bob-sabiston
Latest
GDC08: Hands-on Inchworm
Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software behind A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly wanted to draw and animate on his DS. So he wrote his own application, Inchworm. He says, "[It was] sort of a passion project, something we really want to see on the DS." In between his GDC meetings to find a publisher, I sketched through the latest build of the tool.Even though Inchworm is closer to Painter than Mario Paint, it's still fun for dabbling. Artists use the stylus to scribble out stills or cels. Top-tier tools that I'd expect in Photoshop even filter down to this level, including layers, opacity settings, alpha channels, selections, and onion-skin animations. Sabiston also intends to add smear brushes to blend paints and sound effects for animations.
Nintendo DS bots in full force
What? You still only play video games on your NDS? It's time to look and learn from these restless DS owners who've promoted their trusty handhelds to robots on a mission. Natrium 42's homebrew kit is an open robot platform that lets you control your RoboDS (pictured right) with an NDS WiFi connection through a web browser interface. You can add a wireless camera to use it for remote spy tactics or strap on a laser pointer to burn enemies' corneas play mean-spirited red dot target jokes on your friends. On a lighter note, Bob Sabiston's bot takes a more poetic route and makes up for those art skills you never had. Sabiston, a professional programmer and engineer, got Nintendo to send him a DS software development kit which allowed him to pump out a sweet painting and animation app to make his DS bot a visual virtuoso (example pictured left). Hopefully with more bot-mods to come, the DS is really blossoming from what we know and love into the task droid we've always wanted.[Via DS Fanboy]Read - Bob Sabiston's artiste botRead - Natrium 42's RoboDS
