Monday, May 10, 2010

Digital Voices

In the last year I have come across a growing musical phenomenon called Vocaloids.

One of my favourite songs is "Love is War" sung by Hatsune Miku.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Dqb6uJ8WY

Upon listening, you will probably determine that some sort of computerized effect has been added to a singers voice. But in fact the entire song is sung by a computer program called "Hatsune Miku". Miku is as much a character as she is a voice. All of the Vocaloids have been marketed this way and it has been hugely successful among anime fans.

Musical composers are able to write songs and have Vocaloids provide the voice. They can then share the song online and collaborate with other people to create music videos. Most Vocaloid videos are distrubuted on a Japanese website called Nico Nico Douga. Many talented composers have released their created songs on CD and via iTunes with great reception.

One software developer went as far as to create a program called Miku Miku Dance, which allows the user to create dance moves for Miku and output a video to use with their music.

Currently the most well known Vocaloid characters are the Japanese ones, which have been all given personalities through the anime style characters to represent each voice. While some Vocaloid software has been released for the English speaking market, it did not include mascot characters and did not take off so well.

Some more Vocaloid songs I really like:

Imitation Black sung by Kaito, Len & Gakupo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2SgPM9ayAg

Paranoid Doll sung by Kamui Gakupo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oikw-VbQ8Y

Meltdown sung by Rin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ox5-fEH4Ww

I am always mindblown that these songs can be sung so beautifully by a computer program. The voices were created by sound sampling from voice actors rather than singers. The software was developed to create the vocal ranges. The Vocaloid software is said that it can sing notes unattainable by the human voice.

In addition to sales of music, the Vocaloids even have their own merchandise! Figurines and a wide range of other products have been produced.

References:
Hatsune Miku - The worlds first virtual diva (mini documentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBZOlipfjkQ&feature=fvw

Love is War minisite
http://supercell.sc/koisen/index.html

Tripshots (composer)
http://www.tripshots.net/

http://www.mikufan.com/

http://vocaloid.wikia.com/wiki/Miku_Hatsune

Miku Miku Dance Software
http://www.geocities.jp/higuchuu4/index_e.htm

Online Games - PSO & WoW

As long as I can remember, I’ve always had a video game console. I grew up with games and still enjoy them as an adult. To watch the way that video games have advanced is simply amazing.

I especially enjoy online games that let you connect up with friends or even strangers. In my case that is quite ironic because almost my entire core group of friends were all originally online friends that I met via games. It sounds strange to but I think in the future, the concept of meeting people online will become much more accepted.

It’s really quite amazing that you can play a game with someone in your own country but also with people from overseas. Learning to communicate with people that don’t speak the same language is a challenge but well worth the effort. I used to play Phantasy Star Online on the Sega Dreamcast, which was a pioneer in online gaming for consoles. PSO had a list of phrases you could select that would be translated into the correct language for other players. It was limited of course but such a fantastic concept. I’ve yet to see it implemented in any other online games. Even Phantasy Star Universe, the successor to PSO, lacked the ability to connect to anyone worldwide. Separate servers were set up for Japanese and English speaking countries. Unfortunately too many people disliked playing with people they couldn’t speak with fluently in PSO.



In class we were introduced to Second Life. A world where you can create an avatar and home for your online personality. The “game” itself is free but some people spend real world money to buy items for their virtual character and house. I often wondered if it was possible for such a concept to take off.

I’ve noticed this trend of buying virtual items slowly creeping it’s way into other online games. Microsoft’s Xbox Live has an online store where you can buy clothing and accessories for your avatar. Users already pay a subscription fee for an Xbox Live Gold account in order to allow them to play games online. I quite often scoff at Microsoft charging for dashboard themes, icons and avatar clothing. But even I caved and bought an icon pack eventually.

Blizzards massively successful World of Warcraft is a MMORPG (Mass multiplayer online role playing game), the only way to play it is online and you must pay a subscription fee to play. Since the start of the game, people have been selling in game items and entire accounts to each other privately and via ebay. The sale of in game gold for real world money is frowned upon and can earn you a permanant ban from the game.

World of Warcraft has just recently introduced special items that can only be obtained by purchasing them with real world money. The “Celestial Steed” sells for $25 US and despite the hefty price tag being more than the cost of 1 month subscription to play World of Warcraft, it is reported that the Celestial Steed made US $2million in the first four hours of
its release for sale.

Sources:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178849
http://www.wow.com/2010/04/19/breakfast-topic-i-just-bought-a-25-imaginary-horse/

I play World of Warcraft and I have not purchased any virtual items as of yet. But it’s hard to resist! It’s a pretty glowing pegasus and honestly I am a complete sucker for cool items in games.

Last year I spent a week madly hunting virtual easter eggs during the Easter event, Noble Garden in order to obtain a pair of rabbit ears for my character to wear. The amount of time and effort people pour into online games is quite amazing.



The critisism of online games being too addictive can also be applied to todays new media, as it is all designed with endless options to keep us engaged and connected. Mobile phones, email and social networking sites encourage us be in a constant state of availability. I am personally beginning to find these expectations becoming stressful. All these messages and invitations I’m meant to sort through and reply to, waste the time that I could have spent playing video games!

Friday, May 7, 2010

2003 - 2009 improvement meme


UniKoRn 2003 - 2009 meme by ~unikorn on deviantART

I’ve always loved drawing. I’m good but not fantastic. I’ve had to be very critical of myself to start improving. Learning to accept criticism is really hard!

I find it really interesting that the problems of preserving artwork have been solved by the computer. A digital file can be replicated with ease, without loss of quality and will last forever with no deterioration.

I mentioned ‘memes’ in a previous entry. Another form of them is art memes. Someone creates a challenge and then other artists can follow it. In this case, someone on the website DeviantArt, created a blank template and asked people to compile pieces of artwork from 2003 to 2009 and observe their improvement over the years.

My old artwork was a little awkward looking because I didn’t plan out the poses or facial features enough. I didn’t use references for anatomy very often either. In comparison, around 2007 I began to observe photo references more often and the anatomy looks much better. I’m far from perfect at it but I’m getting there. As when I am sketching without any references, things come together much better.

In 2003 - 2004 all my digital coloring had all the telltale tacky signs of a Photoshop newbie. I didn’t really understand much about choosing color pallettes that work and in fact I’m still learning. I think my choice of colors could have helped a lot of my older artwork to look better. Building up depth with different colors is something I need to explore more.

I also branched out to using different programs to create art. A few
times I’ve used Adobe Illustrator to make sharp clean outlines. I barely
understood how to use the pen tool and had no idea about the
pathfinder. It took me a long time to get the outlines right and often
I’d just delete the path and start again because I didn’t know how
to edit the nodes! Since starting Graphic Design at Deakin last year,
I’ve learn more about Illustrator and my future work in it should be
much more effecient!

Another program I tried is called Open Canvas. It has a really great
way of handling digital painting. You can achieve similiar results in
Photoshop but it takes a lot more effort to set up the paintbrush
settings. I only had a demo of Open Canvas a few years ago and
some unfinished work files don’t work even though I recently bought
the full version. If I had of known I’d lose those files, I would have
converted them to Photoshop .psd files while the demo still worked.

I love that digital art can achieve paint-like results without all the
mess that comes along with the real thing. Not everyone has the
appropriate space in their home for an art studio but just about
everyone owns a computer these days. You don’t even need to buy
expensive software like Photoshop. there are free websites where
you can draw such as Oekaki boards. I’ve even seen amazing
pictures that were created in MS Paint.

I’ve really learnt that it’s not all about owning the best or most
expensive tools. Something amazing can still be made with low
tech computers or software.

Part of the reason I wanted to attend university, is that I really
wished to improve my art skill. The irony is that while I am learning
all the techniques to make my work much better, I don’t have as
much leisure time to actually apply it to any large personal art
projects. But I look forward to being able to create much more
successful art pieces.

A large portion of my work is just fan-art. But I hope to have the
confidence & skill to create my own characters and comics on a
professional level one day.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Robot Unicorn Attack

http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

This funny game "Robot Unicorn Attack" seems entirely silly but it's actually quite a lot of fun to play.

Monday, May 3, 2010

What is Internet Art?

The following is an Essay I wrote last year (2009) for my Internet Arts class at Deakin University.


What is Internet Art?

Art has become anything and everything in the modern world. One of its newest forms is blossoming on World Wide Web. In a revolution of user created content, web 2.0 gives people many opportunities to share and create artwork online.

At the most basic level, one could create artwork by normal methods. A painting, photograph or drawing can easily be transferred into your computer and then uploaded to public websites such as Deviantart, Myspace or Facebook. On the internet, small time artists can get themselves a lot of exposure by creating their own portfolio website or uploading their art to a community website. Within these communities other users can see your work and give feedback. Sharing your art on the internet takes little time, effort and cost compared to the struggle one would have trying to get noticed and set up an exhibition in a local real life gallery and getting the advertising to inform people of it’s existence and coax them to come along. Yet with the internet, in the privacy of your own home you can search exactly for the subject matter you enjoy and be led directly to it, which is extremely convenient for both the user and the artist as their gallery is open 24 hours all year round.

However as these works can exist outside of your computer they are not purely internet art as they do not rely on the net to come into existence. So what art is purely a product of the internet? I feel this is the real question behind “What is internet art?”.

Websites themselves can be seen as a work of art in the hands of a skilled designer and programmer. In the early days of the internet, HTML pages were very basic and even the mighty Microsoft had a rather ugly website. These days if your website is an eyesore, you aren’t likely to attract customers, let alone a random web surfer just looking for entertainment. Design can really make or break your website, so it’s important for a creator to consider usability and aesthetics. Most of them do follow some basic layout and composition rules so the truly innovative and artistic sites are a few and far between. However in the realm of internet art, websites are only a minor component. Mostly they are created offline and uploaded to a webserver, much how a photograph or drawing could be shared online. Websites are moreso the facilitator of internet art, rather than the definition.

Online drawing programs have been gaining popularity in Japan and are slowly making their way into the hands of Western internet surfers as well. These programs use technologies such as Java and Flash to present the user with an array of drawing tools and a canvas that can be drawn on using the standard computer mouse or a drawing tablet consisting of a “pen” and a “board” that control the on-screen cursor. These sorts of programs are for creating internet art in the most literal sense as they can only be run online from a website, unlike popular software such as Photoshop that is directly installed to your computers hard drive.

Oekaki runs from a Java Applet in your browser and is like a Bulletin Board System (Also known as Message Boards and Forums). Although unlike the text based BBS, a new post is started by making a drawing, other users can then reply to your drawing offering praise or constructive criticism. Oekaki is quite diverse in the range of brushes and effects it can do and can almost rival some conventional offline drawing programs. Tegaki-E is similar to the Oekaki BBS idea, however it takes the ability to give comments on a drawing to the next level by also allowing you to draw your reply.

Paint Chat uses an online chat room where you chat in real time with friends (or random people if you choose) and have the ability to draw on the same canvas together and collaborate. Can you imagine trying to draw on the same piece of paper with two people physically being there? It would be very awkward; you would bump into the other person and quite possible smudge each other’s work depending on the medium used. So in this instance, the ability to 2 people creating a picture together in real time is a unique experience that can only be possible through a computer hooked up to the internet. Generally the range of applications that come under the classification do not have the same power as their offline counterparts such as Photoshop but in comparison Paint Chat and Oekaki are both free to use. Most commonly Paint Chat can be run from a Java Applet in your web browser but even popular chat software MSN, which runs independently of the web browser, has a drawing component available.

Another internet phenomenon is called Viral Marketing, which basically relies on internet users to spread the word about a product. They can present themselves as video clips, flash games, blogs or ARG (Alternate Reality Games). Popular movies such as Cloverfield and A.I (Artificial Intelligence) had information that unfolded in on the internet as if they were the stories of real people or organizations to follow, save or defeat. Players could follow clues, solve puzzles and discover side stories not exposed in the actual movies. This massive level of interactivity has never been possible before with the nets media predecessors such as television and radio. There are large communities of people that collaborate to solve the intricate puzzles that will help all players progress in the game. ARG’s can sometimes be associated with marketing a product but some are just purely for the fun of the game and are run by individuals rather than big businesses. The way the players react to the in-game characters, stories and puzzles can actually affect the outcome of the game, creating a truly unique experience for each player. In comparison, most traditional video games only have one outcome when you complete the game – however there are a few with multiple endings, which is probably a large influence for creators of ARG’s.

While many web browser reliant software out there could be set up on a private intranet with a webserver on your network, it would still lack the sheer social numbers of people that the internet itself holds. So it is possible to run all these web browser reliant programs offline if you have the knowledge but I believe that it is the social interaction on the internet that really defines the experience of internet art. Your peers online can and will inspire the content that you create online.

Oekaki, Paintchat, Blogging, Social Networking and Viral Marketing are all forging their own paths for internet art in its most pure literal forms. Many of these technologies are still unknown to your average everyday internet surfer. But the concepts of viral marketing will pave the way to present these niche programs to the general public eventually. There is an enormous amount of potential for these technologies and the artists that use them. However there is also a danger in them becoming commercialized and censored, destroying freedom of speech and thought and limiting the growth of societies creativity. Internet art allows users a lot of freedom under the guise of an online alias and anyone wishing to set up an online art community must remember this.

Art is not only something to look at and enjoy but also reflects the thoughts and feelings of its creators, sometimes making bold statements that general society may criticise or find hard to accept. Internet art still acknowledges its predecessors in mimicking some of its techniques but in essence it is about interactivity and can go much further than a painting on the wall, as it can last indefinitely when saved and duplicated across websites and computers all over the world.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Turney, Drew, ‘Got Game?’, Desktop, no. 236, 2008, pp. 50-52.

Hines , Heatherly, All About Oekaki's, retrieved 17 August 2009, <http://www.squidoo.com/oekaki>.

Kronschnabl, Ana, Tomas Rawlings, Plug In Turn On A Guide to Internet Filmmaking, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, London, 2004.

Greene , Rachel, Web Work: A HISTORY OF INTERNET ART, 2000, retrieved 10 August 2009,

Ippolito, Jon, Ten Myths of Internet Art, New York Digital Salon, retrieved 16 August 2009, <http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/10/essay.php?essay=6>.

The Economist, Serious Fun, retrieved 16 August 2009,