Category: General Geekery

After reading Brian’s response to the Smith reading “Shaping The Maxx,” in which he referenced Sin City, I immediately thought of a movie I saw recently called “Renaissance.” It stars Daniel Craig (the new James Bond) and takes place in a futuristic Paris dominated a massive corporation whose main product is eternal youth and beauty. The story itself kinda sucks, but it’s look is totally awesome (like a B&W version of sin city). Here’s a link to some screen shots – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386741/mediaindex. After doing a couple google searches, I found out that this look is done with a technique called Rotoscoping. Here’s the jist of the wikipedia article: Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

Ross posted a couple of things concerning the PC/Mac ads and the way that operating systems are perceived & marketed. If anyone is interested in these issues, I highly recommend taking a study break and reading Neal Stephenson’s essay In the Beginning was the Command Line – it’s a bit dated now (from 1999), but speaks to how we engage with operating systems and interfaces. A brief excerpt to whet your appetites follows beneath the fold.
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