If this is your thing, you might like Star Wars Uncut from 2009 https://www.starwarsuncut.com/
I like the style here a lot more than the low-res pixel art approach of the OP. Thanks for sharing this. :)
The Free Movie
21–30 of 105 posts
Re: The Free Movie
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't even begin to guess how you would numerically average or compare hairline drawings. If they were fully shaded frames it would work, but hairlines I have no idea. Also I observed that some frames left a dark background white, and others filled in a dark background as black. So you'd have to set up a lot of drawing "rules" to ensure it was even conceptually meaningful to generate an average in the first place.
Use distance fields.
The problem isn't just approximate positioning of lines, but radically different artistic styles and amounts of shading and detail. Is someone's hair made of one line, five lines, or 100 lines? Does a face have 3 simple lines or 50 little lines that give a sense of skin texture?
Distance fields would work great for font outlines, but not for translating movie frames.
Re: The Free Movie
#23You can see a "preview" of the movie by clicking out of the email box and clicking "PLAY" on the bottom right. It's basically what you would expect from a drawing site hosted on the open internet...
I see beauty in that chaos, almost like a subconscious.. a 16 year old's, but still..
Re: The Free Movie
#24Poor execution, but great idea. Give users random frames. Obtain multiple drawings for each frame. average and reject frames that are too different from the average. voila!
Give users a choice - do they want to draw a frame (will take a couple of minutes, many people don't have time/patience) - or do they want to vote on a few frames?
For each frame, get at least 4 different drawings.
For voters, show them 2-4 frames and have them pick the best one.
If there are more than 4 versions of a frame, do a bracket-based competition to determine the best frame.
This could be an ongoing process. Generate a version of the movie using the best available frames, but continue allowing people to redraw frames. The movie would continue getting better and better over time.
Then, when you watch the movie, maybe you could have a slider to control which "generation" of the movie you're watching. Slide all the way to the left and it will be really primitive, slide all the way to the right and it will be the best version.
Re: The Free Movie
#25What are the copyright implications of this work? Is it legal to distribute the stitched together frames without audio? Do you think this project is going to get DMCAd off the internet?
It's almost certainly transformative. DMCA takedown requests need to consider fair use. There is a lot of case law like Cariou v Prince
It's also possible they got permission, or even that they were paid to make this. MSCHF is well funded.
Re: The Free Movie
#26Amazing Idea, but a few problems
1. Anytime you give someone freedom to create (anything), you will end up with a penis drawing. Just scrolling through quickly I see that Frame #13122 delivers on this law of the universe. After watching the movie preview, I only watched the first 45-50 seconds and counted about 4-5 drawings of the bodypart and 6-8 additional frames that just contain the word "penis". I wouldn't be surprised if 2-4% of the total frames submitted contain this specific content.
2. It says that all frames have been drawn, but in fact they are far from complete. Many people have submitted blank frames or frames with one line scribble. There really should be a minimum "ink" or "coverage" amount before determining that a frame has been given a proper amount of effort in the drawing.
3. People have wildly different artistic capabilities. Which sounds like part of the fun, but in practice many of these frames are so bad, that watching them back to back just looks like a static mess.
4. Not a problem, but there are also some AMAZING submissions in here that are awesome to see. I wish those people could be allowed to submit additional frames. Maybe enough "upvotes" on their existing frames and they get to create another frame.
5. We need to crowdsource a review process. It would be good to allow people to either A) draw a frame, which is a smaller portion of the population or B) review an existing frame for content and quality. This allows everyone to contribute to the movie in a way that they are capable. Reviewers could be shown a frame with a few buttons such as: blank, low effort drawing, inaccurate drawing, inappropriate drawing (see #1). If a frame gets a high ratio of similar negative reviews then we know to put it back into the rotation to be redrawn.
5. Just because all frames have been drawn, there should be the option to resubmit an alternative for low-effort or blank frames. These are easy to find, so I should be able to submit a second drawing that gets queued behind the original in case the original gets rejected through the review system (which a blank frame easily would).
Overall the concept is really cool. These tips above would solve most of the core problems and make it a better experience for everyone.
Re: The Free Movie
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use distance fields.
The problem isn't just approximate positioning of lines, but radically different artistic styles and amounts of shading and detail. Is someone's hair made of one line, five lines, or 100 lines? Does a face have 3 simple lines or 50 little lines that give a sense of skin texture? Distance fields would work great for font outlines, but not for translating movie frames.
Oh, I don't know. How well does it have to work? If anything I'm suddenly very curious what kind of results you'd get from converting line art to distance fields, averaging/interpolating, and converting back. Maybe I'll write some code...
Re: The Free Movie
#28What are the copyright implications of this work? Is it legal to distribute the stitched together frames without audio? Do you think this project is going to get DMCAd off the internet?
MSCHF probably knows what they're doing in terms of copyright at this point, lol.
Re: The Free Movie
#29This is brilliant. Often, people will come up with clever-sounding ideas for how to "fix" some part of the internet. "Just let people do X and it'll all work out!" The movie generated by this project is a perfect illustration of what happens: you'll get some excellent results from a small subset, the bulk of people will contribute in some small but productive way, and you'll get a small-to-moderate sized group whose members metaphorically relieve themselves all over your project.
It would be cool to do some followup projects. "Ok, that was try 1, now we'll add some basic moderation." It would be great to see visually how well that would work. "Ok, how about meta-moderation?" For a fairly niche project, my guess is that that would be enough to get to a presentable product without any fullscreen "Poop!"s. Then you do "ok, that was cool but the quality was kind of poor, let's incentivize with small amounts of actual cash."
It would be fascinating. Call it "How the Web Melts, Illustrated".
Re: The Free Movie
#3065244 frames is about 45 minutes, are they only rotoscoping a portion of the movie, or are they dropping frames? Just wondering.