This ad started heavy play in the Picksburgh area today.  Tim Burns is running for John Murtha's old seat in the US Congress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnHiN6Pwwos

Great CGI...  8)

This ad started heavy play in the Picksburgh area today.  Tim Burns is running for John Murtha's old seat in the US Congress.

Great CGI...   8)


That is a great ad!  Of course, I love the bumpersticker I saw on base the other day.  I am trying to find one for my truck:

I will keep my guns, my freedom, and my money.
You can keep the change.

That is a great ad!  Of course, I love the bumpersticker I saw on base the other day.  I am trying to find one for my truck:

I will keep my guns, my freedom, and my money.
You can keep the change.


Hmmm...the more I think about that statement, the less it seems to mean.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_scratch.gif

Hmmm...the more I think about that statement, the less it seems to mean.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/icon_scratch.gif


My, how soon they forget...

http://emsworth.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/obama-change.jpg

That is a great ad!  Of course, I love the bumpersticker I saw on base the other day.  I am trying to find one for my truck:

I will keep my guns, my freedom, and my money.
You can keep the change.


Sort of like the freedoms Lil' Georgie preserved, like privacy.  What bunk.

Obama is not interested in your guns.  You don't have any money.*  Freedom is something you voted against when you cast your lot in with the neo-cons.  

* No, no, I don't mean annual income or some dough stashed away in a 401K, I mean REAL money.  Republican country club money.  $100 million or better.  The kind of money that gets you on the Grover Norquist xmas card list.  And nobody who has the kind of money the Republicans stand for would have a truck with that bumper sticker.  I guaran-f**king-tee it!
8)

That is a great ad!  Of course, I love the bumpersticker I saw on base the other day.  I am trying to find one for my truck:

I will keep my guns, my freedom, and my money.
You can keep the change.


After 8 years of Bush-o-nomics, we'd be lucky to even have any change left.    I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.  I remember Ben Stein, neocon extraordinaire on some talk show around 2005 or so talking about how the deficit didn't really matter back when the true costs of the Bush years was beginning to become better revealed.  Last year I see an editorial by him on the yahoo finance feed stating that the deficit was crushing the country and we couldn't take anymore.  The only change I see is whose in office and what they want to spend it on.

The only change I see is whose in office and what they want to spend it on.


Hey, man, whaddya mean there's no change!  Democrats and Republicans have always had significant differences of opinion about the purposes for which the Federal government's expenses and powers are to be expanded! :)

I like the premise, but that CGI was pretty bad.  That was lower quality graphics than Toy Story 1.

I'm guessing they were working with a really small budget.

I like the premise, but that CGI was pretty bad.  That was lower quality graphics than Toy Story 1.

I'm guessing they were working with a really small budget.


Well, most people don't make political ads with a multi-million dollar budget.

Toy Story 1 had a budget of $30 million.  TS2 had a $90 million, and TS3 is estimated to be around $125 million.

Most people have no idea how long it takes to make a computer animated clip, or how much is involved in making it.  I built some high end dual core computers for Spaff Animation several years ago, and saw how they worked.  Months went into making just a 30 second commercial, with the rendering alone taking a week or more.

After 8 years of Bush-o-nomics, we'd be lucky to even have any change left.    I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.  I remember Ben Stein, neocon extraordinaire on some talk show around 2005 or so talking about how the deficit didn't really matter back when the true costs of the Bush years was beginning to become better revealed.  Last year I see an editorial by him on the yahoo finance feed stating that the deficit was crushing the country and we couldn't take anymore.  The only change I see is whose in office and what they want to spend it on.




Hey, man, whaddya mean there's no change!  Democrats and Republicans have always had significant differences of opinion about the purposes for which the Federal government's expenses and powers are to be expanded! :)



There are plenty of changes:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8zYkPdt2kE


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBa3yXr7ZPI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuSPPhq4qQg&feature=related


I could post several hundreds more but you get the point.



Cat

Well, most people don't make political ads with a multi-million dollar budget.

Toy Story 1 had a budget of $30 million.  TS2 had a $90 million, and TS3 is estimated to be around $125 million.

Most people have no idea how long it takes to make a computer animated clip, or how much is involved in making it.  I built some high end dual core computers for Spaff Animation several years ago, and saw how they worked.  Months went into making just a 30 second commercial, with the rendering alone taking a week or more.


True, but to make graphics that are better than Toy Story 1 today wouldn't actually cost that much.

True, but to make graphics that are better than Toy Story 1 today wouldn't actually cost that much.


You might be surprised.  Looking at one of those I worked with before, I got a basic price rundown.  This will give you an idea of what is typically charged.

A 30 second commercial, conputer animated, with the following:
Single character
Basic background, single set
Single voiceover
No special effects
$25,000 per 10 seconds.

That commercial was 30 seconds (as are most), so as a minimum, $75k.  But there are at least 3 sets, 3 major animated characters and at least 6 secondary characters, 3 different voices, and I counted at least 9 special effects shots.  So you are probably looking at around $200k for that 30 second commercial.  Plus the money to actually buy the commercial airtime. 

That is cheap as far as Computer Animation is concerned, but not exactly pocket change to a politician in a pre-primary race.  And probably a lot more then most people would expect.

To compare, a more traditional political campaign ad with the candidate talking and some CGI banners is normally around $3-5,000.  And quite often it is even less, since a lot of candidates hire somebody on their own staff to handle such things.

$25,000 per 10 seconds.

That is cheap as far as Computer Animation is concerned, but not exactly pocket change to a politician in a pre-primary race.  And probably a lot more then most people would expect.


But to put it in perspective...

These guys at xtranormal.com are basically packaging the whole thing into a free download.  Sure, the graphics and audio are primitive by today's standards, but it's trivial to render the video (with the computer-generated audio, based from your original text files, as a start) and replace the audio portion of the stream with your own voiceovers.  What you can get for free these days used to cost thousands of dollars an hour.

The point I'm making is not that the free text-to-video service is great.  It's that it only took 10-15 years to go from state-of-the-art CGI to "free download", which is about the time it took for a Cray's worth of processing power to turn from a million-dollar supercomputer into a $299 low-end laptop.  Within 10 years, there will be photorealistic CGI actors who will be indistinguishable from The Real Thing(tm), and within 20 years, you'll be able to do the same thing on your desktop.

But to put it in perspective...

These guys at xtranormal.com are basically packaging the whole thing into a free download.  Sure, the graphics and audio are primitive by today's standards, but it's trivial to render the video (with the computer-generated audio, based from your original text files, as a start) and replace the audio portion of the stream with your own voiceovers.  What you can get for free these days used to cost thousands of dollars an hour.

The point I'm making is not that the free text-to-video service is great.  It's that it only took 10-15 years to go from state-of-the-art CGI to "free download", which is about the time it took for a Cray's worth of processing power to turn from a million-dollar supercomputer into a $299 low-end laptop.  Within 10 years, there will be photorealistic CGI actors who will be indistinguishable from The Real Thing(tm), and within 20 years, you'll be able to do the same thing on your desktop.


Uhhh, there is no comparison between the two.  And for commercial purposes, xtranormal.com is not free.  In fact, if you real the EULA and membership agreement, it very specifically it is only free for non-commercial use.  And I would hardly call barely animated Fischer-Price people "state of the art".  If I was to do it off-the-shelf, I would probably go the Mechanime way, with something like Second Life, The Movies, or even The Sims 2.  But never XtraNormal, those were ghastly.

Sounds like the ad industry is vastly inflated in its costs.  In all seriousness, I know several very talented students in this field that could make a professional commercial for $1,000.  Hell, they'd love to get $5,000.

You might be surprised.  Looking at one of those I worked with before, I got a basic price rundown.  This will give you an idea of what is typically charged.

A 30 second commercial, conputer animated, with the following:
Single character
Basic background, single set
Single voiceover
No special effects
$25,000 per 10 seconds.

Have you seen Muvisu?

This sort of stuff is getting cheaper by the minute...

But never XtraNormal, those were ghastly.


No argument there about the CGI - I just think it's neat that they can basically do 99% of it for zero effort on the part of the composer other than writing the dialogue.  Give it a few years: the XtraNormal people probably won't be the ones doing it, but we'll get to the point where (for instance, by reading the italics around "zero") sufficiently-clever software can do as good a job as a real live human machinima artist.

The most expensive part of any project is the labor: it's why reality TV took over from scripted dramas.  It's why a cat playing the piano (or any other viral video you choose) can get more views than the Super Bowl.  It's why lossy MP3s beat out Super-Audio-CDs.  It's the decade of "good enough", and when a postliterate generation meets up with software agents that can (for example) translate my emphasis (and punctuation, including smileys :) into facial gestures, that we won't be reading message boards, we'll be watching our own computers render cartoon Easter bunnies, bomb-riding cowboys, 60s TV stars, and longcat/tacgnol avatars reading their authors' words on our behalf.

Won't be as good as proper machinima, but it'll be good enough.

No argument there about the CGI - I just think it's neat that they can basically do 99% of it for zero effort on the part of the composer other than writing the dialogue.  Give it a few years: the XtraNormal people probably won't be the ones doing it, but we'll get to the point where (for instance, by reading the italics around "zero") sufficiently-clever software can do as good a job as a real live human machinima artist.

The most expensive part of any project is the labor: it's why reality TV took over from scripted dramas.  It's why a cat playing the piano (or any other viral video you choose) can get more views than the Super Bowl.  It's why lossy MP3s beat out Super-Audio-CDs.  It's the decade of "good enough", and when a postliterate generation meets up with software agents that can (for example) translate my emphasis (and punctuation, including smileys :) into facial gestures, that we won't be reading message boards, we'll be watching our own computers render cartoon Easter bunnies, bomb-riding cowboys, 60s TV stars, and longcat/tacgnol avatars reading their authors' words on our behalf.

Won't be as good as proper machinima, but it'll be good enough.


You gotta see Terry Gilliam's "Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus."  Gilliam is one of a few animators worthy of the CGI technology!