creative technology

Vidcode Takes CES 2016 on the Diversity Spotlight Stage!

The first week of January tech took over Las Vegas as the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show came into town. The Vidcode team came to Vegas with the rest of the techies, as the Diversity Spotlight presentation at the Intel booth! 

Vidcode co-founders Allie and Melissa, experiencing a virtual reality roller coaster at CES 2016!

Vidcode co-founders Allie and Melissa, experiencing a virtual reality roller coaster at CES 2016!

Laina, an eighth-grader and talented Vidcode user, ran the presentation. Laina is an artist, and loves painting, drawing and playing her cello. As a student in middle school, her favorite subjects are math and science.

She was so excited when she found Vidcode, a platform she could use to combine her artistic and technical interests. She used Vidcode to create a computer vision project, using code she wrote herself and a video she had filmed. 

A coding tool for high school girls

Laina presented her beautiful computer vision project on stage alongside Vidcode co-founders Allie and Melissa. "I'm shocked that I learned a new skill through something I love, and it was exciting to see what goes on behind my favorite apps," said Laina after showing the crowd what she had made.

Watch the entire presentation below.

Creating Art in the Virtual (Reality) World

This year, Vidcode went to the Intel Developer Forum and had a blast seeing all the amazing things that makers and artists were creating with new technology!

Of course we also made sure to check out all the new technology we could, and were so excited when we stumbled on virtual reality that let us draw all around us, creating beautiful glowing art out of nothing in an empty virtual room.

Source: www.tiltbrush.com

Source: www.tiltbrush.com

We were using the HTC Vive headset, which comes with controllers and sensors that let you move around freely in virtual space, and draw anything you want around and above you. One of the Vidcoders wrote her name all around her, another drew a room full of rainbows and falling leaves. 

HTC Vive virtual reality art drawing

 

The Future of Storytelling created a video showing Glen Keane, the former Disney animator behind 'The Little Mermaid' and 'Aladdin', using this same virtual reality technology to make his 2-dimensional characters come to life around him.

 

Disney drawing with virtual reality HTC Vive

“When I animate there’s a frustration I have, wishing that the flatness of the paper would go away and that I could actually dive in,” says Keane. “Today all the rules have changed. By putting tools in your hand that can create in virtual reality, I can put goggles on and I just step into the paper, and now I’m drawing in it.”

In the video below, produced by The Future of Story Telling, Keane tries out this new way to create art and tell stories through technology — and what he creates is out of this world.