Walk the Dog + Motion Control = STAY!

June 16, 2012 9:23 AM

STEADYo - a motion tracked yo-yo provides a different look at some amazing tricks. [via]
posted by quin (8 comments total)

Sorta takes the magic away from it, doesn't it? Makes it look like someone pulling rubber bands around something nailed into an invisible wall. And not that an invisible wall isn't super neat, it just makes the yoyo tricks seem mundane.
posted by crunchland at 9:31 AM on June 16, 2012

That was interesting, but the drum beat driven camera stutter was annoying.
posted by Mblue at 9:33 AM on June 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

crunchland: "Sorta takes the magic away from it, doesn't it? Makes it look like someone pulling rubber bands around something nailed into an invisible wall. And not that an invisible wall isn't super neat, it just makes the yoyo tricks seem mundane"

We clearly took completely different things away from this video!

I found it fascinating because it showed the dynamisc in both string length, yoyo position, and hand movement, that normally we don't focus on when watching yoyo tricks. By stabilizing the yoyo, the changes in everything else were super highlighted.

I dug it. I coulda done without the kaleidoscope vision stuff, though. That was rather bleh.
posted by barnacles at 9:38 AM on June 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sorta takes the magic away from it, doesn't it? Makes it look like someone pulling rubber bands around something nailed into an invisible wall. And not that an invisible wall isn't super neat, it just makes the yoyo tricks seem mundane.

I disagree, I could never really understand how to do yo-yo tricks as a kid because I wasn't kinesthetically gifted enough to make sense of it all in motion. Isolating just the motion of the string suddenly makes it seem so much more understandable to me.

Say, does Tommy Smothers know about any of this?
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:39 AM on June 16, 2012

Neato. One thing I've never understood about pro-level yo-yo ing is how they always try to make it look cool and hip, like it's on par with skateboarding and other x-games. Why not just embrace the fact that it is a really geeky hobby and go with that?
posted by Think_Long at 10:27 AM on June 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, too much with the blinky scratchy. Couldn't actually watch it.
posted by clvrmnky at 10:46 AM on June 16, 2012

It's fascinating to reverse engineer this trainwreck. They're not using video because video is too blurry. Instead they're using a DSLR's "fast shoot" mode -- but that only gives them 6-10 photos in quick succession. So they've built this stuttery experience around stuttery content.

It's awful, but they didn't have that much of a choice.
posted by effugas at 1:38 PM on June 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wow, they see you spinning...

I thought it was cool, quin.
posted by FrereKhan at 11:20 PM on June 17, 2012