ADVENATURE

TITLE:

Advenature (ADVENTURE + NATURE)

THEME:

Illusion

CONCEPT:

This piece aims to bring their viewers into an illusionary world of flowers of different colours through the use of 3D space and perspective. It can also be said that they are looking through the eyes of an insect as it finds the flowers to pollinate.

The process is separated into different posts. However, I will collate some of the more important ones ehre.

METHODOLOGY:

Maya, Aftereffects CC 2015

STILLS:

This is a work-in-progress. There is still much that I have to do.

INSPIRATION: JENNIFER STEINKAMP

Her work involves flowers, and animation as well. Here is her portfolio link.

I was particularly intrigued by one of her works, Rapunzel. What is interesting about this piece was the fact that it was so simple to make, yet it was therapeutic and pleasing to look at, something I wish i could do, as I hope MAN wall could have a lot more pleasing flowers to look at.

 

Rapunzel 13, 2010. Variable, approx. 26 x 10 feet link

Rapunzel 9, 2005. Variable, approx. 10 feet high link

Her portfolio has many more works!! Please go and see haha.

I also managed to borrow a book about her from Ina. I went to study particularly on that piece.

Obtained from Book by JoAnne Northrup on Jennifer Steinkamp’s works. Was at San Jose Museum of art ha ha. p9
Obtained from Book by JoAnne Northrup on Jennifer Steinkamp’s works as well. Was at San Jose Museum of art ha ha. p7-8

PAINTEFFECTS

This was the flower tab on Painteffects. There will be a list of folders that would appear when you first open Painteffects. There was one where u can make hamburgers with it.
This tab allows the flowers to grow. However, it doesn’t do it for just one flower in a bunch. But rather for the entire bunch.
In the flowers tab, you can manipulate the appearance of the flowers
Part 2.

FIRST PROTOTYPE:

yeap the one in week 7 heh

Feedback for first prototype:
  • less structured, more random, but not chaotic.
  • play with more color combination
  • play with them growing upside down and not just up. (maybe half from bottom up while half going downwards)
  • vary the growth of the flowers, don’t all grow and disappear at the same time.
  • Make the ending more like an ending.
  • Flowers at the side of course didn’t work very well.
  • Add many more different flowers on the same file. Vary size, growth speed and how it disappears in the timeline. (can either do that in maya or aftereffects)
  • depth, 3d, perspective

DEVELOPING FROM THE FIRST PROTOTYPE:

After taking into account on all of the feedback received, I continued the work on painteffects in a new direction to go to.

In week 7, i made a mistake of not previewing properly before i render in aftereffects.  This was the accident created, which afterwards I explored more in that direction.

During week 8, I was on the verge of giving up on this project because I hit rock-bottom for really long. You can click on this OSS link for more details.

After week 7, I indeed went to explore more, and even sketch out new ideas to visualise what I want my work to be. Initally, i wanted to place all sorts of flowers to make a garden feel.

So basically, I wanted to place many flowers surrounding a lone tree, creating a story which i could tell others, something I really aspire to be as a character animator, but wanting to do it through experimental animation instead of animating a character with expressions HAHAHA.

However, this really didn’t work well at all, even if I animate it moving forward. All in all, it was really chaotic, the colours clash throughout and it wasn’t pleasing to the eye at all.  Below was some stills I captured.

I took a step back, and looked again at my references, studied better and came back to try again, even though I was asked to change my idea as i was stuck but I am generally a persistent person when it comes to my own work once I am set on it.

I posted this just for the sake of this presentation ;_; it was really bad. Haha.

ANALYSIS OF HER WORKS AGAIN

From the pictures taken from her book (scroll up), we can see she only uses 1-2 types of flowers, with different colours with turbulence manipulated only. the placement of the flowers are all randomly for both the x and y-axis. More can be found on the week 7/8 post.

CURRENT PROGRESS

Following that analysis, I restarted again, only using two types of flowers this time: flowerTallred and DandelionYellow. Before I forget, here is what the program looks like right now.

This is my current interface. It looks messy on the program but it will look better once you open render view on Maya.

This was one of the stills i caught while I was still experimenting, which i thought looked great, so I went with this. Initially, i added a few more types of flowers in front, but i removed it.  as it looked really, really quite messy. Now i am stuck with this idea, and played with the camera speed. The video below was the official second prototype (which had only finished rendering during Longfei’s presentation… heng ah). I liked the dreamy look as the camera moves slowly while the flowers zoom in.

VIDEO AS OF NOW:

The quality is quite bad? :\

AIMS FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS:

My aim would be the next week would be that I

Play around with more camera movements such as left and right, rotation.
Find music to fit the piece
Tweak turbulence values and more colour combination for the flowers and leaveless daffodils.
BACKGROUND!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Author: insertacat

god damn it why am i doing this again? every year my info keeps changing im so done

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