X-Radiation

May 20th

The suit was ready at the front desk first thing in the morning. We started the day early and made our way to an art school in Xi’An to give a presentation for both the art school students and the students and staff from the Maya Group studio and school (no relation to Autodesk). The folks at SideFX gave me some T-shirts and mouse pads and I used these to great effect to energize the crowd by tossing a few of them out at the start. It was a similar presentation to the one I’d made the other day. During the Q&A, there were only a couple of questions but as soon as I made it clear that those who asked questions got a T-shirt we were flooded.

We moved the afternoon seminar a few blocks away to an auditorium at the Maya Group School. I presented an introduction to crowd animation and some Q&A as well as passing out some Houdini instructional DVDs. After this presentation Mr. Hu arranged some photo ops with the staff and students of The Maya Group and they made me an honorary dean of the Maya School.

Mr. Hu hosted Daniel and I to a 72 course vegetarian dinner in a private dining room the size of a Westside condo. The chef is a Buddhist monk who manages to make tofu really taste like chicken. We had a private serving staff of 10 beautiful women as well as a private en suite bathroom. The restaurant actually had about a dozen such rooms. Between courses 46 and 47 we attended a private concert by musicologists playing 1500 year old instruments uncovered in archeological digs in 1978. The toasts were nonstop and we knocked back 7 bottles of baijiu. I got to meet some really great folks: Mr. Nu, Mr. Ree, Mr. White and Ms. Li Li. Mr. Nu and Mr. White introduced me to a few Chinese drinking games. Mr.Ree decided I would be his Shifu and he my disciple. Once this relationship was consecrated by a secret ceremony Mr. Ree was required by the dictates of ancient Chinese customs to drink three times for every drink I took.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

May 19th

Special Agent Shaw picked us up and took us back to the Shaanxi Animation Industry Platform building. I participated in a town hall with the Platform’s key managers to talk about their specific animation questions. They introduced me to an architectural visualization of an animation campus called Town Star that Xi’an is planning to build in the next few years. The Town Star complex has twin forty story towers dedicated to hosting vertically integrated animation and post production facilities. The campus also plans to feature restaurants as well as museums with exhibits on the history of animation. They are also planning a school on the campus to teach the next generation of animators. After showing me their impressive plans they asked me to provide some specific advice on what else to include and I gave them my ideas.

We toured the studios at the Shaanxi Animation Industry Platform building then headed for another family style lazy susan Chinese meal featuring apple-wood smoked Peking duck. Best damn duck I ever ate.

After lunch we headed over to Mr. Oong’s studio located in an old pharmaceutical factory. They brought me into their audio studio where I busted out some raps on the mic. They gave us a Kung-Fu demonstration using their Motion Analysis performance capture system. Next up they demonstrated their Minolta laser scanner and Zprint 3d printer. On our way out we stopped back in the audio suite where they’d added a beat and mixed down the rap I’d recorded earlier.

We travelled to the edge of town to visit Mr. Oong’s museum. Apparently his father was visiting an area about 100 miles from Xi’an where the locals were tearing down ancient houses that ran along a river for building materials, paving stones and latrine liners. He organized a project to move the buildings brick by brick to a new museum location and reconstructed the entire neighborhood. I joined a traditional Chinese folk band on the stage in the courtyard of one of the reconstructed domiciles for a rendition of Public Enemy’s “You’re Gonna ger Yours”. I also advised them on techniques for digitizing antiquites.

It was a long day. We got back to the hotel . This was the last we saw of Special Agent Shaw but I think he was following us the rest of time to secretly ensure our safety and document our whereabouts. Ms. Fu brought the suit to my room for a final fitting and took a few more measurements. I selected a couple of matching ties, sent Ms. Fu home and fell asleep.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

May 18th

I ran into Daniel and Tim at the breakfast buffet. Discussed the day’s strategy. Special Agent Shaw picked us up. Thanks to his excellent driving skills aggressively navigating the Xi’an traffic we arrived at the Shaanxi Animation Industry Platform building. After a brief introduction to the Platform Directors Mr. Lu and Ms. Soon I was lead into a press conference where several journalists asked me to compare and contrast the American and Chinese animation industry as well as advise them on how the Central Chinese Government could support the animation industry in China. Following the press conference I addressed a crowd of 350 journalists, government officials, industry professionals and students giving them an introduction to SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia as well as a personal history of my work in visual effects and animation.

We took a break for lunch in a private room within the building. There was a contingent of Japanese executives working on animation in China as well as the heads of various animation companies working in the Animation Industry Platform building. The Xi’An Director of Propaganda and the Director of the Xi’an Department of culture joined us as well.
After lunch I gave a one-on-one interview with China Central Television (CCTV) where I talked about my favorite projects and informed the journalist that stereoscopic 3D was the new hotness in animated feature film production in America.

For the afternoon session I presented information about the history of computer graphics in film. I think I lost the audience a bit during this part of the presentation. This was followed by 45 minutes of questions and answers.

We had a family style dinner on a lazy susan in a private room in a Chinese restaurant that had the largest lobsters I’d ever seen sitting in the tanks in the lobby awaiting their sizzling fate. Mr. Lu’s wife, the Shaanxi Provincial Director of Propaganda, joined us and we engaged in the Chinese tradition of toasting each other with shots of Baijiu. Mr. Yan from Yelloon Animation and Mr. Oong who runs another animation studio as well as the museum of Shaanxi Folk Art joined us as well. The restaurant staff wheeled a television into the room and turned on the Central China Evening News. About half way into the broadcast they ran the interview from earlier in the day. Things got a little hazy after that but Special Agent Shaw’s professional driving ensured our safety on the way back to the hotel. Ms. Fu arrived at the hotel, suit in hand, for a first fitting and I let her do her thing over a glass of Macallans before crashing out for the evening.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

How do you tell Good Locke from Bad Locke?

Locke’s Beard, of course!

Kobe Beef meat locker. Cooled with big blocks of ice.

Santa Gundam, AKA Inappropriate Santa, lead us on a beef and whisky expedition to Kobe. We took the Shinkansen to Kobe for a gourmet Kobe Beef foodgasm. Had a bit of a delay as Santa Wrong Station bailed off the train one station early but we made up for lost time had one of the most amazing dinners ever.

Blow by blow after the jump!

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Went to Nakano with Paul. Checked out the otaku collections and ate takoyaki at Gindaco. Yum!

We found a sort of Tokyo version of Philz Coffee called Wada Coffee.  Not quite the same as Philz, but enjoyable. Mom and pop shop. Pop heats water  over an open fire in a metal kettle and strains it through a filter one cup at a time while Mom does the table service.

Met up with various Santas to check out the Team*Lab design studio.

Very cool stuff. It’s sort of a tech incubator and hacker co-op. Our host Takashi Kudo introduced us to the team. They have been working on some impressive CG animations that retain the look and texture of traditional Japanese art. First we watched “100 years sea” then they showed us a project called  “Flower and Corpse” which was recently on display at the Louvre. We had a nice round table discussion with some of their animators, designers and developers.

One of their creations, SketchPiston, combines crayon physics with various interactive techniques. I think my favorite is the SketchPiston V.4  Bamboo Play Room they made for Wacom. It’s a music synthesizer combined with crayon physics. Way cool!

Ate a nice dinner of Kaiten Zushi near the hotel and dropped in to a seriously epic karaoke session in Shibuya before hitting up the Maruhachi Izzakaya for some late night eats.

Today we gave our presentation on crowds during the courses sessions at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in Yokohama.  I was very happy with the content and variety of  presentations. I owe a debt of gratitude to each and every presenter who agreed to be part of the course.

A Fuzz of Crowd Animators L to R: Mihai Cioroba, Paul Kanyuk, Tak Yoshida, Marc Salvati, Stephen Regelous, Xray Halpein

After the talk Paul, Tak, Mihai and myself went back to Toki for a celebratory noodle dinner and coined the term “A Fuzz of Crowd Animators” to refer to a group or herd of crowd animators. It’s sort of like “A Gaggle of Geese” or “A Murder of Crows”.

More pictures after the jump…

Stephen filling us in on Massive 4.0

I spent the second day of SIGGRAPH Asia attending the conference and getting ready for my presentation on Friday. In the morning I went over to the exhibiton hall and caught up with Leyla, John and Richard from Side Effects Software. My friend Matsuno-san from OxyBot came to the show. We went over to the nearby mall for an Indian food lunch with Tak, Mihai, Paul, Matsuno-san, Soren, M. Kennedy ans Stephen.

In the afternoon I attended a session called Chiptune Marching Band which was a great workshop run by Jamie Allen and a Japanese guy named Joe. They walked us through building a oscillator and amplifier circuit with the parts they provided and then circuit bending it into a musical instrument. It was a stellar workshop! You can check out their web page here:

http://chiptunemarchingband.com/

After the workshop we marched through SIGGRAPH Asia playing the instruments on the way to the art gallery to include them into a presentation on Chiptunes. Later, I donated my “Xrayzaphone” to one of the particpants after the instrument she built mysteriously disappeard. The thing looked like a bomb anyway, so I’m not entriely sure I would have been able to get it on the airplane.

That evening we attended a nice reception held by NVIDIA, spent some time talking to Laura and Dominic then headed out to a small club in Yokohama for a party organized by Polygon Pictures. The music was a lot of fun with a techno drum trio as well as a Residents “cover” band called “The Yokohama Residents”. I used the word “cover” loosely because while they may use the Resident’s visual tropes and audio inspiration their particular brand of music was much more dance friendly… but still enjoyable.

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Dec. 15th

Woke up early and checked out of the hotel. Met Sneery and his friend Ming in the lobby. Headed out to Shinjuku to grab some food. The plan was to scout out the basement food shop at the Isaten department store and eat at the park on their roof.  I also wanted to check out their whisky selection.  We got there a bit early so went for some coffee to wait until they were open.  I got several croquettes (Okonomi, Imo, Ebi, Kani) and one big Ebi Fry. We picked up a bottle of sake and went up to the roof to enjoy the fruits of our hunt.

We wandered around Shinjuku for a while. We saw some guy taking what looked like a small dog out for a walk but I did a double take when I realized it was a spider monkey.

We ran across the local franchise of my favorite Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant, Little Sheep.

We found a really great liquor store with an amazing selection of rare whisky called Shinanoya.

I got back to the hotel, grabbed my bags and hit the train for Yokohama. I put on my Santa suit and registered for SIGGRAPH.

Hooked up with Oyabun Santa, Santa Maki and Baby Santa Juno.  Got back to the hotel, linked up with Santa Michael and wandered around Yokohama’s china town looking for some dinner and damn if we didn’t find it.

We ended up at this place called “To Ki” or “Toki” and had some of the best noodles ever. It’s a style from the Shanxi province of China called dao-Xiao-mein. At Toki, Chef Wang uses a large chunk of freshly kneaded wheat  flour dough and hand shaves flat strips of raw noodle dough into a big wok of boiling water. The cooked noodles  have a rough and chewy texture with a very unique fresh wheat taste.  We also tried their delicious Mabo Tofu and a spicy Salt & Pepper shrimp dish, similar to what I’ve had before but this was probably the best version I’ve every had.  Simply outstanding.

Stopped off at the combini to get some desert. Picked up some Sweet Potato flavor haagen-daaz ice cream and hit the sack pretty hard.

Dec. 14th

Got up very early. Ate breakfast and ran some errands in Nagoya. Had lunch as a place that’s been awarded the Scovie for their spicy mabo tofu. I had the spicy tan-tan-men ramen and made the mistake of asking for it extra spicy. OH MY GOD! I managed to get through about half of it before giving up in lip quiverring agony. I paid for that later in the evening.

I got on the shinkansen back to Tokyo and got to OLM Digital around 3:30PM.  I got a tour of the facility. They work on 2D animation for Pokemon as well as 3D effects, notably for the more recent films of Miike Takashi. I worked with my OLM host Ken on our SIGGRAPH Presentation then headed out to Ebisu for a chankonabe dinner with Marc, Ken, Ayumi, John from WETA and myself. I can’t remeber the name of the yokozuna that owns the place but it’s famous for shio chanko. The meal was delicious.

Got back to the hotel and started to pack for Yokohama while paying the price for the spicy tan-tan-men experiement.