Slashdot Mirror
Linux Powers Digital Muppets
Darren Alcorn writes "Red Hat and Jim Henson have teamed up to bring you digital animatronics through the use of Red Hat Linux." I bet thats a fun system to see in operation.
The article is light on technical stuff, but discusses the computerized puppeteering system
a little.
You may want to amend that to Jim Henson Studios. I'm not sure he'd approve of this deal anyway.
Linux clusters were used by Dreamworks to do the images, and SGI Octanes, O2's, and Origins were used for the rendering. SGI's article details it to some extent.
AMD!
How's that for underdog geekiness. When I was at SIGGRAPH last year, the AMD booth had a display booth with a dude using the the Henson "Muppet-tronics" platform running on a AMD-Powered Linux workstation. I think the control software said something like version 0.8. It was pretty neat.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
The other day something awful had to remove a parody of Muppet movies, with funny things like "DAS BERT" instead of "DAS BOAT," etc. Kyanaka received a letter, which is shown here.
Needless to say I was shocked to see that someone who was making no money form parodying the Muppets, which are simply carpeting glued to wood, was asked to remove parody content.
I would be very careful if I was RedHat. Its funny how companies like the Church of Scientology (The cult I mean) have more lawyers after the leader dies, in the SOC case, Hubbar croaks, and people are marauding around using racketeering and extortion on "worshippers." Such is the case, to a smaller degree obviously, with Henson. Because the magician, the creator, the worthy one is dead they assemble a cabal of lawyers to viciously and rabidly attack anyone "using" the franchise because they now are charge with protecting against something that is non-Novel, replaceable, duplicateable, old. On another note, Tolkein's son, who tries to "continue" the LOTR franchise by printing his father's notes, was against the move LOTR. JRR's grandson was for it. Its time to let go, and let more creative people take a stab at things sometimes - we are all glad that JRR's son wasn't able to stop the movie. Excerpt - I think some stories are meant to be read, not to be seen. Before seeing this Oscar-nominated movie, Tolkien's son Christopher said, "My own position is that The Lord of the Rings is peculiarly unsuitable to transformation into visual dramatic form." Filmmakers disagree. Two sequels based on Tolkien's Rings characters, filmed at the same time as The Fellowship of the Ring, are scheduled for release in 2002 and 2003. Ah, yes. The franchise cometh.
I really hate when opportunists feed on the carcasses of things. This sort of activity as displayed by the Muppets franchise is so completely wrong. Its not as if Disney was slandering Henson, or parodying and making money off the parody. This company will go so far as to harass independent site owners on the web, they have lawyers trolling to make trouble. I cant say how upset I am at the Henson franchise.
My letter to Henson:
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Says they chose Redhat due to the RHN software update feature... obviously they haven't used it recently
The real article wasn't misleading, but the
slashdot synopsis is. Jim Henson Studios did not
"team up" with redhat. Redhat is just giddy over
the fact that JH's Studios bought a bunch of
copies. I like seeing linux advance as the rest
of us, but comon. Lets go with REAL advances.
If Mercedes Benz bought 2k copies of XP for their
existing servers, we woudln't say MB teams up with
MS.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Shrek was rendered on Linux boxes. The new animated film "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron" was both created on Linux workstations and rendered on Linux.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!! (Did I mention NO!)
From the rec.arts.henson+muppets FAQ: "Disney does not, nor has it ever, owned the Muppets. ... [However] in the fall of 1989, the Walt Disney Company entered into negotiations to acquire The Jim Henson Company (then Jim Henson Productions) and the Muppets. Jim Henson died during the negotiations, and the deal eventually fell through. However, the JHC and Disney have sometimes worked together, such as for the MuppetVision 3-D at Disney/MGM studios in Orlando."
Short answer: They've collaborated extensively, but Disney does NOT own the Muppets!
As for Disney, if my history is correct, right before Jim Henson died, he was negotiating to sell the studio to Disney but, after his death, his sons nixed the deal.
As has already been commented, Disney does not own the Jim Henson Company. Disney has made several attempts to buy the company over the years, but for various reasons has never succeeded. What Disney does own is the distribution rights to a fair amount of the Muppet materials; this is what often causes the confusion.
This stuff is really neat to see in person. Using HDPS, a trained puppeteer can create computer graphics facial animations in realtime that might take a team of animators several weeks. There are some images of our system in use available.
You can email me (dhelfman at la.creatureshop.henson.com) if you've got any questions.