Let’s be honest – most of us battle distraction from time to time. Admittedly, I tend to have a look at fun web sites in my lunch break these days (when I was employed by one of our competitors many years ago, the boss would send round the funny web sites hourly!) but once in a while, something cool grabs the attention of the office. We’re pretty good at keeping it under control though! Here’s a few sites that have proven intriguing, fun or weird.

Motion Portrait http://labs.mppark.jp/hige/ – Recently Tweeted, this takes a head and shoulders portait picture of you and brings it to life. Clever use of technology and quite spooky too.

The Favourite Web Site Awards – www.thefwa.com/ – This listing of the techiest, newest, cleverest and coolest sites is always worth a look. It’s slightly infuriating that their own site is so unwieldly!

Sporcle – mentally stimulating diversions – www.sporcle.com/ – online puzzles and games for anyone who likes their brain tickled.

3D animations from photos by motion portrait

We have already covered the subject of 3D avatars aka IVA’s (Intelligent Virtual Agents) for business on this blog.

Motion Portrait in Japan is taking this one step further with the ability to turn a 2D picture into a fully-fledged 3D intelligent animation. The result is awesome and can be seen on their home page at  http://www.motionportrait.com/e/. If you refresh that page you’ll see different versions of the same avatar, with different accessories (fuzzy-haired wig, moustache and thick eyebrows,  spectacles or plain 3D animation).

Very impressive indeed, and also a bit weird to a certain extent in so far as it is very close to a real person and therefore very strange. Motion Portrait also offer manga-style IVA’s or other formats. Their IVA’s aren’t just made for web pages but can be adapted for mobile phones, TV programmes and game consoles.

Click below for something both creepy and awesome:

It’s a long time since I stumbled upon this site, but it needed a post..
Click this link and move your mouse around.

Sinceridade cá está: não faço idéia do que diz o site nem nada, só sei que uma das partes do site te leva até essa bizarra figura que se movimenta de acordo com o mouse. Muito surreal. Percebi que se você ficar de 2 a 3 segundos (dependendo da rapidez que conta) ela volta ao centro. A boca dela as vezes abre e sorri para você. Detalhe pros olhinhos vermelhos. Que medo. Confiram aqui

Développé au Japon par l’agence MotionPortrait.inc, la technologie, qui porte le même nom, permet d’animer une photo de manière intéractive après un processus automatisé de modélisation 3D du portrait et de programmation.

MotionPortrait is the technology that automatically creates 3D face model from one single picture, which can be animated in a variety of facial expressions

Selon les concepteurs, n’importe quel sujet peut être modélisé en 3D (portrait d’humain, d’animal, illustration 2D… allez jeter un oeil ici pour en savoir plus sur les possibilités)… et tout ça automatiquement !

Ce procédé unique en son genre donne un rendu réaliste et en temps réel : il permet donc d’animer le portrait 3D grâce à la souris, à un bouton, à une touche de clavier, à un son… autant de commandes programmable par l’utilisateurs.
Ce qui démarque aussi fortement cette technologie des procédés d’animation programmable habituels (action script dans Flash, QuickTime VR etc…) est la multitude d’expressions faciales préprogrammées (mimiques, étonnement, colère etc…) qui donnent un aspect beaucoup plus réaliste et vivant aux animations intéractives.

Notons que cette technologie suscite un véritable engouement en Asie : les walkman SONY par exemple, ou les derniers jeux vidéos à la mode au Japon, ont déjà profité de cette technologie sur leur site internet, et les internaute affirment avoir été agréablement surpris par cette nouvelle expérience.




De quoi présager de futures campagnes intéractives surprenantes !

Check out MOTION PORTRAIT totally bizarre. she follows you around the screen…