Crickets Chirping

via Cognitive Daily: Cuts in movies an their impact on memory.

While cutting abruptly between camera angles seems unnatural, moving a camera from place to place while filming can be quite realistic: after all, people walk around all the time; their own viewpoint is constantly changing. One study did find that people have better memories for a static scene filmed with a moving camera, compared to two still shots taken from the beginning and end- points of the camera’s motion.

via Flowing Data: Is an Animated Transition From a Scatter Plot to a Bar Graph Effective

The main result of the study was that animation improved graphical perception at both syntactic (object tracking) and semantic (change estimation) levels of analysis. Even in highly predictable transitions, such as the stacked bars to grouped bars conditions, animation had a significantly lower error rate. As we masked each trial stimulus, the better performance in highly predictable cases may in part be due to improved transfer to memory. Survey results also revealed strong preferences for animation, as subjects found it more helpful and engaging. Furthermore, staged animation was significantly preferred to direct animation in most cases. This argues strongly for the efficacy of animation for depicting transitions between data graphics.

via Destructioid: Fez, the best game I have never played

While not much info is known about this Independent Games Festival finalist, Fez is obviously a platformer with a ridiculously cute (and adorably animated) main character. That is all well and good, but the minute I saw the game break the traditional 2D perspective and morph into this crazy 2D/3D ridiculously well-designed hybrid I almost fell of my chair and cried with happiness. Okay, fine, I did fall off my chair and cry with happiness. But it was all worth it.