This is one of the kids’ favorite moments in Cape, an episode of the BBC series Africa: springboks pronking, or leaping high into the air — up to 13 feet!
In Afrikaans and Dutch, to “pronk” is to show off, though the reason that springboks pronk is not known definitively. They could be excited, agitated, exercising, spreading their individual scents, or showing off their fitness either for predators or rivals within the herd. Any which way, it’s fun to watch.
Watch more BBC videos in the archives.
A character in a moment, one created each day for 30 consecutive days, animated as an exercise of skill and imagination by UK-based animator Geoff King. He writes:
It was difficult to even think of what to animate most days. I spent a few hours on average for each day, sometimes it felt like all day. I originally intended to do them quicker but they usually didn’t get going till the late evening. This also meant all the days where only ‘first passes’ or ‘straight aheads’. After the first 5 days I realised I should try to maintain a reasonable quality. It wasn’t easy, a lot of time was spent hitting a wall but I had fun trying something different everyday.
30 Days is also a nice example of how a sketch can connect with its audience with motion and emotion in only a few seconds. No dialog required. Music: Le bal de Rémy by Circus Marcus.
Related watching: One second (or so) per day for a 2-months in Asia.
via The Curious Brain.
Karl Sims is a digital media artist, computer graphics research scientist, and software entrepreneur. His influential artificial life computer animations, like this one from 1994, were programmed as virtual creatures that simulated evolution through genetic algorithms:
This video shows results from a research project involving simulated Darwinian evolutions of virtual block creatures. A population of several hundred creatures is created within a supercomputer, and each creature is tested for their ability to perform a given task, such the ability to swim in a simulated water environment. Those that are most successful survive, and their virtual genes containing coded instructions for their growth, are copied, combined, and mutated to make offspring for a new population. The new creatures are again tested, and some may be improvements on their parents. As this cycle of variation and selection continues, creatures with more and more successful behaviors can emerge.
The creatures shown are results from many independent simulations in which they were selected for swimming, walking, jumping, following, and competing for control of a green cube.
Thanks, @benjohnbarnes.
