Microsoft’s Dope New Tool Is Like #Autocomplete for #Drawing | WIRED #digital #animation #interactive #media #tech #software #design #art


CREATING EVEN A few seconds of a hand-drawn animation—think old-school Looney Tunes, or earlier Disney films like Snow White—is a painstaking process that requires artists to draw hundreds, if not thousands, of frames. Over the years, advances in digital animation tools have streamlined that process and, in doing so, created a new aesthetic best seen in the faces of Pixar’s canon of characters.

Microsoft Research, along with the University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, just unveiled a proof-of-concept technology that could bring back the charm of older, hand-drawn cartoons, with the speed and fluidity of today’s animation software. “Autocomplete hand-drawn animations” debuted at the Siggraph Asia conference, and it’s an interactive system that watches what the artist draws and then predicts what frame or line might come next. READ MORE: Microsoft’s Dope New Tool Is Like Autocomplete for Drawing | WIRED

The First Great Works of #Digital #Literature are Already Being Written | The Guardian #gaming #video #storytelling #art #tech


Video games could be the greatest storytelling medium of our age – if only the worlds of art and technology would stop arguing and take notice…READ MORE: The first great works of digital literature are already being written | Technology | The Guardian

Disney Has Invented #3D #Coloring #Books | Gizmodo #tech #kids #AR #augmented #art


With its Color Alive line, Crayola was the first company to merge coloring books and apps so kids could bring their on-page creations to life. But Disney Research is taking that idea one step further by letting kids see a coloring book character move in 3D while they’re still coloring it. It’s all made possible by a new augmented reality app that Disney Research has developed that’s able to track and capture real-time images from a mobile device’s camera, and then map them onto any 3D deformable surface. READ MORE: Disney Has Invented 3D Coloring Books | Gizmodo

A 17-Year-Old Artist Created This Incredible #Map Of #Literature | BuzzFeed #maps #books #art #culture


Martin Vargic is a 17-year-old artist from Slovakia who specialises in creating intricate maps drawn from modern data and pop culture. READ MORE: A 17-Year-Old Artist Created This Incredible Map Of Literature | BuzzFeed

Indianapolis’s own ‘Big Free Libraries’ | TeleRead #LFL #littlefreelibraries #libraries #free #art #community


I stumbled onto a brilliant new art installation program in downtown Indianapolis called The Public Collection, designed to make books freely available to the general pubic, modeled after the “Little Free Library” project but on a much larger scale. READ MORE: The Public Collection: Indianapolis’s own ‘Big Free Libraries’ | TeleRead

A Children’s Illustrator Is Losing Fans Because Of Her Anti-Racist #Art | BuzzFeed #books #racism #diversity


Illustrator Mary Engelbreit has made many fans for her work in stationery, home goods, and children’s books for over 30 years. [S]ome of those fans are not so happy with anti-racist artwork she’s posted on her Facebook as a tribute to Michael Brown, who was killed nearly a year ago. READ MORE: A Children’s Illustrator Is Losing Fans Because Of Her Anti-Racist Art | BuzzFeed

Google’s Dream Robot Is Running Wild Across the Internet | Gizmodo #images #algorithms #visualizations


Remember a few weeks back, when we learned that Google’s artificial neural network was having creepy daydreams, turning buildings into acid trips and landscapes into Magic Eye pictures? Well, prepare to never sleep again, because last week, Google made its “inceptionism” algorithm available to the public, and the nightmarish images are cropping up everywhere.

The “Deep Dream” system essentially feeds an image through a layer of artificial neurons, asking an AI to enhance and build on certain features, such as edges. Over time, pictures can become so distorted that they morph into something entirely different, or just a bunch of colorful, random noise.

Now that the code for the system is publicly available, anyone can upload a photo of their baby and watch it metamorphose into a surrealist cockroach, or whatever. If you need some inspiration, or an excuse to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over your face, and wait for the world to end, just check out the hashtag ‘DeepDream’ on your social media platform of choice. READ MORE: Google’s Dream Robot Is Running Wild Across the Internet | Gizmodo.

Also See: DeepDream – A Code Example for Visualizing Neural Networks | Google Research Blog

Adieu |Guy Laramée | Vimeo #art #books


Adieu / Guy Laramée from Colossal on Vimeo. Artist Guy Laramée (guylaramee.com/) bids farewell to the printed Encyclopedia Britannica. via Adieu / Guy Laramée on Vimeo.

How a Museum Restores a Beautiful Painting from Hundreds of Years Ago | SPLOID #art #paintings #museums #restorations



Charles Le Brun’s painting of Everhard Jabach and His Family was finished in 1660. Now that it’s 2015 and hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my favorite museum in New York, it was in need of a little bit of, um, reviving. The Met guides us through as it restores the giant piece of art and shows the steps the artwork needed to shine again. READ MORE: How a museum restores a beautiful painting from hundreds of years ago | SPLOID

Build #STEM Skills, but Don’t Neglect the #Humanities | HBR #STEMMA @HarvardBiz


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Instead of just STEM, we should perhaps be promoting STEMMA — raising a new generation that also has greater capacities for managing collective human endeavors and appreciating the arts. Management education – the new “M” in the acronym – has not always been infused with humanistic thinking, but it must become more so. Our goal must be to cultivate the thoughtful enterprise leaders of the future. Meanwhile, regarding the “A,” how could it be beneficial to the future to deemphasize the arts, which inform our knowledge of beauty and meaning in human affairs? All the brilliant discoveries of STEM will not solve the grand challenges of today’s world — ignorance, poverty, intolerance, and political conflict – without the practical wisdom of humanities-trained leaders.

READ MORE: Build STEM Skills, but Don’t Neglect the Humanities | HBR