Monday, February 20, 2012

Digital Abe

Abraham Lincoln, reconstituted.

... [A] small team of New Media students have spent literally hundreds of hours researching and recreating Honest Abe for their undergraduate research project.

The five-person group, working under the direction of Assistant Professor Christopher Oakley, are constructing a photorealistic and animatable 3-D digital version of Lincoln based on photos, biographical information, and some life casts of the President's face and hands.

"This is something I've been waiting to do for 25 years," says Oakley, an avid Lincoln fan who used to work as a 3-D character animator for Disney. "Fortunately, these students were excited to jump in on it." ...

A dozen years ago, I told a group at a local college that new movies with Gable, Cagney, and Bogart were on the horizon. Hasn't really happened because synthetic is still synthetic, and not the genuine article. And many audiences don't seem to accept the "almost real but not quite" aspect of digital recreations.

But you never know. Technical strides are rapid and steady. Just because computerized versions of human beings make my skin crawl, doesn't mean that others won't clasp the technology to their hearts. And it's still a great learning tool.

H/t to President Emeritus Tom Sito for the heads up on this.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Abraham Lincoln were brought back to life today, he'd die at the sorry state of his once respectable republikan party.

Steven Kaplan said...

I knew I saw something on this before. There was a History Channel show that highlighted the scanning of death masks. They had Pres. Lincoln's masks scanned and the 3d models textured for the production.

http://youtu.be/9q6cuiYA0f4

Anonymous said...

Can we get the CG model to run the country and save the Republic again

pffft said...

nah...andy serkis would end up being the mocap actor for it and would steal all the credit for saving the US....

Anonymous said...

LOL!!!! It'd be better than the robots in the gNOp ruining the country now.

Anonymous said...

^ same clueless kid that can't spell.

Anonymous said...

^and is not living in the real world. Just his mummy's basement.

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