Why does the video get cropped when you activate full-screen? Is this something that Chrome does automatically, or something in the CSS of the website? https://imgur.com/a/bZdZ2sl
Im not a 3d artist, but I still find Ian Hubert's blender tutorials[1] very cool to watch.
He comes off as an artist who immensely enjoys their craft. I have also really enjoyed his Dynamo Dream series [2] which are a labor of love for him. He's only released like 3 episodes over several years, but hey labor of love.
Ian was also chosen as the director of Tears of Steel (2012) which is one of the Blender Open Movies [3] the foundation produces. You might not recognize that film, but many of you have heard of at least one Blender Open Movie, Big Buck Bunny! A big nod (IMO) from the Blender foundation that he represents the spirit of the project and community, as well as has the skills to oversee a project meant to demonstrate Blender's capabilities.
These Open Movies are projects that HN can likely appreciate, as they are created to showcase and help push capabilities of the open source Blender software, are licensed under Creative Commons, and their assets are provided to the community for free.
New title: 16yo watched ALL the Ian Hubert tutorials
But who can blame them? Ian's tutorials are some of the most entertaining videos out there, especially his lazy tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjnyapZ_P-g
Regardless this is extremely impressive. There's nothing to distinguish this from something made by a group of professionals with infinite time and resources.
They likely created a large portion of these assets themselves. There might be some kitbashing but the amount of detail here is certainly doable for a motivated 16 yr old.
Theres a lot of creative ways to add details using scans, texture projection and scattering.
My brain just seems to prefer having a tool to reach for with a clear purpose. For me, availability of a thing that does what I want is generally the difference between being able to do it or not. I've tried learning to code on my own, but I always hit a "now what?" situation since the available tools for the things I make are already better than I have any interest in improving on. I'm not a programmer by interest and don't foresee ever being one by trade.
Node editors like Blender's are the best thing for me: you get all the tools, but they're composable with other tools. Your hammer can be a screwdriver. Worst case, I need a new tool no one's figured out how to make with nodes, but odds are someone already wrote that code as a plugin. Looping back to the "now what" issue: it already exists in a state beyond anything I could get up the motivation to improve on.
Thanks for this comment, I find that a really interesting perspective. I'm the exact opposite -- I'm comfortable with code, and always find node editors really awkward to use (but I definitely feel I'm missing something because they're undeniably super productive in many situations).
They're super productive when you're unfamiliar with the subject matter, do it once only or can't code at all.
Anyone can watch a couple of videos, launch Blender, start with a cube and work it into a chair in UI. Coding that for just one chair will take almost anyone more time.
Now if you need to do this to make 10 slightly different chairs where changes need to be made early on in the process, code will win even with first timers.
with stuff like 3d modelling code you're kinda skipping straight to some of the more hardcore coding. 3d transformations and algorithms are no joke, thats university and master's degree level maths. Don't feel bad if you don't get it, a huge number of professional programmers wouldn't either. I write a lot of software myself close to the metal as a robotics engineer and ive tinkered with blender code but id definately need a lot of practise to feel comfortable doing that without glueing together tools
Totally. 3D geometry is hard and when you're coding there are a bunch of different ways a minor error can mean absolutely nothing appears on the screen. Just learning about those different failure modes takes a while.
The other thing I find (but maybe this is the same with node-based approaches too!) is that there are a bunch of arbitrary coin-flip choices you have to make when doing 3D (e.g. left-handed versus right-handed coordinates). At a fundamental level it doesn't matter which choice you make, but your decisions have to be consistent, otherwise things can get flipped around, or often just vanish entirely. The sneakiest problem is when you unknowingly make two wrong choices, and they mostly cancel out except for some weird edge cases that happen to exercise the exposed code path.
Hard surface modeling in blender is pretty easy if you go the kit bash route. You still have to have some concept of what you're building. You also still need environments, rigging, lighting, camera work, compositing, and post.
You can cheat with URLs to watch all of them. Grab the ID from the gif thumbnail URL, throw it in something with HLS stream support with this URL: https://stream.mux.com/<id>.m3u8 (Safari and iOS browsers work, on Windows and Android you might need to get creative with something like VLC).
Huh, looking at the other nominees a part of me wonders if it was created by someone else and they just had a child stand in to take the credit. This is incredibly suspicious to say the least but who knows. There's nothing wrong with a parent or someone else helping them but to the extent of this...
You could be right; I'd hope the competition vetted the entries. But 16 isn't really a child. There's a lot of variation, but there are a lot of very talented people that age or even younger.
Honestly at 16 even if a child reached this skill level it means they typically sacrificed other aspects of there life to reach it. Realistically less than 0.1% of children reach this route and from I've seen it's due to "encouragement" by their parents. I've seen a wide range of people children who had have "gone" far. Kids who finished their PhDs by the age of 16. It's almost always child abuse. There parents don't necessarily hit them. But they "encourage" them by forcing them down a path because it's "good" for them. If you're thinking of going this route, don't. The professors I've talked to kind of just see this as abuse and they will not help these children.
No I'm not endorsing anything like that. I'm thinking of the kid who picks up a guitar or sits at a piano at age 12 or 13 and falls in love with it, and is an amazing player by age of 16. It's an inner talent and passion that is unlocked, not a skill that was learned by force.
None of the people I've described have been forced to learn these skills. Well, not in the practical sense. Here is an example. You an born in a Tibetan Monastery in front of you is a set of items, the items that you pick are the ones that you will follow for the rest of your life. A child in this scenario is never forced into an option. Instead, the option just does not exist. From birth you are encourages and taught about the wonders of a skill that you will learn for the rest of you life. Of course you aren't being forced. But wouldn't it be fun if you could learn just a bit more? Oh friends? What friends? The people that the departments I've had the opportunity to interact with deal with these kinds of people. These children are never forced explicitly. It can have later in life too. 12 or 13 this is around the age for many sports and athletes. It's not a talent or passion, what you think exists doesn't.
Thank you for direct links to these. Winner is obviously much outlierier than these other two "mere mortal" young animators.
Mentally daydreaming, my thoughts flash back to 2002 — back when a simple 16-color, ten second animation (done by a peer at our elite creative arts HS) took days to render [PowerMacG4MDD Rage128 FTW!] and secured this peer artist acclaim from his classsmates, state, and future creative employers.
How far we've come. To where we'll go. Just incredible — can't imagine what the next decades will allow, but looking forward to robotic dumplings/streetfood.
Almost certainly. As a longtime member of Ian's Patreon, I recognize more than a few specific techniques being used here that he's posted tutorials for on it. Not that the inspiration takes away at all from the final product! The fact that a 16yo made this would be insanely cool even if it was a shot-for-shot remake of an existing movie scene, so any originality that it has beyond that only makes it more cool!
What I love about Ian's astonishing work and performance is the sincere, spectacular excitement and enthusiasm he conveys, that shows how tremendously fun it is to be that skilled, talented, and well practiced. It serves not just as a proof of what's possible, but also as an inspiration to put in the hours to learn Blender that well, whichever of its many facets appeal to you.
Yeah. Definitely in that vein - Ian's work draws on a whole lot of sci-fi/cyberpunk forebears.
He's got a pretty fantastic series of short, hilarious, and extremely useful and practical tutorials for Blender on his channel, and his Dynamo Dream project is hugely impressive - just the credit sequence of the latest episode is interesting enough that I wish it was a whole miniseries itself.
Absolutely, which is an enormous well deserved complement! He makes it seem so easy, but he's got a ridiculous amount of skill. He's on his way to giving mind blowing presentations at Blendercon too.
Huge frustration at whoever edited/shot that video. Frequently zoom in exclusively on the speaker when he is actively diagramming a visual he built. Miss several scenes he was presenting.
Impetus is certainly more artistic and thought-provoking, but is there anything that makes Impetus a greater technical achievement than Street Food? From my (very) non-expert perspective, Street Food seems much more technically impressive.
Dec 25, so wouldn’t be animator of the year for 2023.
Besides, celebrate rather than compare:
"When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create.“ - _why the lucky stiff
Ah good catch didn't realize it was from last year.
I agree these things are definitely "ands" not "ors", just comparing because the linked article is about a competition.
It's a pretty specific niche which made me think "oh but what about this other amazing animation made in blender by a 16 year old!"
_why the lucky stiff is probably the reason that I think of programming as a creative endeavor on par with things more regularly called art. It also took me from occasionally dabbling with JS to committing to becoming a paid dev.
It led me to redefine my personal version of "creative" to focus on the root word.
I suppose it could be intentional but the actual animations seem off to me. The hammer appears to slow before impact and there is no slight pause when piercing Takoyaki. Again, they're robots which means it might be a stylistic choice to have mechanically fluid motion.
I don't, though. I'm not saying he sucks, or that this doesn't look good, or anything. I'm saying that this could be improved by having the animations looking more real by behaving more like they would in reality.
Saying something can be improved is not the same as saying that something is crap.
Well we can definitely start doing that from any movie in that case because all of them include totally unrealistic stuff regardless if it about physics or narrative. In that case, voluntary or not it give that bigger robotic feeling.
But guess what, that is also part of what makes movies interesting.
I would just argue I have not the same tolerance/expectancy regarding reality when it comes to animated movie vs those with actors made of flesh or depending which subject is treated.
For example I kind of hate most action movies starring actors like Tom Cruise or movies such as the James Bond or Jason Bourne series but I do love more liberty with reality when it comes to movies treating on myths/legends, science fiction or animated movies.
Everyone put their own cursor. This discussion is kind of moot anyway without knowing the author intention.
There's a difference between consistent, explained differences and inconsistent and inexplicable things. If you were watching a scifi film and, half way through, the characters became fish, without anyone acknowledging or explaining this, you might not enjoy it.
> I do love more liberty with reality when it comes to [fantasy] movies
I have the same - probably because you know from experience that, e.g., someone taking the punishment that John Wick or Bourne does wouldn't be running around two minutes later but you have no frame of reference for, say, an 8ft goblin doing the same.
(Like the first episode of Slow Horses: there is no way a huge anti-terrorism training exercise across London stations wouldn't have every second of communications recorded for later examination and it made the whole premise of the show - that the fella is exiled because someone lied about what they said to him over those comms - nonsense to me.)
Being critical regardless of age is very valuable. There's this thing that if a young person does something pretty damn cool, they're made to believe it's extraordanirily good, rivalling even the best in the industry. I think it's called the "Gifted Kid Problem" in certain circles.
It happened to me with programming games; I entered competitions and even won one or two, making me believe I'm just SO good.
Now that I'm 30+ years old I still crave that same level of recognition which is basically unobtainable for me now as I'm just another cog in the system. Sure, I have some nice projects here and there and I get a compliment out of that some time, but never on the level I received while I was young.
I think it's incredibly important to give people advice on what could be improved, while still being respectful / praising of the work that's already done. That's how, in my opinion, you get a balanced individual.
>Being critical regardless of age is very valuable. There's this thing that if a young person does something pretty damn cool, they're made to believe it's extraordanirily good, rivalling even the best in the industry. I think it's called the "Gifted Kid Problem" in certain circles.
I think you nailed something that I was wondering while browsing this thread. What difference does it make if a person practiced 5-10 years a craft resulting to winning an award if that person started when he was 10 vs. 25? The headline would not only be radically different if it was a 30-year old who did it because he studied since he was 20-25; We might not even have a headline. It would have been "oh, someone won the award. Yay?"
Do we reward the output as as standalone (as is) during the contest, or do we also reward our perceived potential (imagine what this person would do in 20 years)?
this is another reason why as a gifted kid who became lazy and average I feel like every effort I make now at 25 to improve myself is honestly just too late. In 5 years I will be irrelevant.
strength and self-worth as a gifted child cannot come from utter mastery of a single field. The incentives and behaviors learned do not produce the patience and long hours required to push through to top most fields. However self-worth can come from the ability to master many skills quickly. I suggest learning something new with an open mind and no expectation you will become great, just try to get to the point where its fun to play around with. I taught myself 3d modelling this year to a reasonably good degree and its been amazing. Last year I learned good typesetting and graphic design. Having a broad spectrum understanding is not only personally gratifying but has been great for my career when someone asks me to do a simple task (make some slides showing the data) and I come back with professional grade work
Yeah this gifted kid syndrome has basically made me depressed as an adult because I always expected to become great with very little effort since I was apparently already great. Turns out I'm now stunningly average and I struggle to find any meaning any more and when I try to improve at things I feel this incredible weight of all my lost potential that makes it unbearable to continue.
I got clobbered for pointing out flaws in a deceptively good-looking project at an 8th grade science fair. The kid had basically been pre-anointed as the winner, but there were serious methodological shortcomings.
Then again, I have sought criticism my whole life. The harsher the better, especially from people whose opinions I respect. Criticism and failure fire the crucible of improvement.
To some people all criticism is bad. Even if they aren’t the target of it. There is such a thing as constructive criticism which is what you were offering.
I would claim we should give a pass to everybody because we are all human.
I would also claim I don’t think it’s nice to judge people based on their age, regardless if it’s good or bad judgement. Furthermore, I would definitely be annoyed as 16yo if I were deemed “good enough for my age”. He competes with peers, at the highest level, not with superiors who do him a favour.
We have separate sports classes based on gender on age to reflect abilities.
It's takes time to get good at this stuff, a younger person has inherently had less time.
I'd structure it as one overall ranking, but special age rankings within that.
A 5 year old could hypothetically win overall, but if they didn't they'd still be rewarded in relation to their (age) peers.
There's an 'encouragement' element that you're missing.
My 5 year old draws objectively bad pictures. I wouldn't tell him that though. I want him to get better so that he does become objectively good.
This is specifically a competition for young people. It's totally based around age and that's fine. A teenager doesn't have the luxury of 20 years of professional experience.
I agree, absolutely phenomenal post-processing and effects, but the core animation maybe has room for improvement. Could have been a stylistic choice indeed, but, I don't think so. I mean at age 16 it's not like they have anywhere to go but up lol so it's hard to be too critical of that. I certainly couldn't have done this.
On that note though I was watching the recent world of Warcraft cinematic they just put out and while obviously phenomenal and gorgeous and state of the art, it made me realize that the biggest tell for me for something being computer rendered is always physics animations. Things always seem to move just a bit too smoothly or consistently, or slowly. I think it just has to be that way because if something is 24fps you have to make it visible for a couple frames so as to demonstrate a movement, I remember reading in an animation book about how animating something "realistically" isn't a good idea because it just won't look good because of the nature of how it's presented (at a certain framerate, framing, aspect ratio, etc).
I was thinking about that very thing as well, but I came to the conclusion that robotic movement doesn't really need to match human movements. If you want to have consistent fine motor control, you wouldn't really expect things like acceleration when hitting with a hammer, or pulling down the top of the griddle.
Human nervous system has a similar mechanism where limbs are slowed down just before the impact when striking something to prevent muscle over-extension and injury, high performance martial artists train against this so that full speed and force is available upon impact without any slowdowns.
The movement did stand out to me, but I found it added to the atmosphere. It's a robot, its movements are supposed to be unlike that of humans. The non-physics based aspects just add to the mystique of the story for me, as this is clearly set in some (dystopian or not, for the viewer to decide) future. 3-CPO also walks 'weird' or at the very least unexplained from a physics/mechanical pov, but its movement is iconic nonetheless.
C-3PO is bound by the physics of Anthony Daniels in a suit. It had limited mobility. The design definitely informs lots about the way the character would move, but it’s definitely proper real world physics.
Looking back on where I was at in my life as a 16 year old kid, this is insanely impressive and the other comments implying that it's "all right" sound incredibly snobby.
Last time I dipped my toes in these waters was high school >25 years ago. I was doing my best with an Amiga Video Toaster and Lightwave 3D.
There was so much I wanted to do and just simply couldn’t because the technology hadn’t evolved enough (well, SGI was there, but wasn’t something that was going to be available in high school settings). Jurassic Park had just barely barged onto the scene.
I was running overnight render jobs for scenes that were far less impressive and much shorter.
Having the power of the tools and computer resources at your fingertips for 3D that we have today has the potential to really unleash some talent.
This is related but in a kind of obscure way. I play low-level tennis, talking Div. 9 where there are 10 divisions in total. I play with and against a fair few juniors that are just cutting their teeth playing against seniors (learning how to 'play' a game of tennis having learned technique for years ad nauseum).
I've lost to 12, 13, 14 year olds who are sensationally talented, but what's scary is that, if they're slumming in Div. 9 in their low-teens, they're pretty much out of the running for professional tennis already.
This animation is likely an example of someone in that rarefied air combining natural talent, willingness to expend the effort on a single pursuit, and desire to see something through. This guy's a pro in the making, to continue to tennis analogy, at age 12 he'd have been cutting his teeth against div 3 seniors - In Div 9 I wouldn't even see this level of talent, even when it's up-and-coming (and maybe that's a good thing for my own motivation to continue playing and improving).
What an impressive talent! The animation is both entertaining to watch because of the content and style. Well-deserved win.
I disagree with some of the other commenters here who describe this style as cyberpunk. Neon lights and robots does not automatically equate to cyberpunk. I think the designer/artist may choose to describe it as they wish, to me it appears to be inspired by robot science fiction. I see some kind of whimsy and optimism in this short, as its interesting that these robots are making (what appears to be) human food. What an interesting idea :)
I also thought it was interesting that the robots used machines that a human would to make food the way a human would. It made me think we already have a lot of machines involved in the production step - will future mechanical additions be a problem or a boon?
I don't think it's just "neon lights and robots" that make it cyberpunk. It's the combination of high tech and lowlife, the grungy city streets, the street food, the rain, and the urban East Asian elements.
All of these elements are strong signifiers of the cyberpunk aesthetic.
> It's the combination of high tech and lowlife, the grungy city streets, the street food, the rain, and the urban East Asian elements.
I would argue that none of those elements make anything cyberpunk :) The cyberpunk genre (per my understanding) involves elements of technology, its effect and force on human life, and the pushback against those effects and forces. There has to be some "punk" for something to be cyberpunk, I think. So necessarily some subversive elements, motfis or themes that challenge a greater power or status quo. That said, I also find it disheartening that cyberpunk is often imagined as dystopian or hypersexualized, that's all very trite tbh.
I mean, you're free to make up your own definition, but it won't be shared by the vast majority of other people.
From the Wikipedia article: [1]
> Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech" featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.
> The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors ("the street finds its own uses for things").
> Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir
All of this comes from the foundational literary and cinematic works that defined the cyberpunk genre, namely (in rough chronological order): Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Akira, Snow Crash, Johnny Mnemonic, and The Matrix.
The visual aesthetic representation of the cyberpunk genre is firmly rooted in a vocabulary involving dense cityscapes, night, neon lights, and rain (echoing the film noir vocabulary), often set in slums of East Asian metropolises or US Chinatowns.
Deciding that the common elements of all these works isn't what "cyberpunk" is is simply creating your own, personal, idiosyncratic definition.
> ...juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.
Hmm, I guess I didn't see that in the video, maybe I viewed it differently? Robots were making human food, which seems whimsical to me, and makes me wonder why would something (maybe autonomous) want to do that. I am not sure simply using an Asian setting and neon lights makes something cyberpunk, but maybe the artist did intend it that way.
This part from my comment is just my perspective, not me defining:
> That said, I also find it disheartening that cyberpunk is often imagined as dystopian or hypersexualized, that's all very trite tbh.
I find this characteristic about the genre boring and unnecessary as I think it's reflective of the views and relationships of the various authors to technology and its effects.
it may be boring and unnecessary but being dystopian is an integral part of what cyberpunk is. you may want to take a look at solarpunk as an alternative that is distinctively not dystopian:
It's not that the narrative concept is innately cyberpunk, just that the aesthetics are an exact match for modern Cyberpunk. My go-to method for setting the wallpaper on a new device is just to image search "cyberpunk wallpaper" and they all look very much like that opening shot.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadA quick document.querySelector('#player').style = '' in console allows proper fullscreen viewing.
He comes off as an artist who immensely enjoys their craft. I have also really enjoyed his Dynamo Dream series [2] which are a labor of love for him. He's only released like 3 episodes over several years, but hey labor of love.
Ian was also chosen as the director of Tears of Steel (2012) which is one of the Blender Open Movies [3] the foundation produces. You might not recognize that film, but many of you have heard of at least one Blender Open Movie, Big Buck Bunny! A big nod (IMO) from the Blender foundation that he represents the spirit of the project and community, as well as has the skills to oversee a project meant to demonstrate Blender's capabilities.
These Open Movies are projects that HN can likely appreciate, as they are created to showcase and help push capabilities of the open source Blender software, are licensed under Creative Commons, and their assets are provided to the community for free.
(This comment is a love letter to Ian Hubert)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@IanHubert2
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A
[3] https://studio.blender.org/films/
But who can blame them? Ian's tutorials are some of the most entertaining videos out there, especially his lazy tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjnyapZ_P-g
Regardless this is extremely impressive. There's nothing to distinguish this from something made by a group of professionals with infinite time and resources.
Theres a lot of creative ways to add details using scans, texture projection and scattering.
On the other hand, it's like Scratch and from my distorted worldview exposing it as code would be more straightforward.
I wrote some words on the topic: https://kyefox.com/2022/08/05/learn-to-code-or-dont/
Node editors like Blender's are the best thing for me: you get all the tools, but they're composable with other tools. Your hammer can be a screwdriver. Worst case, I need a new tool no one's figured out how to make with nodes, but odds are someone already wrote that code as a plugin. Looping back to the "now what" issue: it already exists in a state beyond anything I could get up the motivation to improve on.
How about creating a dynamic number of point distribution nodes and adding them all together? Trivial in code, most likely impossible in node editor.
The most flexible UI is a good programming language, anything else comes with flexibility compromises in favour of something else.
Anyone can watch a couple of videos, launch Blender, start with a cube and work it into a chair in UI. Coding that for just one chair will take almost anyone more time.
Now if you need to do this to make 10 slightly different chairs where changes need to be made early on in the process, code will win even with first timers.
The other thing I find (but maybe this is the same with node-based approaches too!) is that there are a bunch of arbitrary coin-flip choices you have to make when doing 3D (e.g. left-handed versus right-handed coordinates). At a fundamental level it doesn't matter which choice you make, but your decisions have to be consistent, otherwise things can get flipped around, or often just vanish entirely. The sneakiest problem is when you unknowingly make two wrong choices, and they mostly cancel out except for some weird edge cases that happen to exercise the exposed code path.
(I'm always wondering why they don't bring this feature to desktop version.)
https://younganimator.uk/winner/1699875806584x29956216420210... (Jeremiah, Aged 14)
https://younganimator.uk/winner/1668441140134x35615750206437... (Nishaan, Aged 17)
Mentally daydreaming, my thoughts flash back to 2002 — back when a simple 16-color, ten second animation (done by a peer at our elite creative arts HS) took days to render [PowerMacG4MDD Rage128 FTW!] and secured this peer artist acclaim from his classsmates, state, and future creative employers.
How far we've come. To where we'll go. Just incredible — can't imagine what the next decades will allow, but looking forward to robotic dumplings/streetfood.
He's got a pretty fantastic series of short, hilarious, and extremely useful and practical tutorials for Blender on his channel, and his Dynamo Dream project is hugely impressive - just the credit sequence of the latest episode is interesting enough that I wish it was a whole miniseries itself.
https://www.youtube.com/@IanHubert2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPWKecazgM
That would be Impetus[1]
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJeEhfhyO5Q
No need for goal posts if we dont know what they were
Besides, celebrate rather than compare:
"When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create.“ - _why the lucky stiff
It led me to redefine my personal version of "creative" to focus on the root word.
Taken as an entire piece, its very good.
Saying something can be improved is not the same as saying that something is crap.
But guess what, that is also part of what makes movies interesting.
For example I kind of hate most action movies starring actors like Tom Cruise or movies such as the James Bond or Jason Bourne series but I do love more liberty with reality when it comes to movies treating on myths/legends, science fiction or animated movies.
Everyone put their own cursor. This discussion is kind of moot anyway without knowing the author intention.
I have the same - probably because you know from experience that, e.g., someone taking the punishment that John Wick or Bourne does wouldn't be running around two minutes later but you have no frame of reference for, say, an 8ft goblin doing the same.
(Like the first episode of Slow Horses: there is no way a huge anti-terrorism training exercise across London stations wouldn't have every second of communications recorded for later examination and it made the whole premise of the show - that the fella is exiled because someone lied about what they said to him over those comms - nonsense to me.)
It happened to me with programming games; I entered competitions and even won one or two, making me believe I'm just SO good.
Now that I'm 30+ years old I still crave that same level of recognition which is basically unobtainable for me now as I'm just another cog in the system. Sure, I have some nice projects here and there and I get a compliment out of that some time, but never on the level I received while I was young.
I think it's incredibly important to give people advice on what could be improved, while still being respectful / praising of the work that's already done. That's how, in my opinion, you get a balanced individual.
I think you nailed something that I was wondering while browsing this thread. What difference does it make if a person practiced 5-10 years a craft resulting to winning an award if that person started when he was 10 vs. 25? The headline would not only be radically different if it was a 30-year old who did it because he studied since he was 20-25; We might not even have a headline. It would have been "oh, someone won the award. Yay?"
Do we reward the output as as standalone (as is) during the contest, or do we also reward our perceived potential (imagine what this person would do in 20 years)?
Then again, I have sought criticism my whole life. The harsher the better, especially from people whose opinions I respect. Criticism and failure fire the crucible of improvement.
I would also claim I don’t think it’s nice to judge people based on their age, regardless if it’s good or bad judgement. Furthermore, I would definitely be annoyed as 16yo if I were deemed “good enough for my age”. He competes with peers, at the highest level, not with superiors who do him a favour.
We have separate sports classes based on gender on age to reflect abilities.
It's takes time to get good at this stuff, a younger person has inherently had less time.
I'd structure it as one overall ranking, but special age rankings within that.
A 5 year old could hypothetically win overall, but if they didn't they'd still be rewarded in relation to their (age) peers.
There's an 'encouragement' element that you're missing. My 5 year old draws objectively bad pictures. I wouldn't tell him that though. I want him to get better so that he does become objectively good.
On that note though I was watching the recent world of Warcraft cinematic they just put out and while obviously phenomenal and gorgeous and state of the art, it made me realize that the biggest tell for me for something being computer rendered is always physics animations. Things always seem to move just a bit too smoothly or consistently, or slowly. I think it just has to be that way because if something is 24fps you have to make it visible for a couple frames so as to demonstrate a movement, I remember reading in an animation book about how animating something "realistically" isn't a good idea because it just won't look good because of the nature of how it's presented (at a certain framerate, framing, aspect ratio, etc).
Human nervous system has a similar mechanism where limbs are slowed down just before the impact when striking something to prevent muscle over-extension and injury, high performance martial artists train against this so that full speed and force is available upon impact without any slowdowns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretch_reflex
Last time I dipped my toes in these waters was high school >25 years ago. I was doing my best with an Amiga Video Toaster and Lightwave 3D.
There was so much I wanted to do and just simply couldn’t because the technology hadn’t evolved enough (well, SGI was there, but wasn’t something that was going to be available in high school settings). Jurassic Park had just barely barged onto the scene.
I was running overnight render jobs for scenes that were far less impressive and much shorter.
Having the power of the tools and computer resources at your fingertips for 3D that we have today has the potential to really unleash some talent.
I've lost to 12, 13, 14 year olds who are sensationally talented, but what's scary is that, if they're slumming in Div. 9 in their low-teens, they're pretty much out of the running for professional tennis already.
This animation is likely an example of someone in that rarefied air combining natural talent, willingness to expend the effort on a single pursuit, and desire to see something through. This guy's a pro in the making, to continue to tennis analogy, at age 12 he'd have been cutting his teeth against div 3 seniors - In Div 9 I wouldn't even see this level of talent, even when it's up-and-coming (and maybe that's a good thing for my own motivation to continue playing and improving).
Survivorship bias-ish?
I disagree with some of the other commenters here who describe this style as cyberpunk. Neon lights and robots does not automatically equate to cyberpunk. I think the designer/artist may choose to describe it as they wish, to me it appears to be inspired by robot science fiction. I see some kind of whimsy and optimism in this short, as its interesting that these robots are making (what appears to be) human food. What an interesting idea :)
do I care about the genre etymology of how Cyberpunk 2077 itself got where it is in look and feel? no, not really
I like it and thats the first word that popped into my mind
All of these elements are strong signifiers of the cyberpunk aesthetic.
I would argue that none of those elements make anything cyberpunk :) The cyberpunk genre (per my understanding) involves elements of technology, its effect and force on human life, and the pushback against those effects and forces. There has to be some "punk" for something to be cyberpunk, I think. So necessarily some subversive elements, motfis or themes that challenge a greater power or status quo. That said, I also find it disheartening that cyberpunk is often imagined as dystopian or hypersexualized, that's all very trite tbh.
From the Wikipedia article: [1]
> Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech" featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.
> The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors ("the street finds its own uses for things").
> Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir
All of this comes from the foundational literary and cinematic works that defined the cyberpunk genre, namely (in rough chronological order): Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Akira, Snow Crash, Johnny Mnemonic, and The Matrix.
The visual aesthetic representation of the cyberpunk genre is firmly rooted in a vocabulary involving dense cityscapes, night, neon lights, and rain (echoing the film noir vocabulary), often set in slums of East Asian metropolises or US Chinatowns.
Deciding that the common elements of all these works isn't what "cyberpunk" is is simply creating your own, personal, idiosyncratic definition.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Hmm, I guess I didn't see that in the video, maybe I viewed it differently? Robots were making human food, which seems whimsical to me, and makes me wonder why would something (maybe autonomous) want to do that. I am not sure simply using an Asian setting and neon lights makes something cyberpunk, but maybe the artist did intend it that way.
This part from my comment is just my perspective, not me defining:
> That said, I also find it disheartening that cyberpunk is often imagined as dystopian or hypersexualized, that's all very trite tbh.
I find this characteristic about the genre boring and unnecessary as I think it's reflective of the views and relationships of the various authors to technology and its effects.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31325956