This is what they had to say about advertising today.

Watch in HD at Vimeo

Download the QuickTime movie (1280×720, 320MB)

The audio interviews were recorded by The Anti-Advertising Agency.
antiadvertisingagency.com/category/projects/portable-sound-units

My workflow in creating ths animation was pretty unorthodox. Almost all of the character animation was recorded real-time with a custom setup involving Max/MSP and Animata. I created a patch in Max to control animation in Animata with the sound of the interviews. I also had some sliders and buttons to trigger things like blinking and arm movements. I used After Effects for compositing and for some additional animation.

Check out my tutorial to see the basic setup for connecting Max or PD to Animata.

The Mixmaster 1200 is a wireless scratching device for the turntablist who prefers to deliver his/her scratches like a 5 star chef. As you can see, the Mixmaster does not have any beaters attached to it. This is because it has small laser powered plasma emitter beaters that actually heat up the airwaves around the device itself producing the unique sounding aural explosions.

More information: http://originalhamsters.com/motion/mixedup.php

I found this old blender from a flea market and noticed that the names of the different blending modes are very similar to the terminology used in DJing. So I decided to turn this kitchen appliance into a DJ mixer.

The audio tracks are triggered by inserting different fruits into the blender. The buttons on the front panel control the mixing modes and you also have two different types of transformer switches for cutting the sound in and out.

The options are:

• Stir
• Puree
• Whip
• Grate
• Mix
• Chop
• Grind
• Blend
• Liquefy
• Frappé

How does it work?

• Arduino for brains
• RFID reader
• Different kinds of fruits made out of felt
• RFID tags inside the fruits
• Max/MSP for converting the serial data to MIDI
• Ableton Live for playback
• Mad skills to pay the bills

Stay tuned for more information, pictures and and better quality videos. This is just a preview, I’m hoping to improve it in the following weeks.

I also need to come up with a better name for this thing. Please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Beat Blender documentation page.

Vimeo link for the video.

Youtube link for the video.

If you haven’t heard of Animata yet, you should head over to http://animata.kibu.hu/index.html and educate yourself. Download the software and go through the tutorials. I also recommend reading through the mailing list, it has tons of useful information.

Controlling Animata with a mouse and doing real-time animations is pretty cool by itself, but Animata really shows its true potential when you control it with OSC. Then you can start doing something like this:

There is a Processing example available from the Animata site that controls Animata with sound input.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Unfortunately, the Kitchen Budapest guys are busy improving the software and there isn’t really good documentation available about the OSC messages needed to control Animata. I’ll try to go through all of the available messages and give you some examples in Pure Data and Max/MSP

I assume that you know something about OSC, Pure Data and Max/MSP, because I don’t want to write a huge post explaining everything from the beginning. I’m also assuming that you have spent some time learning the basics of Animata.

One more important thing. I’m using revision 35 of Animata compiled from the svn repository. NOTE! YOU WILL NEED TO COMPILE ANIMATA FROM THE SOURCE CODE TO MAKE THE /LAYERPOS MESSAGES WORK. IT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE BINARY VERSION ON THE ANIMATA WEBSITE. All the other messages I’m showing here do work with Animata 003 that is available from the site. OK, let’s start.

DOWNLOAD MY EXAMPLES. Contains the Animata Scene + Max and PD patches.

FORMATTING THE OSC MESSAGES

All incoming messages to Animata must be sent through port 7110. The “name” in the message refers to the name of the joint, bone or layer.

Moving a joint, x and y are float values:

/joint name x y

Control the length of a bone, value is a float between 0 and 1:

/anibone name value

Switch on and off a layer, on_off is 0 or 1:

/layervis name on_off

Set the transparency of the layer, value is a float between 0 and 1:

/layeralpha name value

The next two messages require the svn version:

Moving a layer in absolute mode, x and y are the position coordinates as float values:

/layerpos name x y

Moving a layer in relative mode, x and y is the amount of pixels you want the layer to move from it’s current position:

/layerdeltapos name x y

PURE DATA TO ANIMATA

I’m not really comfortable with Pure Data, but I was able to get all of the messages working except /layervis. I believe this is because Animata is very picky and is looking for real boolean values and Pure Data is sending integers when sending 0 or 1. This was just fixed by the Kitchen Budabest guys. The /layervis message works now. I have updated the code so please download the .zip again. You need to compile Animata again from the svn for this to work.

Pure Data to Animata with OSC from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

There is a little problem, because Animata needs float values in the messages and Pure Data doesn’t have a separate number box for floats, so have to make sure the number you are sending is never an even number. I did this by multiplying the values by 0.999. If someone knows a better way, let me know.

MAX/MSP 5 TO ANIMATA

It’s pretty much the same deal with Max/MSP. The /layervis doesn’t work here either. This was fixed in the svn version (>36). My Max-patch has been updated so please download again.

Max/MSP to Animata With OSC from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

I didn’t add the /layerdeltapos to the example patches, because it’s really easy to lose your layers somewhere outside the window.

SENDING OSC FROM ANIMATA

There is also an option to send OSC messages from Animata. For this you need the SVN version. It simply works by clicking on the small OSC tick box on the Skeleton tab. The messages are sent through port 7111. The message format is: /joint name x y

QUARTZ COMPOSER

I’ve made a plugin for Quartz Composer that makes it really easy to control Animata from Quartz Composer. Check it out over here.

HOW ABOUT OPEN FRAMEWORKS, PROCESSING ETC.

Basically, any software or programming environment that is able to send OSC messages should be able to communicate with Animata.

Processing works perfectly and you can download the Sound Input example from the Animata website that will get you started. I’ll see if I can find the time to do a similar sample file for Processing also.

I’ve also had luck testing OpenFrameworks. Download the FAT version of OpenFrameworks and modify the oscSenderExample.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THIS?

Whatever you want! Hook up audio input, MIDI controllers, sensors or computer vision to control real-time animations.

Check out my Mickey Mann project for an example on how to control Animata with an Arduino.

Here is the source code download link one more time.

Here is a widget containing all of the videos that are added to the group:

You can embed this player to any website with this code. Just copy & paste. Modify the code if you need to adjust the size.

Tooniversity from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

When watching cartoons, people rarely think about the amount of time and dedication the cartoon characters spend on perfecting their sketches and routines. Unfortunately, consumers love to see toons getting hurt. There is just something special about dropping heavy anvils on the heads of unsuspecting cartoon characters that appeals to the majority of viewers.

Like in all fields of entertainment, the competition in the cartoon business is also very harsh. You are only as good as your last fall from a huge cliff. That’s why all the aspiring cartoon students at tooniversities across the world practice new and inventive ways of getting themselves hurt.

A group of activists from PETT (People for the Ethical Treatment of Toons) have been able to sneak a spy camera inside the Tooniversity facilities at Concordia University. Because of their brave action, all the dirty secrets inside the Tooniversity will be exposed. Please go to http://tooniversity.originalhamsters.com
to find more information and sign a petition to stop this madness.

This project was made at Concordia University for Vincent Leclerc’s Tangible Media and Physical Computing class. You can find technical details from my class website

Now I have. It’s still missing some parts of it as I had to meet a class deadline for this. I will have to finish this later.

If I haven’t uploaded a new version with the missing parts in a couple of months, feel free to send me angry emails with the subject: Get Your Lazy Ass Up and Finish That Animation!

Six Frames from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

This little hybrid between Mickey Mouse and Steve Mann enables you to control and view stereoscopic animations that are animated in real-time.

It’s an old View-Master viewer modified to have ChromaDepth lenses, some custom buttons, accelerometer, bluetooth radio and an Arduino to control it all. I thought about hiding the electronics with bigger ears, but decided not to, because I like the ghetto-cyborg look he’s got going on there.

So how does it work? You look through the viewer to the screen where you will see some 3-layer Månsteri-action in all of it’s stereoscopic glory. The great thing about ChromaDepth stereoscopy is that it works with basic colors. You don’t need two channels for the video to achieve a 3D-effect. On a dark background, everything that is blue will appear to be in the background and everything that is red will appear to be in the foreground. Colors in the spectrum between blue and red will appear to be somewhere in the middle. If you didn’t understand my explanation, look it up on the interwebs.

The accelerometer detects your motion and will move the character on the middle layer, giving the illusion that the character is trying to mimic your movement. You can control the content of the layers with the three buttons on the side of the viewer. Button three controls the background, button two the middle layer and button one controls the foreground. Check out the video and you’ll understand what I mean. If you have ChromaDepth glasses, put them on to see the 3d effect.

The Arduino sends the sensor data and the button states wirelessly via bluetooth to my computer. The information is parsed in Max/MSP, which in turn sends the data as OSC packets to Animata (my favourite software at the moment). Animata then animates everything in real-time and handles the hiding/revealing of different layers.

If you are interested, I have uploaded the Arduino and Max 5 source codes and also the Animata scene. It’s all very specific to my setup, but someone might find it useful. Download the source.

Qstock festival in Oulu, Summer 2008.

Superia United meets Ruckazoid from Aku Meriläinen on Vimeo.