To view the IMDB profile of this movie, Click HERE

The movie whose visual effects impressed me the most, is the one, I set about writing, for this month. If you are going to search for the movie I am talking about in Google, try this,

“hobbits, elves, men, dwarves and wizards”.
No, that wouldn’t work. Could you please add a
“-Peter Jackson”
 to the query, please.

Yes, the Lord of Rings. Not the much celeberated and hyped Peter Jackson’s franchise that if you aren’t aware of, you were probably in some sort of a coma for the last eight years, but a lesser known animated adaptation by an Isreal-based American Director some thirty years ago, at a time when Peter Jackson was just a nerdy teenager half-way into his first Tolkien book.

Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings (1978) was the first entirely rotoscoped animated feature.

Filmed with live actors in black-and-white and rotoscoped, each animation cel drawn over a film frame of an actor.

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years.

The chief advantage with rotoscoping is, as the rendered output, is in a semi-animated format, the live-action footage that is used, could be anything (as long as it’s  copyrighted) Bakshi, therefore, used battle footage from Aleksandr Nevskiy (1938) for some rotoscoped animation scenes.

Also, rotoscoping embraced the realistic look that live-action provides. Compromises on acting talent could also be made, and this considerably brings down the film-budget, at least in today’s times and surprisingly, it was no different in 1978. The focus therefore, was in the voices, like any animated film, and Bakshi had roped in, John Hurt, Peter Woodthorpe and William Squire for the film.

Publicity for the film announced that Bakshi had created ‘the first movie painting’ by utilizing ‘an entirely new technique in filmmaking.’

‘ The rotoscope in the past has been used in scenes and then exaggerated. The action becomes cartoony. The question then comes up that if you're not going to be cartoony, why animate? It is the traditional method of rotoscoping but the approach is untraditional.’
—Ralph Bakshi

For the live-action portion of the production, Bakshi and his cast and crew went to Spain, where the rotoscope models acted out their parts in costume.

The actions of Bilbo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee served as the performance model for Frodo Baggins Although some cel animation was produced and shot for the film, very little of it appears in the final film. Most of the film's crowd and battle scenes use a different technique, in which live-action footage is posterized to produce a more three-dimensional look. In a few shots the two techniques are combined.

" Of course, a big problem was controlling the artists so they drew alike. How do you have 600 people draw one character alike? The tendency is to want to let the artist have some freedom but then someone would leave off a hat or horn on a hat on a character. I think we've achieved real illustration as opposed to cartoons. Artistically, we can do anything we want."
—Ralph Bakshi

Following the live-action shoot, each frame of the live footage was printed out, and placed behind an animation cel. The details of each frame were copied and painted onto the cel. Both the live-action and animated sequences were storyboarded.

"Making two pictures [the live action reference and the actual animated feature.] in two years is crazy. Most directors when they finish editing, they are finished; we were just starting. I got more than I expected. The crew is young. The crew loves it. If the crew loves it, it's usually a great sign. They aren't older animators trying to snow me for jobs next year."

A few scenes from the movie :

The Beginning of the Movie	Gandalf Meets Saruman	A Shire Song

Film for next issue : The Fellowship of The Ring

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               Prof Ben Leong is an Assistant professor at the NUS School of Computing. He obtained his PhD from MIT in the field of computer networking. In his PhD work, Prof Ben Leong developed new geographic routing algorithms for wireless networks. To further develop these algorithms, he is currently in the process of deploying a new multi-radio wireless mesh testbed.   

               Another project that Prof Ben Leong is working on is the Hydra Project. The aim of the project is to develop a new programming model for peer-to-peer applications. Presently most networked games, like Starcraft and Warcraft, are built on a server-client architecture. With this approach, the server needs to be running all the time. If the server fails, everything fails. In the peer-to-peer approach, one of the clients acts as a server and hosts the game; when it fails, another client will seamlessly take over. It is complex to automate this task. The aim of this project is to develop a methodology for application developers to be able to write such programs without having to worry about the complexities associated with node failures.  

               Another common application of the peer-to-peer architecture is in large file transfers. The Intelligent Nation 2015 (IN2015) program will eventually provide local households with gigabit-level access bandwidth. While users will then be expected to experience significantly higher download bandwidths, the reality is not so simple. It is expected that a significant load would then be shifted to the servers, and the servers would then become the bottleneck. In order to fully exploit the new available bandwidth, a peer-to-peer approach is likely to be the solution. While peer-to-peer file transfer algorithms like BitTorrent are relatively commonplace, such algorithms are designed for file sharing and not optimized for high-bandwidth file distribution. Prof Ben Leong and his team are currently studying BitTorrent and related algorithms in order to develop better peer-to-peer algorithms for high-bandwidth file distribution.

               In addition to his research work, Prof Ben Leong is teaching two modules in this academic year, CS1101S (Programming Methodology (Scheme)) and CS3216 (Software Development on Evolving Platforms). Scheme is employed in CS1101S to teach the fundamentals of programming.  It is a functional language unlike Java and C/C++ which are object-oriented languages. In CS3216, students will learn to create Internet applications on the latest social networking platforms. For last semester, the target platform is Facebook. For future semesters, new platforms like Adobe Air might be introduced.

               For students who are interested in doing research in networking, Prof Ben Leong suggests that they take up the module CS5229 (Advanced Networking). Good programming skills are also an important pre-requisite.

Next Issue's Interview : Wendy Hall (President of ACM)

*****

               With Google Notebook, you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that's accessible from any computer. Planning a trip? Researching a product? Just add clippings to your notebook. You won't ever have to leave your browser window.

                Just sign in to the Google Notebook homepage with your Google Accounts username and password, then download the Google Notebook browser extension (if you haven't already). As soon as you restart your browser, you'll see a Google Notebook icon in the bottom-right corner of your browser window. Click on this icon to open your mini Google Notebook, where you can save all the clips of content you want.

               While the mini Google Notebook allows you to save clips of information without leaving the webpage you're on, you can organize and review your notebooks most easily in the full-page view. To access the full-page view, just click on the Open in full page link in your mini Google Notebook, or log in directly at www.google.com/notebook. If you are using the Firefox browser, you can also pop out the mini notebook, using the arrow icon in the title bar. This enables you to view and edit your notebooks in a movable and re-sizable window, without having to go to the full-page view.

               In the full-page view, you can organize your web clippings and bookmarks, add your own notes and comments, and search over all your notebook content. You can also share your notebooks with others by inviting them to collaborate with you or by publishing your notebooks to the web.

               Downloading a browser extension enables you to use the mini Google Notebook. The mini Google Notebook allows you to clip information from the web without ever leaving the page you're on. You'll never again need to toggle between windows, or copy and paste info from your browser window to another application.

               It is tools like these that make Google so popular...keep posted to Shiv’s Corner for more gems of innovation that make our life so much simpler.

(To download Google Notebook, CLICK HERE. Note : Google Notebook works only with Internet Explorer and Firefox)

*****

Florida Atlantic University researchers Avinash Srinivasan, Feng Li, and Jie Wu have developed the Probabilistic Voting-based Filtering Scheme (PVFS), which they say can protect and help improve the viability of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). WSNs are vulnerable to two types of cyber sabotage, according to the International Journal of Security and Networks. The first is the fabricated report with false votes attack that sends phony data to the base stations with a forged validation. The second type of attack adds false validation votes to genuine incoming data, which labels genuine data as being false. Most WSN systems have built-in software to prevent false data from being given valid credentials, but the second type of attack is more difficult to detect. The researchers say the PVFS can counter both of these attacks simultaneously. To learn more click HERE

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed two experimental ad hoc wireless networks that instruct emergency workers how to deploy transmitters to ensure a good signal. The NIST prototypes, which have been under development for more than three years, use algorithms to monitor the signal-to-noise ratio of transmissions and automatically warn when a new node should be deployed. NIST's Nader Moayeri says the prototypes aim to avoid fixed rules because situations change depending on the area. The methods also need to be adaptable because deploying too many nodes can lead to excessive costs and communication delays. To read more on this article click HERE

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