discovery channel magazine - january 2012

YOUR NEXT JOB

SHOCK TESTING 98STANLEY MILGRAM SCARES A HORROR MAN

PSYCHOLOGY

OTAKU POWER 86THE OBESSIONS OF JAPAN’S GEEK ELITE

SEEKERS

MEET THE 52 SUPER TASTERS

CHEMISTRY

THE SCIENCE OF FOOD

76SCI-TECH

GET ANIMATED 60 STORYTELLING GOES HIGH-TECH

16-PAGE SPECIALPG 36

SG $8.50RM 14.95PHP 250HK $45Rest of Asia US $10

JANUARY 2012

AUD $7.90NZ $9.90THB 250IDR 60,000

HOW TO BECOME AN ASTRONAUT

46 8660 36 52

65DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE

86

FEATURESCONTENTS

5498


SPACETraining to be an astronaut is no easy task. Yet as we find out from speaking to the fourth and

tenth men to ever set foot on the moon, the hard and high-risk work is also well worthwhile

36

FOODWho is ever weird enough to stop, mid-chew, and think about why food tastes so good? We

are, as we explore the wild and wonderful universe of molecular gastronomy

52

ANIMATIONSome of the biggest, best and most complex

films out today are animated ones. So what kind of magic goes into making Kung Fu Panda,

The Matrix and other acts of pixel perfection?

60

AK-47

It's been around for more than 60 years, but the Kalashnikov assault rifle shows no sign of being

knocked from its violent yet iconic throne

74

In another country, they might be branded obsessive fanboys and goof-ball nerds. Yet in

collection-mad Japan, the otaku are super-cool

86OTAKU

EVIL

Learn about the twisted psychological experiments which recently had even horror

film-maker Eli Roth quaking in his boots

98

74

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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

WOW 8 THE DEAD SEA HAS NEVER LOOKED SO BITTER, AND YET SO STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL

MASKS 12 IF YOU WANT TO ROB A BANK, YOU HAD BETTER GET YOUR COSTUME RIGHT, AND AS STYLISH AS POSSIBLE

STAFF STATS 15 THE BIGGEST EMPLOYERS IN THE WORLD

SALT 16 WE SPRINKLE SOME MORE OF THE MINERAL THAT DOES IT ALL

BEST & WORST 18 OUR PICK OF HISTORICALLY IRONIC DEATHS

28 23

22

BUSTED! 25 WE FACT-CHECK LEGO BALLS, WHEELS OF FIRE AND A BUCKET OF MATCH HEADS

HOW THINGS WORK 31 YOU'LL HAVE SEVEN YEARS OF BAD LUCK IF YOU DON'T REFLECT WITH US ON THE SCIENCE BEHIND MIRRORS

WOW 34 WATCH AS STREET ART RAMPS IT UP A NOTCH WITH THIS GARGANTUAN, PESPECTIVE-ROCKING URBAN PAINTING

WHAT'S ON 103 GANGSTERS, MOBSTERS, MYTHBUSTERS AND ALIENS: OH MY, WHAT A JANUARY!

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DEPARTMENTS

FRONTIERS

ALIEN FIGHTERS

Don't worry, readers: in the event of an alien invasion, the Discovery Channel Magazine crew are ready to fight

23

WIND POWER

What goes into one of the swiftest sailboats on the planet? Among other things, a massive 14-storey-tall sail

FAST AND FURIOUS

26

BULLET-PROOF

You may have trouble taking these armoured men down: they're protected by leather, metal — and books?

THEN AND NOW

28

CUT THE SHEET

Elephant dung paper can help you save the Earth, especially if you print with soy ink, then let GreenPrint help you print less

GREEN PLANET

29

SPACE

Do you know how many swings it took to hit a golf ball on the moon? No? We can reveal that fact and a planetful more

THE BIG PICTURE

50

DISEASE ON SCREEN

Raw, adrenaline-soaked and terrifying it may have been, but just how realistic was our chosen scene from Contagion?

FACT V FILM

33

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FROM THE EDITORJANUARY 2012

EditorialEditor Luke ClarkDesign Director Richard MacLeanChief Sub Editor Josephine PangStaff Writer Daniel SeifertPhoto Editor Haryati MahmoodCreative Director Kevin OngContributing Designer Gavin Goo

Contributors Alison Marshall, Arthur Chan, Chris Wright, Eric Talmadge, Gavin Goo, Jeremy Torr, Mark McCormick, The Illustration Room’s Ray Zapanta and Rui Esteves

Editorial BoardDirector, Licensing Pinky DavidVP, Marketing Magdalene NgVP, Programming Charmaine KwanVP, Production Vikram ChannaVP, Communications Melissa Tham

ProductionCreative Services Manager Kwan Gek LianProduction Manager Lim Ling Ling

MarketingMarketing Director Ann PuttyResearcher Danny Gilchrist

ExecutiveChief Executive Officer Rosemarie WallaceChief Financial Officer Marie LyteVP Custom Content Paul ColemanHead of Digital Malti PeplowOffice Manager Phylicia Tan

Published monthly by Novus Media Solutions Pte Ltd, Company Number: 200920797Z © 2012 Novus Media Solutions Pte Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner in whole or part in English or other languages prohibited. Protection secured under the International and Pan-American copypright conventions. All Discovery Channel logos © 2012 Discovery Communications, LLC. Discovery Channel and the Discovery Channel logo are trademarks of Discovery Communications, LLC, used under licence. All rights reserved. Printed by Times Printers Pte Ltd, 16 Tuas Ave 5, Singapore 639340.Times Printers Licence Number: L020/09/2011 Singapore MICA (P) 222/09/2011. Malaysia KDN PPS1680/12/2011 (020195).

AdvertisingBusiness Development Director Angie Santa [email protected]

Executive President and Managing Director Tom KeavenySVP Content Group Kevin Dickie VP Finance Shitiz Jain

Novus Media Solutions77B Amoy StreetSingapore [email protected]

Publisher

There are some truly impressive job titles out there. Being a father of molecular gastronomy (page 52), or architect of RenderMan (page 60) is difficult to beat. Unless you're a real-live astronaut — surely the epitome of a cool job.

Mankind still has a childlike fascination with space. The recent successful return of Japan’s long-term mission from the International Space Station, broadcast live by Discovery Channel HV Japan on November 22, 2011, is another reminder to us of just how universal our excitement over space flight really is — and how like never before, the opportunity to venture beyond our atmosphere has really become a global one.

So what would it take to make it onto one of those missions? We take a detailed look at how to get there, and what the experience before, during and after, is actually like (page 36). For me, reading the personal accounts of two of the 12 people to set foot on the moon was a joy. And if our writer Chris Wright is anything to go by, it was a thrill to compile too. He even sent me a note, admitting that aside from three lengthy interviews, he had gone slightly overboard researching our space extravaganza: "I reeeeeeeally over-researched this; read four books, watched three DVDs… total information overload. Fun though!"

Going overboard is a big part of Discovery Channel Magazine. For our second banner feature, on animation (page 60), I spent many pleasurable hours interviewing practitioners in the film animation field, whose jobs have seen their work appear in films like Kung Fu Panda, Toy Story, The Matrix, Terminator 2 and Avatar. It was another long study in pleasant obsession — which is an apt description of an industry in which it often takes up to five years to complete each movie.

We explore other obsessions, including the revolutionary world's fondness for the AK-47 (page 74), a weapon which, while iconic in its design, is not actually the most accurate of shooters. Less fierce but no less frenzied is our exploration of the weird and wonderful universe of Japan's otaku (page 86), a colourful subculture in which fandom becomes a way of, even an expression of, life.

And speaking of expression, you might be wondering what the image on the right is. It’s not the International Space Station, but you’re close. It is an artist’s impression, courtesy of NASA, of the Space Station Freedom. The 1991 painting shows what could have been a permanently crewed orbiting base, an attempt at international cooperation which was to be funded by a dozen countries and completed in the 1990s. It never came to fruition, but is a pleasant reminder that where space, science and art is concerned, we love to dream big. So here's wishing you a New Year filled with pleasant and prosperous obsessions — filled with dreaming big, and delivering even bigger.

TO OUTER SPACE AND BEYOND

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Salt is one of the foundations of civilisation. Its ability to preserve food allowed cultures to travel, spread and trade with each other. Without a constant upkeep of salt in your body, you would die. And without an outrageous salt tax, the French Revolution may never have happened. And you thought it just made french fries taste delicious...

SPEED ONSalt flats are the remnants of dried lakebeds and are found all over the world. The Bonneville Salt Flats, a dense salt pan in the US state of Utah, is also known as the Bonneville Speedway. Its massive spaces and flat surface mean that it is ideal for testing land speeds of various craft, and it has been used for this purpose since the early 1900s. The first record was an unofficial one, when a rickety Blitzen Benz powered across the flats at an astonishing 228 kilometres per hour. Since then, a variety of motorbikes, cars and jet-powered vehicles have blasted across the site, including the rocket car Blue Flame, which hit 1,001 kilometres per hour.

SALT-ERSTICIOUSSalt has found its way into many folk beliefs. In Europe, the mineral’s purity and cleansing abilities meant that it was believed demons and witches loathed it. If you spilled salt at the table, it was a bad omen, which is why even today people will toss a pinch of the spilt powder over their left shoulder, to blind the devil who lurks behind you. In Scotland, brewers would add a handful of salt to beer-making ingredients to keep witches away.

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A BALANCED DIETIf you are a frequent crier or tend to sweat energetically, you will know that salt is present in your body. What the heck does it do? (Hint: it is not “make our tears taste good”) The vital chemical component of salt is sodium. Without it, you would be unable to regulate water levels in your body, transmit nerve signals, control muscular contractions, and maintain a normal pH balance in your blood. But, like so many things in life, salt intake is all about balance. Too little, and you become a twitchy, vomiting wreck. Too much, and you increase your risk of strokes, stomach cancer and high blood pressure. Consume carefully.

WHITE GOLDIn trade, the mineral was worth its weight in precious metal — literally. The trans-Saharan salt route saw huge caravans of up to 30,000 camels, laden with salt slabs, carrying their precious cargo south through the desert. Upon arrival in the trading metropolis of Timbuktu, an ounce of gold was traded for an ounce of salt. The 800-kilometre journey from the salt-choked mines of Taudenni to Timbuktu is still undertaken by salt traders today, in much the same way as their ancestors.

VIVE LE REVOLUTION!Mention the word “gabelle” to a French peasant from the 15th to 18th centuries, and he would probably spit in your eye. So hated was this “salt tax”, under which the poor were forced to pay for the consumption of salt but the rich were largely exempt, that it helped fuel the French Revolution in 1789. We can understand why it was unpopular — in some places it forced all citizens above the age of eight to purchase seven kilograms of salt a year at a hefty price. And those who didn’t obey the draconian salt laws were punished severely. By the late 18th century, thousands of men, women and children were being sentenced to prison or death each year for their crimes against the gabelle.

POWDERY PAYTo indicate that someone is “worth their salt” means that they are valuable. Some believe the phrase stems from Roman times, when soldiers were paid partly with special salt rations known as “salarium argentum”. This is where the word “salary” comes from. In Colonial India under British rule, local sepoys (soldiers) who enlisted in the army were made to swear an oath of loyalty. A commanding officer placed salt on the blade of a sword, saying “If you decide contrary to your judgement and falsely, may this sword be your death.” The blade would then be held into the mouth of the soldier, who would swallow the salt to indicate his allegiance.

MANY-FACED MINERALPotassium nitrate is a form of salt used in everything from fertilisers to fireworks. It is also known as saltpetre (from the Latin sal paetre, or “salt of rock”), a basic component of gunpowder. Mull that over for a second. No saltpetre; no gunpowder; no development of firearms, bombs and artillery; no massive casualty rates for wars. Thus, a complete change in modern history as we know it.

Potassium nitrate has also been used in toothpaste to treat tooth sensitivity. Salt is indeed a double-edged sword.

FRONTIERS


Bragging that you're “the greatest dancer on the planet” then falling over your feet whilst doing the Twist is a fine example of irony. But it's not as twisted as these untimely demises

ADMIRABLYIRONIC DEATHS

BEST & WORST

BAD TIMINGGENERAL JOHN SEDGWICKGeneral John Sedgwick was not only the highest-ranking Union casualty in the American Civil War, he may also have uttered the most ironic last words in history. Strolling about the battlefield one day as Confederate marksmen took potshots at his platoon, he berated his troops for taking cover. "I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—" Why didn’t he finish his sentence? A sniper’s bullet struck him below the eye and he fell dead.

KABOOM FOR KENDRICKJOHN KENDRICKSometimes victory ain’t so sweet. American sea captain and explorer John Kendrick was in a good mood as he sat down to dinner in 1794. He and his crew were celebrating their easy battle win over a Hawaiian tribe, and fired a victory salute at an allied English ship. The allied ship returned the salute, but one cannon was accidentally loaded with grapeshot ammunition, rather than just powder. The load tore into Kendrick’s ship, The Lady Washington, killing him at his victory meal.

TRIAL BY FIRECLEMENT VALLANDIGHAM

Trial lawyer Clement Vallandigham was known for his dedication. In 1871, he was defending a man accused of murder in a bar brawl. He attempted to demonstrate that the deceased had accidentally shot himself drawing his pistol from a kneeling position, rather than being fired at by the defendant. Trying to demonstrate events to the jury, Vallandigham shot himself. He died from his injuries, but at least managed to prove his point — his client was acquitted of all charges.

GIVING CANCER A HEADACHE It seems aspirin does more than alleviate a migraine; popping the pill beats cancer into submission too. Scientists at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom monitored aspirin intake versus a placebo on two groups of test subjects with a history of cancer. They found that of those who took a placebo, 30 percent developed cancer again,

versus 15 percent of those who popped two 300-milligram aspirin a day. Furthermore, lab research has shown that salicylate, the active ingredient in aspirin, may prevent cancer from developing at all. Dr John Burn, who led the study, said, “One possibility is that [aspirin] might be enhancing programmed cell death or apoptosis in cells that will go on to develop cancer.”

QUOTEUNQUOTE

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ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

On a chilly afternoon in November, 1889, Annie Oakley, well-known trick shot artist, was preparing to take aim at European

royalty. She was on tour with Buffalo Bill’s Wild Wild West Show in Berlin, performing for the aristocrats at the city’s Charlottenburg

Race Course. One of her most famous feats involved shooting the ashes off a lit cigar held in the mouth of her long-suffering

husband. This time, another volunteer stepped forward: Kaiser Wilhelm II, ruler of the German empire.

Calmly lighting his cigar, the Kaiser stood puffing away. Oakley blew off his ashes perfectly with her Colt .45 revolver, like a true cowgirl. But what if she had missed? Kaiser Wilhelm, a hawkish,

nationalistic ruler, would have been off the throne, and Germany’s militaristic policies of the time may have been halted, effectively absolving the build-up to World War I. No World War I means no

beaten Germany, followed by an embittered ex-soldier, Adolf Hitler, building the Nazi Third Reich from the ashes of defeat.

Oakley must have had similar regrets once the bloodiest war in history, at the time, kicked off. She sent the Kaiser a letter asking

for a second opportunity at the shot. He declined to reply.

The above is based on one of the many entries in the alternative history compendium What If? Edited by Robert Cowley.

TRUTHAND BEAUTYWith ever-advanced digital retouching software, more and more magazines are airbrushing their cover models to within an inch of their lives. Exposure to this constant media perfection can have a negative effect on image-conscious people, leading to a rise in body-image disorders. But soon, retouched images could come with a “photoshopped” warning. Dr Hany Farid and Eric Kee, digital image forensics researchers at Dartmouth College in the US state of New Hampshire, have created a “scale” of retouching. The scale is based on the amount of change in pixels on the model’s face and body, as well as levels of blurring or colour correction. “When published alongside a photo,” they say, “a rating can inform consumers how much a photo has strayed from reality.” They are also working to create a real-time Photoshop plug-in which tells the user if they’re monkeying with Mother Nature too much.

BY THREE METHODS WE MAY LEARN

WISDOM: FIRST, BY REFLECTION,

WHICH IS NOBLEST;

SECOND, BY IMITATION, WHICH

IS EASIEST; AND THIRD BY EXPERIENCE, WHICH IS THE

BITTEREST

CONFUCIUS

"

"

QUOTEUNQUOTE

THE ECONOMY OF THE BIG MAC: HOW MUCH DOES ONE COST AROUND THE WORLD?

NORWAY:

US$8.31AUSTRALIA:

US$4.94UNITED STATES:

US$4.07SAUDI ARABIA:

US$2.67MALAYSIA:

US$2.42HONG KONG:

US$1.94

IN BRIEFOne of the greatest

Asian philosophers in history, the teachings

of Confucius had a profound effect on the development of China.

His beliefs in respect for one’s elders and familial loyalty are

still cornerstones of Chinese culture.

FRONTIERS


British artist Joe Hill probably isn't afraid of heights, or he would likely have had trouble sketching, planning and executing this huge piece of art. Located at Canary Wharf in London, England, this 1,120-square-metre behemoth has broken records for the longest and largest surface area 3D painting, according to the Guinness World Records. Considering this photo was taken in mid-November, the icicles certainly add a touch of authenticity. Brrr.

WORLD'S LARGEST 3D PAINTINGBy Paul Hackett


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AMAZING TASTESNO MATTER WHAT YOU PREFER OR IN WHAT QUANTITY, FOOD MOVES US ALL. YET WHILE WE FACE A PLATE OF IT EVERY FEW HOURS, HOW OFTEN DO WE ASK WHY FOOD TASTES SO GREAT? ALISON MARSHALL CONCOCTS A SOUFFLÉ OF FACTS TO FIND OUT

FOOD

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Eating has come a long way since our hunter-gatherer days of sheer survival, when food was simply a tool to get us to tomorrow. Thankfully, tough meat and rotting berries don’t appear on any 21st century menu. As

a result of science meeting art, many of today’s award-winning chefs are creating taste sensations to make even Willy Wonka look like an amateur.

In today’s world, food is big business. It is no longer enough for a renowned chef to provide a good meal; the educated consumer is demanding a gastronomic experience that is as much a feast for the senses as an unfolding drama played out across the taste buds.

CHEMICAL APPEALPut simply, taste is the perception of a combination of chemical signals on the tongue. When you factor in the other sensory perceptions of touch, sight, smell and sound, taste becomes a whole different sensation — flavour. The crunch of a raw carrot, the savoury aroma of a rich sauce, or the cooling sensation of a frozen sorbet all add up to the memory of a good meal.

Flavour is a fusion of multiple senses when the brain interprets the gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell) stimulants, as well as tactile and thermal sensations. Tongue nerve endings will also register cold, heat and pain as aspects of flavour. This is why menthol is described as cool and spicy food as hot. And why chomping on hot chillies can be potentially dangerous for people with no sense of smell: due to the close linking of these two senses, a lack of smell sometimes leads to a diminished sense of taste.

Sweet, sour, bitter and salty have always been acknowledged as the four different taste sensations. This has been added to as recently as the 1990s with a fifth taste: umami, which is recognised as the savoury flavour of food. To picture, imagine the taste sensation of Parmesan cheese, a good meaty broth or ripe tomatoes. Monosodium glutamate, better known as MSG, added to food also imparts this savoury taste.

Chemical reactions that occur during the cooking process can heighten taste and flavour too, from the charring of a steak on the barbecue, to the crispy exterior of a golden croissant. Known as the Maillard reaction, which is named after scientist Dr Louis-Camille Maillard, browning of food results when amino acids (in proteins) and sugars (in carbohydrates) are heated and interact.

The average human taster has approximately 184 taste buds per square centimetre of tongue, or around 10,000 taste buds in total. Dogs, on the other hand, have less than 2,000 taste buds, and cats, a pitiful 473. Among human beings, the outliers include "supertasters", or people acutely sensitive to taste, who have a whopping 425 taste buds per square centimetre of tongue, and non-tasters, who average just 96.

THE TERM "SWEET TOOTH" IS A BIT MISLEADING, CONSIDERING IT IS THE TASTE BUDS (ABOVE) WHICH DO THE WORK

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THE AVERAGE TASTER HAS AROUND 184 TASTE BUDS

PER SQUARE CENTIMETRE OF TONGUE, OR AROUND 10,000

TASTE BUDS IN TOTAL. DOGS, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAVE

LESS THAN 2,000 TASTE BUDS, AND CATS, A PITIFUL 473

Taste receptors are concentrated on the side and back of the tongue. The centre of our tongue has no taste buds, doubtless a relief to proponents of piercings. Yet the traditional “tongue map”, whereby specific areas were said to detect certain tastes, has now been disproved. Instead, scientists now agree that taste receptors across the entire tongue are able to pick up the five basic tastes.

AGEING TASTELESSLYSeemingly the simplest (and weakest) of the five senses, much less is known about the sense of taste than about hearing or sight. Yet it seems that, like our other senses, taste diminishes with age.

Conversely, exposing children to different foods at an early age will let them experience different taste sensations — even from the time they are in the womb. While as youngsters, we may not enjoy the taste of bitter and spicy foods, with repeated exposure we may grow to like them, or at the very least, not dislike them as much.

Dr Marcia Pelchat from the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in the US state of Pennsylvania, says that though taste buds are important, the connection between the nose and mouth is often underestimated. "When people are eating, they make small movements with their tongue which pushes air up the retronasal pathway," she explains. "Most people aren’t aware of how important the sense of smell is in experiencing flavour."

Pelchat says that if we have a cold and our nose is blocked, we lose the olfactory portion of our ability to taste. As a result, while we might be able to distinguish between sweet, sour or salty, the intricacies of flavour will be lost.

Craving certain foods is often attributed to taste, such as having a “sweet tooth” or liking the mouth-feel of certain foods. Yet Pelchat says that such preferences go much deeper: “Since Neolithic times, we have been calorie-seeking machines,” she notes. “It has been demonstrated in animal studies and in the lab that people want to eat flavours that are associated with calories, in order to live. Which

A chemist at the University of Connecticut, in the United States, has developed an artificial tongue that can

analyse substances and determine taste. The “tongue” is a platinum

electrode coated with polymers to conduct electrical currents, similar

to how a human tongue works. Developers hope it can be used in environmental monitoring, food testing and landmine detection.

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ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND A WILLINGNESS TO TEST THE LIMITS ARE BOTH ASSETS IN THE CREATION OF NEW AND UNUSUAL DISHES; CANADIAN KEVIN CHERKAS HAS BOTH IN ABUNDANCE

57 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE

could explain why children don’t like vegetables — because they have no calories. The vegetables children do like, such as carrots and corn, tend to be calorifically dense. It is all about the survival mechanism.”

MATTERS MOLECULAR If science had been as much fun at school as chemists like Dr Hervé This make it, the world might just be a happier place. One of the leading experts in molecular gastronomy, This, one of France's most famous chemists, and the late Dr Nicholas Kurti, who was previously a professor of physics at Oxford University, in England, created the discipline as recently as 1988.

Broadly speaking, molecular gastronomy refers to matters concerning human nourishment, from the selection of food to the enjoyment of it, and everything in between.

Physics and chemistry have changed the way that many leading chefs cook. From the innovative creations of multiple-Michelin-starred Spanish restaurant El Bulli, to chefs such as Heston Blumenthal from the United Kingdom and Pierre Gagnaire from France, chef-scientist collaborations have almost become the norm. Which in turn allows the industry to pioneer new ways of cooking food, enhance taste, fun and the overall dining experience — to make enjoying food a true theatrical event.

Food science is not new. Papyruses have been found from as early as the 2nd century BC showing how a balance was used to determine whether fermented meat was lighter than fresh. Indeed, the ultimate recipe for meat stock was of as much interest in the 4th century BC as it is today. By the 1980s, scientists were analysing different ingredients to see how the properties and nutrients in food related to the demands of our bodies, and developing methods of processing food on an industrial scale.

As someone who knows his cuisine, This insists there is no formula or scientific test

to determine why food tastes great. “Good food is like art or music, you cannot prove if it is good scientifically. Take the pairing of flavours. Science tells us that foods with at least one odorant (aroma compound) in common can be paired, and those without, cannot. Yet I challenged my friend, renowned chef Pierre Gagnier to pair two foods with no common molecules. He created a dish combining Camembert cheese and raspberries — and it worked. Food pairing is not scientific, it is about inspiration, taking the ideas from science into the kitchen.”

Ultimately though, the human touch rules out over science. “A soufflé has a technical aspect: it will swell if it is done right. If it doesn’t, it’s a failure,” says This. “Technically it may be a success, but if it has too much salt for your taste, it's not right, even though it’s theoretically correct. You wouldn’t ask Mozart to add one violin or use one less when composing a symphony; more or less salt is part of the composition of taste, and to a chef it is instinctive.”

He says our comfort zone over food can make creating something new a challenge. “Sometimes taste is all about changing the rules. If you tell something to the mind, sometimes it accepts it. Breaking rules is not necessarily bad. Everyone’s taste perception is different.”

EGG FOR DESSERTThere was a time when seeing an egg on a plate meant you were getting an egg. When cookery meets science, that is no longer the case. Take the dessert on the menu of Canadian chef Kevin Cherkas, who trained at El Bulli, considered ground central of molecular gastronomy. Dessert at his Singapore restaurant Blu may look like an egg, and have the texture of an egg — but it is in fact coconut cream with a mango purée centre.

Cherkas is of the opinion that if the whole dining experience is memorable, it will

FOOD

DEFINITION OFMOLECULARGASTRONOMYFirst coined in 1988 by Dr Hervé This and Dr Nicholas Kurti, molecular gastronomy is defined as the application of scientific principles in cooking. In a 2006 article on his craft, This wrote that gastronomy “is the chemistry and physics behind the preparation of any dish: for example, why a mayonnaise becomes firm or why a soufflé swells.”

BULLY FOR YOUSadly it is now closed, but in its heyday, this small, three-Michelin-starred restaurant on the coast of Catalonia was described by the Guardian as “the most imaginative generator of haute cuisine on the planet.”

Here are three (of a great many) reasons you wish you could have eaten at El Bulli might include:Notable dish: A fascinating deconstructed take on the Spanish omelette, with each ingredient cooked separately. One part potato foam, one-part onion purée, one part egg white sabayon.Seats only fifty people, but at one point received two million booking requests in a season. Was voted number one restaurant in the world five times within the span of a decade.

THE TASTE TESTBeing a supertaster, or someone with a heightened sense of taste intensity, is down to having an increased number of fungiform papillae. That may sound like a fairly gross dish, but these papillae are actually mushroom-shaped (hence the name fungiform) protrusions on the tongue. Do you want to find out if you’re a supertaster? Just spread a few drops of a brightly coloured food dye on your tongue, which will make it easier for you to identify your papillae — they will remain pink and undyed. If you end up having over 30 of those dots in an area that is roughly the size of your index fingernail, then it is very likely that you are amongst the 25 percent of the population who are supertasters!

IT'S ONLY NATURALNatural and fresh ingredients are the best way to produce great-tasting but healthy dishes. Traditional Chinese herbs are often used to enhance the taste, flavour and even the texture of food, while still providing goodness taken straight from natural resources. For example the Momordica grosvenorii fruit, better known as luo han guo in Mandarin, tastes very sweet. In traditional medicine, the fruit is often used to treat coughs and dissolve phlegm nodules. Another example is the hawthorn berry, or the Crataegus pinnatifida fruit, which is also known as shan zha in Mandarin. Often used to treat abdominal distension and indigestion, it has an extremely sour taste, but is useful if a dish requires a particularly tangy flavour.

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A tablet made from the compressed, freeze-dried so-called miracle berry

(from the plant Synsepalum dulcificum) makes everything taste sweet.

Mberry™, an American product, is made from a naturally growing fruit

that tells the taste buds to temporarily recognise acidic and bitter flavours as sweet, so lemons taste like lemonade,

and vinegar like apple juice.

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and adding flavours never before encountered. Young chefs and chemists that This has spoken to about the idea seem to be taking it on board. "It will make food much more interesting. It is like using a synthesiser to make music. Why make a sound like a violin when you already have one? Make a brand new sound," he says enthusiastically. "Note by note is to cooking what electronics was to music in the 1950s — a brand new idea."

People will need to suspend disbelief, he cautions. “Some people will be sceptical because it is too new and they will not like it. Most people like things they recognise, foods they had when they were young. Most of us eat only what we know. I hope that note-by-note will come into its own.”

As if in challenge, he puts forward a mission for the next generation of food pioneers. “The best chefs in the world will become famous. But they will have to be brave.”

RIGHT: CEVICHE OF SCALLOP AND PRAWN WITH SWEET WATERMELON FROM THE KITCHEN OF KEVIN CHERKAS. THE SWEET WATERMELON BALANCES THE SOUR PICKLED FISH, WHILE COCONUT JELLY WITH ENDIVE ADDS TEXTUREOPPOSITE: SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT CHOCOLATE TASTES GREAT WITH EVERYTHING; MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE A NIBBLE OF CHOCOLATE-DIPPED FISH

FOOD

enhance our memories of the meal’s taste experience, similar to the way our fond memories of childhood dinners are often coloured by their emotional resonance.

“Making food taste more of what it is, the best you have ever had, that is my goal. I used to be super interested in the theatrics, and felt that the most innovative part was presentation. That without presentation, the dish would be mundane or boring,” Cherkas explains. “Now I have changed my philosophy entirely. Flavour is king – food is made to be consumed.”

"First, you take ingredients and look at what you can do to it to improve it," he says as he elaborates. "For example, we take an apple and apply texture. There are 40 or so textures, but how many are worth applying? Slimy is a texture, but it’s not desirable in food."

According to Cherkas, the cooking process must extract the best taste from the ingredients. For instance, to purée a carrot, he suggests juicing it, then combining the pulp with the juice in a certain ratio. Afterwards, he says to place it in a plastic container and microwave it so it steams in its own goodness, in a process similar to blanching. “You’re left with a neon orange purée tasting like the best carrot you have ever tasted, with an unbelievably silky texture. And it is nothing but carrot and salt.”

“You have to be contrary to be exciting,” the culinary wizard notes. “Until the age of 26, I did everything I was told. And I was very good at it, but I never started thinking about who really knew why?” To question culinary traditions, Cherkas went to Spain’s three-Michelin-starred Arzak Restaurant, the three-Michelin-starred El Bulli and the two-Michelin-starred La Broche.

Olfactory stimulants are great contributors to flavour. At Blu, Cherkas uses perfumes of herbs, which smell but do not add to taste, “They are very aromatic and lighten the intensity of the dish. People believe they can taste it because they can smell it.”

NOTE BY NOTEIn the meantime, the latest invention from This combines two of life’s best things — music and food. The idea behind cooking “note by note” is to use chemical compounds to create a meal of the like never tasted before, taking existing flavours to new heights,

“SOMETIMES TASTE IS ALL ABOUT CHANGING THE RULES. IF YOU TELL SOMETHING TO THE MIND, SOMETIMES IT ACCEPTS IT. BREAKING RULES IS NOT NECESSARILY BAD. EVERYONE’S TASTE PERCEPTION IS DIFFERENT”


BREAKING OUTFar removed from the days when it was restricted to children's TV and heart-warming musicals, animation is now big business. Its heroes are A-list actors, and its stories stretch way beyond the confines of holiday children-tamers, into being major blockbuster material. And sometimes, when it is really good, you don’t even know that it’s animated at all. As Luke Clark writes, today’s animated film success stories owe much to an industry in which software developers and artists continually push one another, and the industry, to new heights


ANIMATION

Shut your eyes and imagine an entirely different world, one in which a single storyteller rules the universe. Working for this all-powerful figure is a team of talented creative artists, whose sole objective is to

realise the vision of the storyteller — even if it is a vision that has never been seen before.

These artists are no slaves to a never-ending story; far from it. Whenever they become stuck on a problem that is just too large or thorny, they call on the services of a team of ingenious scientists, who then set to work inventing an all-new technical solution which not only solves the artist’s dilemma, but ultimately helps realise the

storyteller’s vision. If the story turns out to be good, everyone lives happily ever after — at least until the sequel five years later.

Welcome to the world of the animated movie.

INGENIOUS SCIENTISTThe above description may sound fanciful, but as Rob Cook, vice president of software engineering at Pixar Animation Studios explains, when it comes to making an animated motion picture, that is exactly how the process works.

“The story is the leader here,” he tells Discovery Channel Magazine. “The director is the storyteller, and they work on the story, by themselves, in small groups or with story artists or visual artists, for a long time.” One can picture a sign at Pixar’s Emeryville headquarters, in the US state of California, reading: “Quiet: Artists

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at Work”. During this time, as the all-powerful, omnipotent storytellers develop their grand plans, what are ingenious scientists like Cook doing? Put simply, they’re listening at doors.

“We will hear about it early on, and know they’re working on this. And we had better get busy doing research in this particular area. It’s really led by the story, and I think that is part of why this works. Later on, we might say, 'Look, we can’t really quite do that like the way you’d hoped to.' But then, we are compromising a way of interpretation. We don’t let that way of thinking muddle the story.”

Speaking to us before SIGGRAPH Asia, held recently in Hong Kong, Cook explains how the technical team then sets out to challenge the laws of physics, light and storage capacity, in order to solve a problem, and to ultimately help create an entirely new world. Often, he says, the task of the technical team is to first work out the rules of science in this new world.

“The cartoon world is a really different world from the physical world, because animators really exaggerate things. If someone stops, we want the effect of their tie flying. But if you really simulate what happens, the tie will go wrapping around their neck,” he elaborates. “That extra punch to the stopping so quickly gives an emotional feeling, which is great and it makes viewers feel that emotion more deeply. But when we started using physics to do simulation in that world, we had to completely redo how we did the physics.”

As each five-year movie mission grows, the overall team working on it swells progressively — initially small, then to 20-to-50 people, until it may be an army of a few hundred dedicated workers. And what does this team of hundreds, working tirelessly on a half-decade-long project that involves sketches, colour, meetings and software solutions hope for the most? Simple. “A great story.”

“It was my great fortune on the technology side to see the work being put into something that people wanted to watch,” Cook says. “I’ve had a lot of colleagues doing fantastic work, on movies that are kind of embarrassing.”

As head of Pixar’s tools group, Cook’s movies were far from the embarrassing types. Instead, storytellers and artists were producing epics such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. As each new task become bigger, and each creative hurdle became higher, Cook’s team of scientists became more and more adept at problem solving.

“The artists are just trying to tell a story. They ask for things with no regard for whether it's hard or not technically. And then, because we’re too proud to say we can’t do it, we end up scrambling to try and get it done,” he admits.

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONSIndeed, they did get it done. Spanning a career which began in 1981 at Lucasfilm, Cook and his team’s achievements include developing a

piece of software which became synonymous with nearly two decades of special effects film-making excellence. Cook was the co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan software, which, put simply, creates photo-realistic computer images.

Consider for a moment the following list of films, ranging from 1991 to the present day: Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Death Becomes Her, Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Independence Day, What Dreams May Come, The Matrix, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings (LOTR): The Fellowship of the Ring, LOTR: The Two Towers, LOTR: The Return of the King, Spider-Man 2, King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Golden Compass, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Avatar and Inception.

The 19 films listed above won the Visual Effects Academy Award for their year. And every single one was made using RenderMan. Put simply, if academy award-winning animators were Jedis, Rob Cook would be Yoda.

As is so often the case, RenderMan was initially a case of needing a better tool in order to make a movie. “It started in the early days, with mainly me and Loren Carpenter wanting to build a renderer that would hold up to making feature-length movies, with the quality of footage you would need to have to make animation or effects that could blend in seamlessly with live-action footage,” he notes. “And there were many things that we had to invent in order to that.”

In the early 1980s, Cook wrote the RenderMan program. Around the same time, Dr Pat Hanrahan, now a professor at Stanford University in the US state of California, designed a standard to allow one to talk to a renderer, which Cook and his team then configured. “This was at a time when commercial modelling programmes were coming out. That really made it so that everybody knew how to talk to a renderer,” says Cook.

Then suddenly, a grumpy liquid metal police assassin called T-1000 (played by Robert Patrick) and an even scratchier T-Rex caught cinema-goers’ attention worldwide. “In the

THE TECHNICALTEAM THEN SETS OUT TO CHALLENGE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, LIGHT AND STORAGE CAPACITY, IN ORDER TO SOLVE A PROBLEM, AND TO ULTIMATELY HELP CREATE AN ENTIRELY NEW WORLD

RENDERFARM IS WHERE COMPUTER GRAPHICS GO TO BE BROUGHT TO LIFE — AT LEAST AT PIXAR AND LUCASFILMSBELOW: TOY STORY 3, RELEASED IN 2010, BROUGHT WOODY BACK TO HIS ADORING PUBLICBELOW RIGHT: TAKE A NORMAL FACIAL EXPRESSION, EXAGGERATE IT, THEN ANIMATE — TAH DAH!

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Q: Out of Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol, who would get the job

working with you?I can’t go against Picasso, he’s my

favourite. Van Gogh was really brilliant, but he might be a little too crazy to work with. Picasso was not

only brilliant and talented, he also had such a wide range of styles. I would

probably go with Pablo.Rob Cook, vice president of software

engineering at Pixar Animation Studios

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early 1990s, RenderMan was used for Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. And suddenly everybody wanted to use it.”

“It’s all very gratifying,” says Cook. “The computer program I wrote of course was fairly simple. It’s gone on and we have had teams of people improving it; it has gotten much better over the years.”

In 2001, Cook and two of his colleagues received Academy Awards for their contributions to the industry — the first Oscars ever awarded to software developers.

CREATIVE GENIUSThe modest problem-solving developer is the first to admit that he would be nowhere without the creative minds driving the conception of these mythical worlds. “There’s this great collaborative cycle going on,” he tells us. “It’s terrific, and it comes about because there’s enormous respect for what the other can do. I’m in awe of what the artists do, and

I think they’re appreciative of what we do too.”

For animation artist Raymond Zibach, the awe-inspiring process has been about creating ancient worlds, within which animated characters will, quite literally, do battle. As production designer on DreamWorks’ Academy Award-nominated Kung Fu Panda, and more recently Kung Fu Panda 2, Zibach has had the dream job of helping to bring the world of Asian kung fu to life for a cast of animated animals.

For Zibach, the projects became a labour of love, first blending his love of Chinese

ink paintings with the culture of kung fu, and impressive new genre movies such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

“It was such a charming and goofy idea when we first started talking. But we quickly delved deeply into the culture of China and kung fu, and there was this whole other movement of really serious, beautiful, artistically directed film-making happening. And it fit perfectly with animation.”

Zibach enjoyed the freedom that painting within this vastly different cultural context gave him as an artist. “As with Hero and House of Flying Daggers, the colour of a sequence could be really strong. The way the lights are used in computer graphics (CG), we had sequences that were really strongly lit, with a lot of colour. They weren’t trying to be ultra-realistic. So Tai Lung’s escape from the prison [in Kung Fu Panda]became a battle of blue and red. And when Po achieves what he’s been trying to do

with Shifu, we go to a nice golden scene. All those colours meant something emotionally throughout the film.”

The artist agrees that the creative and technical fusion on a successful film is what makes ultimately for the most innovative results. “It shows when you’re done with a film and it looks different, that you are forcing each side to flex a side of their brain they don’t use as often. You are asking the technology guys to push towards a creative solution that they wouldn’t usually do, where they would normally think of a more logical realistic solution. Or the artist to be able to

"BUT WE QUICKLY DELVED DEEPLY INTO THE CULTURE OF CHINA AND KUNG FU, AND THERE WAS THIS WHOLE OTHER MOVEMENT OF REALLY SERIOUS, BEAUTIFUL, ARTISTICALLY DIRECTED FILM-MAKING"

Q: In a fight, if you were to take on one of the Kung Fu Panda characters,

who would you match up with?“(Laughs) Um, Mantis! Because I think his fighting style is just the coolest, and

it’d be the most challenging, because it’d be hard to see him coming, he’s so small. I’d really have to be at the top

of my game. It’d be a close match. I’ve got some pretty decent mandibles… I’d

maybe be able to take him down.” Raymond Zibach, Production Designer,

DreamWorks Animation

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1Story:Tokyo is the first stop in the World Grand Prix where Lighting McQueen, Mater and the Radiator Springs gang experience many new wonders of their global adventure — a kabuki performance, sumo wrestling, the glow of neon on the streets, and the glamorous race kickoff party. It is here that Mater is mistaken for an American secret agent, and is propelled into the world of global espionage. The Tokyo race sequence alone took over 1,400 storyboards to portray the action involved.

2Layout:This frame shows the camera and character staging that precedes animation, known as the layout stage. The set models and dress-ing are still in progress and will be finalised once animation is completed.

4Shading:The character and set shading encompasses the colour, texture and material attributes of every surface, and determines how surfaces will respond to lights. In the world of Cars, graphics play a big role in the shaded scene, especially with the many neon signs in Tokyo.

3Animation:This frame shows the final character animation poses. The primary and secondary characters are keyframe animated. Background cars that populate the road are added procedurally using a crowds software system.

ON THE ROAD:BUILDING THE CARS 2 WORLD

5FinalComp:Virtual lights provide illumination from thousands of light sources such as streetlights, headlights and neon signs. The reflective car bodies and wet street require a computationally intensive technique called Raytracing. Visual details such as lens flare from headlights and coloured fog are added. The final rendered image is computed on a render farm and freed of any visual artifacts.


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explain what they are after. And if there was a realistic way to get there, can you push it so far that it becomes a newer style, and a new way of getting to that style on the technology side?”

He describes how the lighting department on Kung Fu Panda had been accustomed to using its tools for very discreet purposes, and was suddenly asked to produce what appeared to be more like a theatrical stage play, with extremely controlled lighting. “Usually I start with a very rough concept board painting. And I say, ‘Well, I want to have this guy to be hit with red light, and everything else is like, pure blue.’ And

then the lighter says, ‘But those two colours are going to mix at some point and you’re going to get purple.’ And I would say, ‘Well, I don’t want purple.’ And they’d say, ‘Well we’re going to go away and mess around with that.’ And they had to go through their bag of tricks, and come up with almost a new method.”

He says sometimes the ideal solution came when he just painted directly over what the developer had shown him, creating a back-and-forth dynamic that soon resulted in a solution. “What’s great about CG is when those things happen, you get people pushing past what they are used to.

I think that is when everybody is rewarded at the end. They say, ‘Wow I’ve got a whole new tool in my toolbox.’”

Zibach is quick to caution however that the story must take precedent over the whims and fancies of the artists. “You have to constantly be designing and coordinating art so that it is always enhancing the story, always servicing the story.”

Even so, the artist can also enrich the story process, he notes. Having studied China so closely for his sets on Kung Fu Panda, Zibach started to understand the deeper philosophy and symbolism that was at the core of the culture.

“I would do presentations about what the dragon meant in China. And those things were kind of eye-opening to the storytellers. They thought of the dragon as a Western symbol, and in Asia it’s completely different. That ended up effecting a whole storyline. As a designer, that was great,” he says. “I think that is when you know you are really doing the right job.”

CROWD CONTROLAside from setting the scene, technicians on animated movies are also involved in populating them in ways once thought

Q: Which of the characters in Carsis most like you, and why?

“Interesting question. I’ll go with Guido, the Italian forklift from Radia-

tor Springs. He’s a builder, repairing cars in record speed; an artist, creating

a leaning tower of tires. But also a perfectionist, obsessing a bit too much that each tire is in the right place. His language is also gibberish to friends other than Luigi, which I feel some-

times happens to me when I break into too much technical jargon.”

Paul Kanyuk, lead technical directorfor Pixar Animation Studios

RIGHT: TOY STORY 3 WAS THE HIGHEST-GROSSING ANIMATED

FILM OF 2010, WORLDWIDE. WELL DONE TEAM!

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unimaginable for animation. For Paul Kanyuk, lead technical director for Pixar Animation Studios, that meant creating living, breathing (well sort of) animated crowds, either for

crowd scenes in the movie Cars, or for an infestation of vermin in Ratatouille.

“Crowd simulation may be thought of as artificial intelligence for film,” says

Kanyuk. “With standard 3D animation tools, it may take more than a week for a skilled animator to create just one second of motion for a single character in a quality film. A crowd of thousands would mean years of work.”

Crowd simulation is thus the “bag of tricks” the technician uses to achieve the same quality over less time, with many characters in a shot.

“Many such tricks cleverly create variation by reusing a small set of motions on a larger set of characters.” It gets interesting, he says, when the crowd is directed to swarm, flee or just mill around. “In these

cases we often use techniques from artificial intelligence, and create brains, or small programs that each character runs.” Each brain animates a character based on information it perceives from its virtual environment, such as the slope of the ground, or where its neighbours are.

“We create little robot actors that do our bidding. Controlling them is the fun and challenging part. For the film Ratatouille, we had a good many shots where a large pack of rats ran and scurried as a group. To this end we created a ‘rat locomotion brain’ that instructed our crowd characters on how to move

"IT’S PROBABLY NO COINCIDENCE THAT BOTH PIXAR AND DREAMWORKS CREATED FILMS ABOUT INSECTS BEFORE FURRIER CHARACTERS WERE INTRODUCED. HAIR WAS HARD, BUGS WERE CHEAP"


When you started out on the first movie, what was the most difficult part of the Kung Fu Panda design process for you?For me the hardest part and the challenge was, what world made sense to the film? That was not easy. An all-animal cast in China. Do these animals make their own buildings? Do we use Chinese architecture? After we put a couple of images together using traditional Chinese architecture, then put our characters in front of it, the fit was really great. That’s when we said, 'We have something really special.' Then I started getting deep into the culture, and looking at the symbolism of what is actually painted on the architecture, and trying to stay true to what’s there, without copying it.

From a non-artist point of view, the films certainly do look different from a lot of animated films on the market. But what in technical, art terms was different and unique?There was a big focus on how the matte paintings integrated into the computer graphic (CG) sets. We almost didn’t want it to integrate at times: we were okay with them looking like paintings. And I think that is pretty important. As soon as you try to integrate the matte paintings too much, the scene becomes so realistic that it doesn’t look like art any more.

ENTERTHE DRAGON

trying to make sure everybody else working on the film would feel the same way.

After all the development and research work you had done, what was it like when you finally got such strong feedback from the Asia-based fans of the Panda movies?The feedback we got was stunning. During the tour, you felt like you were a rock star. Everybody you bumped into said they’d seen it in the theatre more than once, and were so excited to meet people that had worked on it. Then the other feedback that we were getting — the Chinese people were stunned that they didn’t make the film. That was the highest compliment you could get: they couldn’t find anything in there that they wouldn’t have loved to have done themselves. That was crazy.

From a career point of view, do you have any personal advice for budding young students, on how to go from a CG artist say, to an animator? Look at the studios and what they’re doing. And hopefully what they’re doing is what you want to do too, so when you get there it’s going to be a good fit. If it’s not all about the money, if it’s about the project and what’s going on, then you’re going to excel and grow, and it’s going to be natural for you.

Sometimes people jam themselves into a situation they don’t fit into. Finding the right project and right studio is pretty important. What I love about animation is, as long as you’re willing to learn and look at this thing as if you’re still a student, you’re always going to be happy, and learning. Animation as a field is always willing to teach, because we need everybody to grow and to further what we do. We’re constantly looking for people who are young and still students. That’s what I love about this industry; it stays young because of that.

RAYMOND ZIBACH, PRODUCTION DESIGNER, DREAMWORKS ANIMATION, TALKS ABOUT UNCOVERING THE WORLD OF CHINESE ART, AND THE THRILL HE GOT AT SHARING KUNG FU PANDA WITH ITS ASIAN FANS

Are there specific technologies you still go “wow” at, that you work with everyday, or around? We’re developing new stuff right now, but I don’t know if I can talk about it (laughs).

How about giving us a preview without being too specific?Well we’re combining a world of hand-drawn shadows with CG characters. If you know anything about a pipeline, to incorporate hand-drawn art into a CG 3D-viewable scene, that’s a pretty big accomplishment. And that’s what I love about this medium; sometimes you’ll come up with an idea, and a whole string of technological advancements have to be figured out for you to be able to create that as a film.

What in your opinion is the next big thing in animation art?For me, pushing the style and the art of an animation film is why I’m in this business. It’s an ever-changing canvas. That’s the juice of the whole thing.

And it’s also key for success, because with so much product coming out, the best way, I think, to stand out is to actually do something different. I think the studios are realising that too.

At the same time it’s not cheap, because you have to be develop new ways of thinking and new technology. But that is a big focus at DreamWorks.

Tell me briefly about your trip to China, with director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, researching Kung Fu Panda 2We had been admiring China from afar for about five years, and we knew what story we wanted to tell for the second film. Qingchengshan, the mountain, to me that was a real surprise, and had a lot of impact. Getting to see and touch baby pandas. We bought back like 12,000 photos. So much of the first film was designed from reference, now it was about almost the feelings we had that we used for inspiration. When you got back you were

ABOVE: JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE, A SWARM OF RATS IN THE RESTAURANT'S KITCHEN CAUSED PANIC — THOUGH IN RATATOUILLE, IT WAS HARD TO TELL IF THE HUMANS OR THE RATS WERE MORE FRIGHTENED

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as a pack,” he explains. “This involved creating rules — run left if another rat is close to your right, and vice versa. Or run faster if the rest of the pack is ahead.”

Which is all well and good, but if the brain follows rules perfectly, the characters look too polite; whereas rats are anything but. “Rats get into each other’s personal space. They dart around, sometimes seemingly without motivation. As such, we coded these tendencies into the brain using some intentional randomness, and tuned our parameters until our virtual rodents looked suitably ratty.”

Having worked on both Ratatouille and Wall-E, films with a greater range of poetic content and emotional potency than previously explored on fully animated films, Kanyuk believes directors on an animated film are now more confident that the technical side of the equation is up to telling deeper stories.

“Animators were once constrained a lot more by the limits of technology, especially in the early days of computer graphics. It's probably no coincidence that both Pixar and DreamWorks created films about insects before furrier characters were introduced. Hair was hard, bugs were cheap,” he says. “There are still plenty of challenges in modern computer graphics, but with the advance of our expertise and technology, animators are far less constrained by technical limitations than in the past.”

While Kanyuk says collaboration between technical and artistic staff is a given at Pixar, there is still a price to pay — from those who foot the bill. “Our software engineers and technical directors pride themselves on being able to create any effect or any tool, and the art department does not let them down. It’s the poor producers that have to keep the costs under control,” he notes.

He believes having members of both technical and artistic teams working with the director is the best way for each film, and for the industry, to move forward. “I can attest to the enjoyment of this collaboration, especially in crowd simulation. I usually work with an animator as we watch roughly sketched storyboards to interpret what kind of crowds will be in the film, and plan how to best realise them. We work together shot by shot, planning what motions will be needed and how to create enough variation,” he says.

“I’ve learned a tremendous amount about traditional animation and what techniques are used to really bring charters alive,” says Kanyuk. “In return, I hope I’ve taught the animators a bit about the geekier topics of rendering and physics that help make our images more realistic. Seriously, it’s a fun collaboration.”

Our sincere thanks to SIGGRAPH Asia for its generous assistance with the interviews and images: www.siggraph.org/asia2011

ANIMATION


THENEWREALITYIt is not just cartoon characters that are inhabiting exciting new universes. In the area of reality-based movies, animation is also helping to redefine the rules of the possible and impossible. Luke Clark spoke with one of the technical magicians helping to remake reality

While the world of enlivened toys, rats and pandas is a compelling

one, equally brain-bending in terms of the way we perceive our world is the work that animators now do in replicating the real world — then bending it into a new and improved one.

A specialist in exactly this type of work is Dr Paul Debevec, associate director of graphics research at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, in the US state of California, and a research associate professor in the computer science department of the university's Viterbi School of Engineering.

Debevec's career was kick-started in 1996, when in his doctorate thesis he presented an image-based modelling and rendering system, called Façade, for creating photo-real architectural models from photographs. His techniques were used to create virtual backgrounds for "bullet-time" shots in a new science fiction epic. “The Matrix was a very successful merging of the story that needed to be told, and the technology that was just beginning to become available. It's about being in a simulated world, where the rules can be tweaked.”

“The techniques I had been developing had digitised the real world from photographs, to create this ‘virtual mirror’ world. It looked very similar, but gave you these sort of superhuman abilities to move the camera anywhere that you wanted. This meshed well with the visual effects supervisor's goal, to 'digitise reality, and then bend it to your whim,'" he says.

Having his technology in one of the coolest movies of the 1990s was a big break. "It is a really great thing to have had even a small part of," he tells DCM. "Sometimes you get lucky."

Bending reality has practical applications in everything, from architectural design all the way to historic recreations. “It’s very much like creating this Matrix world of reality, where if you use your mental powers, you can make the

world anything you want it to be. It is an incredibly powerful role for a storyteller.”

The movie Inception would never have been possible without such freedoms. Some of its most memorable scenes were the product of visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin’s company, Double Negative. “His company took these very interesting ideas that [director] Christopher Nolan had dreamed up — and made Paris fold in on itself,” he says.

Debevec worked on one of the recent breakthroughs of reality-based animation, leading the development of a series of light stage devices for digitising the shape and appearance of human faces. For his efforts, he received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in 2010, along with three of his peers.

Such techniques helped him bring to life characters in James Cameron's Avatar, which features several fully-digitised characters. “We did some very high resolution face scans of the actors, to give to the special effects artists at [Peter Jackson’s] Weta Digital to create the Navi,” he says. “A video of the real actors was used to derive the digital characters. The more these faces have in common, the better for getting that performance to read through correctly.”

Getting human faces right has long been a challenge, given the sheer complexity of the fine movements in a face. Judging by Avatar or Steven Spielberg's Tintin, the process approaches perfection. “The technology has improved: we’re using video of the actor’s faces, not just the trajectory of dots applied to the faces, as the input data. So we actually see what the [actor's] eyes are doing.”

Some hilarious results came from facial modelling left unchecked. “If you programme it wrong, you could actually have the eyes fly right out of the head.”

One irony of technology is that it sometimes allows a storyteller too many possibilities. If a director hasn’t thought through the process early, the result can be a real mess.

"In a world where anything is possible, you don’t have the same things forcing you to create a good film," he notes. "That’s one of the biggest changes, and will require a different kind of director."

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COVER STORY

TOP: IN INCEPTION, THE LAWS OF PHYSICS WERE SUBJECT TO

THE WILL OF THE ARCHITECTBELOW, LEFT TO RIGHT:

IN THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN AND AVATAR, THE

LINE BETWEEN REALITY AND ANIMATION IS A BLURRY ONE


HOW THINGS WORK

We were going to pick something a little more technical for this issue’s How Things Work segment, but as we were checking out our reflection in the bathroom (we’re very vain, you see), it struck us that we have no clue how a mirror functions. Perhaps you are snorting in contempt at our ignorance. “Come on, DCM! Mirrors are simple! They reflect because they are made of… shiny… reflection… stuff.”

See? Mirrors are so incredibly ubiquitous that we grow up never really wondering how they do what they do. Time to reflect.

Ancient mirrors were incredibly simple. Before the discovery of glass, they were made of reflective materials such as obsidian, bronze or copper, painstakingly polished to a sheen. Simple and primitive,

they offered a distorted, fairly unclear reflection. As such, they were used mainly for show; they were also costly and hence were indications of prestige and wealth.

Then came the craftsmen of Venice, who were masters at working with glass. By 1291, they perfected the technique of blowing and rolling smooth, unblemished glass sheets. Coating such pieces of polished plate glass with a solution of tin and mercury, they were able to create an object capable of accurately reflecting the world. So prized was the secret of mirror manufacture that artisans were granted special privileges by the government, and were even able to marry the daughters of nobles. But there are two sides to the story: the Venetian state would also

execute (some people say assassinate) any craftsmen who attempted to reveal their methods to other countries.

Centuries later, in 1835, a German scientist named Justus von Liebig invented a chemical process called silvering, which more effectively coated a glass surface in silver nitrate. Soon, mirrors were no longer exclusively available only to the wealthy set.

What about the science behind mirrors? Put simply, it works like this: rays of light photons hit the mirror, travelling through the transparent glass. Once they hit the reflective metallic coating behind it though, the light rays bounce back. The reason silver nitrate is such an effective reflector is that it gives off almost as many photons that fall on it in the first place.

MIRRORSWe look at them on a daily basis, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know about mirrors. It’s time to follow the white rabbit and step through the looking glass

CHECK IT OUTCops and Robbers: The glass in a two-way mirror is coated with a very thin layer of reflective material, so some light can pass through. When viewed from a bright area (the interrogation room), the mirror is reflective. When seen from the other darkened area, it is transparent.

Convex Clowns: Funfair mirrors, which can turn your reflection into a grotesque distortion, work because the material itself is distorted. Such mirrors create a virtual image by refracting light, bouncing the light back at an angle, rather than simply reflecting it.

Not Just for Light: During World War I, several sound mirrors were built along the English coast. Cast in concrete, the massive curved structures amplified sound, able to swell the sound of slow-moving enemy airplanes long before they could be seen.

Back to Front: Backwards or “mirror” writing is so difficult that only one in 6,500 people can do it. One such genius was Leonardo da Vinci, who kept his notes in mirror writing, possibly to hide the meaning from prying eyes or keep the ink from smudging (he was left-handed).

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discovery channel magazine - january 2012

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