Sparrows vs Sparrows

Sparrows may be small, but that doesn't mean they are timid:

Clash of the Sparrows



Clash of the Sparrows 2


related website: http://videos.viewmyart.com *

Sparrows vs Sparrows

Learning the Fun Way (Animations)

Here's a video which is both entertaining and informative from YouTube user OUlearn (The Open University) entitled "60-Second Adventures in Thought (combined)". Clever summaries and somewhat whimsical animations explain thought experiments by Zeno of Elea, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others:




related web pages:

•  http://www.youtube.com/user/OUlearn
•  http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/philosophy

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Learning the Fun Way (Animations)

Surreal Animation

Here's an intricate animation created by YouTube user vlinefx for a Teesside University Masters project:



related web page: http://www.youtube.com/user/vlinevfx *

Surreal Animation

Sneak Peek: My Upcoming Humpty Dumpty Animation

I've been working on what I believe will be my most ambitious Humpty Dumpty video yet.  This time, our hero will be on a dungeon quest adventure.  Like all my preceding H.D. videos, the frames are being created primarily in POV-Ray, and the story will be told in an original rhyme.  Below is a very preliminary screen shot:

 

Currently I am estimating a completion date sometime in the first quarter of 2013, but I make no absolute promise - I'm trying to really take my time and raise the bar on quality.  One area in which I've been trying to improve is to give Humpty a better walk cycle than the rather jerky one he had in my previous Humpty Dumpty and the Candlestick video.  I found a couple of good online references here and here. I did take a few liberties with the advice offered, such as having Humpty keep his left arm rigid in "lantern holding" position, rather than swinging it, but basically I found the information very helpful.

Once I had his basic key frame positions down for walking (for which I stored the knee and foot position coordinates), I was happy to find that I could very easily average them together to get intermediate positions (and then average those to get even more intermediate positions, and so on). In other words, it's not too hard to compute a whole lot of frames and get as smooth a walk cycle as one wants with POV-Ray.

As I mentioned, the above screen shot is very preliminary. I'll probably add a number of additional objects to the dungeon, and outfit Humpty in some more appropriate adventurer garb.  How does it look to you so far?  Is it suitably dark for a dungeon, but not so dark that you can't make out most of the main details?  It looks about right on my monitor, but I know that can vary a lot, depending on what screen one is using.  Leave me a comment.

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Sneak Peek: My Upcoming Humpty Dumpty Animation

Rock'n Geese

Not all the geese got eaten on Thanksgiving, and the ones in this video seem pretty happy about having survived:



Related web page: http://www.videos.viewmyart.com/video_RocknGeese.htm *

Rock'n Geese

Happy Thanksgiving (cute animation)

Here's a well-made (and cute) Thanksgiving themed animation with a unique style from the talented mind of Timothy Tu.  Happy Thanksgiving to all:



Related website: http://www.ojolie.com *

Happy Thanksgiving (cute animation)

"The Maker" (an excellent stop motion video)

Making a short stop motion clip takes some effort.  Making a high quality stop motion video that runs five and a half minutes long, takes what I can only imagine to be a lot of effort.  So kudos to Zealous Creative for a job well done in giving life to The Maker:




related website: http://www.zealouscreative.com *

"The Maker" (an excellent stop motion video)

A New POV-Ray Tutorial & Other Matters

For those of you who might be thinking of trying your hand at creating animation frames using the (free) POV-Ray raytracing program, I've written a short tutorial on how to do so. It's available here on Stuart Whitmore's  Videoliberty site.

In an unrelated housekeeping note, I've gone through and fixed most (all?) of the broken embeds and links on this blog, most of which were due to the demise of the Revver video hosting service. In cases where I could not find working replacements online (or, more rarely, where I felt the post no longer fit well with the blog) I hit the delete button.  So while the quantity of content here has shrunk, what remains should be working a lot better (and faster too - I deleted a few widgets for reasons unrelated to speed and suddenly found that the pages are loading much more quickly). *

A New POV-Ray Tutorial & Other Matters

Saucer Launch Clip (CC license)

Well, I should have posted this many months ago, but I did finally complete my POV-Ray based clip of a flying saucer taking off:
 

 

 As I mentioned previously, it's available for re-use by other video creators at no charge under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

For more information, please see the page I created at http://videos.viewmyart.com/clips/video-saucer-launch-clip.htm. *

Saucer Launch Clip (CC license)