Better humans

The Digital Human League has released the first batch of data in its attempt to overcome the “uncanny valley” effect in creating digital versions of humans. The league is a group of artists started by Christopher Nichols of Chaos Group that is exploring photorealistic...

Welcome Uglydoll

Yet another studio is jumping into the feature animation pool, with plans to make its introduction with an established property. Variety reported last week that STX Entertainment (a new film studio founded last year) has launched an animation division with the goal of...

More women

Maija Burnett scanned her California Institute of the Arts classroom as nearly 60 new students filtered in, empty notebooks in hand. It was the start of the 2014–15 school year, and Burnett, director of CalArts’ character animation program, was meeting this crop of...

Unplayable history

My cinema classes offered me a very clearly delineated set of films I could watch in order to understand the history, technical advancements and artistic developments of American cinema. Games, an art form only about 30 years old, has no such canon of great works....

Animation made real

As annual passholders to Disney, my family and I spend many weekends there getting more than our money’s worth of fun–as well as deep inspiration. While I lumber in the familiar heat, carrying our well-worn family backpack that weighs as much as a baby Chewbacca, I am...