For this third and final project, I wanted to combine the calmer, relaxing feeling I used in my first project with the sense of perspective and sound-with-imagery work I explored in my second project. After playing with the idea of doing another room-based scene for the sense of perspective, I later decided to go for a more abstract route, creating a cloudy, almost dreamy background with spheres floating around in it. The original interpretation was meant to be more magical in nature, but as the project progressed and the music was added, the project took on a more spacey feel, and I decided to bring that out more in the piece in the final stages of design.
Before even beginning to design this piece, I had to pick
a location. My first thought was to project around the pillars to one of the
entrances to Goodpaster hall; however, after some consideration and input from
classmates, I decided to project on the wall outside the back entrance to
Montgomery Hall. This meant that my piece would be best designed as a large,
sprawling image instead of a smaller animation. To this end, I came up with the
idea of a flowing, sort of whimsical background with some sort of objects
floating in it, creating a sense of space and perspective that the viewer could
look at for a while and still enjoy. Overall, I wanted this piece to be
relaxing to the viewer. This ended up being useful for me, as I had to sit and
watch it for upwards of half an hour the night of the projections.
I started this project in photoshop. I created the image
by first creating a few custom “splatter-brushes”, brushes that would spread
blobs over a wide area. I then did this in various shades of blue and purple,
trying to create an image with several different colors mixed into it. After
the base image was created, I used some of photoshop’s blur and distortion
effects to blend the colors together, as well as swirling the image to give it
a less flat look. On top of this layer, I used another custom brush to spread
white dots of varying sizes on top in a separate later and slightly blurred
them, giving them the appearance of stars. In the original version of the
image, there were also streaks of purple, pink, and green across the front of
the image; these were removed later, during the animation stage, when they were
found to make the loop of the animation easier to spot.
The bubbles/planets in the piece were easier to make than
I had expected. I made them by using the ellipse tool to create a perfect
circle and then using a preset fill setting in which the fill color faces from
one color to transparent, creating an almost three-dimensional look. To make
the three-dimensional look more convincing, I added lens flares to the bubbles
in the colors parts to make it look like the light was directly linked to the
color of the bubble. These were created in three different colors in order to
create some variety in the image.
The image was then put into after effects in order to
animate it. The bubbles/planets were animated first with some simple patching,
and then I made them get larger and smaller over the course of the animation.
Second, I used a kaleidoscope effect on the white dot layer I applied earlier,
making the layer more dynamic and interesting to look at. I also changed the
color balance a few times over the timeline,
making the image shift from blue and purple to red to blue to green and then
back to blue and purple. The last effect I applied was the camera; because I
had to try to fix this the night of the presentation, there was a minor hiccup
in the camera and the animation did not loop smoothly due to the camera
stopping before it should have. However, most viewers at the presentation didn’t
seem to notice this problem, and I wasn’t about to point it out.
The music was possibly the most troublesome part of the
piece. Though the actual composition of the piece did not take very long, I
struggled with getting the piece to loop smoothly for some time, and was unable
to get a clean loop going before it was time to show the piece. If there was
one piece of this artwork I would fix, it would be this part. The rough loop I
was able to produce was very noticeable, and took a bit away from the image, which
was meant to be seamless; though the animation itself had a problem as well, it
was much less noticeable than this music issue.
The end result of my work was a vaguely space-themed
piece that looped over the course of about a minute. The music was essential in
creating this mood; without the futuristic music playing over the image, the
setting could have been much more broad, possibly being the original fantasy
design I had intended to do before switching to a space theme.
My work habits were not as good as they could have been
due to my SMP due date coming up fast over the course of this project. However,
aside from the minor hiccup in the animation and the not-so-minor glitch in the
sound file, the art project came together nicely, and I got many compliments on
it during the presentation. I think, however, with a little more time applied
to the music, I may have been able to fix it and make it sound more seamless.
Aside from the animation, I believe the imagery and animation in the piece came
together very nicely, and I was very pleased with the results.
Overall I would give myself a B for this project. Aside
from a few minor hiccups the final product was satisfactory, but with a little
more time committed to the project those glitches probably could have been
fixed. I do, however, think I achieved what I set out to do with this project,
given all the compliments I received during the presentation; it was a calming
piece that people stood and watched even after it had looped, commenting that
it had a calming, spacey feel to it.
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