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Susan Amkraut is a research
software scientist and artist/designer at Unreal Pictures. As a graduate
student at Ohio State University's Computer Graphics Research Group, Amkraut
pioneered the use of behavioral animation techniques and flocking algorithms
as early as 1985. This work led to her revolutionary bird flocking animation
in the internationally acclaimed "Eurhythmy" (1990), created
with Michael Girard, which won top awards at Ars Electronica in Austria,
and the Imagina Festival in Monaco. Later, in 1992, Amkraut adapted her
flocking algorithms for an interactive, realtime virtual reality installation
"Menagerie" (another collaboration with Girard) exhibited at
the Pompidou Center in Paris. Amkraut and Girard founded Unreal Pictures,
Inc. in 1993. Unreal Pictures develops "Character Studio", a professional high-end 3D character animation system published by Discreet (the multimedia division of Autodesk) for use in the film, games and broadcast production markets. Amkraut and Girard are the principal architects of Character Studio's figure animation ("Biped") and crowd animation ("Crowd") systems. The thrust of Amkraut's artistic work has been focussed near the perceptual threshold between naturally occurring forms and artificially generated algorithmic patterns. |
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