We are now closing to the second milestone in IMPACT_POLAND (2.0) a unique, author’s startup Acceleration Program, developed by FundingBox Accelerator Sp. z o.o. The aim of the program is to accelerate development and to support innovative, creative micro and small entrepreneurs. Also to check their potential with the use of infrastructure, experience and resources of technology recipients (large and medium-sized enterprises).
Acceleration Program for startups #SmartCity / #IIoT / #AR / #AI & others
After months of hard work, we are pleased to announce that we have finally released the beta version of our VFX demo platform where you can try out our state-of-the-art, AI-based VFX tools. All modules were created in cooperation with worldwide VFX companies in order to assure the best quality and usefulness for anyone dealing with video post production. To check our platform you need to visit our website at vfx.comixify.ai and apply for a free demo account. Afterwards, you will get access to all currently available modules which are: Style Transfer, Rotoscoping and Super Slow Motion. You will also get full access to all the future tools that we are about to add soon like Super Resolution. Knowing the general concept, let’s dive into the details!
Last year Amazon Prime released a new animated series called “Undone”. TV series that was entirely created through rotoscope animation. You might be familiar with this technique if you’ve watched movies like “A Scanner Darkly” and “Waking Life.” A similar technique was also used in the “Take On Me” video by A-ha. In “Undone”, all the animation was created by Amsterdam-based animation studio “Submarine”. A Team of talented painters and artists from all over the World was engaged to create the final, magnificent effect. What is more, the actual rotoscoping, led by co-producer Craig Staggs, was performed by the super experienced team responsible among others for “A Scanner Darkly”. Nevertheless, the whole process is very time consuming and requires lots of manual labour. What if there would be a technology capable of reducing this handwork by 95%, leaving only the hardest and most interesting parts of it to the artist?
In a few recent years we observed outstanding progress in the Deep Learning area. The number of research papers regarding Deep Learning published on arxiv.org each year grows exponentially what can be seen in the figure below. This would not have been possible without a similar increase in computing power of modern GPUs that are crucial to train all state-of-the art AI models. Particularly interesting from the VFX industry perspective is the possibility of using AI in Computer Vision and a significant number of visual effects problems that can be solved. One could venture that we are witnessing a transformation that has not been seen since the CGI revolution.
Interview with Beata Kowalczyk English teacher in the Lycée Français de Varsovie René Gościnny.
First of all allow me to congratulate you on your award! Can you tell us more about yourself, about your pupils and about the competition?
Sure! My name is Beata Kowalczyk and I am the English teacher in the French High School in Warsaw, Lycée Français de Varsovie René Gościnny. It is our third participation in the video competition entitled “Je Filme le métier qui me Plaît”, i.e. “I make a film about a job I like”. The competition consists in making a video of 3 minutes about a job that seems interesting to students. The aim of the film competition is to facilitate young students the choice of their future professional career and discover the advantages and drawbacks of many jobs.
Having made films about a teacher for deaf children in Warsaw, a volunteer to help Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and a deer breeder in Mazovia region, we decided to search for an innovative job.
I have been in the visual effects and technology space since college, which means that I’ve been doing it for 25 years at this point. Big picture my motivation comes down to a general fascination in applying science while creating popular art. More recently, we’ve been focusing on various ways of recreating digital versions of our world. It was about 10 years ago that I started ZERO VFX. It felt like a natural progression for me – you start learning the industry and technologies, then you start being able to look forward and see where everything is headed (or so you think). That’s the transition point of becoming primarily an entrepreneur versus a visual effects producer. Plus, spinning off a tech company which I sold to Google was a helping hand in this direction.
Artificial Intelligence here artificial intelligence there… Nowadays it is very easy to write that a project or technology is supported by AI. However, it is much more difficult to prove such a claim.
After years of work and development of our algorithms, when we were ready to show our AI capabilities, we decided to create a portal that clearly indicates our actual use of artificial intelligence in practice. To make it eye candy, we decided to give Internet users a website that transforms movies and photos into comics.
The base idea is simple, the user, who has access to the web browser on mobile or computer selects photos or videos through it and uploads them via our platform. Then our artificial intelligence watches & evaluates the material.
AI watches -> evaluates-> choosing the best frames -> changes the style of best-selected frames. This is how a single comic page is generated.
