animators

Google artists create a real-time 'Wind Map'

Two technology artists who head Google's "Big Picture" visualization research group debuted a new project this week that shows a time-lapse animation of wind speeds across the U.S.

"An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us--energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future," the artists wrote in a post yesterday. "This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US right now."

The black map, simply named "Wind Map," displays white streaks that show varying wind speeds … Read more

NASA video visualizes a 'Perpetual Ocean'

NASA has released a computer visualization project called "Perpetual Ocean" that presents a data-created time lapse of the Earth's ocean and sea surface currents over a two-year period.

The animation (see below) shows the globe slowly spinning as white swirls curl and move in the water around landmasses. It looks as if Vincent van Gogh had painted into the oceans -- from the Gulf of Mexico to the Indian Ocean to the Black Sea.

Using NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Phase II ( ECCO2), scientists simulated … Read more

Angry Birds maker buys game studio

Angry Birds maker Rovio has added another studio to its lineup.

The Finnish company announced today that it's bought Futuremark Games Studio, the gaming unit of benchmarking software developer Futuremark. Creating games for a variety of platforms, Futuremark Games Studio has developed such titles as Unstoppable Gorg, Hungribles, and Shattered Horizon.

"They are an incredibly talented and experienced team, and we are thrilled to have them on board," Mikael Hed, Rovio Entertainment's CEO, said in a statement. "Rovio's success is founded on the excellence of our team, and Futuremark Games Studio is going to … Read more

Dyson's new DC39 is company's first canister vac with Ball technology

If you're a fan of Dyson's bagless vacuums but always wished that the company made a canister model that was powered by its Ball technology, that day has arrived: Dyson has introduced the DC39 Multi-floor and DC39 Animal canister vacs.

Dyson vacuums have never been cheap, and the new models, due out in mid-March, cost $449.99 and $499.99, respectively. Aside from its color and higher price, what distinguishes the Animal from the Multi-floor is the inclusion of an accessory that's specially designed for picking up pet hair. Both models are being marketed as "smooth … Read more

Manage animations in Keynote

Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software is to some degree an industry standard, and its presence on both Windows and OS X allows for a decent level of cross-platform compatibility that new Mac users might gravitate toward; however, there are other options besides Office that might perform as well as if not better than PowerPoint, which you might wish to consider.

As I mentioned in a previous post on Apple's alternative to Excel called Numbers, there are a few Office programs out there that have good offerings and which can import and export PowerPoint file formats. These include the free … Read more

The 404 987: Where we get nailed for intentional grounding (podcast)

Twitter reports that football fans sent roughly 10,000 tweets in the final 3 minutes of last night's game, but that wasn't enough to overthrow the all-time record for tweets per second.

Guess which film roped in 25,088 tweets per second last December? Hint: it wasn't made in America.… Read more

Vintage 3D 'wiggle GIFs' respun with library's cool tool

Some readers may remember the flickering, old-timey, surprisingly three-dimensional GIFs that made a splash on the Internet back in 2008. Writer and artist Joshua Heineman created them from images of 19th and early 20th century stereoscope cards he culled from a collection placed online by the New York Public Library.

Heineman took the two slightly offset images on a given card, separated them, dropped them into Photoshop, and created animated GIFs that quickly "flipped" from one image to the other, over and over (a technique known as "wiggle stereoscopy").

Then, as part of a personal project called "Reaching for the Out of Reach," he posted the GIFs on his Tumblr blog, where they were discovered by the blogosphere and spread far and wide.

Now--thanks to that online fame, and to the New York Public Library's push to reinvent itself in the Internet Age--you too can breathe new three-dimensional life into these stereoscopic artifacts.… Read more

Animations show how you work at the molecular scale (video)

If you've ever wanted to get a glimpse of the microscopic world inside the human body, then Drew Berry is your man.

Berry, whose bio describes him as a biomedical animator, gave a TED talk last year in Sydney showing how molecules interact inside the human body. The computer animations he created--scientifically accurate, by the way--to illustrate those processes are mesmerizing.… Read more

How to create animated GIFs on Android

Sharing movies while mobile can be fun, but generally will eat a lot of your monthly bandwidth allowance.

Instead of sharing the entire movie while you're out, why not share a quick animated GIF instead? With GIFDroid for Android, you can take a new or existing video and turn it into an animated GIF that you can send off in seconds to a friend or family member.

First you'll need to install GIFDroid from the Android Market, then open the app.

Step 1: Press either the Select Video or Record Video button. Select … Read more

Get a unique and evolving screensaver with Electric Sheep

There's really no need for screensavers anymore--modern computer screens don't run the risk of phosphor burn-in from static images that their predecessors did--but that doesn't stop people from using screensavers for aesthetic reasons. Electric Sheep is one of the more aesthetically pleasing and unique screensavers we've encountered, and we recommend it for anyone who's looking for something a little more exciting than typical screensaver motifs.

Electric Sheep creates psychedelic animations, called sheep, that users can then vote for or against; the more popular sheep have their "genetic code" passed on, and over time … Read more