Professor Jeremy and his students from Alfred State (State University of New York College of Technology) visited our laboratory on January 17, 2018. We had a hackathon using special cameras and had a fun time together.

Who are Alfred State students?

They study at “Digital Media and Animation” course and they have come to Japan for touching digital media such as animation and games, and to create some music videos. Jillian, who worked at my team in Hackathon, had an animated sticker on her PC. Also, her smartphone wore an anime character keychain. I didn’t know what to talk with her, so I pointed to the keychain then asked: “What is that?” She told me that it was “Voltron”. I didn’t know Voltron, but Kentaro sensei came to us at just the right moment and he joined our conversation in excitement. He taught me that there were some overseas remakes of old Japanese anime recently and they are amazing.

Aside from that Kentaro sensei is too detailed about anime, Jeremy showed some their animations and games at the beginning of Hackathon. They made plenty of animation and game studies. I found that we were overwhelmingly inferior in the number of studies, so I have to devote more. Not only things like as studies but also things used for exhibitions at science museums, I also realized that experience of these studies would cause great results.

Camera-Hackathon

The hackathon is to make interesting videos and live attractions using a far infrared camera, a near infrared camera or a 360 degree camera. Alfred and Meiji students were divided into six teams that worked together for about three hours.

Although we had a difficult time fighting to overcome language barrier in the working, we arrived at our goal. The results are:

• Team 360 Degree Camera
  • ①Stop motion movie using real video image and handwritten illustrations
  • ②360 degree cinema graph some drinks poured into the cup
• Team Far Infrared Camera
  • ③Stop motion movie using footprints
• Team Near Infrared Camera
  • ④Shot movie -Bright-Bite-
  • ⑤Trick art using an aqueous pen (color: black, deep blue)
  • ⑥Shot movie -Replace-