Toy Story Meets Google Street View

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Toy Story Meets Google Street View

Posted by timothy on Friday November 25, 2011 @01:33PM from the that's-a-lot-of-lamp-twiddling dept.

theodp writes "The Atlantic talks to creative director Tom Jenkins about his short film Address Is Approximate, which tells the whimsical story of a toy's journey to the California coast. Jenkins' personal project, described a 'Toy Story for the Internet age,' uses stop-motion animation and Google Street View to bring an after-working-hours office space to life. Film critic Larry Page gives it a thumbs-up."

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For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 13:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Toy Story was released in 1995. Wasn't the internet age already underway at that point?
1. Re:For the internet age? by martin-boundary · 2011-11-25 14:15 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Toy Story was released in 1995. Wasn't the internet age already underway at that point?
  
  Yup, but it was still in the Archie and Veronica comics reading stage...
2. Re:For the internet age? by dotancohen · 2011-11-25 14:23 · Score: 0
  
  Toy Story was released in 1995. Wasn't the internet age already underway at that point?
  To you and me. To "regular people" the internet did not come home until after Windows XP was introduced in 2001. Don't believe me? Ask your neighbour what windows looked like / was called before XP.
  
  --
  It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
3. Re:For the internet age? by lanceran · 2011-11-25 14:31 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Im having vietnam-style flashbacks of grey rectangles and hourglasses with sounds of dial-up in background. And cyan... so much cyan. I lost a good hard drive back then.
4. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 14:37 · Score: 1
  
  You're talking to the /. crowd we're not "regular people". Quite a few of us remember xmodem / zmodem / kermit, BBS connections to the internet and of course ftp/telnet when we got there.
5. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 15:05 · Score: 1
  
  Nope.
  Windows 95 released in August 1995 without TCP/IP being installed by default. Now sure in some circles the internet was old by then, but it can hardly be the "internet age" when the most popular OS in the world releases without it...
6. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 15:19 · Score: 0
  
  You do know it was possible to use an internet connection on Windows 3.1, though, right? For the people that didn't have OS/2 of course.
7. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 15:39 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  You, sir, win teh gopherspace.
8. Re:For the internet age? by hedwards · 2011-11-25 15:58 · Score: 1
  
  I remember thinking that Compuserve was pretty sweet at that point. And had to be explained to as to why this "internet" thing was such a big deal. Sigh, live and learn.
9. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 16:07 · Score: 0
  
  20 million then vs 2 billion now
10. Re:For the internet age? by SeaFox · 2011-11-25 16:28 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Toy Story was released in 1995. Wasn't the internet age already underway at that point?
  What's ironic about the comment is it suggests Toy Story is old-hat or using some outdated technology when this new short film is done in stop motion and Toy Story is computer animated.
11. Re:For the internet age? by derGoldstein · 2011-11-25 17:24 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Back then you could HEAR your computer working! The dial-up modems, the loud spinning HDs, CD-ROMs, Floppy Disks, and dot-matrix printers. You knew what your computer was going just by listening.
  Now it's all sterile. Software is downloaded onto solid-state hard-drives, in silent computers with low-rpm fans, if any. No wonder there are so many botnets -- you have no idea what your computer is doing anymore.
  
  I sometimes wish I could turn the sound back ON. Sure, there was cyan and #C0C0C0 all over the place, but it FELT real.
  
  --
  Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
12. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 20:47 · Score: 0
  
  What makes you asshats thing the parent is a troll? Frosty speaks the truth.
13. Re:For the internet age? by Frnknstn · 2011-11-25 20:51 · Score: 2
  
  That's not all! Windows 95 was released without a spreadsheet application or presentation package installed! Clearly, the "business age" hadn't started yet, either.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Plus!
  Obviously, having TCP/IP support enabled by default for all your network devices is a fundamental part of Internet access. How else could people in 1995 utilize the cable-provider broadband connections in their home?
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-Point_Protocol
  (For those of you who are a bit slower, my point is that the reason the web browser or many other applications designed for the Internet were not installed in Windows by default, is that Microsoft was still hoping they were products they could sell to you.
  TCP was not enabled on LAN interfaces by default because IPX was the most common LAN protocol at the time. Of course, any modems you installed DID have PPP enabled to tunnel the TCP/IP traffic over to your ISP)
  
  --
  If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
14. Re:For the internet age? by Zakabog · 2011-11-25 21:06 · Score: 2
  
  My first computer was an IBM PS/2 running Windows 3.1, 66MHz 486. Back then the sound of a HDD being accessed usually followed any action I did, opening notepad, starting a game, etc. When the noise stopped the computer was ready and I became conditioned to think of that noise to mean loading. Now days I hear a HDD access noise and all I can think of is "Wow this computer is so slow!" It doesn't matter if it takes the same amount of time to open a program on a silent PC or on a PC with a really loud HDD, the noise tells my mind that the computer is slow.
  The worst thing about how silent PCs have gotten is that people now think any noise from a PC is bad. I've had customers come in because their computer is "way too loud" meanwhile they've got a fan that peaks at 35-40db. Sometimes I wish I could show them some of my old computers with 60+ dBA Deltas pushing 200+CFM to give them a far better comparison of what "way too loud" actually is.
15. Re:For the internet age? by marcroelofs · 2011-11-25 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  Not for long anymore
16. Re:For the internet age? by wesleyjconnor · 2011-11-25 21:31 · Score: 1
  
  Dont forget clippy, people weren't organised before that helpful little guy
  
  --
  http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
17. Re:For the internet age? by plunderscratch · 2011-11-25 23:28 · Score: 1
  
  I hear he's a store greeter these days. Just imagine... 'Hi there, you look like you're trying to do some shopping...'.
  
  --
  Guns don't kill people! Admins do!
18. Re:For the internet age? by neumayr · 2011-11-26 00:41 · Score: 1
  
  ...and it looks a lot better than even modern 3D CGI. So no real irony - stop motion obviously is not obsolete, just a hell of a lot more expensive to make than CGI, limiting it to shorts. Still, not outdated.
  
  --
  Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
19. Re:For the internet age? by SeaFox · 2011-11-26 00:49 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but as an animation method it far predates the world of Toy Story. Which method is more fit to call itself the one of the "Internet Age", the one that requires computer rendering, or the one that I fondly remember for the California Raisins and other Claymation specials of my childhood (back before the commercial internet even existed)?
20. Re:For the internet age? by neumayr · 2011-11-26 01:24 · Score: 1
  
  Probably the first that was used in the movie that was fileshared more often than bought ^^ Which probably would be a commercial film, thus CGI -.- Still doesn't make stop motion outdated! *shake fist*
  
  --
  Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
21. Re:For the internet age? by mwvdlee · 2011-11-26 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  Clippy worked.
  People started reading manuals out of fear for clippy.
  Clippy is better than "RTFM", it's "RTFM or I'm going to humiliate you in public".
  
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22. Re:For the internet age? by Dogtanian · 2011-11-26 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  For those of you who are a bit slower, my point is that the reason the web browser or many other applications designed for the Internet were not installed in Windows by default, is that Microsoft was still hoping they were products they could sell to you
  Remember also that Microsoft were trying to push their own, proprietary MSN (the original version of their AOL-alike network, not later uses of the brand) in preference to the Internet at that point. Seems laughable in hindsight, but they obviously thought that they could do it. I even remember reading a magazine around the time that the Internet had just exploded into the public consciousness (circa 1994) and even they were injecting a sceptical note into whether the Internet would be a success or whether the mass market would end up being routed into closed systems operated over big businesses' lines.
  
  Well, that didn't happen back then, but 17 years on, the "walled garden" threat is back- now that Apple has shown that the public *will* stand for it, I'm sure MS and others will be trying too.
  
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23. Re:For the internet age? by Dogtanian · 2011-11-26 03:35 · Score: 1
  
  Toy Story isn't 3d, but stop-motion animation arguably is...
  Er... what point are you trying to make?
  
  Stop motion *can* be made in (stereoscopic pseudo-)3D, but usually wasn't until recently... just like CGI animation can be made in 3D, but usually wasn't until recently(!)
  
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24. Re:For the internet age? by Relayman · 2011-11-26 07:24 · Score: 1
  
  I bought an HP Pavilion with Windows 95 installed in August 1995. It had TCP/IP installed but no browser. Microsoft wouldn't allow me to download IE using FTP, so I had to buy a copy. I figured if I had to buy a browser, I would buy Netscape Navigator instead.
  
  This explains why I was highly amused when someone from Microsoft explained in the anti-trust trial that Windows had to have a browser to run. My version sure didn't.
  
  --
  If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
25. Re:For the internet age? by martin-boundary · 2011-11-26 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  Lighten up. The OP comment was "What's ironic [is] Toy Story is old-hat [...] when this new short film is done in stop motion and Toy Story is computer animated." That's a dated comment that was true in the 90s when computer animated films were state of the art and stop motion was 60s tech in comparison.
  Today, computer animation itself is old hat and the new new thing is 3d, but ironically stop motion was always more 3d than 90s computer animation since the puppets are actual real objects, and the lighting/shadows/details/environment of the stop motion scenes are richer than 90s computer animation (and to some people, richer than Avatar-like animation too).
26. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-26 11:50 · Score: 0
  
  you're both quite gay.
27. Re:For the internet age? by Matheus · 2011-11-26 13:24 · Score: 1
  
  I miss Z-Modem... it was a damn fine protocol.
28. Re:For the internet age? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-27 01:16 · Score: 0
  
  Just get an AM radio next to your computer, tuned to a empty channel. You're going to hear lots of noise...
29. Re:For the internet age? by doti · 2011-11-28 08:22 · Score: 1
  
  I also find very uncomfortable to use a computer without a good system monitor.
  I use the good old gkrellm
  
  --
  factor 966971: 966971
Just in case anybody doesn't recognize the name... by dotancohen · 2011-11-25 14:24 · Score: 4, Informative

..."film critic" Larry Page has a rather unique interest in Googe Street View.

--
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Actually, by j2kun · 2011-11-25 14:24 · Score: 0

Larry Page gives it a +1. Slashdot summaries need to get with the internet age. sheesh.
First Metrics by RenderSeven · 2011-11-25 14:26 · Score: 1

Not first post, but close. So when TFA posted YouTube page had 123963 views, 5158 likes and 33 dislikes, so we can see traffic sent by /.
1. Re:First Metrics by artor3 · 2011-11-25 16:02 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  And 90 minutes later, YouTube page had 123963 views, thereby confirming that absolutely no one in /. every clicks the links in the summary (or that YouTube only updates that number every few hours, but I choose the believe the first option).
2. Re:First Metrics by Slashdot+Assistant · 2011-11-26 00:50 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  We don't need informed comments. What Slashdot needs is confident and angry action! That's how American politics works, so if it's good enough for Jesus and Gingrich it sure as Hell is good enough for Slashdot.
3. Re:First Metrics by Raenex · 2011-11-26 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  It's up to 141,226 now, and the top-rated comment is:
  "why is it the black robot that has to click like a madman for the white robot...?"
  Which I think is pretty hilarious. It also explains what the black robot was doing. I didn't get it at first.
4. Re:First Metrics by RenderSeven · 2011-11-26 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  Seems like both... YouTube stats seem to batch update, AND there was no spike in views from posting on /. which is not that surprising. The only interesting inference is how little traffic it must take to /. your average server
5. Re:First Metrics by Matheus · 2011-11-26 13:28 · Score: 1
  
  OR... the little fact that most /.ers had already see the movie when this article hit the main page. "Been there done that now for some feverish ranting"
6. Re:First Metrics by RivenAleem · 2011-11-29 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  Waaait a minute! How did you check this without clicking the link? Surely the views count would have gone up when you checked??
  Hmm, what's that sound...
What I'm waiting for: Cannon Ball run video game. by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2011-11-25 14:36 · Score: 1

The day 3d cameras can digitize what they're looking at for a 3d representation of the real world is the day Google Street view becomes a vehicle to turn USA into a big digitized driving game.

--
God spoke to me
The pacific coast is really that beautiful by Krishnoid · 2011-11-25 15:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you've never driven down the California coast, try to do it. Photos and video can't reproduce it accurately -- you have to experience it to understand. I only saw it for the first time a few years ago, and the stick figure's expression at the beginning perfectly captures what I imagine the emotion of someone who used to live near the west coast, has been living in New York for a few years, has difficulty sharing the experience with the people around him/her who have never been there -- and is homesick.
1. Re:The pacific coast is really that beautiful by melted · 2011-11-25 20:08 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe it is, but when I was driving along there it was all hazy so I couldn't see shit. :-) It was in July a couple of years back.
2. Re:The pacific coast is really that beautiful by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 20:59 · Score: 0
  
  Do try to drive on the right-hand side of the road, though. Unlike our English robot pal, who was clearly lucky that there was no-one else on the road that afternoon.
3. Re:The pacific coast is really that beautiful by DamonHD · 2011-11-25 22:57 · Score: 1
  
  Pacifica, Highway 1...
  That was a while ago for me. I don't drive a lot, I'm not into road trips, and California isn't the only beautiful place in this world that can look remarkably unspoilt, but down from SF on Highway 1 was very pleasant.
  I took a pic that I thought was great and noticed that I'd almost exactly reproduced the scenic shot on the front cover of the magazine on the table in my hotel room!
  Rgds
  Damon
  
  --
  http://m.earth.org.uk/
4. Re:The pacific coast is really that beautiful by RivenAleem · 2011-11-29 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  But with GSV I get to see all these places without having to leave my basement and subject myself to a rigorous groping by an Airport Safety Technician, or possibly murdered by their deathmachines.
  Holidays are overrated, you might meet other people.
Re:Just in case anybody doesn't recognize the name by cornholed · 2011-11-25 15:27 · Score: 0

Doesn't matter to this west coast guy on the east coast, it's what we all want to do.

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So, it comes to this.
I don't think it actually uses Street View images. by safetyinnumbers · 2011-11-25 15:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

Its viewpoints are too widely spaced to give such smooth movement. I notice that the linked interview is evasive about whether it actually uses it.
film critic? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 16:17 · Score: 0

stop being cute, he is not a film critic.
Re:Very well done by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-25 17:17 · Score: 0

Ophiuchus?
Re:I don't think it actually uses Street View imag by TheLink · 2011-11-25 17:40 · Score: 1

Yeah. Too smooth.

That said I've used Google Streetview as a "virtual tourist" before - to see various bridges around the world, Rio and the "Cristo Redentor" statue, compare Johannesburg with Cape Town, Kyoto, Tokyo, New York, etc...

It's definitely a far cry from being there, but it can be a good way of seeing the world beyond what photographers and film editors show you.
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Re:What I'm waiting for: Cannon Ball run video gam by DarwinSurvivor · 2011-11-25 18:41 · Score: 1

Actually, in many areas google street-view already has 3d. Take a close look and you'll probably notice rudimentary 3d at a resolution of about 2 meters (groups of trees, fences, etc). It's not very detailed right now, but it's well on its way.
artsy by DaveGod · 2011-11-26 00:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

You know it's arty when the camera never stops moving. Enjoyed the concept and other elements of execution but the camera direction is irritating.
1. Re:artsy by CaptainLard · 2011-11-26 02:02 · Score: 1
  
  You know it's arty when the camera never stops moving.
  You mean like when the camera never stops moving in a Michael Bay movie? Hundreds of millions of blackened souls would disagree...
2. Re:artsy by mwvdlee · 2011-11-26 02:52 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Just watched it again to see if you're right. You're not. The camera stops moving quite often in fact, especially considering this is a short film.
  
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CollegeHumor video with Google Street images by KWTm · 2011-11-26 03:28 · Score: 2

CollegeHumor did some videos that did use Google Street images and animation. Kinda neat.
Here's the first one, and that should lead you to more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35LqQPKylEA

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Re:I don't think it actually uses Street View imag by Matheus · 2011-11-26 13:32 · Score: 1

Honestly the attached article was an Ad. The interview didn't really tell much except for advertise his other work and future project. Either the interviewer was terrible OR it was a canned session. ...and no... there is no way he got all of that imagery from Street View. As you say: (in my words) too much gap in GSV to provide smooth animation (and no controls visible on the screen for the downtrodden black robot to click on)