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Animation and 3D

posted 03/02/08 by Rick Webb

Animation. We live in interesting times when it comes to animation. Worlds are colliding, fields are overlapping. In our business, we wrestle with animation on a few different fronts. First, there’s the whole “new tools are making internet animation companies competitive with traditional motion graphics houses” line of thinking. We sort of buy into that – there are definitely times that we think we can offer something to our client on a budget level that’s different than, say, hiring a major motion graphics house. The thing is, those guys can go buy and learn Flash too, so they generally got that going on for them.
Next, there’s what we like to call the confluence of industries. Actually, I don’t know that anyone’s ever actually used that term, but that’s what it is. Here in digital internetland, animation is coming at us from all sides. You have the motion picture and television animation stuff – the Methods and Digital Domains of the world. Then there’s game animation, which is a whole different suite of tools, owing to the fact that their animation does more than just play a series of pictures in sequence. So we wrestle with game animation and the tools there, and how they relate to the games we make, and where the game industry is going. Then you have scientific animation packages, mathematical modelling stuff, things like that. And, finally, you have the real world architectural modelling, product design stuff.
All of these schools of animation and suites of tools have something to learn. All of them are applicable to what we do in some way. None of them especially talk to each other. We have to talk to all of them.
We spend a lot of time wrestling with what this means for our projects. The answers aren’t all there. But we do believe there is some interesting confluence beginning to happen, and we do believe every field has something to teach us. Therefore, we employ animators from all walks of life – from the music video world. From the science world. From the product design world. They don’t get along that well, but they’re working on it. Ha.

Here are some recent posts from our employees about Animation and 3D:

Lagoa Multiphysics

posted by Dom Goodrum
Dom Goodrum
Dom Goodrum

Art Director : New York

topics: Social Networking and Community, Art Direction, Creativity, User Experience, and Internet Culture

 on July 20, 2010 at 03:25 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D
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Cinder 0.8.1

posted by Mike O'Toole
Mike O'Toole
Mike O'Toole

Developer : New York

topics: Mobile, Software, PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Snacks and Beverages

 on May 21, 2010 at 06:28 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D
We officially open-sourced Cinder, our framework for creative coding in C++, to the world three weeks ago. And, as we’ve decided to go with a release early and often style development cycle, today we’re releasing version 0.8.1.
A few of the new features include…
  • MutliTouch – supported with the same API across Windows 7 and Cocoa Touch.
  • MSAFluid – CinderBlock port of Mehmet Atken’s Fluid Simulation. As a bonus for Cinder users, the solver on the Mac benches at 2x the speed of the original. You can see what Robert Hodgin has been up to with this new capability in this video:
  • Audio Synthesis – callback-based audio synthesis API
  • Numerous enhancements – plenty of other new functionality, bugfixes and improvements
To read more about the new features and download version 0.8.1, check out the libcinder.org blog.
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Cinder!

posted by Keith Butters
Keith Butters
Keith Butters

Co-founder, Chief Experience Officer : New York

topics: Design, Rock and Roll, User Interface, Strategy, and Animation and 3D

 on April 29, 2010 at 07:19 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D
We are incredibly excited to announce that Cinder (formerly known as Flint) has now officially been released into the wild as an open source project. As described on the main page at libcinder.org, “Cinder is a community-developed, free and open source library for professional-quality creative coding in C++.”
So why did we do this, you might ask? Well, it originated as a solution to a fairly kludge-y work-flow we were using to create music visualizers. We were basically designing in Processing, porting to C++ and testing; repeat. At one point we even considered developing a magic-box type macro that would convert a Processing sketch into C++ and then to an iTunes visualizer. I had also coded a basically blank iTunes visualizer that piped FFT data to processing. Good times, but not ideal. At all.
Instead, we started an internal project codenamed ‘Flint ’ (not only because we liked the name, but because the namespace sounded cool: fli::Surface, etc). The project had two main goals:
First, when we needed to be in C++ (for iTunes plug-ins etc.) we wanted to have our creative coders be able to make things directly in C++. It needed to be approachable. For a while, we called this “The Robert Case” after Robert Hodgin, who was a driving force in making a ton of amazing stuff here at TBG.
Second, we wanted to make sure that any approachability enhancements did not prevent the more hardcore developers from doing the “bare-metal” programming. That was the “AFB Case” after Andrew Bell, who wrote the majority of Cinder here, and has been writing C++ code for ever.
We’ve used various incarnations of Cinder on projects like the augmented reality issue of Esquire Magazine, a music visualizer for Relentless, and Magnetosphere, as well as several internal experiments.
I would also like to reiterate some things that we’ve said in the FAQ of libcinder.org. One, we cannot say enough great things about Processing. It’s not only a great way to dip your toe into the waters of creative coding, but also a powerful platform for doing advanced and amazing things. Another incredible project out there is openFrameworks, which is led by some amazingly talented people and has a great community surrounding it.
I am so glad that we were able to make Cinder open source. Andrew and I both expected a certain amount of internal resistance attempting to do so (a lot of hours went into this!), but that resistance never materialized. We have been the beneficiaries of too many open source projects to list, and we all felt that giving back was the only move we could feel good about.
Check out the cinder website here: http://libcinder.org
Grab the source here: http://github.com/cinder/Cinder
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Just in time: Santa's new sleigh!

posted by Lisa Trask
Lisa Trask
Lisa Trask

Client Service : New York

topics:

 on December 16, 2009 at 03:18 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D

In preparation for the holiday season we teamed up with our old friend Dave Skaff and his awesome new company The Science Project on a fun little project for GE. We put on our elf hats and got to work for the big guy in the red suit. With the help of the brain power over at GE, we souped up Santa’s sleigh to fly him into this millennium… let’s be honest, it was time.
GE provided us with some pretty amazing technology to lend a hand in this overhaul. We can definitely get behind technology that promotes cleaner energy, improves access to high quality health care (you have to take care of the guy in charge of presents for the entire world after all), and it even promotes a safer world! To paraphrase: Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night!
From adding Icephobic coating to implementing GE’s Asset Intelligence Tracking system, we pimped Santa’s sleigh in this 360 degree 3D Flash demo for all to see. Go on, you can peek before Christmas, we won’t tell.
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We baked this fresh for you

posted by David Wicks
David Wicks
David Wicks

Developer : San Francisco

topics: Flash, Processing, Internet Culture, and Art

 on December 18, 2008 at 09:05 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D

Dear Barbarians and Barbarian blog readers. Thank you for being with us this year. You are fantastic.
Love,
San Francisco
Images hosted on Flickr
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Intersections Animation

posted by David Wicks
David Wicks
David Wicks

Developer : San Francisco

topics: Flash, Art, Processing, and Internet Culture

 on June 03, 2008 at 05:36 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D
I just finished a short experimental animation. Independent objects move through space. Connections are formed between neighboring objects, creating an overall structure that grows, mutates and ultimately collapses. Intersections on Vimeo.
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Kashi, Palm and Jobs

posted by Rick Webb
Rick Webb
Rick Webb

Co-founder, COO : New York

topics: Agile and Scrum, Brands, Internet Video, Barbarian Style Guide, and Measurement and Analytics

 on August 27, 2007 at 01:56 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Hi there – how has your summer been? Ours has been lovely, thanks. Lots of work being done, lots of interactive thinking and plotting and fighting the future, as the X-Files say.

We launched Kashi.com this summer, a month or so ago. We’re so ridiculously excited about this we can’t even tell you. It’s really just the beginning Agile development methodologies are coming home to roost in the advertising world, you’ll just see, and we’re thrilled to be right there.

We also launched It’s a Palm Thing this summer, with Y&R SF. It’s more of an old school Barbarian project, kickin’ it with the super intense illustration, 3D, navigation and Flash. We really like it.

Finally, we have some job openings in Client Service (SF), HR (BOS/NYC) and Creative Management (BOS/NYC). Takin’ us one step beyond into the interactive R&D shop of the future. Join us!

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Your Words as Art

posted by Rick Webb
Rick Webb
Rick Webb

Co-founder, COO : New York

topics: Installations, Agile and Scrum, Viral Marketing, Rock and Roll, and Alcoholic Beverages

 on July 29, 2007 at 01:55 PM
filed under: Animation and 3D

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Ever wonder what kind of art comes out of your words? No? FINE. But if you did, wonder no longer! We just built the site to answer your question. Allow us to introduce you to Kick Art, at sidekick.com A new site we built for T-Mobile and Publicis West. Good times.

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