Sunday, October 15, 2006

Welcome To Sunny Cimmerfornia

Today's NYT has a fascinating article about new CGI software for mapping actors' movements and expressions onto those of computer animated characters without having to cover them in blue dots or phosphorescent powder.

Very cool stuff, but as I'm reading through some of the upcoming practical applications, I see this:
As for reanimating former movie stars? “That sounds terrific,” said Chris deFaria, head of visual effects for Warner Brothers. “I’d love to see it.” But, he added, “There are real complexities involved with that.”

Undoubtedly so. But at least one former movie star thinks the ideas holds some promise. Arnold Schwarzenegger, now the governor of California, has conducted tests with Image Metrics to use his Conan the Barbarian character in political ads.
Ugh. Hopefully CA voters have figured out that Ahnold is not actually Conan, or Terminator, or any of the other can-do badass characters that he's played.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

dude.

i always liked arnold, until i saw him at the 2004 repuke convention.

Eli said...

Yeah, I pretty much felt the same way. I have to respect his determination and drive to make it as big as he did, considering where he started, plus I always thought he didn't take himself seriously and had an underrated talent for self-deprecating comedy.

Ironically, I used to think the same thing about Mel Gibson, too...


We need to figure out a way to get people to vote on the merits and not novelty or name recognition.

Anonymous said...

exactly.