Ed's Newsletter - January/February 2002

THANKS TO ANIMATION 2002!
I had a wonderful time in Teesside, England at Animation 2002. Phil Tippett (Tippett Studio) was there, as was Ken Beilenberg (PDI), Bill Plympton (his unusual and entertaining self - http://www.plymptoons.com), John Doyle and Colin Davies (Cosgrove Hall Films), Andy Daffy (Framestore CFC) and Neville Astley and Mark Baker (Astley Baker). Animation legend Paul Driessen turned up for a retrospective of his work. amd Paul Wells (new book: "Animation: Genre and Authorship") did the interviewing honors. The conference was organized by the crack Teesside University team of Chris Williams, Siobhan Fenton (new mom!) and Shaun Featherstone. I'll be honest, folks, these kinds of events are one of the most treasured perks of what I do. Every now and then, I get to rub elbows and learn from some true giants in the industry, and I feel very privileged.

ACTING FOR ANIMATORS AT CHICAGO'S COLUMBIA COLLEGE..
I'm teaching two 15-week Acting for Animators workshops at Chicago's Columbia College this spring. Thanks to Barry Young, head of the animation program there, for the opportunity.

HAD MORE FUN THAN I SHOULD HAVE HAD AT VALVE SOFTWARE!
There are not enough superlatives to describe the team of animators at Valve ("Half Life") in Kirkland, Washington. I recently spent a couple of days as their guest and simply had a terrific time. Thanks, guys, for a heck of a wonderful experience! Marc, I'm reading "The 37th Mandala" and like it a lot.

CRAFT NOTES
ACTING AND AI: WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD

Wired Magazine's March 2002 issue carries a must-read cover story ("Wild Things" by Steven Johnson) on the state of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a strong emphasis on its growing importance in videogames. Among the fascinating factoids itemized in the article are these:
** A recent poll of developers showed a sevenfold increase in CPU time used for AI in the average game since 1997.
** There are at least six AI PhD's now working in the game industry.
** Game AI is joining the academic AI community at the hip. Until the past five years or so, these two universes ran parallel but not in tandem.

After reading the Wired article, I went to a coffeehouse, ordered myself a tall latte with extra sugar and tore into an article on the same subject by University of Michigan professor John Laird. Co-authored by Michael van Lent. Entitled "Human-level AI's Killer Application: Interactive Computer Games", it was delivered in 2000 for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Laird is the cheerleader extraordinaire for the advancement of AI in computer games, and he makes a lot of sense. You can find this article on his web site. What he likes about computer games is that they are a totally controlled environment for experimentation with AI.

On the premise that the Wired piece and Laird's article are a credible summary of the state of things, I have something to add: Humor. What I am seeing in these discussions about artificial intelligence is a focus on the desirability of real-time response, characters' autonomous intelligent interaction with the environment, planning skills, language skills, common sense and learning. All of that sounds right, but without character humor, I don't think the game developers will be happy with the results.

SENSE OF HUMOR -- SENSE OF LIFE

If you want a game player to emotionally interact with the characters in a computer game, you are going to have to create for the player a landscape that is familiar in human terms. He must recognize his own. Oh sure, the game environment can be on another planet and populated largely by Cyclops, but it is the humans characters that will do the heavy lifting of creating emotional involvement. Yes, it is an amazing fete to create characters that seem to learn and that develop adaptive behavior. But what is the purpose after all? What is the goal of all of this?

I can't get "Final Fantasy" out of my head. The movie had a lousy story and weak acting, it is true, but for me its fatal flaw was its almost total lack of humor. As I watched the thing, all I could think was how boring a place earth would be if these guys actually succeeded in saving the place for themselves. A world populated by the "Final Fantasy" crowd would not be worth saving.

A character's sense of humor is a marker for his sense of life, same as it is for you and me. Your sense of life is how you process things. It is how you react when you watch pigeons in the park or the fans at a ball game or the politicos when they try to explain Enron to you. We tend to look for friendships and romantic relationships with others that share our same sense of life. You don't want to be spending your life with a person who stands up at the same moment you are sitting down, or a person who does not get the joke that cracks you up.

Personal example: I am these days living a bi-city life, with my wife and daughter being in the San Francisco Bay Area so our daughter can finish up her senior year of high school. I am in Chicago, trying to get a new acting studio off the ground. You know what I miss most about my habitual family life? The little things like when I read the paper in the morning and want to mumble to Cally, "Hey, listen to what Cheney said THIS time!" And she does, and I know how she will respond because I know her sense of life. If I find something amusing, she likely will too. I miss that a lot. Humor is part of my life.

In the book "Laughter - A Scientific Investigation" by Robert R. Provine (Penguin Books, 2000), it was revealed that women laugh more than men, and that women put a higher premium on humor. In personal ads, women tend to "seek a man with a good sense of humor" much more than men seek women with that quality. Women, according to this study, like to find men who will make them laugh, and men are happy to have a good woman chuckle at their jokes and insights. And, most surprising of all, laughter has very little to do with jokes anyway. It is a "I'm OK - You're OK" kind of thing, an indicator of social interaction.

Next time you are sitting in a restaurant, turn off the sound in your head and watch the customers at the other tables. Observe the role that laughter and humor is playing in their communication. Watch how the female tends to laugh at the man's comments, whatever they might be.

And the next time you get up to talk to a group, observe your own gut impulse to put them at ease -- and to gain their approval -- with humor.

I very much agree with John Laird. Computer games are the most exciting new frontier for artificial intelligence. It is also the place where photo-real animation is going to flourish. "Final Fantasy" has scared the bejeezus out of Hollywood, and it will be a very long time before any other studio tries the photo-real thing. Computer game developers are only now accelerating into second gear on a wide-open racetrack.

I intend to watch the developments very carefully and will try to stay abreast of what the academics like Laird are saying about AI. However, I hope that game developers don't kid themselves into believing that AI will all by itself guarantee success, no matter how much CPU power you toss at it. At the end of the day, game playing is an aesthetic experience, a kind of theatre. The animator shamans are still drawing that circle in the dirt, still talking to the tribe. And part of what the tribe understands best is --- you guessed it -- humor. Take it to the bank.