Week 12 Critique

Bill was away this lesson so Matt took the class, regardless I wanted to get something projected on the wall to give me some indiciation of what it would look like. So I ended up projecting both a still of the megalith and an animation of the tree growing.

The projector was old and horrible and didn't do the image any justice, but the projecting surface and lighting conditions of the E-Media computer lab aren't really a conducive projection environment. Another problem was I couldn't make the projection fill the entire wall and thus did not achieve the scale I was hoping for.

From this test projection I've ascertained I'll definitely need an overhead projection to allow the viewer to get as close. Matt suggested I could try rear projecting but I'll need a fair amount of space to make this work.

The tree growing animation was well recieved, however I was concerned that it looked too shoddy because I didn't know what I was doing when I started. Because of this I've got the leaves and branches growing in several differt "styles" some of which defy nature - but nobody seemed to notice and were impressed by what I had done.

We discussed the interaction and what would happen to this tree when someone stopped interacting with it. My first thought was to have the leaves fall off the tree and fade into nothing before they hit the ground. However, I used the "Loop Back & Forth" option in QuickTime so the tree constantly gret and "un-grew" which the class found quite meditative and rythymic. So perhaps I'll explore "ungrowing" rather than "deciduating" because it will be far less complex and quicker to implement.

It also occurred to me I could just as easily create this tree growing animation in Flash rather than in After Affects then importing it into Flash. Creating it entirely in Flash would give me greater control over what happens as I could use Action Scripting down to the very leaves.

Now my next step is to get this tree growing in Flash under certain mouse states (I.e. mouse down, mouse up), then build the mouse a censor and do a test install.

Tree Still Growing

Here's a small section of leaves sprouting...

Another Tree Grows

Here's a variation to the treegrowing sequence...

The Tree Grows for the Installation

I have began work on the tree growing sequence for the installation. There are a few kinks in it, but its a good start.

Creating the Installation

I must begin thinking towards physically installing this megalith, most likely as a projection onto a wall but first I need a suitable source image.

Here are some I'm going to play around with:

Rough Diagram

I have come to the realisation that I'm not going to have sufficient time to produce a quality film for submission so I think I'll focus my efforts towards creating an interactive installation thus enabling me to pursue a short film next semester.

Since I've always liked the idea of putting the viewer in the role of the protagonist I need to find a way to create an interaction with the megalith which results in the tree growing.

Here is a rough diagram to get started:

Bascially it involves two projections, one of the megalith and the other of the tree. The basic premise is an observer does something in front of the megalith and the tree grows in the second projection.