MotionPortrait
August 27, 2007 12:06 PM   Subscribe

MotionPortrait (flash, loads slow, doesn't work for me in IE7 but works in Firefox) is a new kind of interactive photograph. Follow the bouncing mouse! (Via)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste (18 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Their servers seem to be struggling right now; load times can be painful, because it takes about a megabyte of data.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:09 PM on August 27, 2007


Works spottily for me (in Firefox). Kind of a cross between cool and creepy.
posted by birdhaus at 12:22 PM on August 27, 2007


The dog example is extremely creepy, especially when it smiles, and it also gives away that this is (I suspect) really more of a trick with mesh-warps than actual 3-d modeling from a 2-d photo.

My biggest disappointment, however, is that this page, toward the bottom, teases you with the possibility of an example using a pineapple instead of a face, but the image is in fact not a link at all. (If I fancied myself someone who wrote "boo" when unhappy with a poor performace, I would certainly write "boo" here. Wait -- here I go: boo.).

It's also a little disappointing that all the examples seem to use the same animation mapped onto a different face. The first example had tricked me into thinking this must have been done with video-capture, mapping different frames of the video to different mouse-coordinates. In any case, it's neat. Thanks, SCDB.
posted by nobody at 12:48 PM on August 27, 2007


Holy cow. Can you say uncanny valley?
posted by Plutor at 12:49 PM on August 27, 2007


Reminds me of the Harry Potter portraits. They are pretty creepy though, the smiles are just... off... somehow.
posted by gemmy at 1:11 PM on August 27, 2007


This reminds me of dangling a treat in front of the dog's nose and watching them look back and forth.
posted by desjardins at 1:14 PM on August 27, 2007


I've been looking for a way to present myself to people that communicates that I'm creepy, and retarded.
posted by nanojath at 1:20 PM on August 27, 2007 [2 favorites]


Crazy. If only there was some kind of video camera that could transmit via the internet in real time so that this wouldn't be necessary. Some kind of web camera. Maybe it could even dynamically change you into a creepy dog person with glasses or something.

Nah. Just a pipe dream.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 1:48 PM on August 27, 2007


That's more disturbing than the baby in the sun from the Tellytubbies.
posted by ob at 1:54 PM on August 27, 2007


Exactly how "new" is this? I got a Monk E-mail at least a year ago, maybe two.
posted by keys at 3:13 PM on August 27, 2007


Nice find SCDB.
posted by orthogonality at 3:44 PM on August 27, 2007


Cool post.

This extends what crazy talk does in an interesting way.
posted by sien at 4:09 PM on August 27, 2007


Oh, my. Crazy talk is at least 50 times more creepy.

See: A valentine's day card. (Whoever at the company thought the last 5 seconds would make the sample clip more endearing should really reexamine their sense of cute vs. not.)

(more sample videos found here.)

posted by nobody at 4:49 PM on August 27, 2007


A right-click and zoom-in reveals that her eyes are, well, I'll be kind and say tired.
posted by liquidindian at 6:22 PM on August 27, 2007


btw, the actual images are much larger. you can increase the size and enjoy the resolution by entering this into your browser's URL bar then hitting enter >> javascript: var foo = document.getElementById("TIminoriHair").width = "600";var bar = document.getElementById("TIminoriHair").height = "600";
posted by nihlton at 6:24 PM on August 27, 2007


Sweet.
posted by rleamon at 7:08 PM on August 27, 2007


I was impressed with the Quickcam software, crude as it was. I wanna Max Headroom avatar rendered in realtime without having to put dots all over my face.
posted by beowulf573 at 8:15 PM on August 27, 2007


Recently heard an interview with William Gibson where he goes on about this kid in the future watching a film that's, I think, a mash-up of The Hours and The Matrix... with everyone having a dog's head.

Thanks for showing me the future... and my nightmares for the next six months.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:07 AM on September 18, 2007


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