Waiting
for Goatzilla
MIT Media Lab
Synthetic Characters
Group
Here is a short video clip (YouTube, WMV, QuickTime).
In the clip, captured entirely from the Synthetic Characters behavior system, goatzilla is performing actions that he has discovered satisfy his various drives: hunger, pain avoidance, the desire to dominate other creatures, and so on. When the "mouse pointer of Fate" comes in and cranks up his hunger drive, goatzilla is stymied. He'd like to eat sheep and there aren't any left. But his time/rate learning mechanism has taught him that kicking the shed reliably leads to the appearance of sheep. So he kicks the shed anticipating the sheep, out they come, there's a feeding frenzy, and goatzilla rejoices.
(The timing in the director's cut is a lot cuter.)
Technical
and Artistic Direction
Robert Burke and Scott Eaton
Produced
By
The Synthetic Characters Group
The Media Lab, MIT
Advisor: Bruce Blumberg
Graduate
Students
Marc Downie, Damian
Isla, Yuri Ivanov, Michael Patrick
Johnson, Bill
Tomlinson
Undergraduate
Students
Matt Berlin, Jesse Gray
Additional
Animators
Phil McDarby, Jed
Wahl, Geoffrey Beatty
Staff
Aileen Kawabe
Special
Thanks
Gary McDarby, Daragh
McDonnell, Ari Benbesat
(c)
2001 Synthetic Characters Group
The Media Lab, MIT
