“Change is Everything” is a new song by the band, Son Lux. The video was conceived and produced by Nathan Johnson and the folks at The Made Shop. Via NPR:
“The first day we knocked out 535 frames (out of roughly 4,000). By day three, the pads of my fingers were so raw that it hurt to move a pin. I didn’t know how I’d be able to keep going, but my wife, Katie found some rubber finger tips at Staples that helped dull the pain (though it also decreased our precision). We also didn’t realize that the surface of the foam core board would be blown out by day four. buy lexapro generic rxbuywithoutprescriptiononline.com over the counter
We got to the point where the board was so pockmarked that the pins would randomly shoot out and fly across the studio every couple frames. After that, we stocked up on a few more boards and started wearing safety goggles.”
“I’ve always been attracted to art that uses very simple materials in its execution,” says Johnson. “I love the ‘lots of something little’ approach. buy lipitor generic rxbuywithoutprescriptiononline.com over the counter
I guess, partly, because it means that you can use everyday materials that everybody has access to, which feels really accomplishable. I love the idea of seeing something ordinary and mundane transformed into something beautiful and lifelike; and it feels extra empowering to know that the price of admission is only the amount of time and energy you’ve got to spend.”
But it does take a fair amount of time and energy…
The whole video took about a week of prep work and then 2 solid weeks of the tedious frame-by-frame shooting that is stop-motion animation. I’d say it was all worth it!
“Riding Light” is a new, beautiful animation by Alphonse Swinehart. In the 45-minute journey, you will travel with light on its way from the Sun to Jupiter. I love videos like this because they really help me gain a better appreciation for the scale of our Universe. If you watch light travel from Earth to Mars, for example, you will realize how difficult it will be to successfully complete a manned exploration mission to the red planet. There’s just so much emptiness between the planetary masses…
A word from the creators:
“In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it’s unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective.
I’ve taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually “sees” or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall I’ve kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible. I also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter as I wanted to keep the running length below an hour.
Design & Animation: Alphonse Swinehart / aswinehart.com
Music: Steve Reich “Music for 18 Musicians”
Performed by: Eighth Blackbird / eighthblackbird.org”
The first image taken from the Philae Spacecraft on the surface of the comet
The European Space Agency succeeded in putting a spacecraft on the surface of a comet yesterday! This is a wonderful achievement for mankind! The robotic probe, Philae, reached 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (what a name?!) on the back of the Rosetta satellite on a 10-year, 6.4 billion-km journey. The descent to the surface took approximately 7 hours, and it wasn’t without its fair share of suspense. The 2 harpoons which were meant to stabilize the probe failed to launch, and the spacecraft actually bounced a few times on the surface before reaching its final resting place.
The main problem with the current position is that the lander is suffering from a lack of sunlight to power all of its tools. Philae is only receiving about 1.5 hours of illumination during every 12-hour rotation of the comet (much less than the agency had hoped for). The Europeans would love to power up Philae’s on-board drill and analyze the comet’s composition, but at the moment, they are worried that the drill’s rotational forces will destablize the probe and send it off into space. Regardless of future plans, this is already a tremendous achievement. Any time you accomplish something that has never happened in the history of humanity, I’d say it was success!
Why did they attempt this mission?
Many scientists believe that comets brought organic molecules to Earth, helping give rise to our oceans and atmosphere, and maybe even the seeds of life. So, learning more about comets’ materials in space could help us discover how life began at home.
A little known fact is that here at RobotSpaceBrain, we actually launched a manned-mission to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko around the same time, and we are HAPPY TO REPORT, THE MISSION WAS A RESOUNDING SUCCESS! We even stuck the landing:
🙂 Needless to say, this is one of those really exciting moments in space exploration!
Watch the video! What a wonderfully animated short by the Irish filmmaker, Eoin Duffy. I’m not surprised “The Missing Scarf” took home top awards in virtually every film festival in the world. It was also shortlisted for the 86th Annual Academy Awards.
The story starts out following a squirrel’s journey to find his missing scarf, but it evolves into something truly astronomical! The animation technique is exquisitely polished. It’s a beautiful way to use motion graphics — each new design was well timed and added to the scene. And not to mention… George Takei is narrating, so this short is really great by all accounts.
To find more from Eoin Duffy or congratulate him on a job well done, here’s his website.
Welcome to “A Journey Through The Visual System”! I made this video to promote brain awareness for the general public. As a neuroscience researcher, I’ve always believed it’s important to help people understand the complexities of the human nervous system. Thus, I hope this video can be appreciated by kids and adults alike, and something will be learned by all.
The project was inspired by the old Magic School Bus show I used to love as a kid. In the video, you will go on a 5-minute journey from the eye all the way to brain, learning the neuroanatomy along the way.
If you are feeling kind, you can vote for the video here (before Sept. 30th). This was submitted as part of a contest hosted by the Society for Neuroscience and BrainFacts.org.
Anyway, thanks for watching!
Here is the script for the video in case you missed something important:
“We begin our journey with the eye, specifically the iris, which gives the eyes its distinctive color. Now, the iris can be green, or blue, or brown, or black depending on the level of melanin which it contains. When the lights go off, the muscles connected to the iris contract, which makes the dark circle in the center of the eye, the pupil, get bigger. When the light goes on, the pupil gets smaller to allow less light to enter. This is how the eye adapts to light.
Ahh, that must be Ellie. She’ll be our tour guide on this journey through the visual system. Hi Ellie, how are you? To get a better look at the visual system, we’ll need some light. Let’s observe the anatomy of the eye in a little bit more detail. If we peel away the skin, we can see the arteries and veins, which supply important nutrients to the area. Next, we can see the surrounding muscles, which help move the eye in all directions. Now, let’s cut the eye in half to see how light enters the visual system. First, it hits the cornea, the protective layer of eye. Then, through the whole in the iris known as the pupil. Lastly, the job of the lens is to bend light to focus it correctly on the retina.
It’s time to enter the eye. Ellie has her jetpack and now we’re looking at the surface of the inside of the eye. The optic nerve on the right is where all the nerve fibers leave the eye heading toward the brain. Let’s follow Ellie has she heads toward that dark spot in the distance. This is the fovea centralis, a small pit in the retina responsible for our sharpest, clearest vision. Foveal vision allows us to do things like read books, or drive cars, or play video games.
Now, let’s look at a cross-section of the retina to see how neurons respond to light. Light is absorbed by rods and cones, which are specialized photoreceptors. This starts a chain reaction, which excites the bipolar cells and then subsequently the ganglion cells, to send electrical signals off toward the brain. The amacrine and horizontal cells work to modulate the circuit. buy cialis sublingual online https://healthcoachmichelle.com/wp-content/languages/en/cialis-sublingual.html no prescription
Visual information flows along the optic nerve like a river of electricity. At the optic chiasm, the signals split such that images from the left visual field head to the right brain, and images from the right visual field head to the left brain.
After the optic chiasm, the visual signals make a quick stop at the lateral geniculate nucleus, or LGN. The LGN is organized into 6 layers, which all receive extensive feedback control from higher visual areas.
From the LGN, the visual signals travel along optic radiations back to the visual cortex. The cortex is where we use the signal that originally came from the eye to construct our visual reality. The billions of neurons in the human brain work to encode and process the information. Information is sent forwards and backwards. See, the beauty of the visual system is that everything we see is affected by our memories, and our feelings, and what we’ve seen before.
Well, that concludes our journey through the visual system, see you next time.”
“Horde” is a new short film by the Brutus Collective, a group of 4 talented artists: Thibaud Clergue, Aurelien Duhayon, Sebastien Iglesias and Camille Perrin. The story is succinct and engaging, and the animation is top-notch. I particularly liked the implementation of reduced frames to animate the faces, while the clothing maintained a higher, more fluid frame rate. It is certainly pro-level work.
The motorcycle fight was heavily inspired by one of the best moments in the history of animation, Akira’s biker gang scene. If you have any interest in animation, I suggest checking it out. They held their own with this new rendition.
. They held their own with this new rendition.