars to create machines that may one day possess common sense and to help create software that responds more naturally to users’ requests and requires less hand-holding. A facsimile of biological memory, the theory goes, should let AI not only spot patterns in the world, but reason about them with the logic we associate with young children. They’re doing this by pairing brain-aping bits of software, known as neural networks, with the ability to store longer sequences of information, inspired by the long-term memory component of our brain called the hippocampus.
This combination allows for an implicit understanding of the world to get “fried in” to the patterns computers detect from moment to moment, says Jason Weston, an AI researcher at Facebook. On June 9, Facebook plans to publish a research paper detailing a system that can chew through several million pieces of data, remember the key points, and answer complicated questions about them. A system like this might let a person one day ask Facebook to find photos of themselves wearing pink at a friend's birthday party, or ask broader, fuzzier questions, like whether they seemed happier than usual last year, or appeared to spend more time with friends.
While AI has long been an area of interest for Hollywood and novelists, companies hadn't paid much attention to it until about five years ago. That's when research institutions and academics, aided by new techniques for crunching reams of data, started breaking records in speech recognition and image analysis at an unexpected rate. Venture capitalists took notice and invested $309.2 million in AI startups last year, a twentyfold increase from 2010, according to research firm CB Insights. Some of these startups are helping to break new ground. One in Silicon Valley, called MetaMind, has developed improvements to computers' understanding of everyday speech. Clarifai, an AI startup in New York, is doing complex video analysis and selling the service to businesses.
Corporate research labs now rival those in academia in terms of staffing and funding. They have surpassed them in access to proprietary data and computing power to run experiments on. That's attracting some of the field's most prominent researchers. LeCun, former director of New York University's Center for Data Science, joined Facebook in December 2013 to run its AI group. While still teaching a day a week at NYU, he has hired nearly 50 researchers; on June 2, Facebook said it is opening an AI lab in Paris, its third such facility. Google says its own AI team numbers in the “hundreds,” declining to be more specific. Baidu's Silicon Valley AI lab opened in May 2014, and now has around 25 researchers led by Andrew Ng, a former AI head at Google. The Chinese search giant employs about 200 AI specialists globally. The interest from deep-pocketed consumer Internet companies kickstarted a research boom creating “one of the biggest advances” in decades, says Bruno Olshausen, head of the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the University of California-Berkeley. “The work going on in these labs is unprecedented in the novelty of the research, the pioneering aspect.”
As far as tech money has pushed AI in recent years, computers are still pretty dumb. When talking to friends in a loud bar, you pick up what they're saying, based on context and what you remember about their interests, even if you can't hear every word. Computers can't do that. “Memory is central to cognition,” says Olshausen. The human brain doesn't store a complete log of each day's events; it compiles a summation and bubbles up the highlights when relevant, he says. Or at least, that's what scientists think. The problem with trying to create AI in our own image is that we don't fully comprehend how our minds work. “From a neuroscience perspective, where we are in terms of our understanding of the brain—and what it takes to build an intelligent system—is kind of pre-Newton,” Olshausen says. “If you're in physics and pre-Newtonian, you're not even close to building a rocket ship.”
Modern AI systems analyze images, transcribe texts, and translate languages using a system called neural networks, inspired by the brain's neocortex. Over the past year, virtually the entire AI community has begun shifting to a new approach to solve tough-to-crack problems: adding a memory component to the neuron jumble. Each company uses a different technique to accomplish this, but they share the same emphasis on memory. The speed of this change has taken some experts by surprise. “Just a few months ago, we thought we were the only people doing something a bit like that," says Weston, who co-authored Facebook's first major journal article about memory-based AI last fall. Days later, a similar paper appeared from researchers at Google DeepMind.
Since then, AI equipped with a sort of short-term memory has helped Google set records in video and image analysis, as well as create a machine that can figure out how to play video games without instructions. (They share more in common with kids than you probably thought.) Baidu has also made significant strides in image and speech recognition, including answering questions about images, such as, “What is in the center of the hand?” IBM says its Watson system can interpret conversations with an impressive 8 percent error rate. With Facebook's ongoing work on memory-based AI software that can read articles and then intelligently answer questions about their content, the social networking giant aims to create “a computer that can talk to you,” says Weston.
The next step is to create an accompanying framework more akin to long-term memory, which could lead to machines capable of reasoning, he explains.If a talking, learning, thinking machine sounds a little terrifying to you, you're not alone. “With artificial intelligence, we're summoning the demon,” Elon Musk said last year. The chief executive officer of Tesla Motors has a team working on AI that will let its electric cars drive themselves. Musk is also an investor in an AI startup named Vicarious. After some apparent self-reflection, Musk donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute, an organization set up by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Max Tegmark and his wife Meia to spur discussions about the possibilities and risks associated with AI.
The organization brings together the world's top academics, researchers, and experts in economics, law, ethics, and AI to discuss how to develop brainy computers that will give us a future bearing more resemblance to The Jetsons than to Terminator. “Little serious research has been devoted to the issues, outside of a few small nonprofit institutes. Fortunately, this is now changing,” Stephen Hawking, who serves on the institute's advisory board, said at a Google event in May.
“The healthy culture of risk assessment and the awareness of societal implications is beginning to take root in the AI community.”AI teams from competing companies are working together to advance research, with an eye toward doing so in a responsible way. The field still operates with an academic fervor reminiscent of the early days of the semiconductor industry—sharing ideas, collaborating on experiments, and publishing peer-reviewed papers. Google and Facebook are developing parallel research schemes focused on memory-based AI, and they're publishing their papers to free academic repositories. Google's cutting-edge Neural Turing Machine “can learn really complicated programs” without direction and can operate them pretty well, Peter Norvig, a director of research at Google, said in a talk in March. Like a cubicle dweller wrestling with Excel, the machine makes occasional mistakes. And that's all right, says Norvig. “It's like a dog that walks on its rear legs. Can you do it at all? That's the exciting thing.”
Technological progress within corporate AI labs has begun to make its way back to universities. Students at Stanford University and other schools have built versions of Google's AI systems and published the source code online for anyone to use or modify. Facebook is fielding similar interest from academics. Weston delivered a lecture at Stanford on May 11 to more than 70 attending
students—with many more tuning in online—who were interested in learning more about Facebook's Memory Networks project. LeCun, the Facebook AI boss, says, “We see ourselves as not having a monopoly on good ideas.” LeCun co-wrote a paper in the science journal Nature on May 28, along with Google's Geoff Hinton and University of Montreal Professor Yoshua Bengio, saying memory systems are key to giving computers the ability to reason about the world by adjusting their understanding as they see things change over time.
To illustrate how people use memory to respond to an event, LeCun grabs his magic pen from earlier and tosses it at a colleague. A machine without a memory or an understanding of time doesn't know how to predict where an object will land or how to respond to it. People, on the other hand, use memory and common sense to almost instinctively catch or get out of the way of what's coming at them. Weston, the Facebook AI researcher, watches the pen arc through the air and then hit him in the arm. “He's terrible at catching stuff,” LeCun says, with a laugh, “but he can predict!” Weston reassures him: “I knew it was going to hit me.”
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible.Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
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Sunday, May 31, 2015
Google Chromecast Will Enable Mobile Devices to Stream Games to TVs
Google announced the availability of beta versions of new APIs that will enable Android devices to stream games directly to TVs.
Users of Google's Chromecast will soon be able to stream more than just video and audio from their mobile devices to the TV. In addition, they will also be able to play iOS and Android games on their big screens without having to mirror content between their mobile devices and the Google Cast device.
Beta-test versions of new application programming interfaces (API) for developers of mobile games for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets were one of many new products and services that the company introduced at its Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco.
The new Google Cast Remote Display APIs will give game developers a way to enable an "integrated second screen experience," for users of iOS and Android devices, Nathan Camarillo and David Allison, Google Cast product managers, said in a blog post.
Unlike the "Casting Your Android Screen" option that is currently available on Chromecast, the new APIs will enable iOS and Android games to send video and audio frames to a TV where users can play them without the need for game consoles. In addition, a new Game Manager API for Google Cast will make it easier for developers to build multiplayer games than can be streamed to a Google cast receiver, the two product managers said.
The new support for gaming apps could boost Chromecast's popularity even further. Released in July 2013, Google's $35 to $40 Chromecast is currently only second behind Roku in terms of market share in the streaming media segment.
Market numbers released by Parks Associates in December showed Roku holding a 29 percent share of streaming media sales, followed by Google Chromecast with 20 percent.
In the less than two years that the device has been in the market, Chromecast has supplanted Apple TV for second place, according to Parks Associates. Google itself claims it has sold about 17 million of the devices since launch. It claims that active Chromecast users currently consume about 66 percent more Web content daily, compared to when the device was first launched.
In addition to the new support for mobile games, Google has also released new APIs that will soon enable autoplay and queuing of video and audio files on Chromecast. Currently, the streaming media device lets user stream only a single audio or video file at a time. The new APIs will allow developers to build support for content queues and buffering while a previous video or audio file is finishing playback, the Google product managers said.
"This enables the creation of a continuous playback experience and can significantly increase watch time, helping lift per-session watch times by 10 to 20 percent or more," Camarillo and Allison claimed in their blog entry.
Google's moves come amid surging interest in media streaming services and devices. According to Parks Associates, about 10 percent of U.S. households with broadband services owned a streaming device, like Chromecast in 2014. The number is expected to soar to 25 percent of U.S. broadband households this year. By 2017, Parks Associates estimates there will more than 50 million media players sold globally.
In addition to Roku, Google and Apple, other big players in this market include Amazon and Sony. Among the current streaming media market leaders, only Apple has yet to release a streaming media device, the analyst firm has noted.
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Monday, May 11, 2015
FMX Wraps 20th Edition; APD, Stuttgart Show Results
The 20th anniversary edition of FMX in Stuttgart, Germany, is in the books as an event worthy of celebrating two decades of spotlighting the best in the art and technology of visual effects and animation.
Capping with a special screening of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the four-day event reports 3,200 attendees from 55 countries flocked to FMX on a daily basis. The percentage of professionals compared to the students amounted to 61 percent, and there were 270 speakers from 22 countries who delivered presentations, workshops and panel discussions.
Meanwhile, the concurrent Animation Production Day reported that a contract for a European co-production was signed at the event — a first for the show. Jan Bonath of Scopas Medien AG, Germany, and Mark Mertens of Grid Animation, Belgium, signed a coproduction agreement for the project Marnie’s World.
APD drew 120 participants from 12 different countries that discussed and negotiated co-operations for the 37 selected animation projects showcased in this year’s APD in Stuttgart’s L-Bank in over 450 one-to-one meetings.
The total production volume of these projects is around 130 million euros, equivalent to $145 million.
The 22nd Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film — another related event — honored the best productions in the field of applied animation at the Animated Com Award.
The main prize was awarded to Arnaud & Jérôme from France for League of Legends: Warriors.
Within the advertising category, Manvsmachine from Great Britain won with their commercial Nike Mercurial Superfly IV.
The Award for technology was awarded to Ghost Peloton by Mark Huskisson, Great Britain.
Smart Ampelmännchen by Marten Persiel from Germany won the award for spatial communication.
Nate Theis of the United States and his production Driving won a special prize called Future Needs Derivation – Mobility in a Digital World, presented by Daimler AG, which includes 2,500 euros.
The Lapp Connected Award — also including at 2,500 euro prize — was given to Pass It On, by Teresa Cruz.
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible. Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
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Gluckman’s pat for Indian animation
When DreamWorks Studios, the American film production company, first planned on setting shop in other markets, they launched a sort of international location scouting, before zeroing in on Bengaluru , back in 2008. Creative Director Philippe Gluckman says the diverse culture in India was one of the key factors which led them to take that decision.
“I feel the culture here lends itself to creative things. Also, there is a large native talent pool in animation here. The knowledge of English also helps. Cost-effectiveness was a factor, but not the dominant reason,” says Gluckman, who was in the city this weekend to participate in the Animation Masters summit organised by the Toonz Media Group.
In the initial days of the DreamWorks Dedicated Unit in Bangalore, the team was producing animated commercials. TV specials, high-quality material produced exclusively for television, happened later.
Just six years later, in 2014, they produced their first full-length feature Penguins of Madagascar .
“Making major parts of Puss in Boots here was a big deal for us. With Penguins… , we went a step ahead. We worked right from building the characters, the look of the film, to the production phase. Though we planned to produce the entire film here, the last part had to be shifted out owing to scheduling issues,” he says.
Working with a young team of 240, a majority of whom are from India, reminds Gluckman of his earlier days in the industry, of working with small dynamic teams.
Downside
“The only downside here is working so far from the U.S., and the problems of different timelines. But, coming to India changed me, artistically and personally. I am a runner and of late, I have been going into villages and the visual culture there is so fascinating. Also, the people are very welcoming and warm. I am also interested in learning languages. We now speak Hindi at home. We also watch Hindi films occasionally, like the Munnabhai series or 3 Idiots . ”
Working on Indian content is something that he looks forward to, although the studios are yet to warm up to it. Plans were there to produce a ‘Bollywood-style’ musical on Ramayana, which did not take off. “I have seen some of the animation films produced here. Some are interesting and some are dated. But I feel we need to continue to give opportunities to people from here. With the kind of talent pool here, it is unfortunate that the artists here think that they have to go outside the country to make it. This scenario should change.”
He feels that some of the animation films being produced internationally follow a stale formula. “In the initial days, we were making very ambitious expensive films. But, we have to move beyond this one model of making animation films. We now have more diverse markets, and we have to make targeted films.”
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible. Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
Contact us for your 2d and 3d animation requirements email-info@pixotritechnologies.com. Visit our website: www.pixotritechnologies.com
Anti-Aging Measures for Disney’s Animation Cels
The hand-drawn animation cels used to create cartoons before the advent of computers have aged poorly. Their cellulose and polyester backings have buckled, cracked and yellowed, and the watercolor paint is peeling. To determine the best way to prevent further damage, the Disney Animation Research Library, which owns millions of these works, is collaborating with the Getty Conservation Institute.
Michael R. Schilling, a senior scientist at the Getty institute, said researchers are studying which protective materials to wrap around the cels , what temperature are best for storage and how to reattach lost paint.
The original opaque paints were designed to be durable and flexible enough to withstand rough treatment as the cellulose sheets were passed around during filming sessions. Disney animators mixed the paints themselves instead of buying commercial brands that might not have adhered to the plastic. “Too much was at stake when they made these movies to leave anything to chance,” Mr. Schilling said.
Researchers will subject tiny cel samples to lab tests to simulate years of exposure to conditions like extreme temperatures, light, moisture and air. The results will also be useful to conservators working on 20th-century sculptures that contain plastics, Mr. Schilling said.
The Getty’s efforts will help preserve the animation collection not only for historians interested in Disney studies but also for future generations of cinephiles .
In September, a four-hour documentary about Walt Disney will air on public television. Sarah Colt, the director and producer, said the movie will have footage of animators at work. “It just took an army of artists” to make the early films, she said.
Heritage Auctions in Dallas, which regularly offers them, notes occasional condition problems in its catalogs, such as wrinkles and cracks.
SHAKESPEAREAN OBSESSION
Biographers only recently started poring over the voluminous documentation that Henry Clay Folger and his wife, Emily, made of their purchases of Shakespearean works. “The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio,” due out on Tuesday from Simon & Schuster, by Andrea Mays, explains how the couple divided up responsibilities in their shared mania.
The Folgers built their Shakespeare collection with little input from others. From the 1880s to the 1920s, they invested Mr. Folger’s Standard Oil earnings in hundreds of thousands of publications, manuscripts and paintings. They paid tens of thousands of dollars each for rarities, including editions of plays printed in 1623, known as First Folios. When the Folgers traveled, they took along boxfuls of file cards of their cataloged acquisitions. To ensure everything would stay together, they built the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
“Emily read thousands of booksellers’ catalogs, marking them with dog-eared corners and making pencil squiggles in the margins,” Ms. Mays writes in “The Millionaire and the Bard.” Henry Folger negotiated with dealers and tracked what was for sale around the world. “He took meticulous notes on condition, completeness, binding, provenance , and prices paid,” she continues.
One of the couple’s favorite dealers was A . S. W. Rosenbach, whom Stephen H. Grant, the author of “Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger” (published last year by Johns Hopkins University Press), describes as “the most erudite rascal in the book business.” When Mr. Rosenbach needed quick cash, Mr. Grant writes, he would show an associate “something printed in the Shakespearean period and plead: ‘Can you make this into Shakespeareana? I want to sell it to Folger.’ ” References to Denmark and Falstaff’s basso singing were sometimes enough to persuade Mr. Folger to write checks.
Next year, for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger library will team up with the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association on exhibitions of the 1623 First Folios, which will travel to all 50 states.
Daniel De Simone, head librarian at the Folger, said that despite the recent biographies, the Folgers’ innermost thoughts and feelings remain a mystery.
“The nature of their private relationship is even unknown to us,” he said.
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible. Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development.
Contact us for your 2d and 3d animation requirements email-info@pixotritechnologies.com. Visit our website: www.pixotritechnologies.com
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Warner Bros. Animation King Bruce Timm Weighs in on Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn
Created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn has taken on a unique place in fandom through the years. We’re finally getting to see her brought to life for live-action thanks to Suicide Squad, but her look is certainly a far cry from her original Harlequin costume. Timm has some thoughts on her latest portrayal.
Speaking with press about his upcoming web series Justice League: Gods and Monsters (which sees a return of the classic Timm animation style) for Machinima, Timm was asked to weigh in on the recent reveal of Harley Quinn from the Suicide Squad cast photo. He gave this reaction to Polygon:
“It’s interesting,” Timm answered immediately. “It’s weird. Myself — being somebody who’s taken characters that pre-exist and putting my own spin on them in my own little universe — I’m very aware of how when a character that I necessarily created shows up in other media that they have to adapt it and do different things with it than I would do. So I’m very open to it to see what they’re going to do. I’m actually really excited. I just today, just before the show started, saw the first image of Harley Quinn from the Suicide Squad movie, and I thought ‘Woah. She looks actually pretty cute!’ I was actually kind of worried I thought ‘Oh, she’s going to look really, really bizarre and skanky ’ but nah , she’s not too bad. So I’m often mistaken.”
Your mileage may vary, of course, but it’s interesting to see Timm’s take. He also said this to io9: “I was frankly a little nervous about what Harley would look like, but I thought she looked really cool. So I’m optimistic, we see.” He also went on to talk a bit about her evolution and the current solo comic at DC from Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti:
It’s funny, because she started off as just like a one joke idea and she’s gained all these different dimensions from all the stories we did, and the stuff that happens in the comics. I think bottom line the most important thing about her is that she’s funny. One way or the other regardless of what her backstory is, or whether she’s in an abusive relationship with the Joker, or if she’s off on her own, or hanging out with Poison Ivy, or whether she’s a villain or a hero.
I think bottomline her stories always have to be fun, if not flat out hilarious (but that would be even better). That’s one of the things I like about the current comic. They understand that, they’re not treating her as another angsty bizarre superhero type character. She’s really weird and funny and kind of chaotic.
That’s pretty much in line with what I said in response to the first photo, it really is all going to depend on her personality. Still keeping my fingers crossed…
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible. Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
Contact us for your 2d and 3d animation requirements email-info@pixotritechnologies.com. Visit our website: www.pixotritechnologies.com
Ginnifer Goodwin Joins Jason Bateman in Disney Animation's 'Zootopia' (Exclusive)
The project is being directed by Byron Howard (Tangled) and Rich Moore (Wreck-it Ralph) and co-directed by Jared Bush. It has a March 4, 2016, release date.
The script, by Bush, is set in a modern mammal metropolis comprised of neighborhoods such as ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown.
Goodwin will voice a bunny named Judy Hopps (get it?), a by-the-book meter maid with dreams of being a police officer. But being the first bunny on the force is not within reach, so when a mystery is discovered, Hopps forges an unlikely friendship with a fast-talking scam-artist fox (Bateman) to solve it. Together they will upend the predator-prey preconceptions that permeate this metropolis.
Goodwin is already a friend of the Disney kingdom. In addition to Once Upon a Time, which airs on Disney-owned ABC, she has also voiced one of the main characters in Disney's most recent installment of its popular Tinker Bell home entertainment franchise, Tinker Bell and the Legend of the Never Beast.
She is repped by WME, John Carrabino Management and Gendler & Kelly.
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible. Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
Contact us for your 2d and 3d animation requirements email- info@pixotritechnologies.com. Visit our website: www.pixotritechnologies.com
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Meerkat adds Facebook support, 'mobbing' to iOS app
Mobbing means Meerkat will syndicate popular streams to its own feed to boost viewership and interest in popular streams.
The app, which lets users live-stream video to friends, now includes support for Facebook. The feature, which was launched on Saturday, means users can announce their ongoing and upcoming live streams to their Facebook friends. The app also includes support for Address Book integration, allowing users to automatically connect using Meerkat with their contacts.
The update is an important improvement. Meerkat , which has been available for the last few months, previously relied exclusively on Twitter to publish streams to friends. So, when a user would start to live-stream, a link would be automatically sent to the person's Twitter account, allowing their followers to check out the streaming video. While the feature has proven crucial to Meerkat's meteoric rise in popularity, it has also been its Achilles' heel.
In March, Twitter announced the launch of its own live-streaming platform, called Periscope. Like Meerkat, the app automatically shares a live stream link with Twitter followers.
In the month or so that Periscope has been available, it's proven popular, according to Twitter. The company said on Wednesday during an earnings call that the live-streaming service had nabbed 1 million users within its first 10 days of availability.
Though it's unknown how Meerkat was affected by the Twitter launch, Twitter has a vested interest in seeing Periscope succeed and Meerkat fail, which could prove troublesome for the live-streaming startup in the coming months.
With Facebook integration, however, Meerkat is offloading its reliance on Twitter. While the service still publishes live streams to Twitter, having support from Facebook, the world's largest social network, could be the key feature that drives some growth. Better yet, it's unlikely, given that Periscope is owned by Twitter, that it will offer Facebook support anytime soon.
That point of differentiation -- support for Facebook -- is just the latest from Meerkat. Last week, the company announced the launch of its mobile app on the Google Play store. Although the app is still in beta and needs to have some kinks worked out, it brought the app to Android before Twitter delivered its Periscope to the Google platform, giving it a first-mover advantage to nab users and keep them put.
In addition to keeping users on its service, Meerkat is looking to promote some of the more popular live feeds with a new feature it's calling "mobbing." When a stream hits a certain level of viewership , Meerkat will syndicate it to its official feed. The feature appears to be an attempt to surface more feeds to the public to draw in viewership , as well as help to promote popular streams.
"For a Meerkat stream to mob it needs to pass 50 concurrent watchers and meet a certain criteria of people's engagement and retention within the stream," Rubin told CNET. "As long as the the stream meets this criteria -- it will keep mobbing."
The updated Meerkat app is available now as a free download in Apple's App Store.
Animation
Our team of experts works with you, take your company message and create a powerful animated marketing video that will engage viewers in the most effective way possible. Pixotri technology is a creative house developing quality web designs, E-Commerce solution. SEO services and Gaming development .
Contact us for your 2d and 3d animation requirementse mail- info@pixotritechnologies.com. Visit our website: www.pixotritechnologies.com
Two By Two review – plodding Euro animation
Two evolutionary outcasts, a Nestrian and a Grymp, are forced to fend for themselves – and each other – when Noah’s ark departs without them. Teaming up with what appears to be a giant slug (looking like an escapee from some misbegotten Manga), the pair must make their hazardous way to higher ground, encountering various slippy/slidey adventures en route, all the while escaping the attentions of a pair of ravenous griffins.
Co-produced by Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and Ireland, this bland animated Euro-pudding has little to offend and even less to excite as it follows its formulaic journey toward a communal group-hug. There are a couple of giggles along the way, but nothing you haven’t seen or heard before in the wholly superior Madagascar and Ice Age series. Local hero Chris Evans provides the voice of sticky parasite StayPut , a role that requires him to shout “woo-hoo” once too often.
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Friday, May 1, 2015
DreamWorks Animation Earnings Beat Q1 Projections Narrowly
DreamWorks Animation, reeling from a restructuring and a string of underperforming films, reported earnings that were slightly better than projected, after taking out one-time restructuring costs. The company announced a net loss of 64 cents per-share on Thursday, but after taking out January restructuring costs, that improved to a minus 37 cents a share. Analysts had projected a 45 cents per share negative mark going into the announcement.
The toon maker’s revenues of $166.5 million were just ahead of projections, but the costs attributable to layoffs and the remaking of the Burbank-based company dragged earnings lower. The company reported a net loss of $54.8 million for the quarter that ended March 31.
Chief executive and founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, despite still being in rebuilding mode, said he found hope for the future in the company’s lone 2015 film release, “Home.” The animated feature has logged more than $300 million in worldwide box office since its opening a month ago.
The company reported production costs of about $135 million and P&A expenses of roughly the same, meaning that distributor Fox is being paid off and DreamWorks can expect to log more revenue from the film in the second quarter of 2015.
“While 2015 is a transitional year for us, the worldwide box office performance of ‘Home’ serves as early evidence that the changes we’re making in the core feature animation business are working,” Katzenberg said.
He also cited the company’s “All Hail King Julien,” winner of the Emmy for outstanding children’s animated program, as another bright spot, saying the win showed the company possesses “extraordinary talent” that is still producing high-quality product.
DreamWorks had struggled in recent years as a series of releases – including “Penguins of Madagascar,” “Turbo” and “Rise of the Guardians” – disappointed at the box office, leading to writedowns for the studio.
Katzenberg had promised to retool the company and to return his personal focus to filmmaking , rather than to the studio’s television and merchandising operations.
As part of the makeover, Katzenberg named producers Bonnie Arnold and Mireille Soria as co-chiefs of the feature animation unit, replacing creative boss Bill Damaschke, who left the company in January after 20 years, the last four as chief creative director.
The company also reduced its slate from three to two films a year, with “Home” the lone offering it will put forward in 2015. The film was released March 27, at the end of the first quarter.
Katzenberg had previously expressed high hopes for Arnold and Soria. Arnold was the top producer on the “How to Train Your Dragon” films. The second installment in that series offered some home for DreamWorks last year, making more than $618 million worldwide.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2015
China-New Zealand Animation ‘Beast’ Set to Shoot
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Production gets under way this month on “Beast of Burden,” the first China-New Zealand co-production of an animated feature. William Morris Endeavor and Canada’s Strategem Entertainment are set to handle international sales.
The film is written and directed by Kirby Atkins (Nickelodeon’s “The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron”). The story sees a species of now-extinct creatures called Thoriphants rebel against their life of servitude to mankind and embark on a treacherous journey.
“Burden” is a production involving China Film Animation, part of state-owned China Film Group, and New Zealand’s Huhu Studios. Financial backing comes from Qi Tai Culture Development Group, company that spans film investment, production and marketing.
The film’s producers are Trevor Yaxley, CEO of Huhu Studios, and Jun Huang of China Film Animation. Executive production credits go to Michael Cerenzie of Stratagem and Kenin Spivak of SMI Entertainment.
WME is to secure U.S. distribution , while Strategem handles rights in the rest of the world. “Beast” is scheduled to be released in theaters in 2016.
Auckland-based Huhu is a group of creative and training centers specializing in 2D and 3D animation formats. It has additional studios in Taipei and Beijing which dhav six years of experience working with Chinese clients on animated movies, TV series, television commercials and theme park designs.
The film was given its official start at a ceremony during the Beijing International Film Festival (April 16-23). Attending were Yaxley, CFG chairman La Peikang, the New Zealand ambassador to China John McKinnon, and New Zealand Film Commission head Dave Gibson.
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Friday, April 17, 2015
One-Man Team Creates Film Using 3D Printing and Stop-Motion Animation
Chase Me is an animated film made entirely out of 2,500 individual 3D-printed parts
Chase Me is a stop-motion animated film directed by Gilles-Alexandre Deschaud using only parts made with a 3D printer. It took him two years of blocking, design, printing, filming and editing to create the whole feature, which is about embracing fears and turning them into something beautiful.
Large objects, like trees, were printed in smaller pieces and assembled. The protagonist was printed in various sizes for wide-angle and close-up shots.
A CG animator by trade, Deschaud animated each scene prior to printing the components. He made the changes he wanted during this step so he would waste no time or materials during the printing stage. He took his mise-en-scene from CG models, then created the finished product with stop-motion techniques. All animations were finished to spec for 15 frames per second.
He chose the Form 1 + 3D printer because it would allow him to create detailed, complex prints he needed to fully realize his vision.
Chase Me has not yet been released. You can check their Facebook page for announcements about when and where viewings will happen, and see the trailer on the movie website.
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