Web 2.0 visually 'storyfied'

The web revolution, has a name: Web 2.0. Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology made an astonishing video "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" (in terms of concept clarity and visual storytelling representation) which tells the story of this revolution. Just in 4 minutes, you will understand the idea behind this new paradigm.

Para uma discussão mais aprofundada sobre os conceitos discutidos neste vídeo, ver o post sobre a Web 2.0 no blog de Patrícia Gouveia.

300 VFX

Visually magnificent, high levels of complexity achieved through beautifully designed techniques. Technically, seeing 300 is like seeing reality through Photoshop filters. The movie is not concerned with story or discourse but only STYLE and ACTION. We could raise all the questions we want about testosterone, violence, discrimination, feminism but this is not the point. In the same vein as The Cell (2000) by Tarsem Singh, this is an authentic poem to draw, colour and motion. Illustration and design has been elevated to matter of honour, creating an ode to comics and videogames as a complete convergence artefact made of these three media. From the comics, the most interesting effects we can see are the framings made literally as comic squares and even more amazing than that is blood effect very comic like, but with a fantastic motion and depth effect in the movie. From videogames, apart the violence, we have strange bosses to defeat, an unique and linear goal to achieve, no caring for any character, the continuous tension through the entire movie…

Ron Gilbert said "I am happy to report that the convergence has happened. Just not in the direction we had predicted. 300 is a vacuous film filled with bad dialog, stiff acting, a pointless one-dimensional plot and interchangeable characters that hardly deserve to be named in the script. The film barely has a first act and does nothing but drive to a preposterous conclusion led along by a sequence of ridiculous events. The Visuals are nothing more than technical masturbation. Simply put, 300 is the best damn film I've seen all year". I agree it is a damn good film, not the best, but really something astonishing visually.

the style guide by CG Society

"Ten studios in four countries created the backgrounds, skies, blood and other effects for the film: Animal Logic, Hybride, Hydraulx, Pixel Magic, Amalgamated Pixels, Technicolor Digital Services, Buzz, Scanline, Lola, and Meteor."

There was a need to create style guides to distribute among all the partners, and this should be done daily.

"So, in the sky style guide, for example, he explained what to do: Start with a photographic plate. Kick two-thirds of the photographic detail. Look at the splat of coffee on the paper – the “inkblot” – and the cumulus clouds to see where they have the same patterns. Then blend the inkblots into the photos of the clouds and see what happens."

"In addition to guiding vendors creating landscapes, skies and blood, Freckelton created keyframes to help all the studios see what Snyder wanted in the final look. “As the film was being shot, rather than doing film dailies, they did HD Quicktimes,” he says. “I’d take screen captures of key shots from each sequence, and cut and paste and paint them in Photoshop.” In that way, he delivered the color decisions to the effects studios. “They could look at those keyframes, the greens, blues, sepia tones, to match their grade,”

Videogames evolution

See videogame mechanics evolution of the last 30 years in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. This video has been produced for a talk done by David Perry at TED. It congregates five genres: Basketball; Star Wars; War Games; Fighting; First Person Shooters; Driving. We must be careful about the last examples in each sequence because most of them are from cutscenes and not real gameplay. However it's really interesting to see the evolution from Single pixel as characters to the high complexity renderings portrayed by the last generation of videogame consoles.

"we've done a poor job on engagement"

Here we come again, game designers talking about the necessity to take into account the user/player. I believe here we should have thought about that long time ago.
Human-computer interaction science says that we must think about the user, we most develop within design user-centred approach.
At the same time if we look at the film industry, as Hollywood, the viewer has always been king, deciding who the good producers, directors, artists...are

So games should have done the same, at least we see people saying "mea culpa". Peter Molyneux is saying now "We've Failed.. we've done a poor job on engagement". Peter Molyneux believes now that we need to accomplish a simple objective:

have players caring about characters in games



At the same time and during GDC 2007, he talked about the next Fable 2 and what it seems to be a magnificent new character, an AI dog friend, that put me thinking about Yorda. See an overview of the presentation at Escapist forums.

How Art Made the World

Série de 5 episódios produzida pela BBC da autoria e apresentação de Nigel Spivey. Spivey conseguiu condensar em 5 horas a história da arte dos últimos 30 mil anos. Começando pelas primeiras imagens de Altamira ou Lascaux, passando pelo dinamismo imprimido à escultura grega, dos símbolos de poder de Stonehenge ao cunhar de bustos em moeda, dedicando ainda quase um episódio ao poder e persuasão da arte fílmica e terminando por fim com a popularidade e sacralidade da imagem da morte como presença constante do nosso quotidiano.
Dos cinco destaco particularmente o segundo episódio dedicado ao nascimento da imagem como projecção externa da nossa imaginação e as teorias explicativas do porquê do aparecimento da imagem.
De realçar ainda a capacidade comunicativa de Spivey assim como a enorme produção colocada ao seu dispor para a realização em níveis de excelência deste documentário. Não sendo denso academicamente, apresenta a particularidade de conseguir facilmente congregar em seu redor pessoas de todos os espectros intelectuais que à partida poderiam não ter uma grande interesse sobre Arte. Aliás o próprio titulo é disso um exemplo, poderia ter sido qualquer coisa como A Arte no Mundo, mas não. Como a Arte Fez o Mundo, exemplifica perfeitamente o conteúdo do documentário e apresenta-o como algo importante e que qualquer pessoa com um mínimo de interesse por cultura geral, deve ver.

How Art Made the World

the after list

Books I wanted to buy during the PhD, that never did because of many reasons: doubts about the content being good enough; doubts about being really in my focus target; and most of the time because of the high price :). Now i'm taking a new look trough all the lists i got creating a new general list of still interesting propositions that i'll try to buy for my next ventures.

Emotion and cognition

Psychology of Entertainment by Jennings Bryant and Peter Vorderer;
Communication and Emotion: Essays in Honor of Dolf Zillmann (LEA's Communication) - Jennings Bryant;
Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do (Interactive Technologies) - B.J. Fogg;
The Imagineering Way: Ideas to Ignite Your Creativity - The Imagineers;
Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought - George Lakoff;
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini;
Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions - Martha C. Nussbaum;
The Nature of Insight (Bradford Books) - Robert J. Sternberg;
Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology - Gregory CurrieHow We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics - N. Katherine Hayles;

Game design and development

Patterns in Game Design (Charles River Media Game Development) - Staffan Bjork;

Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction - Andrew Glassner;

Learning by Doing: A Comprehensive Guide to Simulations, Computer Games, and Pedagogy in e-Learning and Other Educational Experiences - Clark Aldrich;

A Theory of Fun for Game Design - Raph Koster;

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - David Kushner;

Creating Interactive 3D Actors and Their Worlds (The Conquering 3d Graphics Series) - Jean-marc Gauthier;

Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames (Charles River Media Game Development) - Chris Bateman;

Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design - Jason Busby;

The Fantastical Engineer: A Thrillseeker's Guide To Careers In Theme Park Engineering - Celeste Baine;

Film, narrative and arts

Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art- Gustav Freytag;

Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging - David Bordwell;
Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts - Kendall L. Walton;

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas;

Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification - Christopher Peterson;
Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film - Giuliana Bruno;

A History of Narrative Film - David A. Cook;
Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation - W. J. T. Mitchell;
The Story of Film - Mark Cousins;
Painting with Light - John Alton;
Sanford Meisner on Acting - Sanford Meisner;
Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation - Helen McCarthy;
Creating Character Emotions - Ann Hood;
Improving Your Storytelling (American Storytelling) - Doug Lipman;

A Philosophy of Mass Art - Noel Carroll;

Technology and Culture, the Film Reader - Andrew Utterson;

Cinema and Sentiment - Charles Affron;

Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern - Anne Friedberg;

Thesis delivered

Thesis delivered today at 2 p.m.
Now i'll have to wait for the Jury deliberation and choosing of the defence day. In the mean time i'll try to rest a bit.

Emoção Responsável pela Moral

Novo estudo publicado na Nature sobre a possibilidade de relação entre a capacidade de ajuizamento moral e a emoção humana.
Na verdade, este estudo não vem revelar nada que Damásio já não tenha subtilmente dito anteriomente. Se não vejamos

“As emoções são inseparáveis da ideia de recompensa ou castigo, de prazer ou de dor, de aproximação ou afastamento, da vantagem ou desvantagem pessoal. Inevitavelmente, as emoções são inseparáveis da ideia do bem e do mal” (Damásio, 1999:77)

Agora que os testes são fantásticos, são. Cada um dava um filme melhor que o outro e nisto faz-me pensar directamente no cineasta dos dilemas, Krzysztof Kieslowski . Para além dos decálogos ou das cores, veja-se um dos seus últimos argumentos filmado postumamente Heaven.

Vejamos dois exemplos,

Teste #"Você sabe que uma dada pessoa tem sida e que tenciona deliberadamente infectar outras. Algumas dessas pessoas irão com certeza morrer. As duas únicas opções que você tem são deixar que isso aconteça ou matar a pessoa. Você carrega no gatilho?"

Teste ##
“Soldados inimigos invadiram a sua aldeia. Você e outros refugiam-se num sótão [...] O seu bebé começa a chorar. [...] Você tapa-lhe a boca. [...] Para salvar a sua própria vida e a dos outros você precisa de matar o seu filho por asfixia. Você asfixiaria o seu bebé para salvar a sua própria vida e a dos outros?"

Ainda sobre este assunto, no outro dia conversava com uma colega de psicologia sobre a incompreensão e por vezes até mesmo uma atitude mais agressiva de grande ignorância quando apresentamos determinados estudos realizados no âmbito da Emoção. E realmente quanto mais penso nisto, mais tenho a sensação que as pessoas sentem receio, sentem um receio colectivo face à possibilidade de podermos desvendar a última fronteira que nos separa dos animais (sic) e das máquinas. Veja-se sobre isso os comentários deixados no Público sobre este novo estudo de Damásio e colegas.

Pixar Storytelling

The Commandments from the Pixar team.

• "Empathize with your main character


• Unity of opposites. Each character must have clear goals that oppose each other.


• You should have something to say.


• Have a key image, almost like a visual logline, to encapsulate the essence of the story; that represents the emotional core on which everything hangs.


• Know your world and the rules of it.


• The crux of the story should be on inner, not outer, conflicts.


• Developing the story is like an archeological dig.


• Animation should be interpretive, not realistic.


• "Just say no" to flashbacks. Only tell what's vital, and tell it linearly.


• Consider music as a character to anchor the film. Music is a keeper of the emotional truth."

"Like telling a good joke, storytelling requires that you know where you're going with a tale. You must know the punchline, the end result, the goal. Then, in arriving there, it's not so much what you say, but how you say it."
Daqui podemos extrair que a emoção anda de mão dada com a linearidade narrativa...
(from AWN)