Well, it’s not quite Monet or Renoir, but I bet van Gogh would’ve given his left ear for a piece of this action…
Ok, so maybe I’m being a little flexible with the ‘Impressionist’ title but I think what we’ve got here is a valid way of artistically presenting images in Flash. Warm up the Louvre… I need somewhere to hang this stuff!
Here’s a quick demo of an image filter that I thought up during one of my last projects though it never managed to find itself in the launch.
Click through to see it in action.
Proving that his finger is well and truly on the pulse, Michael Rees (my supervisor from my beloved university days) has found a interactive gem (I endorse everything of his except the title on the linked blog post!).
Lucid Touch, the brainchild of Patrick Baudisch (Microsoft Research), seeks to solve the occlusive problem found in multi-touch interfaces… that being your fingers getting in the way of the content. Using a concept he calls ‘psuedo-transparency’, the user navigates the interface my touching the back of a mobile device - something that looks quite intuitive and, for some reason, it strikes me as a more personal experience than the common alternative.
Check out the following video for something new.
Here’s a quick proof-of-concept for an idea I had this afternoon.
As you’ll see, the concept has a few flaws and limitations - and to be honest, I’d be surprised if it hadn’t been done somewhere before - but hopefully it will be new to you and perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll think of some way to make it better.
OK, I know over 2,500,000 of you have already seen this… but it seems that I missed the boat so I’m assuming that there are still at least a few who will dribble at the sight of this. I was totally inspired and impressed by what you’re about to see.
Johnny Lee, who evidently loves a challenge, has a number of demonstrations that feature motion detection in one form or another. His latest uses a Nintendo Wiimote and some sexy hot-wired goggles to give the wearer a truly enveloping 3D experience.
You’d better loosen your shoes, because this is about to knock your socks off!
Over the last year or two we’ve seen a number of advances that make the jump from two to three dimensions seemingly quite trivial.
For example, there have been algorithms that extrapolate depth and perspective from photographs to form 3D environments (see fotowoosh) and professional services that create 3D models from a series of photographs (goo3d).
Whilst these ideas and implementations have all been interesting and food for thought, none have rocked my casbah as much as this. Wow!
OK - this one’s not Flash, but it is 3D and it does demonstrate a novel use of an interactive interface. Maybe you’ll get some ideas for your next game or application?
In the following video, Tuki Mori from the University of Tokyo tries very hard to tell us about her new application that enables a user to interactively design and sew a plush toy. The program automatically provides the sewing pattern which can also be manipulated and visualised in real-time.
It sounds a little left-field… but take a minute and give it a look - I’m sure you’ll find the interface interesting.
On 1st June 2007, Kloonigames (which is powered by Petri Purho) released a game called Crayon Physics. If you enjoy novel ideas and interesting interfaces in your games, you’ll love this.
Flicking through my RSS this morning, I found Petri’s teaser for Crayon Physics Deluxe - a refined addition to his original (which at this point was still new to me). So I watched the YouTube demo and was blown away. I then checked out his blog article and downloaded the original and it I was blown away a second time - it was getting incredibly windy!
Something about the simplicity of this concept totally appeals to my inner-child… perhaps it’s the crayons… perhaps it’s the soundtrack?! I’m still trying to figure it out.
I had the idea for this experiment a few months ago and I’ve actually attempted it a few times - each iteration being close to what I was intending to achieve but alas, not close enough. This time I’m happy enough with the solution to release it to the world.
I’ve decided that I’m really quite fascinated with three concepts in particular, broadly these are - 1) Automata/Intelligent Agents 2) Intransitivity (the Rock-Paper-Scissors rule set), and 3) Organising information spatially, or by proximity. You’ll see these ideas again and again throughout this site (and no doubt even more in the future!).
This latest adventure touches on all three of these concepts. Brace yourself.
Quite a while ago, I stumbled across some documentation that described a simple maze generation algorithm. A few days ago I decided to play around with it and this is where I ended up.
If you’re familiar with what makes me tick, you’ll know that I really enjoy watching how complex and interesting patterns can evolve from a few simple rules. What you’ll see when you click through, I hope, is precisely that.
Unless you’ve been asleep in a ditch (that can’t get wireless internet) you’ll have heard about Seam Carving and would’ve been wondering how long it will take for the ActionScript community to get in line. Well, it didn’t take long.
For those who came in late, Dr Ariel Shamir and Dr Shai Avidan have developed a process that enables you to resize images without losing key visual information. Since then, I’ve seen three or four attempts to achieve the effect in ActionScript and all have been quite impressive.
First check out the YouTube demo and then see where we’re up to in terms of an ActionScript implementation.
Here’s a quick one for you - I’ve just found Grant Skinner’s first foray into Papervision3D and, I must say, it’s very cool.
His experiment is titled “Yggdrasil” which he explains: “The Yggdrasil is the world tree in Norse mythology that spans the underworld, earth and the heavens”.
The tree is generated on the fly as a procedural model and textures… and it looks very pretty. Jump through for a better look and the link:
Here’s a quick little glimpse of Flash goodness. The dynamic duo that go by the name of “2D Boy” (I love you, 2D boy!) have just launched a mini-project called “Human Brain Cloud”.
Pitched as a massively multiplayer word association game, participants contribute to a web of semantic associations by responding to a cue word with the first word that comes to mind.
Now here’s a research project that wouldn’t have any trouble finding volunteers! Jennifer Chowdhury’s investigation into controlling computer games via intimately positioned touch sensors appeals on many levels… even works as a spectator sport!
Inspired by research into new interfaces for video games and by the Widows of World of Warcraft support group, Intimate Controllers is endorphin inducing goodness which takes half of the game off the screen.
Hey bandwagon, wait for me!
I was thoroughly amused and entertained by the anarchy that transpired over at digg.com yesterday… (if you haven’t heard the goss, catch it here and here)… and perhaps more interesting than the legalities of the issue is how we’ve witnessed that the digg community is essentially one massive organism. The owners pulled the leash too tight and the dog bit back! I also learned a new term - the “Streisand Effect”: where the act of trying to cover up leaked information actually achieves the opposite as a result of the publicity that such activities receive - more here.
Another of the more interesting aspects is how people decided to disseminate the information once the can of worms had been opened. As I was strolling through my RSS feeds today, I noticed that people are now making t-shirts where each of the numbers has been converted to a colour… essentially making a bar code of the key. This ‘in joke’ is the sort of thing that really appeals to the geek crowd (me included!).
The next step was a logical one for me - you guessed it - my Analog Binary pattern has found a new purpose!
