Slashdot Mirror
Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents
CyberKnet writes "Some enterprising folks over at Google have collaborated via Google Documents to create holiday art using cells in a spreadsheet as the pixels. A time delay video was taken and is available over at YouTube and the result is pretty spectacular. More info on how they did this is available behind the scenes. They're inviting people to share their own masterpieces or post a video response over on YouTube."
3d Graphics engine in Excel previously on slashdot:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/06/1732220&from=rss
Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents
Jesus christ, so much for "do no evil"!
"It's a TRAP!" - Ackbar. Don't submit your artwork for their own profit.
"For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels." Source
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It doesn't seem like they actually needed to collaborate on the spreadsheet... one lonely person could do it just as well as four maladjusted web 2.0-ers. Maybe this is just some early viral marketing, taking advantage of the birth of the Savior to obliquely inform the public that collaboration is possible in the Google Spreadsheet.
Either way, I'm left feeling a tad Bah Humbug-ish.
This is the sort of coolness that I like about technology - the fact that you can use to create something not quite mainstream, yet very interesting and very cool.
And these are the moments when I really enjoy reading Slashdot. Reminds me of how back in the day, Slashdot used to post something small but interesting done by a geek in a garage...
Gee, this is just an obvious PR piece.
He so loved the Holidays. Now, his eternal soul is property of Google. He really should have read the Terms and Conditions.
The future ain't what it used to be.
what would be really nice is doing this sort of "drawing in a spreadsheet" thing with a bunch of formulas. Fractals or something.
the music in that youtube video has been very definitely ripped off of some other song I've heard, but I can't seem to put my finger on it. anyone else have an idea?
Your comment about "small but interesting done by a geek in a garage" is clearly not true. This was posted by Google PR, an $83bn outfit. That's one heck of a garage.
Speaking of Excel, I came across a bunch of clips the other day on NicoNico Douga where they used Excel to draw video. Here are some YouTube mirrors of those videos, since the original site is Japanese and registration-only:
ToraDora! OP in Excel
Higurashi Kai OP in Excel
Wow. A grid-based system capable of colouring grids can be used to do pixel art? Clearly the term "enterprising" has changed in meaning, but leaving that aside I have to ask why this is in tech? It quite clearly belongs in idle.
Using a spreadsheet as a graphics program is about as efficient as using a browser to run office applications ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Not that I dislike the story - I just think it should be in Idle, not in Tech.
OK - from what I saw (watched the video - easier than reading how to do it ;) ), its using the google spreadsheet like a basic version of MS paint.
On the other hand, what about getting formula derived holiday art - a random snowflake generator? (I'll leave that to the math geeks)
Or for something OTT, use this to generate cels for animation, probably itchy and scratchy level of animation, but its their server time, not yours :)
ASCII porn is *so* 1970's.
wonder what a flashmob could do...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
yawn... I was doing this on my ZX Spectrum over 20 years ago.
Spreadsheets or GTFO!
This is NOT Christmas. It's not even Advent yet. Admit it, you're in Marketing aren't you.
WTF?
Flu tracker?
Spreadsheet pixmaps?
We're *sick* of Google. I wonder if they can predict that.
Read the image pixel data with Image::Magick, write a .xls file with Spreadsheet::WriteExcel, and import it in Google Docs.
A few years ago, a newly hired engineer at work complained that he couldn't find any drawings done by the previous engineer that had just quit. I looked and the guy that quit had several thousand Excel files and his drawings were all done using tiny cells and cell borders. They were complex drawings of mechanical parts and some were even done in 3D perspective.
The new engineer ended up spending the next few months recreating all the drawings from A3-sized printouts using a real CAD program.
Back in high school, some of us had some pretty 'adult' pics that had been translated into ASCII characters. What was even cooler was that you couldn't see what they really displayed. If you didn't know the correct font, type size, and justification, the file just displayed a bunch of number/letters/symbols.
Heh heh heh.....worked pretty well.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/
It appears that anything a Google employee does these days is considered revolutionary even if it's lame, unoriginal and uninspired.
That being said, here is some real 3D spreadsheet graphics: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3563/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php
I'm just surprised that no one has written a script to convert an image into one of these documents yet, even if it was considered cheating.
Not only true, but apt, precise and funny. n1 :)
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