Japanimation? Lojbanimation!
May. 12th, 2006 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldEvery time I go to a convention, there is usually an anime room. Sitting in there watching the otaku enjoy subtitled animation from Japan, I am impressed by how powerfully this medium spreads a foreign language through other cultures. I think back to the anime conventions I've visited and consider the classes on Japanese that they teach there! An entire subculture exists online, called "fansubbing", for amateur hobbyists to translate Japanese culture into English and other languages before it is officially released.
For another example, audiences hear Klingon spoken with subtitles in Star Trek, or Quenya spoken with subtitles in The Lord of the Rings, and are captivated by the setting that language creates. Not only could Lojban gain the speakers that it needs by using this effect, we'll have fun creating a film!
Animation once required prohibitive amounts of time and money. But with the advent of machinima, that's no longer true, if you're willing to settle for relatively crude computer animation. Machinima is a technique for recording a video game while you control it with a joystick or mouse, and then dubbing your own voices onto the action. It's as if the video game characters were being used as puppets.
There now exist programs which exist for nothing but machinima. "The Movies" lets you choose characters, props and backgrounds which you can puppeteer to create your own film. Online virtual worlds such as "Second Life" and "There", while they are used for far more than machinima, are so customizable that they now serve as ideal platforms for it. Google SketchUp is an incredibly easy 3D modeling program that I have learned how to operate. It can be used to create avatars, props, sets and other models to be imported into machinima software.
Hence I imagined Lojban's answer to Japanimation: "Lojbanimation" or {lojbo skina}. An ideal source material would be a short story rather than a novel. In it, the characters should have some reason to speak an artificial language, rather than have English speakers inexplicably speaking Lojban instead. Another ideal aspect would be a story released under a Creative Commons license that allows free copying and derivative works.
I know of no work that meets all these criteria unless we write one ourselves. The best candidate I know of is "Fossil Games" by Tom Purdom, although it's fully copyrighted. The characters live so long that they learn several artificial languages, so it would be a minor alteration to change the story to have them speak Lojban all the time. The sets are easy to build because they're all either indoors or in an empty Mars-like desert. The story has fascinating political drama, hard science, eye-catching characters, and robot combat. It has a crunchy technological coating and a chewy philosophical center which would pull a viewer into the Lojban mystique and culture.
Much of the work could be distributed among multiple people who become excited about this project. It would require:
1: finding or writing a story.
2: converting it into a screenplay format with dialog and voiceovers.
3: drawing storyboards.
4: translating the script into Lojban.
5: modeling the characters, props and sets in 3D.
6: if we decide to use Second Life, probably purchasing land and paying to put the models in it.
7: puppeteering and recording the models in machinima software such as Second Life.
8: recording our voices acting the Lojban script.
9: editing it all together with music and English subtitles.
10: posting it to Youtube and Google Video.
11: submitting the link to my friend Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.net who will probably blog the $#14 out of it.
12: welcoming the influx of newbies.
For another example, audiences hear Klingon spoken with subtitles in Star Trek, or Quenya spoken with subtitles in The Lord of the Rings, and are captivated by the setting that language creates. Not only could Lojban gain the speakers that it needs by using this effect, we'll have fun creating a film!
Animation once required prohibitive amounts of time and money. But with the advent of machinima, that's no longer true, if you're willing to settle for relatively crude computer animation. Machinima is a technique for recording a video game while you control it with a joystick or mouse, and then dubbing your own voices onto the action. It's as if the video game characters were being used as puppets.
There now exist programs which exist for nothing but machinima. "The Movies" lets you choose characters, props and backgrounds which you can puppeteer to create your own film. Online virtual worlds such as "Second Life" and "There", while they are used for far more than machinima, are so customizable that they now serve as ideal platforms for it. Google SketchUp is an incredibly easy 3D modeling program that I have learned how to operate. It can be used to create avatars, props, sets and other models to be imported into machinima software.
Hence I imagined Lojban's answer to Japanimation: "Lojbanimation" or {lojbo skina}. An ideal source material would be a short story rather than a novel. In it, the characters should have some reason to speak an artificial language, rather than have English speakers inexplicably speaking Lojban instead. Another ideal aspect would be a story released under a Creative Commons license that allows free copying and derivative works.
I know of no work that meets all these criteria unless we write one ourselves. The best candidate I know of is "Fossil Games" by Tom Purdom, although it's fully copyrighted. The characters live so long that they learn several artificial languages, so it would be a minor alteration to change the story to have them speak Lojban all the time. The sets are easy to build because they're all either indoors or in an empty Mars-like desert. The story has fascinating political drama, hard science, eye-catching characters, and robot combat. It has a crunchy technological coating and a chewy philosophical center which would pull a viewer into the Lojban mystique and culture.
Much of the work could be distributed among multiple people who become excited about this project. It would require:
1: finding or writing a story.
2: converting it into a screenplay format with dialog and voiceovers.
3: drawing storyboards.
4: translating the script into Lojban.
5: modeling the characters, props and sets in 3D.
6: if we decide to use Second Life, probably purchasing land and paying to put the models in it.
7: puppeteering and recording the models in machinima software such as Second Life.
8: recording our voices acting the Lojban script.
9: editing it all together with music and English subtitles.
10: posting it to Youtube and Google Video.
11: submitting the link to my friend Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.net who will probably blog the $#14 out of it.
12: welcoming the influx of newbies.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-13 10:33 am (UTC)I've been thinking along similar lines, for a while now . . .
no subject
Date: 2006-05-13 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-13 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-13 10:04 pm (UTC)Any or all help you could provide would be praised and appreciated! Tell me more!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 03:17 am (UTC)Torque would be about a half-step up in machinima. The scripting you need seems dirt easy, but I'm an experienced coder, so that's probably a blind spot. There are plenty of things that can be done without any coding at all, through the world editors. That would comprise the majority of the work for a movie, IMO.
OTOH, I don't know the state of the art in game modding. It might be easier to mod an existing game and use the standard controls for action than to write the script. It just seems like the long way around.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 03:40 am (UTC)I could certainly use a world editor if it has a graphical user interface. But I didn't see anything about that in the Torque demo.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 04:30 am (UTC)And I honestly can't promise more of my time right now. Not if I want to be sure of keeping my promises, anyway . . .
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 04:31 am (UTC)coffee sermon
Date: 2006-05-13 03:52 pm (UTC)On a totally different topic, could you send me a text file of your "coffee" sermon? (adaleATmerlynproductions.com) I am working on some coffee songs and need the inspiration.
Andrea
Re: coffee sermon
Date: 2006-05-13 05:23 pm (UTC)Re: coffee sermon
Date: 2006-05-13 05:38 pm (UTC)(Now I've got the urge to make a cuppa . . . )
Are you attending Marcon?
Re: coffee sermon
Date: 2006-05-13 05:39 pm (UTC)