C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

Every 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.( Read more... )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.

Google just bought my favorite 3D drawing program, SketchUp, and made it available for free to everyone. This is the easiest and most intuitive way to create 3D models, with the possible exception of Second Life. It comes with a tutorial that will have you making models in no time. I used this program to create this illustration of a space station which I use as a visual aid to explain Lojban sentence structures.

Recently I made a model of a three-dimensional chess variant I invented years ago, named Hannibal. Click the pictures to see larger versions. Here it is perpendicular to the ground. Before I add the playing pieces, I want to tilt the board until it rests all three of its deepest points on the table.

I rotated it 45 degrees along one non-vertical axis and 45 degrees along the other non-vertical axis. As you can see, this still isn't level. Here's a geometry question: from the starting position shown above, how many degrees do I have to rotate it around each axis to rest all three points on the ground?