Analog Digital Analog Project

Well, even after I had done all the brainstorming and narrowed things down to one topic.  I have gone and changed my mind.   I was watching the videos on the blog and checking out the instructions on how to build a Zoetrope and also a Phenakistascope. This was a lot of fucking work!  wow... I could have followed their directions and just built something out of a paper plate, but that seemed really lame. 

The phenakistoscope is an old timey animation (motion picture) object.  It used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture.

I took pictures of an old school sculpture that I had made and then uploaded it into photoshop and cropped out some areas and then I printed out the images and arranged them around the wheel along with some rhineston hearts and black and white cut outs of males and females walking around.  It's all about sex!!  And I hope you like it.  Pics and video soon to come.

Brainstorm for Digital Analog project due 2/28

This is going to be our final project that doesn't actually use three dimensions.  For the first several projects we were only creating the illusion of three dimensions by adjusting the scale up and down and changing things around.  I am excited to see what all this means.  And, to be really honest, I have no idea what the outcome would be as far as this assignment goes, so I think it is best that I pitch several different ideas. 


A] We follow a Digital Analog Digital sequence or we follow

B] Analog Digital Analog sequence  

I'm thinking that I am much more an analog kind of guy, which makes me think that I would learn more going the digital route, but i would be more comfortable the analog route. Either way, there is going to be some pain and some gain.  It all comes out in the wash.  If you don't leave the couch, you haven't pulled any muscles, if you have run a marathon, you've been through some hell.  And, as my friend Kenny once told me... "if you ain't fucked nothing up before, that just means that you haven't tried nothing."  I love that statement. 

So.... here are my ideas.  

I would like to take some of my old photographs from 20 years ago and scan them in, then somehow animate them to do stuff.  I also would like to scan a feather boa and add digital bubbles and glitter to it, perhaps somehow adding some motion sequence into the layers then kicking that out.  I'm not sure what the final analog product is.  I would like to  make a collage or assemblage and take photographs or scan the item in and then animate.  Perhaps If I did an assemblage, I could keep some of the pieces loose somehow and  then animate them and fix them to the final analog piece after the work is done.  

Or perhaps I would like to continue scanning in some of the paintings that I'm dealing with and see what happens with them.  I would like to make collages using interesting textured and printed papers and just scan them in and animate them in some way.  Something abstract and different. 

After Effects_Effects Tutorials

So, we have had a great time playing with some of the effects in after effects.  After just a couple minutes of playing around and then watching the tutorials, i realize this is an immense program and will take eons to learn how to work it.  That is kind of exciting though.  That is what makes it fun.    I looked for somthing that I might do with my experimental film projections that I will be making for my MFA and I stumbled across this.  It looked challenging (and it was) and it also was slightly intimidating.  But I felt like I was ready for a challenge.  So, off I went to create a tornado right down main street in Memphis.

First: I took a picture of South Main.

Second: Created New Solid Layers and then employed the use of effect CC-particle world

3,) a grid was lined up with the plane of the street and then the particle intersect was moved until it seemed to be the right heighth.  The particles were tranformed into small triangles.   The particles were transformed to "ice" and then they would slide into the apex or the energy field or tornado in our case.   I never was able to make this happen.

4.) another layer was created based from the very same particle layer, and several adjustments were made to create the vortex using the X Y and Z radius and X Y and Z positions.   this layer we chose the spiral rendering to make it look like it was spiraling or "Twisting" around a vertical axis. then we created an orange solid layer and masked it to give the twister an orange glow. And finally, we "shift" selected the three layers and then selected them in a "pre compose" to flatten them into one layer.

We added an effect called turbulent display to make the object rotate in a lopsided fashion.

5) another layer was created based on the first particle layer and this time the gravity was made into 0 and the shapes were made into squares (resembling paper).  the color was adjusted

6.) I then brought in a couple layers and made particle world create a lens convex particle world.  This was then masked and created as an overlay mask for some white smoke.  Then another layer of smoke was filled with a white color and then the color was adjusted using color curves.

After the tornado was moving round and round and paper was flying from it's center.  I use the "transform" to create a path for it to move along toward the viewer.  I added scale to the image as it came closer. 

This would have been relatively easy had the guy narrating not been so quick to tell you what he was doing without telling you HOW.   Another reason that it was difficult is apparently he is using a PC and I am not sure all the translations from PC to Mac and vice versa.   The third and last thing that made it impossible for me to get the same exact effect was the fact that he was using a different version of after effects and the "add" "subtract" "render" and other effects were not in the same positions and even same controls as the CS5 which we are using.

Today we turned in our video pertaining to use of the puppet tool.   The puppet tool is this magic tool that is supposed to give anyone and everyone the power to animate smoothly with just one layer images.  I am not anyone and everyone.  I had such a hard time with this.  I could get the tools... I could use the tools.... and I could manipulate and transform... but NOT in the way I was trying to.  What a disaster.  I am really disappointed in the piece that i turned in to class and it took me HOURS and several attempts to make this crappy dang video.  GRRRRR!!!  Disappointing, frustrating, and I'm excited to go back to make experimental projections in after effects.  I'm actually very excited about going back to that work because I am terrible at making cartoons, and we are going to get to use the "EFFECTS" of After Effects.  After effects is awesome!


I will not be posting my puppet tool video here or anywhere.   I will make another one over the weekend. 

For Tuesday February 12, 2013

So, once again we have been alotted the "dealers choice" and I decided that I would work on my projections.   This time I worked the pictures in photoshop so they would have a clean black background.  I realize now that i should not have included any background at all to the pictures, because that made it very difficult.  Next time i think i will cut them out and move the shapes into After Effects.  Either way, I need someone to help me with the program.  There are just too many options and selections to making a video in After FX.   And, this one was TERRIBLE!!! The worst... the end.

Mask Assignment

Well, It has been a long week with internship applications and picking up visiting artists and trying to collate information and things for my future. I'm trying to be zen like and do what they said back when I was going to Narcotics Anonymous..."live in the now!" Are you fucking serious? None of these people have been to grad school, acted as graduate rep, been a member of the student alliance, and dealt with internship applications, crazy deadlines and had to MOVE because of a bogus roommate during all this. CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY!!!! Okay, enough about me, here is my first little snippet with making video installations and animations. I had to lose the cartoon character. It is not part of my future. I have a much greater respect for individuals that can do that sort of thing. It's unreal. I am happy with entering some coordiantes and applying some effects to scans of my paintings and using those videos to help create environments within my installations. My only problem is, what the hell is a mask? what the hell is a mask path, what the hell is a interpolation? I love that word!!! Well, somewhat like the male to female sex change is a photoshop/after effects thing called interpolation. It takes the first character you have and turns it into the character you want it to be through either "growing" it or "diminishing" it. NO CHOP AXE and penis guillotines. It's all good. I didn't quite get to the extrapolation. Somehow I forgot. I also didn't like the photoshop mask shape that I imported. All I want to do is make circles... I wonder why? I am obsessed. I want to make round paintings. I want to drive a car with round wheels. I want to blow bubbles bubble bubbles... Here is my first mask-amation. It is a lot shorter than I had expected, but i am a happy camper nonetheless. Not that the final product is super awesome or anything, but because A.) it works (even though vimeo said it wasn't a video) and 2.) There is a lot going on, and I created it by scanning in my paintings.

So, it has been a long weekend and I"ve been playing with the After FX quite a bit. I have been taking my paintings and scanning them in and adjusting the size in photoshop so I can start animating and layering them into films that would work as projections alongside my works. I have obviously made the images too large. I wanted the files to be large so there was a lot of room to zoom in and zoom out. I have started playing with the opacity of the images and work in and out of the different layers while rotating. I also tried to work with some of the effects. There are a ton and I'm sure that I will have a blast playing with them when we are instructed exactly how they work. I am a bit confused. I did get some panning effects, but, in all honesty, I have absolutely no idea what the heck I'm doing in there. And so, I digest.... I mean, digress. Tired, and it's midnight and I've been selected to go and meet the mayor, pick up visiting artists and take them to airport and hotel and lectures, and I've also been asked to assist with a lecture class for photography to the adult community of Memphis. Grad school always starts out at a normal pace, and somewhere after around a month, all hell breaks loose and I have so many appointments to keep I have to pull out the google calendar. I know, I know.. this blog is about digital cinema, dynamic imaging, and I'm just spouting on and on about my hectic stressful life. Did I mention that I am also in charge of planning outing for the graduate students to boost morale? Well.... I am. So, there ya go! oh... I also photographed the Jesus video and redid that animation. It has clouds and other stuff, but I decided to switch his entry from the right side and somehow I deleted his big jump. It's not as smooth as it was last time, but the background certainly looks better. I'm felling much better about photoshop and after effects. Of course, I've been baptized by fire and working hours and hours and hours just to figure out one simple thing.   I am going to learn this if it kills me, and it just might.  Here is my final Jesus movie.  I'm not happy with my cartoon.  this might be the first and only cartoon I ever make.

Jesus layers-VimeoHDEncode from Thomas Green on Vimeo.