I'd love to be over with assignments...

I have tons to do and my kid has been sick since Thursday so I haven't been able to sit down and do stuff that I need to do.

I would really like to finish with the tasks for this course so I can move onto other stuff. I'm pretty sure I have done everything so far. Except for commenting.. because no one has anything that I can comment on. Has anyone done the final task yet?

Motion Capture as Storytelling facilitator - Final Task

Brief description and history of Motion Capture

As with all new technologies that are created out of a particular need, MoCap has found many ways to affect storytelling among other things. 

In brief, Motion capture evolved to a very precise way of recording the movements of actors in a three dimensional space regardless of how they look, and with accurate physics. This translated into a wide range of fields where the information could be used. It is currently used in areas such as Film and Television, Game Design, Medicine, Sports, Research, Military, and Robotics.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Blu-ray/8852/

In the film industry, Motion Capture replaced another technique called Rotoscope where actors were filmed and later animation was redrawn on top, following the same movements. This created more life like movement for characters. This technique was used, for example, in 1978's Lord of the Rings. In that particular case, it helped all characters, be it humans, dwarves, elves, or orcs to have consistent movements. This sparkled the idea that by having an unidentified actor producing the movements, you could have any character or object following it's movement. With Today's MoCap technology we are able to do just that.

As the technology was developing, in 2001, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within became the first full length movie to have been produced using Motion Capture. It was a whole world and characters fully created in the computer. After that, the film industry kept developing the technology as they attempted to recreate life like movements into more and more realistic environments.

Before, it would have been very difficult producing the movement of creatures that don't exist and make them believable. So was the case of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers where the first real time Motion Capture was used to record the movements of the actor to be translated into the screen as the fully computer generated character of Gollum. It would have been near impossible finding someone that looked like the tormented creature to play the part, but by using the technology, they were able to blend the CG and real life footage into a realistic form.

http://www.myjive.com/animation-led-motion-capture

There have been countless movies and now also games that have been produced using Motion Capture. In a way using the technology helps reduce the animation time almost to zero. Yes, there has to be some cleanup of the files and the models need to be paired properly for the avatars to function properly and move according to the actor's movements. But instead of having to manually animate and process every single bone in a character's structure, taking a lot of time in the process, by just preparing the files and models correctly, all of this can be done automatically.

On to a more particular matter: Our own experience using Motion Capture to facilitate OUR storytelling.

How is it now, that a small group of students with very little experience animating, can get access to a MoCap studio? Here is our experience using the technology to help create a small story we developed for a game called House of Cats. We made this during the Mediapolis Game Jam.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikaelpeltomaa/23200134006/

As a Team, we developed a story where the player (a boy inside the game) had trespassed into the Crazy Cat Lady's house. He had to navigate through a house with lots of rooms full of cats and find the way out. The worst part was, the Crazy Cat Lady was though to have killed other trespassing kids before, so the aim was to not wake up the woman and leave the house alive.

We made our game and we used the technology available to us. We went to the Motion Capture studio and recorded the movements that our characters would make. We had 3 characters, The boy, the woman, and the ghost of another kid. For each character we had a series of movements planned that we would need. 

Here is me, ready to do the angry crazy cat lady's moves.

For example the boy would need to walk carefully through the room (movement one), he would topple things accidentally (move 2), he would accidentally step on a cat (movement 3), also when the inevitable waking of the woman occurred, there would have to be a move cowering from her (movement 4). The ghost basically would just move around randomly (my movement however, looked like a weird drunk dancer of some sort, I thought the legs wouldn't matter in the end). And the woman, well, she would come at you to kill you.

The video above shows one of the captures I acted of the boy walking carefully around the room and toppling an item from over a table. As you see, the translation of movement is great and it took literally seconds to create. This can then be used for any character after being linked. I, however, haven't gotten that far yet on my MoCap course, so I won't be able to make all the nifty mini-videos I wanted to make.

As with any newbie using something, of course things went wrong and our animation didn't end up looking perfectly like our motion captures. Mostly because of how the 3d model was made, but in the end I think it worked just fine for our purposes, which was to create a scary looking move, so the glitches (and our ignorance of how to properly work with the files) worked in our favor in making the woman look more demon-like than anticipated.

The video above shows the Game Over mini animation of the crazy cat lady attacking the player, along with our player (using a Virtual Reality headset) watching it happen. By the end of the 48 hours we had to create a game, we changed our concept and play mechanics so much that things were a bit off everywhere.

In our particular case, MoCap technology helped us speed things up by prerecording very quickly our movements instead of spending countless hours trying to make the characters move. As time was of the essence for us in that project, using these "simplifying" technologies is what got us through the line.

****

There is another project that I am currently working on which involves Motion Capture. It's a short story of a business man and a shoe shiner. We already went to the studio, acted and recorded the movements. This experience showed other advantages to this technology.

For example, after running around and acting, you can immediately watch what you captured and see how everything looks like. You can get the full sense of the scene and correct little mistakes if needed. By watching what you recorded, you can see if there are flaws that need to be fixed before we even get into the developing of the characters. 

For example, we noticed that one of the actors was moving very lightly and made it seem like he was barely affected by what happened. Our project is going to be a "mute" story, so expression is crucial for the transmission of emotions. This gave us the chance to go back and reenact the story with better results. Take two and we are ready.

Since in the screen all you can see is a thin gray avatar with no features, it's very easy to see how the body moves with no extra distractions. I even have to say that the physical appearance of the actor doesn't matter, so if I'm still carrying 5 extra kilos from after the pregnancy, they don't show on the screen at all! (self esteem +1)

Tip toeing around the mad cat house.

All in all I believe this new technology has been able to produce some incredible results and I'm pretty sure that storytellers of old would have loved to see what human ingenuity has been able to produce. To show worlds as we see them in our heads so others can see them too. To experience what others experience as if we were there. Storytelling has evolved since the first person that sat down and told a story. Where will we go next?

Sources:

http://areena.yle.fi/1-3159473

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikaelpeltomaa/albums/72157660723845149

http://www.firstshowing.net/2014/whoa-dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-mocap-comparison-video/

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/02/23/motion-capturing-an-oscar/
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2014/04/10/20-unforgettable-moments-from-ralph-bakshis-the-lord-of-the-rings/

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MotionCapture

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-motion-capture-in-dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-is-1580043101

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_capture

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And to finish, on a side note about quickly presenting ideas, we were so proud of ourselves! We managed to write and say our pitch in less than 30 seconds! I think that on the actual pitch (not on the practice run among ourselves) I managed to do it in less than 16. And watching the video made me realize why people have trouble understanding me when I talk fast...

Our pitch when we were only 3 first year students with no game designing experience. (Two codes joined us afterwards :D)

Finnish Media Overlook.

Look at that! I did had time to finish almost all my other assignments after all.

We had to swiftly research the  Finnish media and will give a presentation about it on thursday. here is what we looked into so far:

Media Outlet Owners

Yleisradio (YLE), also known as Finnish Broadcasting Company in English is Finland's national public broadcasting company. It is a public limited company, and 99,98% of it is owned by the Finnish state. It is widely modelled after its UK counterpart, the BBC. YLE offers many services, television and radio being the most visible.

MTV (MTV Oy) is Finland's most watched commercial television channel and one of Europe's oldest commercial television broadcast companies. Previously it was owned by several advertising agencies, however today it is owned by a Swedish publishing company Bonnier. MTV offers news in the television and on their own website and also in radio (Radio Nova). Several other channels (most of them require a fee to watch) are under MTV's ownership - Sub, AVA and the MTV Total channel package.

Aamulehti is a Finnish language daily newspaper published in the Tampere region. Aamulehti Corporation owned the paper until 2003 when it was acquired by Finnish Alma Media. Aamulehti's sister papers are Iltalehti and the business-oriented Kauppalehti.

Helsingin Sanomat (HS) is the largest subscription-based newspaper in the Nordic countries and it is owned by Sanoma which is a Finnish company that also operates in over ten other European countries. Sanoma also owns (for the most part) the television channel Nelonen.

Censorship

In Finland we have freedom of speech which gives any person right to say out loud their opinion.

Its tricky thing because now we all think we all can say whatever we want without censorship, the truth however is that there are all lot of things that are not said. Finnish media have developed this certain way how to say things. For example during election of president on 2006 there was question asked: “Should president of Finland support status of Swedish language in Finland?”

But that question doesn’t really ask anything about Finnish language legislation or the law that makes us to study Swedish in our schools.

So in a way Finnish media have found a way to ask questions about the matter people want to hear without going straight to the point. People just remember politicians talking about the topic and creates illusion of censorship media. http://www.pakkoruotsi.net/media.shtml

Safeguarding impartiality and ethics

We have “Julkisen sanan neuvosto” also know as Council for Mass Media
http://www.jsn.fi/en/

CMM was established in 1968 by publishers and journalists.

Its task is to interpret good professional practice and defend the freedom of speech and publication but it does not exercise legal jurisdiction.

Any person who considers that there has been a breach of good professional practice by media may bring this to the attention of the CMM.

Example of Finnish Media Online Article

News are exposed in a short an concise way, but the amount of information on the articles is lacking and very short. It presents the head title followed by a short description of the article. It is immediately followed by a facebook icon to "recommend" the article to others, or share it. After that an image is presented and followed by the bulk of the article. In the end, it is followed by a series of links to "related news" which may or may not be related.

On the side, a series of headlines is displayed along with a section of "our picks" where they display the articles that seems the most relevant for the journalists. It also has a timeline with news on the far right. On the top of the page, a weather report.

Interesting link about the media landscape:

http://ejc.net/media_landscapes/finland

Is there Free Press?

It’s difficult to have media that is completely objective and free, but the situation in Finland is definitely better than in many other countries. As long as it doesn’t break the laws you can get pretty much any opinions posted as long as someone is willing to publish it.

Politicians can be criticized freely and even quite radical opinions get out there. Even blatant racists and just general assholes (the True Finns party) can get their voices heard.

The word “free media” is used a lot, but it kind of remains open who and what it actually refers to, or if it's all finnish media in general. Like in this article.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/vapaa_media_pelasti_henkeni/6318533

____________________________________________________________

** This was a group task, so team members opinions are expressed as well.

Busy Busy Mediapolis Game Jam

Two of my friends and I participated in the Mediapolis Game Jam. It was the first game jam I've ever attended. I loved it, it was great, but i'm exhausted. Therefore I'm not sure if my blog post for this weekend will be on time but here is this post saying why.

Photo by Mikael Peltomaa

I will write more about the game jam later on as well. But for now this is it.

Another media blog entry. (day 2)

Wow, I'm still amazed at how quickly the heart of the common person changes. Yesterday the internet felt a wave of sorrow and compassion, and today... Today it's already too much?

I kept following what happened with the topic of the attacks on Paris, and this is where the web is at now:

How weird is it that we were talking about these massive media events in class and one happens before next class? Does he know something? Do we?

Another media blog entry. (updated a lot)

It's terrible that such bad news appear right when you have to do a dedicated assignment about media. I could say so many things about what's going on, but i'm not going to, It's too much stuff that I don't want to get started on that.

Instead, I will yet again point at how weird it is that people turn to social media for news.

In this case, I was browsing around and ran into this post:

http://9gag.com/gag/aepwZdB

The person that posted this mentioned that they don't know french and they don't understand whats going on in the news, so naturally they turned into a place they know will most likely provide answers.

Among the ordinary "Fallout 4 is out" and "John Travolta" posts, there were a lot of messages posted by people following the news all over the world. Many in the USA are posting pictures of governmental buildings that have been lit with the colors of France's flag to show support. It's amazing how nowadays you can so easily find out what happens around the world as a reaction to another event.

I'm sure many would not see those pictures at all if it wasn't for social media. The printed press and even the news webpages can only "print" a limited amount of pictures, right?

Here are a few images of what's going on right now.

I don't know. It seems to give a sense of unity. I don't log into social media to check whats going on, I mostly log when i'm bored and have nothing else to do, like have a few seconds of peace that could not be used to, say, play a game.

I keep updating this because I've been paying attention to how things have developed over the day.
It seems at first people seemed to be shocked and supportive. Now some other issues have been arising:

Need I say more?

Documenting Ideas. News for all.

Well, it was strange. We had to come up with a way of delivering news that was different from what we currently have. I guess I had been pushing the boundaries of the exercises slightly as of late. So now we get more defined outlines.

As we went back to our fortress of thought, riddled with dirty dishes and all kinds of disgusting features (yet the best seats in the school) we set up to redefine the concept of news itself. (Yes, i'm feeling a bit poetical after watching some Dr.Who and hearing "fire in the water" one too many times.)

One of our team members suggested that we try to tackle it in a more controversial way. It's weird but all I could think of was how news were presented in a completely non-objective and biased way in V for Vendetta. And in a way we ended up trying to do something in that style. Kind of.

The weirdest thing is: What a coincidence... That day was the 5th of November...

(Yes, that extra comma there makes my grammar-nazi senses tingle.)

We started our mandatory discussion trying to define exactly what we wanted. I certainly was aiming for something different but as a team decision, the best I can do is try to help define it. As always, I went to the computer and tried narrowing down the ideas as best I could and put them into a presentation. Its hard when we are so caught up on making and exploring ideas that we then need to go back to a few simple statements and write the down.

No wonder when we try to ground the ideas we have such a conflicting time, some of our ideas end up being contradictory by nature. And it always seems like we have a lot of time to think about things, and we end up running out of time in a flash.

In any case, our idea was that instead of delivering news in a direct and pre-digested way, we would do more of a dialog between two opposing opinions on the matter and try to make people think for themselves. Revolutionary, right? We tried to aim it as making people truly get involved mentally.

Think about it this way. If I tell you Replicators are dangerous, you might just nod and move on with your day. Maybe one day in the future you will remember the word Replicator, but won't remember if it was good or bad. If instead, I show you the struggles of Replicator Fifth and sarcastically say how loving and caring this character was, you might (if you have a curious nature) feel compelled to learn more and make your own judgement. See what I did there? If you have no idea what Replicators are and have no idea what I'm talking about, you might feel tempted to click on the links and read a bit about what those things are. (Or if you are lazy you will just keep going, if you even keep going at all.. I'm looking at you Patricia! *grin*)

The point doesn't end there. If you clicked on the links you might have learned that Fifth was a replicator who was betrayed and in turn became an enemy for the humans on a tv series called Stargate SG-1. You would have learned that indeed replicators were a nasty plague that drove the Asgard to commit mass suicide ending their existence as a race in the galaxy and they might have almost destroyed our dear Milky Way. But if you hadn't been somehow pushed into learning about it on your own, by your own conviction, (or in this case being 'spoon fed' by me in this paragraph) you would have "Maybe remembered the word Replicator, but not remembered if it was good or bad."

That was basically the point we wanted to make in class. I think we failed miserably in the execution as I believe the idea didn't get trough. It didnt help that we had quite a few contradictory ideas floating around and we were force, due to lack of time, to condense everything to have something to present.

Shame on us really. I hate bad quality work.

Wow how weird.

You know when you haven't even thought about something for years and you suddenly remember about it. then you log on and there it is?

Someone posting about the movie I mentioned yesterday at class. Evolution.

The longest shampoo commercial in the history of mankind.

Oh my...

Pre-task.

Time Travel. Media Landscape Report.

The world is healing.

If you haven't, read this post first.

I hope you enjoyed the short story setting I wrote for this assignment. It costed me a lot to do it, since I paid for an upgrade for my 3d modeling program (*grin*) and well... It did take the whole weekend to make and render that tiny video of the chair with plants and water. Too much water, and in retrospective, I shouldn't have used brushed steel as a material for the chair, too many reflections of water waves and plants moving around. But now I have so many ideas of pictures I want to make related to this story! Now that i just uploaded the video, i gotta say.. it looks terrible and horrific. I hate it. I have no idea what happened with compression rates or something while uploading. This is a nightmare...

Anyways, back to the assignment. On this trip to the future, I followed a Worst Case Scenario with a twist. Since the assignment was defined as "no right or wrong answers" I did push it a bit to the extreme and had a lot of fun in the process of making the whole story in my head (and checking lots of facts and conventions so that things sound plausible, I even came up with my own interplanetary time system and all!).

I wrote the story of how the world ends due to disarray and chaos. How, sadly, the amount of small minded people overwhelms the possibility of a brighter future and eventually ends with the demise of the human species. Before all is lost, the party blamed for the chaos (the aliens who hadn't even made contact with us by the time of the war aka 'The Raze') comes and saves the day for the few remaining bits of human society and takes them to safety while, well, Earth gets a makeover.

In this setting, I considered the media going back to a more primal state, where it is actually used as a means of communication, no hidden agendas, no evil handlers, no puppeteers and no zombified spectators. An Utopian media if you will. The way intelligent and moral beings would use it, discarding the bad aspects of it.

The media would affect the society in a way that it would (in my setting in the future) help reintegrate the remaining people. It would give back a sense of community and belonging, while being friendly, informative and positive. It would be awaited instead of just another part of the busy lives of our contemporary lives.

All in all. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed.

Time Travel. Regional Gyration Notation: Year 2025...

The following text has been translated to CEL (Common Earth Language: previously known as English)

To citizens of the human colony on 'Tabetha':

The latest probe on Earth has sent back promising results. Radiation levels have effectively started decreasing following the events of The Raze. Relocation to Earth is now possible and available. Apply to secure your place in The Ark in the next junction cycle.

Following is a short demonstration of plant life regeneration and ecosystem reformation. Due to transmission delays, the video demonstrates events from 3 years ago. Decontamination methods used have proven effective.

(wow the quality of this video really went to hell, wtf?)

 End of communique.

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We are going HOME!

Good news from our hosts in this far away corner of the Galaxy! It seems that their relentless efforts to heal our broken planet have paid off! Radiation levels are dropping fast and their probe sent us confirmation of local vegetation growing without intervention and outside the Regrowth Zones.

Applications for the first trip on The Ark have begun. Don't forget to inform your supervising agent and apply with the necessary forms available in the grid.

Have a pleasant afternoon.
-Darleth Scorial, Communications Manager.

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A time for remembrance.

It has been 6 years already since we lost the ability to live on Earth. Thanks to our kind hosts we have been able to retrieve electronic files with information regarding The Raze. Let us remember the past an honor those who were lost on that tragic chain of events.

Following confirmation from the Kepler space observatory, the debate on existence of life outside our Solar System was finally put to rest. After much deliberation on Alien life and the consequences that could bring, several governmental organizations across the world came together to create a spaceship capable of Faster than Light Travel. It was early in the year 2017 that the Astraeus was launched and it triumphantly entered Hyperspace.

Following the success of the Astraeus, many populations began to manifest fear of the encounter with another intelligent life form, remember that at this time, we had not yet made contact with our gracious hosts. Riots began on most mayor cities of the planet and eventually, the 'Humanitarians' began a series of offensive attacks against the various forms of government. Martial law was put into effect on most countries but regardless the population of Earth all fell into disarray.

The Dark Day (July 17th, 2019) marked the end of our Human era. On that day, nuclear war began with the detonation of large yielding atomic bombs at ground level in many areas of the world. It was speculated at the time that a small number of individuals infiltrated an arsenal and began the attack.

The nuclear war was swift and unstoppable. The following months after the fallout brought death to the population of Earth. By September a mere 0.000012% of the population remained, most suffering from severe radiation poisoning.

It was then when our kind hosts arrived and saved the 88,534 people that were left on the planet. Advance medical procedures were performed to stop and eliminated the radioactive illnesses that we had. Along with a few species of animals, our hosts also retrieved the over 10,000 seed samples from the vaults at Svalbard. They kindly began a campaign to rehabilitate our planet.

November 1st, 2025.

Story, concept and all images and animations made by Barbara Leal

Continue to the media report here.