Leaping The Uncanny Valley: Japanese Pop Star Turns Out To Be A Computer Generated Mashup
from the remix? dept
A few folks sent over versions of this story, about how the popular 61-member (!) Japanese girl music group AKB48 introduced its newest member, named Aimi Eguchi, in a candy commercial, which you can see below:Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: japan, mashup, robots, uncanny valley
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I can see lonely people carrying a pad with a pattern that tells the camera were to place the virtual avatar, so they can take pictures with them or when it is less the 150 gigabytes in size people could pay a buck or two to take a photo with their idols.
Or play games with augmented reality characthers.
But in this case one can see the possibilities, an idol that never dies, never gets angry at fans, never gets old and lives forever, no PR nightmares and maybe most important no one to pay.
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Why not?
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Re: Why not?
one thing we do still need tho, is voice talent. so far cg voice is terrible. it always sounds like it has no soul.
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I wish my children had learned to speak as fast as you, not sure about the foul mouth though.
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...but why should we? It cost us quadrillions just to make him smile.
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Apparently that is important to you,
but for others - it depends.
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And you are? 15?
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Oh great...
For all that is holy please tell me that there isn't some company in Japan working on an unmaned fighter jet...
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Re: Oh great...
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Anyone else...
It's alive! ALIVE!
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There's no such thing as bad publicity
Because it's gotten them a lot of attention, and because it's memorable. And who knows - this may be the opening move in a CwF gambit! Fans could request custom mashups of their favourite band members, or mashups between fans and band members, or band members and politicians, or band members and Sony executives - the possibilities are endless!
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Re: There's no such thing as bad publicity
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Kawaii desu!
Think of all the stories that, today, will never be told because to do so requires thousands or (more often) millions of dollars.
It will be a wild, diverse explosion just like the digital music scene. End result: more culture for everyone.
Unless the MAFIAA ruin the party for everyone.
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An answer to a question.
It's called a figure, and Orchid Seed probably already has a license to this "mash up" so they can throw "her" into panties and sell them for $120 each.
Oh, and the panties will be removable.
This way, none of the girls will be offended when they see the product on shelves across Japan.
AKB48. Legal in Japan. Gets you arrested crossing into Canada.
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Because they can do it!
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That was a movie about a digital actress who took the world by storm and resulted in the mental breakdown of both her creator and the director who controlled her.
Good movie.
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Re: movie "S1mone"
The days of the live actor/actress may be coming to an end, especially once they figure out a computer generated way to get rid of those pesky voice actors.
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This all may be true (for the present time), but the money paid to a puppeteer will be astronomically less than any big named "Hollywood" actor.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: movie "S1mone"
I am reminded of the movie "Being John Malkovich". The puppets are what people watched, but the puppeteer was the famous one and was the one who got paid, quite well.
If actors are replaced by digital puppets, people will still recognize the skill behind them as it becomes apparent that some digital "actors" perform better than others.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: movie "S1mone"
Being skilled as a digital puppeteer doesn't mean your going to get Johnny Depp's or Angelina Jolie's paycheck. It will never happen and the movie studios will see to that. If you don't agree on their price to be a digital puppet in their movie, they'll just get someone else. After all, by then they won't be needing your name or your face to bring money into the box office.
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It doesn't matter what you put in front of the screen. There will be some human element behind it some of those will be more skilled than others and become more known.
Digital actors are just extensions of the humans that control them. People will be fans of the puppeteers, not the puppets.
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Re: Re: Re: movie "S1mone"
Also the people behind it can be easily changed.
On the bright side any actor that reaches fame can today be forever young on the big screen, how much celebrity artists will pay for having a digital version of theirs that they can put on screen?
Tron was the first film I saw CGI for this but it was not that good you could tell something was not right, but japanese one, oh that one is almost perfect it fooled a lot of people.
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Who are you going to believe..
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I'd have to admit though that she was really good. I'm usually good at spotting digital fakery, but I couldn't tell right off which one she was from the short time each was on the screen in the first video. It's not until I get a better look in the second video that I could spot the "glitch", her eyelids hardly animated at all. They just blinked a few times. That's quite odd, considering that I find that Japanese animators are usually better at animating eyes than most!
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Extra!
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It's Japan, home of all those "by our powers combined!" hero groups whose big powered armor suits can join into a really humongous powered armor menace to fight the worst bad guys. :)
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Video is no longer available
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