Frame rate 101

We all know the motion picture is a lie. That movement on screen? It’s just a bunch of still images. Still images that seem more like believable, realistic, lifelike motion the faster they flicker along. Faster is better, and that 48 frame-per-second version of...

Disability be damned

Despite being confined to a wheelchair, Oliver Morton-Evans leads an animated life. The owner of Newtown-based animation company Big Cookie Studios is making waves internationally after picking up a Best Music Video gong at the Los Angeles Movie Awards. The studio won...

Wage fixing lawsuit

DreamWorks Animation, the Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures Animation and Blue Sky Studios contend that an antitrust wage-fixing lawsuit filed by digital animation workers “comes far too late” and that their claims lack evidence. The workers, in class action...

The face problem

Last month in New Zealand I visited some of the wizardly artists and engineers working for Weta Digital, the effects company behind series like “The Hobbit” and “Planet of the Apes.” That set me thinking about how we decide whether something has a mind. You might not...

Meet ‘Joe Cartoon’

Back in 1998, a company called Macromedia had just released a program called Flash 2, a platform for creating interactive websites and banner ads. It sounds so paleolithic now, but at the time, Flash 2 was the first software package to integrate digital hand-drawn...