Mark, an award winning artist, has developed systems and techniques for animation in many different media including laser light (LaserMedia, 1980), television, games (Acclaim Entertainment, 1993) and feature films, that allowed him to work as an artist, supervisor and director. Recruited by DreamWorks SKG (1995), he worked on visual effects for a number of their fully animated films. At Rhythm and Hues Studios (2002) he worked on visual effects for numerous award winning live-action films. Recruited to join NTU/ADM (2005) as founding faculty, he has taught and mentored numerous students who have gone on to become award winning entrepreneurs. He was granted major funding from the National Research Foundation / Media Development Authority (2008) for research, the capstone of which is an award winning film, [Vengeance+Vengeance]. His exploration of Transmedia is the animated short film “The Adventures of Barty and the Pirate” and an accompanying mobile game “Barty Run“.
Presentation: Virtual Representation & Pseudo-Intelligence in Virtual Characterization
Animation technologies are used to portray virtual characters as intelligent agents and made to convey data in a conversational manner for many different applications. Current uses of virtual characters include non-player agents in games to online agents helping the user with a friendly design and a functional and operational utility. Other applications include artistic explorations of agency and representation. Teacher avatars are being used to provide simple course instruction. They are also being used as student avatars presenting to teachers models of student behavior for supervised teacher instruction. Our research attempts to use these animated teacher avatars along with annotated video as learning companions in the instruction of language arts.
