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CG Idols - Human Not Required
greymond sent in a blurb about computer-generated celebrities in Japan. I'm sure a fair number of you have read Idoru... The Final Fantasy movie didn't do well, but I think it's safe to predict that eventually, computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones. There are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture, ranging from "never gets arrested for drunk driving" to "never demands salary increases", that I think it's inevitable.
When I saw Final Fantasy, I thought the graphics were great. However, that feeling went away after 10 minutes, and the characters seemed to be robotic and void of depth. I'm sure this will get better in the future, but we shouldn't say that it will be inevitable that they will be as numerous as real actors.
Yes, but nobody can really identitify itself to a star .. or dream of be a star when he'll grow up ..
Thus, I'm not sure we'll say goodbye to the star as we know them now so early .
> "computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones"
:)
I guess the first one was Lara Croft.
She came from a game, and not a movie, but still is a star
-J
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
We've already seen the start of this... anyone remember Max Headroom from the '80s... Started off on a Coke commercial and got his own show...
-- Ed Bugg --You have freedom of choice, but not of consequences.--
Here in America, I imagine that most people would become bored with a "perfect" celeb. I mean, I find Robert Downey Jr more entertaining since he climbed into his neighbor's kid's bed in a drug induced haze... That's entertainment!
--
http://www.trackspace.com
Developed by Atlus Co. Ltd., the game allows users to manipulate female (of course) CG models in a variety of poses and have photographs taken of them. Users can choose the setting, clothes, props and several other aspects of the game and even hear the models talk back when they are asked to perform poses a little too difficult for even a computer-generated character.
Clothes???? Why does she need clothes???
Anyone care to lay odds on how long before this technology is exploited for those "hormone charged" people the article talks about?!
I just know somepne's gonna tell me it's alreadsy been done. I wouldn't be at all surprised.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
...is what we all said. Imagine going nuts over a virtual celebrity! And then Lara Croft came along and suddenly virtual celebrities were cool. I bet they're all laughing at us now.
I'd say either PacMan or Mario was first. Pacman had a couple of TV series, a cereal, and a dance(do the PacMan!). Mario had his own feature film and Capt Lou Albano did a pretty good job portraying him on the TV show.
D
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Not a troll but a real question... Does the porn industry already have established digital characters like this? They always seem to lead the way in these areas... no CG person would balk at anything asked of them.
And if they do make real digital celebrities, how long until grey/black market pornographic representations get loose?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Never gets married to Nicole Kidman to pretend he's straight ...
This isn't really that huge of a deal--idolizing a person because they aren't actually real. I guess it seems like a bigger deal than it is because they are computer generated images. But think of all the famous "people" we have now that aren't real: Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny...even CG like Woody and Buzz. No need to look at Japan for that type of thing.
:)
Maybe because the line between what is real and what is not becomes blurred by CG makes this more of a story. Some could mistake Aki for a real person (in a still picture at least), but I don't think anyone would assume Buzz is real. As we head forward into more and more realistic CG, I think an effort should be made to distinguish what characters are real and what are not when blending them with live action--just for society's sanity
PS - on an unrelated note, I read that George Harrison passed away...RIP to an incredibly talented man.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
lest we forget that one of the sexiest role-models was born in the backwaters of the english countryside by people who probably read these pages daily ...
.. if only.
The one thing of particular note from my relatively short 23 years so far, is that nothing is inevitable. Things as trivial as this are certainly not inevitable, because things as complex as people with termial diseases do not inevitably die. Some few fortunate souls have had HIV for 25+ years with out ever suffering negative consequences. A guy out in my area several years fell off of the 10th floor of a construction project, and was impaled from his leg through the top of his skull, even through his heart by a lengthy bolt. They removed it and he is having a perfectly normal life, with a few good scars to show for it. People's parachutes fail to open and they walk away from it.
Are computer animated celebrities inevitable? No, I hardly think so. Likely perhaps but not inevitable.
/tangent off
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
"but I think it's safe to predict that eventually, computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones."
Actually this has already happened. Take a look at Mario, Sonic, Duke, Lara Croft, Jar Jar Binks, Earthworn Jim, Buzz Light Year and son on...
But still, people will prefer real idols since most of them represent in a sense what we all want to be. When coming to idols and role models and son on theres nothing like the real thing!
Here's Yuki Terai's offical site. Not quite photo-realistic, but pretty good CG. Guys with a thing for little Japanese girls should love it.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
What was the name of that film from the 70s or 80s where actors were killed off and replaced by computer models, thus saving the studos a fortune?
It was the kind of thing that Michael Crichton would write, but the only one that seemed similar was Looker
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
... will finally get a body. ;-)
Okay, that proves it, I definitely need more coffee this morning.
No matter how good a CG model is or how fluidly it moves...it's acting ability must come from a real person otherwise it loses that certain something (read *talent*) that can't be defined but definitely perceived on screen.
Here it is. Mostly in Japanese, but the important stuff is in English and Japanese.
Just in case anyones taking a pole - no, I don't care for CG people over , ummm, people people. Sure, people actors get drunk, crash cars, etc. But then agan, they are sometimes Laurence Olivia. Get me?
Now, if you wanted to replace me with a CG guy, I'd gladly give up my spot in front of the varied electromagnetic field generator.
Except the voice isn't synthesized. They hire a real person to do it. Who can ask for a raise.
That's it, I am reporting you to Star Command.
(highly UK specific post....)
There have since been many virtual stars already. Ventriloquist dummies are often stars in their own right, but Basil brush, Emu, and Roland Rat are all virtual characters that have not only had their own shows, but been interviewed as stars and so on.
The move from puppets and models to CGI is not that important.
Roland Rat was especially interesting because he didn't have a clearly identifiable human partner, but was very much a creation of the TV company.
At the end of the day, these things are all fiction. I can't really see people getting more excited about a CGI model than a furry puppet. It's also _much_ harder to use the CGI model. An interview with the virtual star would require weeks of computer work and post processing just to fit the CGI model into the normal studio shot of the interview. Not exactly spontaneous and realistic.
At least with Roland rat the guy operating him could ad-lib.
-----
When I was young I wrote a letter to 'Santa'. I received a reply!. I even saw him on TV!!!
I also wrote a letter to Donald Duck at Disneyland and received a reply too! He was also on TV!!!!!
Apparantly the Japanese have done something similar, but used a computer instead of a fake beard or crayons to do it. The principle is the same though. Can somebody explain to me why this is a big deal?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Artificially created heroes have existed for ages. We all know Spiderman, Tom & Jerry, Roger Rabbit and Betty Boop. I don't see much of a difference here, except maybe the genre in which the hero operates. Cartoons characters are often funny, CG heroes are often tough.
Besides, Lara Croft the Movie was awful. I felt ripped off, if only because the actual boobs in the movie were not as big as they promised in their promotional material.
My karma ran over your dogma
I think it's safe to predict that eventually, computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones
That will be a very sad day, indeed, when modernism has stripped our humanity to the extent we cannot be bothered to discern sufficient difference between a soul-less cartoon and a human being. Fuck I hate geekism for its uncritical and vapid devotion to technology. It's a dead end.
I think a large part of a lot of people's "attraction" to celebrities is the fact that they *are* real. They make mistakes (drunk driving, salary disputes) just like everyone else. There is a large subsection of the population that thrives off of E TV and People Magazine and all the gossip that goes with that stuff.
A quote from Gamastra.com :
"Square's CEO Quits after Poor Showing by Final Fantasy Game software maker Square announced that president and chief executive officer, Hisashi Suzuki would resign after the company reported its worst-ever loss for the first half due to a disappointing showing by its Final Fantasy The Spirits Within mo Square reported a group net loss of $106.8 million for the six months through September 30. The film has generated revenue of about $30 million in the U.S. market, well below the targeted $80 to 90 million, and interest among Japanese consumers has also been weak. The earnings news came as no surprise to the market as the company issued a profit warning last week.
Chief operating officer Yoichi Wada will take the top position on December 1, while Suzuki will remain as the chairman."
from this page.
It's sad to see that people who worked so hard on something that was quite something technically have not succeeded, at least financially.
I plopped down my cash to see the Final Fantasy movie in the theatre..
I think the problem is really that the technology needs to mature. I'm a complete geek, so I was able to stay "wow'ed" for an hour and 45 minutes.
But for most folks, the "wow" wears off rather quickly, and then you're stuck with this really bizarre storyline.
Point is, I don't think all-CG movies will work unless the technology matures to the point that it's commonplace. Then, all-CG can simply be a convenient vehicle for a good movie rather than the point of the movie itself.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
You have the person doing the voice, and unless we get speech generation software good enough to not require voice-over, the person doing the voice-over is the person giving the CG actor the personality.
The thing is, just getting the "look" right is far from it, the characters in Final Fantasy move about way too smoothly. It'll be a long time before you can have CG actors that will move about like a real human being.
Kill'em! Kill'em all!
Computer generated celebrities are fine, I guess,
but are we really that inventive?
Starmakers give us Britney Spears. Worse, they give us Britney clone after clone after clone, at least when they're not cooking up another boy band or Country-Western Hat Act or heavy metal lizard band.
Britney Spears, yes. No Doubt, no.
Do you believe that a million CG monkeys at a million CG terminals would ever come up with a Humphrey Bogart, a Jimmy Stewart? Heck, how about an Arnold Schwartzenegger (Give it up man, with that accent, you'll never make it in movies).
Life is more creative than we are.
Thank God for that. It keeps things interesting.
While we'll certainly see totally-CG actors in a few movies, I don't think they will be as wide spread as most would think for one simple reason: unions.
The Screen Actors Guild would never allow CG actors to gain a foothold and take jobs away from real actors the same way the UAW won't let complete automation of assembly lines take jobs away from autoworkers.
In case anyone was interested, here is this CG girl's web site. The information on there is pretty amusing...
After all, while the CGI 'actors' may not act in such ways... are you proposing that in the near future we will have the technology of AI for the personality and AI for creating the character and its 'roles'? Even then, you STILL have the initial designers in the acting matrix. Now you have the animators, voice actors, designers, and implementers (that would be the digital directors and writers) to deal with.
Unless they're appearing on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. At which point they simply appear on that TV screen...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
The whole point of Celebrity is to fascinate in these people off-screen. I'm sorry, but artificial celebs who are brought to life for a film, simply do not have an 'out of character' capability. Any attempt at one would be an act itself.
:) ) also lack the real world problems that real celebs have. They don't go into rehab, shoot people in night clubs or get caught with prostitutes. Any 'news' of Max Headroom punching out a paparazzi would be a blatant publicity stunt.
A.C. (Artificial Celebs, not Anon Cowards
Further, none of these A.C. have their own personalities.. They're all based on the human. Bart Simpson may have fans, but there's a woman's voice and a writer's words behind that.
Anyone who would see an A.C. as a true celeb is out of touch with reality, and is doing the work of all those fascist freaks who want to define 'acceptible content' for us, protect us from ourselves, raise our kids for us, and tell us what we should be thinking.
If someone can't tell the difference between Dr. Aki and Nicole Kidman, then they just might think that killing 102 people in 30 minutes is OK, since Arnold and Sly do it all the time, and that Ozzy really does think that suicide is a Good Idea.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
The first thing this called to mind was David Mack's Kabuki. A great graphic novel about a near-future Japan. Hard to describe to anyone who hasn't read it, which I strongly suggest - but the main character(s) are enigamtic pop-stars presented as super-heroes, CG representations often popping up on the occasional screen with a quick propogandic blurb. No one being certain whether they're real or fake. Really interesting reading.
are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture, ranging from "never gets arrested for drunk driving" to "never demands salary increases",
;-).
You can also produce that spread-open 'pink' shot that those nasty hollywood film actresses seem so aginst doing
I think that this is a slippery slope that we are approaching with CG actors. I mean do you want your child to develope crushes on a CG person?
Also, with the new legislation like the DMCA and various other ones, what happens if some company makes a CG model that looks like you? What happens if they copyright/patent/trademark this image, do all computer images of you become illegal?
Think about this people before we start heading down that slope
Does this mean it is possible to improve Brittany and Outta sync?
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I love the song 'Love Communication' by Kyoko Date. I had no idea she was a CG idol. I just figured it was some nifty bubblegum J-pop. Damn, now I feel wierd. I always thought the name of the MP3 I found had some funky Japanese to English translation errors.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Video games are increasingly becoming a spectator sport. With graphics improving at the rate they have been, I'd much rather watch a video-game controller character than some self-important, overpaid, egotistical athlete.
Is it just me, or does this sound like one of the Macross Movies with the computer generated singer?
... and once we have this protocultur what do we do with the legacy culture???
Wille this give us protocultur...
Sam
When you look at how disconnected celebrities are from the reality that their fans' live ... CG characters may be the ultimate in understanding. It's quite possible that CG characters may more down to earth than their hollywood counterparts, as the people creating them and animating them will live lives substantially closer to our own than Julia Roberts ever has.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The "official" site on her is here
Me personally, I don't like short hair on girls [grin]. This is all actually quite funny.
Why didn't they provide links to pictures of this CG star. I never heard of it but I love japanese looking chicks (I find them cute, I love cute girls).
It doesn't have to be pr0n, I like normal sexy pics too...
Guess I qualify as one of those hormone laden guys they talk about in the article.
is here
The plot is usually better too...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
There was a movie back in the mid-80's that predicted this. One of the major plot elements was that this mega corp came up with a way to render computer generated actors that looked completely real.
When I saw Final Fantasy, I remembered back to the movie Looker.
Of course, the other major plot element was that now that they could make human actors obsolete, they started killing off all of the humans who looked "perfect". Young women who were "lookers" would suddenly turn up dead. The monopolistic mega corps wanted to have a monopoly on actors, and saw no problem with this.
Up until some years ago I still could find the movie in larger video stores. Haven't seen it on the shelves lately though. (Probably a mega corp conspiracy.)
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
I would argue that computer generated figures
are never likely to become as popular as real
people. People buy hello (or other trashy magazine) to find out who is sleeping with whom,
who is in rehab etc. Computer generated celebrities don't appeal to our love of sleezy. We cann't look at them and think "he/she may be rich but they are coke fiends". Nor can we live vicariously through a computer generated figure.
Admittedly finding any rules for who gets to be a celebrity and who doesn't is well nigh impossible but one factor is probably scarity. If one day there is one CGI celebrity the next day there will be a million identical clones and the day after that there won't be any.
regards
Neil (ngb@orc.soton.ac.uk)
Natura non facit saltum is the famous quotation: Nature does not make a leap -- as she lets the Japanese Idoru evolve from a soulless computer generated celebraty to a full artificial mind.
It would be too jarring to see our world suddenly co-populated with superintelligent CG Idoru phenotypes. Therefore the Technological Singularity comes about only gradually, lulling us into feeble acceptance of ultimately colossal changes.
Even here on SlashDot there is backslash and recalcitrance against an AI emergence so world-changing and so iconoclastic that our very theological foundations of existence will be shaken and reevaluated. As usual, look to Japan and the CG Idoru celebrities for the first steps of mass innovation.
I'm sure that if the designers of said "computer generated celebrity" have any choice in the matter they'll "lease" the characters they make to movie makers... Not sure you'll be able to avoid salary increases TOTALLY, but if the movie production company itself has exclusive rights to the characters, they're golden.
Humans looks up Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, and Julia Roberts. Dogs look up to Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, and Benji. Aliens have dozens of Idols. If AI is ever to progress, those robots will need idols.
I'm all for it...
:)
One of my thoughts of the day after FF came out was How Real Does Aki Feel. I explained that there are certain human elements that are required before I'll be convinced that I'm not just looking at texture maps on polygons. Shrek did a good job of overcoming this problem. On the DVD they have interviews with the characters as if they were real people and not the people who do their voices.
(Posting anonymously in case friends, or my wife, sees this. I am posting anonymously, right? Right??)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Perhaps a sleeper but Albert Finney stared in a movie called Looker (1981) about a fiendish plot to create perfect models, kill them and replace them with CG replicas.
I hate exposing the plot like that but its a 20 year old film and you weren't going to watch it anyway. It is good, though.
Are you kidding? You think the artists, let alone the software and hardware manufacturers are going to just stand aside when it starts raining money?
324006
These CG characters could become stars one day and appear in a variety of movies but until they make them look like they have life and come up with a way to synthesize the human voice in a believable way it won't happen. They can't detach the characters from the people who do voice overs or you have the same deal you have with the new scooby doo series or the flintstones when they changed the people who did the voices for some of the characters. The characters die if the original voice leaves because of salary negotiations or if he/she dies or whatever. Could you like watching Arnold Swartzenegger in a movie if when he opened his mouth it sounded like someone doing an Arnold impression? The voice lends too much to the character. So I don't think CG actors will be viable for celebrity for a LONG LONG LONG time. Maybe 100s of years. Just my opinion.
What about hacking one of these virtual celibrities? Will we see them get arrested for drunk driving after all?
"There are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture, ranging from never gets arrested for drunk driving to never demands salary increases, that I think it's inevitable."
Readers of Gibson's (in my view prescient) novels will disagree. What about "runs away with a real person to get married"....
--- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Heh. I saw this photo and couldn't help but think, "Hmm, Real Dolls?"
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
At the end of the day, these things are all fiction.
Like it makes a difference - most of what we see from flesh and blood stars may as well be fictional. I'm as likely to have meaningful interaction with Roger Rabbit as Tyra Banks.
Reboot macht Frei.
at least not as implied by the submitted story. We've had the Muppets for years in interviews etc ( I just saw them on Family Feud).. everyone knows it's all for fun.
Unless the entertainment powers that be do something spooky and create a photo-realistic person and get the entertainment press in on the secret.
Computer generated celebrities, yes, but they still need people to make them talk. While we work on making their movements more natural so they look real in motion as well as in stills, the voice actor gets older and his or her voice changes with age. When we get computer generated speech that sounds convincing we'll be onto something. Really, how many Harry Potter movies can be done without changing lead actors?
Macross Plus, that's all I gotta say. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I saw that commercial while living in Japan (Just came back to the US.) I thought it was actually very well done. But, I ended up watching to see how WELL they animated her. And honestly, I couldn't remember it was for toothpaste... I could only recall how weird I felt when she bent over for a hug/kiss from a live-action guy in the end.
Well animated, decent textures, but still hard to accept a virtual idol in a real setting.
Idolization of the intangible is ubiquitous in almost every culture. Perhaps the future will be a "Snow Crash" Win-amp skin like world where WE become the stars; we can pretend to be a superstar in the virtual world. Fiction has often predicted the future; William Gibson, and Neil Stephenson have been talking about this kind of stuff for some time.
It's unlikely that CG idols will not be tainted by scandals: I bet lots of popular CG idols will appear in prOn, have afairs with other CG idols, or even real people - they're computer generated, and so they are far more easy to reproducible, duplicate and copy than their flesh-and-bone counterparts.
Scandal and sex sure could sell well, and someone out there is going to try to make money on it, even if it's some CG Idol pirate ripping the Idol copyright owner off.
The visual arts have long passed the need for "acting talent". Today's production techniques allow a director to show anything he wants. The only use for "stars" is to help market the product. The cult of celebrity has replaced critical appreciation. I see no reason why a CG character can't be added to the pantheon.
But I'm a little depressed, because many of the posts so far compare CG characters to "real" characters. As I noted above, directors can use CG tricks to show anything they want, so for TV, movies, etc. there is no such thing as a "real" character!
You could almost say that "The Matrix" already exists -- it's called Television. Almost everyone has one, it's controlled by greedy, nebulous forces, and it sucks out your energy. The antidote is the red pill: engage the real world. Don't watch a basketball game on TV, go to an arena, or even better, play a game yourself. If you want to see fine acting, screw the movies, go to a play. Downloading music is ok, but nothing beats real, live music.
Everyone should go out right now & buy a ukulele.
Salaries. Now, in order to load a film full of stars and make it a high profile deal, one no longer has to fork out obscene amounts of cash to attract big names to take a role in the film.
Versatility. Whereas there are some people we wish we could change, we can't. Pixels on a screen, however, are amazingly easy to change: Directors will be able to create the exact effect they wish, as long as they have the correct software and capable technicians at their disposal. "One Role" actors are definately going to take a hit: when faced with characters who can act whatever their director wishes, they will invariably get the short end of the deal.
While I am definately going to get a lot of people disagreeing with my optimism(?) I think that these actors, in the hands of a good director and staff, will become a cheap and amazingly powerful tool which will produce far better films. However, we'll still see human actors for a very long time, because there's no mistaking that human effect....
What's in a Sig?
If the movie had a coherent plot and/or interesting characters, instead of some half-baked mumbo-jumbo blabberheads that live in Bryce-land. I think Square got what it deserved -- an uninteresting response to an uninteresting movie.
The Japanese have the idea of computer-generated celebraties in their fiction for quite a while now. The most well-known I can think of is the "Eve" character in the anime film Megazone 23 pt 1. That character was supposedly so "good" that the citizens didn't even know she wasn't real.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I believe that it is unlikely that people will start to worship computer generated actors.
I believe that it is more likely that the artists will become the focus of our adoration, not their creations.
Think about the comic book and anime industries. Yeah we will always buy our favorite characters, but when there is always an artist or writer that we will follow. Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, etc.
It's the same with novels (Sci-fi, fiction, or even harlequin romance). We're more likely to buy books from authors because of their writing, not just for the characters.
Misfit
however if there was that chance run in with the celebrity in a chatroom...
Can anyone say Jar Jar? I mean he's no celeberity, but he sure as hell is annoying. If this is how CG celebs are gonna be, give me the real thing!
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
That they will never be sunbathing nude on a beach, or accidentally pop out of their dress during a dinner function. Oh well.
If it won't boot, Fsck it!
At Hammerhead, we have been approached to do a character like this as well, call her Desiree [name changed to protect, well, me :)]. This group of producers wanted to create a pop star that didn't have all of the baggage that real people have; they could then choose the actual voice behind the character strictly on the basis of singing ability. As with these Japanese characters, Desiree would have a biography, would appear on radio interview shows, would endorse products, etc. With the recent advances in skin rendering, one could make a far more compelling image than the plastic-like characters to date.
The producers wanted the character to be 'racy' and 'revealing', like Britney -- something that I consider a tragic mistake. Perhaps as her career evolved over ten years or so I would think that she shoul d go that way, but I feel that flashy but modest clothes would be far more appealing over time than the same old skin. Clothes are adornment, not just censorship.
Personally, I don't see this as very different than Britney Spears. Britney is almost as synthetic as Desiree -- and at least Desiree would lip-synch competently.
This project drifted along for a while and finally died, as do 95% of all proposed projects. Still, it will definitely happen, the economics work. Desiree need only 'live' a few dozen minutes a year; and those appearances could be funded at a pretty reasonable rate.
This contrasts to what the poster above commented about porn stars. He commented that this would be an obvious venue, as you could build perfect bodies that would do anything. It seems to me that porn stars already have next-to-perfect bodies, and from what I can tell, there is very little that they won't do. More importantly, they are cheap. The most expensive full-length porn movies don't cost nearly as much as a synthetic music video would cost, say, $500,000. From what I've read, porn stars make most of their money outside of the films by performing live -- they treat the films as advertising for the live shows. Needless to say, this is beyond the capabilities of synthetic characters to this point.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
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Mod this Parent down. This guy spams _every_ article with somthing about his Javascript AI. Check out http://slashdot.org/~Mentifex/ and look at some of his previous posts.
who does the voices for these cg celebs?
a smashing sucess [an interesting rendering of Aki] ;-)
I wouldn't be so sure of that! Once a GC celebrity is modelled, it still takes a lot of talent to animate it. In fact, a lot of the subtle character quirks of a CG celebrity are probably inherited from the animator. In that sense, the real actor is the person at the computer. This person could surely demand a salary increase if his/her CG character becomes overly popular. This person isn't as expendable as you might think. Kermit The Frog has never been the same since someone took over Jim Henson's job, and that's just an overdeveloped sock.
Jessica Rabbit?
Betty Boop?
....
*insert long list here*
....
Helen of Troy?
We have been idolizing imaginary hot females sense the Dawn Of Mythology!
They just look more real now.
------- I saw a VW Beatle the other day. The vanity Plates said "FEATURE"
It seems to me that the control of these characters has to get away from traditional animation & more towards puppetry. To get good movements etc, a real actor could control all the movements with the CG character being essentially a mask. I'm thinking of a sort of vr situation, whith the results saved & edited. The role of actors would be changed, but the skills would still be needed.
The idea with "real" celebrities is that everyone thinks "Hey, if I could only be like them" or "I want to be him/her!" and there is actually a slight chance that one will get as famous as their idols one day. With digital celbrities it's different. You will never be "them" or live like "them". And they will never show up on parties, they will never give you autographs. They will never have affairs, scandals or other publicity. So you will never identify yourself as much with them as you do with "real" or human celebrities.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
I'm really getting sick of the amount of computer generated effects being used in entertainment these days. The Matrix seems to be the starting point of this widespread overuse, but at least it fit with the story in that movie. Commercials for Charlie's Angels, The Musketeer, Pearl Harbor, Behind Enemy Lines, and everything Jet Li has been in lately were full of these kinds of effects, and I just don't see the appeal. Call me old fashioned, but I'll take Black Sheep Squadron's mix of stock footage, combat footage, and cockpit views over a computer generated plane any day. I liked Robert Picardo better as a singing doctor in Vietnam than as a singing holographic doctor on a starship. Large scale CG has its place in historical recreations for documentaries, but it is a poor substitute for plot and character development.
With that said, you can probably figure out how I feel about these computer generated celebrities. I'm not a big fan of human celebrities, so I'm not too excited about the CG kind. Physical presence is the one feature most "celebrities" are reduced to relying on - what will be left when that is taken away? Hopefully this "next big thing" will be the next big flop.
The owners of the character will play the role that the agent does now for a real actor. They can license the character to movie makers and demand higher prices as it gets popular. I hope the movie companies don't keep any illegal copies of the software though! Thanks DMCA!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I thought most actors were artificial already. Just look at Sylvester Stallone's acting, he is obviously not human.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Digital actors still need a voice actor to show up to record their lines. However, it won't be long before you can take sound clips from the actors and string them together convincingly to produces lines.
www.dictionaraoke.org (mirror: dictionaraoke.mirrors.gweep.net) has songs that people have painstakingly put together using talking dictionary sound clips.
Most of the time fetishes are sexual, but consider this:
Just look a the people who wear jerseys with their favorite athlete's name on it. "I can't play football, but I can wear X's jersey." "I can't be Bruce Smith, but I can buy the same smelly shoe he wears." This is fetish worship. And while a young girl may never be Britanny, she can have the surgery, dye the hair, and wear the clothes. Again, it's fetish worship.
So, my question is this: What is the impact of something completely manufactured to be celebrity on this sociological phenomenon? At least with real people, including surgically and chemically enhanced people, there is the possibility to emulate them.
In 1984 they had computers producing the plots to pornographic books. I guess in the 21st century we'll have computers pumping out committee generated characters.
Actually Disney is doing this already...
1. Handsome and athletic young male leading character who doesn't resemble his ethnic character.
2. Beautiful, skinny young female love interest who doesn't resemble her ethnic character.
3. Wacky, sarcastic animal sidekick.
4. Ugly and mindless evil antagonist who does resemble his/her ethnic character.
How crappy can tv/movies get before people turn it off? The lower limit seems to be unbounded.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
They're already pretty plastic poll driven acting personalities that are just a puppet 'front' for well organized special interests.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Perhaps a better question is why many people are so obsessed with celebrities anyhow. CG or not, celebrities are not real, they're manufactured. The glitz and glamour is all fantasy. Sure, human celebrities are real people, but you'll never actually see the real person unless you happen to be a close family member or friend. What's the point of elevating fake personas to such status?
Robots already have idols: Battlebots
Granted, they are Remote controlled rather than AI, but they should suffice as Lego Mindstorm idols..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The probability of dying "p(death)" can be calculated with the simple equation "p(death) = (x - y)/x", where "x" is the number of people who have ever lived, and "y" is the number who have attained immortality.
For an atheist, y = 0, and p(death) = 1, as you have assumed. But other belief systems give different answers. In a traditional Judaeo-Christian system, we find that y = 2 (Enoch and Elijah), and hence p(death) is slightly less than 1.
TEST: Formulate a similar equation for taxes. Compare the results for a variety of belief systems. Is p(death) greater or less than p(taxes)? (Discuss.)
The big difference is that a puppet or a cartoon character is clearly not human and isn't being passed off as anything but a cartoon/puppet. Hollywood will try to pass off CGI models as humans.
Well, guess I'll watch my phony actors in my virtual reality display while taking my placebos and eating my artificially flavored food.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Speaking of digital actors, there is a Bruce Lee movie coming out. The new movie will star a digitized Bruce Lee. They even have people impersonating his voice!
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
We certainly will be heading this direction. Doug Lenat is building the infrastructure, and Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast is demonstrating the state of the art.
Recent rumors indicate that Steve Jobs will reveal a new device for the Macintosh "digital hub" paradigm at the next MacWorld Tokyo. Details are sketchy, but numerous sources have corraborated the name - Sharon Apple.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
...but how will it play out for a virtual "Badboy" character, who *NEEDS* to get arrested, to have run-ins with the law, etc., to help create and maintain the image?
Or will it all be one big pandering charade like professional wrestling is?
Unless you want all future CG characters to sound like Steven Hawking's voice synthesizer, you're going to have to hire voice talent.
Look how all the latest CG movies work - they hire
big name actors to do the voices for the animated characters.
CG has come a long long way (the fur in Monsters Inc. is incredible) but voice synthesis hasn't improved at all, and I suspect it's a far more difficult challenge..
There are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture, ranging from "never gets arrested for drunk driving" to "never demands salary increases"...
... and "never signs autographs, or shakes a fan's hand."
Yeah, there will be digital celebrities, but they'll never really replace the real thing because the fans are the ones who actually spend money.
Everyone loves our CG pal Jar-Jar :) I can't wait to meet her! I would never wash my harddrive again if she would only sign my digital certificate!
It is so hard being a fan of a computer generated character, first it is so hard to find the real person.. Sure, there are tons of impersonaters in rubber suits, but to find the REAL one.. its hard.
Maybe one day I'll get to meet Jar-jar, the bestest person in the whole wide world!
It is a quick way to try to rip of someone the glamour of a well known star.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
god help us.
There are so many advantages for the purveyors of pop culture
Maybe-JUST MAYBE, we could collectively grow up a little and realize that our PRESENT 'pop-stars' may as well be CG. They live scripted, Public-Relations-hyped lives - dating, divorcing, fucking, drinking, clubbing, working, whatever - who cares? Why do I care what Kristina Applegate eats for supper?
The fact that "we" have a pop-culture phenomenon at all is proof of a greater illness in our culture... I am not sure exactly what would cause people to replace a 'real' relationship/knowledge with a real person (family/friend/neighbour) with the 'virtual-reward' of having 'virtual relationships' is mind-numbing.
The 'purveyors of pop culture' are meddling with the human-psyche in a uncontrolled and viscous manner. They purposely seek to build memes and use their vitality for profit, at the expense of the real health of the public, strangers. Like corporate propagandists (marketers and advertisers) these people seek to meddle in your mind, to take advantage of your desires and needs and to give them 'virtual satisfaction' by overwhelming you with a 'reality they create'... this realty is then exploited to create wealth for them. These plutocrats and oligarchies are out of control - I see no difference between the RIAA and Washington in terms of the genuine self-less-ness that would be expected of those who occupy positions of such power.
What does this have to do with CG pop stars? Well, think, what does it mean when people are willing to accept stories - told as fact - about virtual people. What does it say about the overall conditioning of modern people? about their ability to be influenced, as a group, from afar, with motivations completely unknown??? Why would we view a CG 'pop star character' as anything more than a playfull curiosity - why would the scripted existence of such a thing not illicit ire and a sense of being insulted. I can understand small children being mis-lead and accepting the concept of such a thing, but grown people, I believe should be a little more apprehensive to accept a 'CG person-product' in their lives.
Well, guys with a thing for Japanese BARBIE DOLL girls at least...
Back in the old days of movies the studios "owned" the actors (and, to some extent, the writers and directors) through draconian contracts that gave the studios full control over their careers. That mostly broke down in the 1950's-60's.
Now the studios can once again control their actors - this time through copyrights.
By the way, everyone keeps talking about how virtual actors still need a human voice - so they aren't really "virtual". Voice synthesis is slowly getting better all the time. If the developers had the kind of money that the studios are pumping into CG development, it would be a LOT farther along than it is. I expect that as soon as "real" actors start demanding the kind of money for voice work that they get for on-camera acting, that voice synthesis will start getting more attention.
Norman Spinrad, "Little Heroes".
Published 1987. About Muzik, Inc., who makes a virtual record star. Videos and everything.
---
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Does anybody remember Little Heroes? I bet we'll see Red Jack hitting the charts soon.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
Celebs in the mainstream of pop culture generally have their image based on one of two things (and often both.) Fantasy role-model (everybody wants to be like Mike) or sex appeal.
Animated characters will have trouble cracking the role-model market, because there isn't the illusion that if I tried real hard, devoted my life to the goal, had a few lucky breaks, whatnot, I could be like the celebrity. Let's face it, eating a lot of bowls of frosted flakes is going to make me more like Homer Simpson than Tony the Tiger.
Animations certainly can (and already have) crack the sex-appeal market, but even there I think they remain sort of the grown-up version of kid's cartoons. There's something about the person being real that aids the transition from "Oh... that character has nice (anatomy part)," which any animation can do (remember iMac Girl), to insidious fantasy figure. I doubt I will ever see an animation acquire a deranged stalker.
How is this different from the many popular cartoon characters? Indeed, in the US, don't you get TV shows presented by Mickey Mouse or whatever? I'd be surprised if there aren't any shows for children presented by Pokemon characters. And for grown-ups, how about the South Park characters?
:-)
After all, it couldn't be more expensive than CG - where you need a team of animators for each virtual celebs. Those animators eventually become celebs in their own right, requiring higher rates of pay... which leads me neatly back to Walt Disney
Sure, get on your high horse and say, "I don't need celebrities. I don't care if my movie stars are real humans or not!" But most people like celebrities. That's why movies are made the way they are these days.
Big studios don't take chances any more. They bet on horses that have won in the past. Some nobody from nowhere comes to them with a script that's great. Do they bank on that script, then fill it with actors? No! They find one or two or three big-name actors with star appeal, and get them in on the project. Then they screw with the script until it makes everyone's egos happy. Then they shoot the film, market the thing, and we all go and see it.
Studios do this because the know that there are millions of people infatuated with Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, et. al.. They're not infatuated with the characters these people play - they're infatuated with the actors themselves.
As long as there are people out there who made it out of Bumfuq, ND and became big-name movie stars, with the strange and unreal trials and tribulations that movie stars have, there will be celebrity fans.
Those celebrity fans dictate the movie business in every major movie-producing country. Without human star actors, there's no movie industry.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Max Headroom....Now tell me what's new about computer generated celebrities?
managers...why god invented purgatory
> ranging from "never gets arrested for drunk
> driving" to "never demands salary increases"
I think one of the reasons people are interested by Hollywood stars is the fact that they, too, have faults...it's a way to relate.
Pictures are great, but you still nead a voice. You can have the same problems with a voice actor as you can with a normal actor.
Liquid Gaming - Your daily dose of gaming news
Generating an artificial person takes so highly specialised manpower, it would never be cheaper than a real actor. So you try artificial intellegence.
Big Deal.
A dumb one wouldn't be very interesting in the long run. And why should a intellegent one ant to emulate humans?
The only skin on a computer should be porn.
IMHO, they were the pioneers of Ecommerce.
Yea. What about 10 years later?
Every Man and Woman of the world try to find Best shaped, ultra crafted, superious lookin digital partners.
I hope that ill can be cure soon.
Thats absolutely mess.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Well, despite the fact that the "Slippery Slope" is a well-known logical fallacy, there are other faults in the argument. First, kids develop attachments to and crushes on artifical characters now. If you're careful to teach them the difference between reality and virtuality, it's not an issue, and teaching them this idea also has a few other benefits which I don't think I need to address. As to your fear that a company could make and copyright a virtual you, you could certainly claim prior art in the case of existing before the virtual character (and possibly have basis for countersuit), and you could claim an exception to copyright law if you were born looking like an already-created avatar (as opposed to having yourself altered to match said avatar). So again, no issue.
Virg
CG characters will never be worshipped like real actors are.
Now excuse me while I go play some Tomb Raider.
Oh the humanity!!!
That is all.
I'd have more confidence in Final Fantasy style human models being used in movies alongside human actors if they didn't move and look like CG models.
Fure, they put trackers on human actors for the people in FF, but they didn't walk or move exactly right. There were just too few imperfections for them to be real people. Hell, they walked like robots.
Until it is easy to mistake a real human and a CG person, they'll only be really good for having around other cartoon characters.
It might, however, be a good idea to use CG people in pornography. Snuff flicks, kiddie porn, etc DO have a fairly big market, and the main objection to them (aside from the obvious thoughtcrime problems) is the exploitation, torture and probable death of the victim.
If you can get CG people to act like they're in real pain (and liking it) they'd be useful in all sorts of kink, custom-built fanasies, etc. You wouldn't have to worry about the privacy problem associated with going to the pr0n store either.
In general, porn applications would probably be the only place they're handy right now.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
The voice acting is the main element. It is very reminiscent of Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) in which the computer industry could create very accurate visual simulations, but had a much harder time with generating voices. People used to adore various radio celebrities without any CG visuals at all.
I'm sure all these CG celebs have 1-2 voice actors associated with them at most, and they can certainly demand large salaries, get into scandals and so forth. They might even be able to move into regular acting roles (cf Hank Azaria from the Simpsons). You can see that Kermit has no longer been the same since the death of his creator and voice. Good voice actors/singers are not interchangeable.
Automatic speech generation is very primitive. The fall of Lernout and Hauspie has certainly impacted the whole speech community. A look at Victor Zue's work at MIT helps to illustrate how the field is just getting to the point where they can create a realistic sounding voice. The best techniques use concatenated phonemes from real speakers. They are nowhere near the point of being able to convey emotion or being able to sing...although research continues.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
Computer graphics can certainly allow the creation of new kinds of media, but represents an evolution, rather than a revolution in story telling. The creation of interesting, vibrant, living characters has been done for centuries, and is probably not made significantly easier by the development of computer graphics.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
So the restraining order I received for alledgedly stalking Belle (from Beauty and the Best) was ahead of it's time. She's a babe.
passetspike!
If you've watched a professional CGI animator at work, you realize the level of talent required to do this. It takes really good 3D visualization skills to draw in 3D. A competent pro can draw a head by drawing, freehand, a few cross-sections in 2D and skinning them. This takes about 30 seconds. There are very few people who can do that. Training doesn't help if you don't have the talent. Go to any of the animation schools and look at the student output, most of which sucks. (Note to budding animators: never put a spaceship or a robot on your demo reel.) This is why 3D animation tools don't go mass-market.
Until somebody figures out how to make this stuff usable by non-artists, it's going to be expensive. Poser is a step in the right direction.
What about the stalkers of the world? Are people going to be stalking SGI boxen now? Where's the fun in THAT?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I consider Lara Croft to be the first CG idol .. I would actually put Lara as the first true idoru. Like Terai, Lara has a "biography" (she's still single, guys!) and a web site as well as many fan sites.
Like an idoru, you can pretty much put Lara anywhere to advertise any product. Lara has already been in several commercials (Lucozade, SciFi channel, ...) and has modeled clothes from various designers. Of course you can also buy books about her, calendars featuring Lara, and movies about her. Not to mention the games that introduced us to Lara.
I think Lara Croft the GG idol has now expanded beyond Lara Croft the game character. You have real-life models portraying her at conventions (E3) and in movies (Angelina Jolie). Fan sites are all over the place. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who would have preferred that the movie had starred the virtual character rather than Angelina (who was great and all, but not quite there.)
It's nice that Yuki Terai is getting attention for bringing "idoru" into the every day, but I think someone else has been there first.
(And don't even get me started on Ananova, who not only has a CG body and personality, but voice as well...)
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and most animated shitti things done in america have been idolized and, i should say, form the real base of the american cultura (and americans are proud about it, go figure)...
As for the japs, they have taken this idea way farther with their anime stuff (much much better than anything made in the US), so I think they have already had virtual stars.
The computer generated part is simply a different medium to create a virtual star.
On the other hand, Final Fantasy is a piece of crap and most of the anime ive seen is hand drawn and it beats the hell out of it.
Alex
NO SIG
Digital porn has been around for a while. We've all seen manipulations -- real photos digitally edited to put a famous head on an unknown body, or to create situations no real model would allow. There's also a big subculture of "poser art", pictures created by Poser or other modeling programs to appeal to fringe markets (snuff porn mostly) that the mainstream industry has neglected.
Of course, animated celebs like Yuki are nothing new. What's extremely strange is that her publicists and fans are so serious about the whole thing. Part of the appeal of celebrity is the fantasy it creates. People follow Brittany and SMG and Antonio partly to improve their own make-believe romantic lives. How can you fantasize about being with somebody who's so conspicuously not real?
"...but I think it's safe to predict that eventually, computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones."
This is crap. People love spotting celebs in H'wood or on movie locations, reading about them in the tabs, seeing them get together with or marry other celebs- CG actors will *never* be as popular for these reasons.
im in lov with rikku :)
u 10 24.jpg ..
http://img.www.fffans.net/gallery/archive/1rikk
now i just need the money for PS2..
media brainwashed, market manipulated anarchistic AC.
CG here, CG there, in principle there is only little difference between Mickey Mouse and Aki Ross. Actually Mickey played in much more movies, has more fan clubs, has a start in the walk of fame, has her foot prints in front of the chinese theatre, was guest in talkshows.
Ok, I agree Duckburg is not New York or Tokyo and Mickey is not as hot as Aki (well, depends on your sexual orientation
Cheers
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
What most people seem to be ignoring here is that all these "virtual idols" need human voices. Pac man, however, was eternally silent.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
If Final Fantasy didn't do so well, it wasn't because of the fact that the actors were CG, it was because of the storyline and other issues.
Also, you still have voice actors behind the scenes... granted, you can get unknowns that are for all practical purposes as good as the hunk of the month for this job, but there are still people behind the scenes to pay.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Isn't it peculiar that we can create reasonable visual facsimiles but are unable to do so for voices? Why is this? I would have thought that our visual senses were superior to our auditory ones, and therefore harder to fool.
Anyone with some felt and some plastic googley eyes can make a puppet. CGI characters are made by multi-million dollar corporations. Corporate america is taking control of the puppet industry and no one is noticing!
My Blog Sucks.
When Ananova.com launched a couple of years ago, there were numerous articles in the press laughing at the way it worked. At the time, Ananova was primarily a streaming video news service fronted by a computer generated character.
Its voice was completely retarded, and let out plenty of faux-pas during its 'broadcasts'. For example, there was a story about a cancer patient who died, and Ananova's cock-awful pronounciation and weird facial tics turned it into a comedy.
It's better now, but still sounds like Stephen Hawkings on acid. Whoever developed this system is a brave mofo for trying it out, but with computer generated characters like this, I think regular people are going to be in demand in the broadcasting industry for some time yet..
Watch Ananova Video
mogorific carpentry experiments
I'm getting really tired of these pathetic plastic-skinned, deformed CG skanks popping up in the news every few months, just because some Japanese digital Svengali decides to pimp his latest Phong-shaded stroke material out to the Tokyo couterparts of Lara Croft fanboys.
When someone can fool me into believing that one of these CG "pop-stars" is a real person in both stills AND video, I'll start paying attention. Until then, go back to the lab, boys. You still have a long way to go.
Some advice to these wanna-be digital pimps: Do yourselves a favor and take a page from the modellers and animators of "Dr. Sid" from Final Fantasy. There were moments where this character actually crossed over. Brilliant.
It isn't a memory leak. It's an object life-span issue.
What I want to see is somebody create one of these things and then make it open source so people can change it and make it do whatever. Sure only people that know how do make CG graphics would be able to change it but who cares? Only programers can change Linux. I think it would be cool.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
"never demands salary increases"
Until their programmers/artists ask for one...
:)
Interestingly, we (in North America) tend to take a dimmer view of sex-oriented situations than violent ones. It's okay to own guns in some States probably before you can drink a beer legally. It's okay to go to the latest Schwarzenegger film with attendant blood-on-the-walls high-deathcount activity, but softcore porn is verboten.
CG is interesting in that it opens up possibilities for stunts that humans could not attempt due to ludicrous risks. It opens up vistas on scales that can't be done well otherwise. It opens up new realities.
Interestingly, we can write in text about many very nasty things, but if we put them on the screen or on the Internet, all of a sudden they get banned. The difference between images of something or movies of same and a book describing them? Your imagination.
Somehow public standards are offended by taboo images more than taboo text. Interestingly, the CG actors and actresses could be made do things humans wouldn't or that they could be (for instance) slaughtered in stacks without the huge SFX budget that a violent movie requires (and of course, they might get away with a bit more violence because everyone knows it isn't real).
It'd be nice if societies had some sort of consistent and sane ethic. But views differ. Many folk seem to think a naked breast is the work of Lucifer, whereas having 14 year olds with firearms makes sense. Others don't want anyone carrying guns, but seem to think that adults and young teenagers making whoopee is acceptable. CG just serves to once again focus our attention on the differing values of different parts of the world. Some of the things done in a lot of Japanese Manga/Hentai just isn't allowed over-the-counter uncut here in North America.
I don't realy have a conclusion (wish I did), but it is surely one of the interesting questions about these discussions: Does it matter if the person in an image (or story, if it is text) is real or not as to how what happens to them is judged? Is virtual porn better, worse, or just the same as virtual porn? Is virtual violence better or worse or the same as real violence? Most people would probalby say real violence is worse than virtual violence. But many would probably say virtual porn is as bad as real porn.
If it all made sense, it wouldn't be half so interesting....
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I can't wait for the next stupid bubble-gum-and-badly-choreographed pop sensation to be 100% CG. Then I simply break into the systems used to produce him/her/them and voila, dead pop icon.
And I don't even get prosecuted for murder. What could be better?
It's actually damned creepy when you think about it, but several of the events that took place in Macross Plus could be very possible within the next few years. We already have plenty of ingredients for it:
- Computer-generated characters that could almost pass for human by just looking at them. Before long, they should be able to render these characters in real-time, enabling almost limitless possibilities of interactivity.
- Copious amounts of effort being poured into developing the perfect artificial intellegence. We seem to be getting close, but none of them are currently self-aware, as we know it. That could change.
- A vast, global network that puts almost every point on earth within reach of a computer. Humans are merely "cells" to build and maintain the parts of the larger organism, the "Net."
- Computer controlled weapons have been among us for a while. Are we foolishly setting ourselves up to be destroyed?
- Planes controlled by the mind are being experimented with by NASA. At the moment though, it has mostly been used on non-military aircraft for landings.
Interesting. Just think, the next-generation in video-games could be trying to survive within the real-world itself!
8==8 Bones 8==8
I suspect we'll see artificial news anchors becoming prevalent first, before generic "synthespians". Ananova is an interesting initial attempt at this. In my opinion, the text-to-speech needs a bit of work, and the site needs a better news feed, but the CG is nicely done. Unlike an actor, or performer, where you need convincing movement, dancing, etc., a synthetic news caster needs limited facial expressions. If I were a talking head on the local "Eyewitness News", I'd be worried.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Lara Croft has great shapes, but not my thing...
... 8)
I mean,I know it's all Silicon
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
The US Supreme Court is going to take a case involving this issue and there has been some discussion along these lines. The philosophical questions the technology raises are far more interesting than the actual use of it because the technology is remarkably unconvincing.
Plus, no matter how much you pay that egotistical athlete, you're not likely to find very many of them that'll go into the match when you tell them
ok, here's the rocket launcher, you've got 50 rockets in your backpack, 2 nail grenades, 4 frag grenades, here's a pair of shotguns, single-barrel and double-barrel, 150 shells in your backpack, now go get the flag
Unless they're too stupid to realize the rest of the guys probably have a similar armoury when they go in.
Ryoko
Shinji
Asuka
Rei
.. the list could go on for ever..
I've said for a long time, you'll know when computer animation has really arrived when we start getting new Shirley Temple movies that are indistinguishable from the old ones.
I don't understand how actors get elevated to the heights that they do. They are just people how pretend to be other people and speak lines that other people wrote for them.
When I watch a movie I don't really care about the actors, I care about the characters and what they go through in the story being told. Thus I don't care if they are real actors or computer-generated ones. And a CG actor is the work of many people: animators, designers, artists, voice actors and so on. Much more impressive for me than a flesh and blood actor.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
I don't think that it's safe to say that "eventually, computer-generated celebrities will be as numerous as live ones".
As stupid as it seems, getting arrested for drunk-driving, etc. makes people like celebrities. People can't relate to non-humans. This will never catch on in a big way in the United States. Maybe in gimmick-happy Japan.
This story is only about 5 years old. What's news?