On Friday I began setting up the installation for assessment and I give thanks to Guy and Sam for helping me rig the screen.
I discovered suspending a screen that large to be completely wrinkle free is near impossible with the level of skill and the technology (within my immediate budget) available to me.
Nevertheless the course outline clearly states:
"As the focus of the unit is on experimentation and process there is a degree of risk that the outcome may not be well resolved. The emphasis for an assessable outcome is therefore not just any completed work that comes from this experimentation, but documentation of experimentation and process"
Anyone who takes the time to throughly examine this blog will observe comprehensive documentation throughout the entire semester. Unfortunately I haven't been able to document as much as I would like, however to go beyond the current level of documentation I would need contantly carry a video camera with me and I'd be spending more time documenting than I would experimenting and working on the projects!
Using the construction method explained in the earlier blog entry I make various branch and leaf growing animations, like these...
I also took a picture of the stick (aka cane) mentioned in the Inspirt story and removed the background from it.
Importing everything into After Effects I now reposition the animations over each other at varying positions in the timeline. So as soon as one animation finishes playing another one begins so it creates the illusion of continuous growth.
The squares in the image below represent the handles along the boundries of each invidiual animation.
I wasn't satisfied with the test set up, so for assessment I have a new configuration in mind using my new 5 x 2 metre screen.
The most significant change is the screen is now rigged diagonally which partitioned the room. I think this is a better decision because all the technology will be concealed behind the screen.
The first step involves taking some pictures of some leaves and branches against a neutral coloured background.
This background could be keyed out but I've decided to manually erase it using an image editing program then saving the image as a PNG. PNG files have an alpha layer so when I import them into After Effects the background will already be transparent and this will save processing power and memory when it comes to rendering because the computer won't need to do so many calculations.
So the result is files like these...
The next step is to import the PNG of the stem or branch into After Effects then set its anchor point to be at the end of the wood in which it is intended to grow from. If you enlarge the below image you will see a cross hair at the base of the stem. This may seem contradictory but the background is almost made blue, however this is pure blue and will key very easily when the time comes.
Now I adjust the colours. At frame 0 I change the hue to make the steam appear green, this way it will look fresh as it begins growing. At frame 50 I change the hue to make the stem appear older and worn. So over the two sections it grows it will start a green shoot then gradually become
To make the stem look like its growing I return to frame 0 and change the scale to 0%, then at frame 50 I make it 100%. Now over the 2 seconds the stem will grow from nothing to its full size and since its been anchored at the base it will appear to be growing from that point.
A similiar to process is used to simulate a leaf growing only the leaf will be growing as the stem grows. To make this look plausible the leaf will also need to move as its resized, so this is a matter of adjusting its position so it appears to remain growing out of the place on the stem. The dotted line represents the leaf's moving path.
Now to add a couple more leaves growing at different intervals and the end result is this:
The configuration I used for the test installation was inadequate, primarily because the material wasn't wide enough and too long which resulted in sagging around the floor. There was also a gap between the two materials which wouldn't close without creating too many wrinkles.
So for a new approach I shall stitch the material side by side to give me 5 metres in total. Then I shall get another 2.5 metre length, cut it in half giving me another two 2.5metre lengths which are 0.63 metres in height. Then I shall take these lengths and stitch them to the top of the the 5 metre length to create projection screen with an area of 5 x 2 metres.
This is the first 9 minutes and 42 seconds of The Mummy Returns. The reason for its inclusion is because between 3:24 to 3:50 there is a sequence depicting an oasis instantaneously growing out of the desert sands. But to make things confusing once embedded YouTube counts down from 9:42 so the the sequence starts at 6:15.
Since you the YouTube video quality is terrible I won't extract that sequence form the video and reupload because that will only degrade the quality further. Therefore the reader will be required to diligently fast forward the below video to 6:15 in order to view what I'm referring to. To see the time counter the video must be playing.