This looks interesting. From France comes this new animated feature film "Une Vie de Chat" (currently in release in French cinemas) , directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol.
Un chat mène une double vie secrète : il passe ses journées avec Zoé, la fille d'un commissaire, mais la nuit il accompagne un voleur sur les toits de Paris. Alors que la mère de Zoé enquête sur les cambriolages nocturnes, un autre truand kidnappe la fillette...
Acatleadsasecret double life:he spendshis days withZoe,thedaughterof a police commissioner,butat nighthe accompaniesathiefonthe rooftopsofParis.WhileZoe's motherinvestigatesthe burglariesat night,anothercriminalkidnapsthegirl...
And just in time for Christmas comes this handsome image posted on the film's Facebook page:
This Christmas greeting for CBS Television (from 1966) was designed by R.O. Blechman , animated by Willis Pyle.
(I have always loved the elegant minimalism and great sensitivity of this piece ... I had it on Super-8mm from Blackhawk Films in the late 70's . I've been glad to notice that since I posted it to YouTube on Dec. 24, 2006 that it has received over 281,350views to date. So a few other people appreciate it too I guess.)
More Blechman:
This is from Blechman's Christmas special for PBS, "Simple Gifts" ... opening sequence designed by Maurice Sendak , animated by Ed Smith.
I wish this beautiful Christmas special were available on DVD . I don't know why PBS doesn't air it annually . '
The bits of it available on YouTube are not the best presentations , but unfortunately all that is available at the moment .
Christmas 1914 -
No Room at the Inn -
Here's Richard Williams wonderful (though much too short ) animated version of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" ---
This is another film that should be available in a restored version on DVD , but is only available on the internet.
A cel from "A Christmas Carol" that I own. This was animated by Abe Levitow. Director Richard Williams graciously autographed it for me last time I saw him at the Disney Studio when he was there giving a lecture about animation.
// boolean function returns either true or false // if an x,y point is inside a rectanglular area boolean insideRect(float px, float py, float rx, float ry, float rw, float rh) { return px >= rx && px <= rx+rw && py >= ry && py <= ry+rh; }
Technical Details Written in c++ using openFrameworks and openCV for image processing. Using the ofxKinect addon and the libfreenect driver on Mac.
How it works First it thresholds the scene to find a person, then uses a histogram to get the most likely depth of a person in the scene. Then any pixels closer than the person to the camera are possible hands. It also uses contour extremity finding on the person blob to look for hands in situations where your hand is at the same depth as your body. It only works if you are facing the camera front on. Then it uses one hand as the neck of the guitar, drawing a virtual line from the neck through the person centroid to create the guitar line. The other hand is tracked to see if it passes through this line, strumming the guitar. The neck hand position controls the chord.
Here is an example of a function that returns a boolean, as opposed to a 'void' function. The insideRect() function returns true or false if a point is inside a rectangle.
void setup() { size(300, 300); }
void draw() {
background(120);
int rectX = 30; int rectY = 40; int rectHeight = 50; int rectWidth = 50;
Here's some code to start creating a painting app in Processing. Hold down space to access a future "menu". You may code in a color picker, or other tools in this menu. Press 's' to save your image. It's a very simple framework, but it gives you a good base to start developing your own drawing applications.
Notice how we create a new PGraphics object to draw on, which makes it easy to add other elements to our app without affecting the pixels of the canvas.
// canvas object to draw on PGraphics canvas;
// menu toggle; boolean menu = false;
// background color color bgcolor = color(190);
void setup() { size(500, 500); // create new PGraphics that's the same size as our app canvas = createGraphics(width, height, P2D); }
void draw() { background(bgcolor); // if mouse is pressed and the menu isn't on if (mousePressed && !menu) { // start canvas drawing canvas.beginDraw(); // draw a line from the mouse position canvas.line(mouseX, mouseY, pmouseX, pmouseY); // end the canvas drawing canvas.endDraw(); }
// display the canvas object image(canvas, 0, 0);
// if menu is on, execute menu function if (menu) { menu(); } }
void keyPressed() { // if spacebar is pressed, toggle menu boolean if (key == ' ') { menu = true; } // if 's' key is pressed, save image to out.png if (key == 's') { canvas.save("out.png"); } }
void keyReleased() { // if spacebar is released, toggle menu boolean if (key == ' ') { menu = false; } }
// menu function void menu() { fill(0); rect (20, 20, 50, 50); // draw menu here, and do menu functionality }
Here are some various resources for creating games or interactive applications with Processing.
The Processing Discourse is the first place to start your research. Here, people exchange ideas and techniques used in creating interactive apps with Processing. You can post your own questions to the forum, and more often than not get detailed, supportive responses: http://processing.org/discourse/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=Contribution_Responsive
Musical Apps
Musical applications are very similar to games, although (usually) there's no score, and it's more about playing with the app rather than trying to "win". Here are some examples of musical apps:
This is an example of a musical sequencer by Lukas Vojir. Individual objects are placed on the canvas that each have a sound property that plays when the playhead crosses them. From
I started with an idea of placing objects on a stage and having a ball bouncing from them - and playing different samples.. it was quite fun, but the sound output was random too much.. even too much for me.. so I brought it back to relatively “boring” from-left-to-right-going-playhead concept..
Games by NMcCoy. Most of his games include the source code for reference:
Snake Oil is a cross between Asteroids and the classic snake game.
Neutronium Verge is an interesting puzzle game.
Wave Spark is an interesting side-scrolling game. It’s a simple premise – use one button to control gravity in a hilly environment, and go as fast as you can.
Using Open Source Projects as Reference
Looking at software that's been made open source is an excellent way to learn about coding different aspects of interactive applications. Games are especially interesting because they are made to be played with and enjoyed, so they are programmed with the end user in mind. Musical Apps are similar, as they are meant to be played with as a musical instrument. There is are distinct overlaps between the two. There is a lot to learn from programming simple game or music concepts.
To add sound to your Processing sketch, you need to create a 'data' folder in your sketch location, and Processing will be able to access the files from that folder.
Recently when I attended the CTN Expo in Burbank I was really happy to run into my friend Mark Kausler who was selling original hand-inked cels from his brilliant film "It's the Cat" .
I had sworn off collecting any more animation artwork , but seeing Mark run his wonderful film "It's the Cat" there at his table (on a portable DVD player) and with those gorgeous hand-inked cels right there on the table I was overwhelmed and just had to have one.
This frame (from the title sequence) is the cel I purchased:
(this photo doesn't do it justice ... )
The film "It's the Cat" is not currently available for purchase online, but if you purchase an original cel they will include a bonus DVD of the film.
One of these handsome cels would make a great Christmas gift for any cartoon fan. And these are likely the last of their kind since hardly anyone does hand-inked cels anymore . AND purchasing one of these unique , one-of-a-kind pieces of animation art will help fund the completion of Mark's second cat film , "There Must be Another Cat" , which is finished through rough animation, but still needs to have the inking, painting , and photography finished. Mark's producer, Greg Ford, is chipping away at the task little by little , but by purchasing a cel you'll have a hand in making sure that "There Must Be Another Cat" is completed sooner .
(and then we'll have more cels to collect in addition to another great cartoon to watch ! Yay ! See how this works ? )
I was really happy that Mark gave me a sneak preview of "There Must Be Another Cat" at the CTN Expo . He had the pencil test on a DVD and was very kind to let me see the pencil test. It's another great example of pure cartoon joy brought to life by a great animator.
What you may not know is that the pencil test from the original "It's the Cat" film is posted on Mark's website.
