computer generated animation

Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2002 9:13 PM

From: nikolai kingsley <nikolai@broadway.net.au>

>>do i detect a touch of Invader Zim here?
>
> FUCK yeah. The sicko cartoons are among the few things that are preventing me
> from taping a bullseye over the screen.

whenever i see something like that, i think "you've got all the software
you need to make something similar; why don't you get off your arse
and DO it?". i guess i'm just waiting for a sufficiently insane idea to
occur. going through the whole character development, plot development,
BUILDING GODDAMNED BACKGROUNDS and - it all seems like too much work. if
i had a studio full of lackeys, i could make THEM do it, but it still
seems like too much work. what i'd really like is a program that can
generate cartoons from a single random number seed, sort of build them
from the ground up.

maybe that's what JHVH-1 did. maybe that's why we're here.

PLEASE ENTER A LARGE PRIME NUMBER: 8748587
THAT WILL DO NICELY. PLEASE WAIT.
GENERATING 10 to the power of 8748587 HYDROGEN ATOMS
COALESCING INTO STELLAR MATERIAL
FORMING PLANETS
GENERATING LIFE
START AND ENDPOINTS LOCATED.
DO YOU WANT TO WATCH THE SHOW? (y/n)

nikolai
---
"Mmm-hmm." - Gir

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From: "nu-monet v4.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>
nikolai kingsley wrote:

> whenever i see something like that, i think "you've got
> all the software you need to make something similar...

Yeah, but can you make something eminently cheesier and
more surreal? A long time ago I got this "Doonesbury"-
type lazy-man's-cartoon program *used* on 5 1/4" disk.

It had four "Superheros" in about 18 generic poses, and
four "Supervillains" in about the same. The only other
thing it had were cartoon balloons of various types,
a dozen generic backgrounds to plug the characters in,
and other stuff you see in cartoons, like "International
Chinese" (cursing with punctuation), Sweat "plewds" (I
think Mort Walker called them that), and other plugin
gunk.
All you had to do was to make panel after panel, writing
your dialogue in the ballons after you had assembled the
pieces. You could (theoretically) do an entire graphic
novel.
Ironically, the bastards designed it with a fatal flaw--
their own file format, incompatible with anything else.
It was also a resource hog, requiring DOS 3.1 and a
minimum of 320 Kb of memory!

--
"I'm going in to rescue him. It's my duty.
My duty as a complete and utter bastard."
--Rimmer, from "Red Dwarf"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nikolai kingsley <nikolai@broadway.net.au>

... superheroes? i was thinking along the lines of an animated version
of Matt Howarth's "Konny and Czu". aliens. completely and utterly
non-anthropomorphic aliens. not a humanoid in sight. or perhaps a comedy
featuring a bunch of smart-mouth subatomic particles. or bacteria. or
stray programs loose in the net. yeah. i could call it "netwits".

nikolai
---
this, from the guy who thought up "dingbats", a cartoon
featuring characters from the font.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

nu-monet v4.0 <nothing@succeeds.com> wrote:

> HellPopeHuey wrote:
> >
> > Stang is working on the TV version of The Hour of
> > Slack right now. As soon as we all get streaming
> > video capacity...
>

The problem is, Hour of Slack is not in any way live. It would be a web
cam pointing at a CD player.

We can't put a webcam at WCSB because all the DJs would be arrested if
the cops happened to tune in.

Me working on the show is like a 4 hour shot of me typing and listening
to stuff and moving my mouse around and picking my nose. Then at the
end after about 10 minutes of paperwork I actually turn on a mike and
read the credits over whatever instrumental music had burbled to the
top of the stack that week.

Streaming video... sheesh, that is in such turmoil... I spent two hours
last night upgrading my video stuff just so I could see my son's latest
trailer on his website. And I had done the SAME THING a week earlier!
They keep making new codecs and the kids keep USING the damn things
which means *I* have to.

Thanks to Lil's suggestions I was able to pick up a Mac audio player
that runs Ogg Vorbis. Nu-monet mentioned that compression scheme a
couple of months ago but there were no Mac gizmos. Now there are... I
can now Ogg and yEnc my shit. But WHO WOULD BE ABLE TO PLAY IT?? Only
warez kids and ultra geeks. Until next year when everything is ".ogv"
instead of mp3. If we're smart.

((SOUND OF STANG TEARING OWN HAIR, STOOGE LIKE))

I have NO interest in ME being on TV because then I'd have to shave and
change this shirt. BUT, I am plowing ahead on animation. I just got me
this thing called Videodelic (brother to ArtMatic) by the LIVING GOD
KNOWN AS ERIC WENGER (one of the main inventors of Bryce, along with
our foul pal Dr. Mojo). Chas and I played with Videodelic -- basically
you can throw in a bunch of Dobbsheads and some porn, a Quicktime .mov
of Dobbsheads, an El Queso All Stars dobbsong .mp3 and it spews out
incredible morphing video collages.

But I gotta get off this NG and fill those swag orders and do the
fucking TAXES!!! AAAARGH!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v4.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

And you know what *most* of the web cams on the Internet
are broadcasting? Guys pulling their puds is what.
Looking at a CD player doing something slackful is *way*
higher up on the "primate house" scale than ENDLESS
masturbation sequences.
Hell, if you want *content*, put it in your bathroom
(as long as you don't masturbate in there.)
For a real thrill, stream doing your taxes.
No matter WHAT you do, it's better than 99.5% of the
SHIT that's currently out there. Including CNNFN.

--
"Globalism is like the worst parts of both
'Rollerball' movies, except the corporations
that rule are Colossus, Umbrella, AOL, Skynet,
GM, Exxon-Mobil and Soylent." -- nu-monet

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Original file name: computer generated animation.tx - converted on Friday, 20 September 2002, 16:09