Waterdrop recorded at 2000 fps

Ste's Weather updates

" Matthew, it's looking rather moist outside! Stick that on the blog" Steven Swanbaruga 27/11/09

Exhibition

Here are some photos of the exhibition we finished earlier on today.


This is where the animation will be displayed onto using the data projector kindly lent to us by graham.

This is where the projector will be positioned on aimed at the door.

This is the awesome organic half to the piece that the rest of the guys made whilst i was in New York and working on the animation.


Again from another angle

Stencils retrieved from the environment

This is an image I retreived from NY, I opened it into photoshop and with a few tweaks of the levels, brightness and contrast was able to convert it into this:

now that I have a clear monochrome image to play with I can print this out and then convert it into a stencil via removing the black letters with a craft knife, always get permission from an adult kids.

now that I have removed the Black from the image a stencil is clearly visible, with this I plan on applying a identical layer on the door using spray paint.

Here are some other images I have taken and edited into stencils:

Exhibition Space

So we all went into the exhibition space today, its looking pretty good. the size is comfy a good 10" x
8.5" floor space is plenty of room for what we intend on doing.

Can't wait to get all set up and ready.

New York - Inspiration

Over the 4 days I spent in New York I gathered quite a large range of urban art/imagery.

I used this collection to help partially design the urban door.



The biggest thing I was looking at was ‘tags’, where as the vandals/artists (depending on your opinion) would sign objects, vehicles, walls. These come in a vast array of sizes, colours and styles, much like that a normal person’s signature.





These appeared almost everywhere in some of the more disadvantaged communities I travelled to whilst visiting the city, and I have to admit I like them.









Along my travels I saw a bike locked to a lamppost on the side of the pavement. The way it incoporated both the organic and urban side as one was brilliant.

Animation

For the urban side of the door we have thought of creating an animation that will simulate the Organic/Natural side breaking through to the urban half. Ive been looking at ways to make this animation after deciding that it will be in a vine form growing/spreading across the door.

as shown here in one of Stephen's illustrations:


here is a test for a method i found where as the snake/vine is made from sections following a 'leader' layer. with this, depending on the texture it is very life like. the movement is just to demonstrate a certain bend, it can be moved in any direction.




I was happy with this animation and wanted to improve it so that the final intended result of the vine growing across the door could be achived, however the scale and time involved in making such an animation made this certain method very time consuming. So I trotted on and after a while found another solution, this time perfectly easy, quick and simple.

This method is called a 'Write-on'. It is an effect performed in Adobe After Effects and is fairly simple.

You get an image, in this instance the urban door with vine. Using the pen tool you draw over the lines made by the vines, making sure multiple animation frames are used for the timing. Once done certain choices can be made to 'reveal the layer behind' - being the image of vines.

here is the tutorial I used incase your interested more
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpqT_bzhiA8

Below is what i came up with:



I wanted my animation to standout and look more visually pleasing as it was just the vines growing out from the letter box, I started to wonder how it could be it better and how i could exaggerate it more.

literally like a flash it came to me, how about after the cameras come out from the vines what if i turn the vines into a neon tube light. As if the organic movement has been taken over by the artificial space and assimilated it.

I looked into this and whilst in NY I managed to take a few images of Times Square, which is renowned for its artificial lighting.


through use of key framing I changed the fill colour to a sharp red and then back to the natural green, I played with this and created several flickers to create the illusion of a real neon light. To accompany this i needed some sound, so i searched on the web and found a suitable noise that i could edit.

This sound was perfect but had one problem, it was just too short. I needed something that would last for around 30 seconds and fluctuate also, so I took the sound and duplicated it looping i on top of itself. With this a minute jump was inevitable but, with the flicker of the neon lighting a bridge was created for this sound to become an advantage.


The finished outcome (turn your speakers up):